Escape from Paradise City

PAX 2007 Preview

From the developer team behind Gangland comes a new take on gangland violence. Consider Escape from Paradise City part role play, part arcade and a whole lot of action.

The game setup is simple: the city is overrun with crime, apparently stemming from a particular crime syndicate, which is at the center of it all. The government sends in three agents, all with diverse abilities, to take out this syndicate, but in order to do that they will have to work through both the story arc and the neighborhoods. But rather than running and gunning, you don’t actually take out the crime bosses of the individual neighborhoods. What you do instead is beat them into submission so that they then run around and tell everyone in the neighborhood that you are the new boss and they start to work for you.

That yields multiple results. First, you begin to see money filter into your coffers. Money is used for weapon, armor and skill upgrades. Second, you may actually gain new skills by having the neighborhood under your control. And third, you may gain some minions out of the deal.

The three agents have diverse skills to begin with. There are two men (one with ranged attacks and one that is primarily a field commander in that he recruits and directs minions) and one woman (who is the melee specialist).

Eventually you will get to the final boss that has some supernatural connections, so leveling up and acquiring new skills is tantamount to success. And in the beginning of the game, players will have agents selected for them for the opening scenarios, but later on, you will get to select the agent you wish to use to tackle the scenario.

The camera either uses the isometric viewpoint or can go over the shoulder with the map interface allowing you to click on a location and your character will run there automatically. A vehicle does come into play later in the game, but you can’t control it. Consider it a taxi ride that quickens traversing a zone, but you can’t do much except enjoy the ride.

The game’s combat system is simple in that you select and opponent, choose your attack and then let your character go. You can change up attacks during the confrontation, and even move in an effort to evade attacks. Multiplayer will pit player against player to take over the most neighborhoods (and it is online).

The game follows some RPG elements in that you will have skill trees to work up and after you defeat an enemy, you can loot their bodies. Even your henchmen will have skill trees that you can work them through.

The control scheme will allow for either point-and-click play or using the WASD movement keys on the keyboard in conjunction with the mouse.

Graphically the game looked good playing on a laptop at the Penny Arcade Expo in the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The sound was negligible because of the noise of the exposition. Look for Escape from Paradise City to hit store shelves in October.