Phantom Dust

Phantom Dust's initial planning sessions must have been interesting. The Tokyo disclosure team's pitch to Microsoft suits probably went like this: "We know what Japanese stays like -- battle royals, collecting material and cyberpunk attitudes. And now we have Phantom Dust, a fresh Xbox game with a large serving of Dragon Ball Z-like fisticuffs, Pokemon-inspired collectable skill cards, and cyberpunk bad striplings stripped right out of Akira -- all dosed with a post-apocalyptic backdrop of ruined cities and a struggling human race."

We attended the game's formal unveiling at Microsoft's pres occurrence in the fashionable Harajuku district in Tokyo last week, and lead game director Yukio Futatsugi (whose design credits include Panzer Dragoon Saga) was upon hand to offer press members a chance to play the near-finished game. In the game, players are thrown into arenas populated by the agency of friends and foes after viewing make an incision in scenes that explain why you should lay the impair on your opponents. Once defeating your enemies, players are then taken back to a mission selection shield not unlike Mechassault's. The game's 200-plus single player missions should hold players very busy.

Phantom Dust go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake ofs the story of a gang of nomads looking to restore their memories after a disastrous circumstance that left most of the world as wandering amnesiacs. All they know is that the surface is run over by fiends that embody people's worst reflections and nightmares. Mysterious particles Phantom Dust populate a great deal of of the land and are lock opener to regaining once-forgotten memories and skills. In their effort to explain their world, your gang must battle [i]or[/i] part of to the other some nasty foes -- a certain number of living, some not.

Accumulating skills is the lock opener to building your character and winning fights against increasingly stronger foemans Before matches, players can elect a handful of the skills they have gathered in previous rounds and take them into battle. Skills range from defense upgrades, short and lengthy range fireballs, and agility booster that permit players hover in mid-air as they take the battle to the firmament New skills can be rest on the battleground in the form of colorful orbs. greatest in quantity players will probably seek without new skills before engaging enemies at the beginning of a match. A total of above 300 skills can be assembleed throughout the game, some more rare than others.

The real-time fighting perceive s intuitive and fluid. Players lock-on to enemies by dint of pressing the right trigger, flicking it again to turn back back to normal movement, and jumping requires a click of the left trigger. Each of the colored buttons upon the Xbox controller can be assigned single skill. When walking over a skill orb upon the battlefield, players can assign the skill to single of the A, B, X or Y buttons. While your customized button layout is displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the defence our time with the game revealed it earns difficult to remember what skills you have assigned to each button in the heat of battle.

Futatsugi was eager to present to view off the game's multiplayer features, as well, since Phantom Dust will support the one and the other system link play and online battles [i]or[/i] part of to the other Xbox Live. A total of four players can battle in individual arena online, each bringing their preferr collection of skills to the battle in a nod to card battle games like Magic: The Gathering. a certain quantity of skills will be available after beating antagonists online, while other rare skills will be available solitary as downloadable content. Players will also be available to download maps, upload statistics, create clans and participate in tournaments upon Xbox Live.

Graphically, while the game undergos from a drab color palette of oranges and grays, the voluminous power-ups that players gain add colorful explosions, and various gameplay seconds damage the arenas as well. The greatest in quantity impressive visual scene we witnessed was an environment with highway overpasses collapsing and craters forming upon the concrete when players implacable to the ground.

Clearly the greatest in quantity surprisingly element of Phantom Dust is its music; it's anything on the contrary run-of-the-mill. Microsoft Game Studios outsourced the game music to a studio in Japan that has provided the game with a jangled, technical electronica soundtrack that is reminiscent of Aphex Twin, on the contrary is far more listenable.

In a surprise announcement earlier this month Microsoft admitted having no plans to release Phantom Dust outside of Japan. The company gave no explanation in its pres release, on the contrary we have uncovered an interesting twist to Phantom Dust's fate. Not alone did director Futatsugi admit that his team make knowned an English version along side its domestic Japanese build, he plane loaded up the fully-translated English version upon one kiosk at the pres incident eager to show it off

Microsoft's polemic decision to scrap plans to release Phantom Dust outside of Japan is something of a brewing strife of words within the company, with game designers and public relations race urging Western Xbox fans to embrace the game and demand its release stateside. single Microsoft representative told me that if demand is hardy enough in North America, Microsoft may turn upside down its previous decision.