The New Flesh

Okay one out of left field which perhaps says more about me as a gamer than anything else but Plain Sight was my game of the show. Shoved into a lions den of tripple-A titles this was the one game that really left me buzzing and made me overcome by shyness and chat to the rep/dev.

The stand such that it was looked oddly out of place with four very ordinary PCs (in contrast all the other PCs on show looked like this) set up in a spare corner of the show floor that wasn’t listing in the program and decorated with with some very home made looking posters (home made in the home of someone with an obvious talent for graphic design but still home made). It looked suspiciously like first time indie developers Beatnik Games had called Eurogamer at the last minute and begged for some floor space. Whoever decided to let them come made a good call because what they had on show was damn good.

Plain Sight is a mutliplayer game where you play a little insanely agile robot with a katana that double jumps it’s way around all sides of a floating level where gravity seems to be defined partly by the last surface you jumped off and partly on the centre of gravity of the object you’re jumping around on (I’m not sure, it’s weird but you get the hang of it very quickly). Combat is a bit TPS and a little bit modern flight sim because you run and jump arround in third person but spend most of the time (once you work out how to do anything but run, jump and die which does take a while) trying to get target lock-on and when you do you click again and go flying towards the other robot and bash him, at least assuming he doesn’t dodge or block. It’s very unique and enormously good fun. There’s also this points scoring system that ties back into how powerful you are which looks like where the depth might come from.

I had a brief chat with one of the devs and apparently they’re hoping to do another beta later this year, one more early next year and then release it on PC. I suspect it’ll be a bit of a cult hit to begin with because it certainly isn’t pick up and play because the combat mechanic is so odd but it has that jena se qua. I also suspect that it’ll be a huge hit on the consoles once they get a console version done because the attack system would be a good fit for a joypad since aiming doesn’t really come into it, however when that will I did not ask so cannot say.