Development teams Airtight Games and GRIN are both working on titles for Capcom with unique hooks for three dimensional gaming. While both trade in that most common of play mechanics, shooting things, they’re both predominantly focused on providing the player with a unique way to move about their respective worlds. GRIN’s revitalization of the Bionic Commando franchise is built around a grappling hook and Airtight’s Dark Void is built around having a jetpack. Superficially it might seem that these sorts of tools are little more than a gimmick, shallow expansions on the sort of gravity play that has been essential to gaming since the first time Pitfall Harry jumped on a vine. But what they really offer is new solutions to the problem that’s plagued 3D games since Mario 64: precision control on the Z-axis. Nintendo’s Mario Galaxy itself had a novel answer to the problem in building the game around small, spherical play fields allowing microcosms of gravitational law reign in movement in 3D space. Airtight Games and GRIN have gone with vertical spaces instead and, instead of direct manipulation of gravity, have used tools to give the player more control and freedom. The grappling hook ties the player to the environment directly in Bionic Commando and the jetpack in Dark Void gives the player powered flight to scale the game’s levels (Mario himself has had flight in his 3D games but not thrust and so the mechanic has traditionally been used to “glide” over more horizontal spaces). They’re exciting ideas from the both teams and stand to make an impact on the way designers broadly think about 3D gaming not tied directly to the ground.
Head over to 1up.com to check out their exclusive preview coverage of Dark Void and you can get an in-depth look at Bionic Commando (61FPS early hopeful for 2008 Game of the Year) at the game's homepage.