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While I found Dead Island interesting, I was much more impressed with Warhound, a sort of uber first-person shooter that's built around the concept of mercenaries. In the Xbox 360 and PC game you select missions then build out your kit and get yourself to the drop zone on your own dime.
The developers even created a hideaway for you to store your weapons, train and, perhaps, customize your home.
The start-up menu has you log in to a fictional database to find what missions are available. Then you hop to a map which pin-points your target's location and gives you a variety of drop points, each with its own cost. So having a boat drop you off on the shoreline far from your target might cost your $500 while having a helicopter drop you off in the middle of the jungle much closer to your target might allow you by-pass some of the bad guys but could set you back $9000. The bottom of the same map also shows your timeframe, often a three day spread, with weather predictions for each hour of each day. You get to decide what day and time you want to drop in, but if you wait to long there's always the chance that another mercenary drops in and lands the target before you do.
Once you select the mission drop point and time you hop into your hideaway's armor, physically equipped with all of the weapons you have purchased. You literally walk around inside your armory picking up the weapons you want to carry on the mission. Outside of your armory are training areas where you can work on your Alpine, Weapons and mechanic skills. All skills that will directly impact how you play the game. For instance if you work on your Alpine skills it will make it possible for you to climb higher and eventually allow you to access and use grappling hooks. The firing range will make your targeting easier.
After equipping you drop into the mission. The build I saw didn't really have a mission, but the developers did show off some pretty neat gun effects. As we reported earlier, the game makes great use of physics, imbuing the game's vegetation with real world physics so when you do something like shoot up a tree it will eventually fall over, something spectacular to behold. While this may sound a bit gimmicky, the developers explained that the game will make use of these unique physics in game play. For instance, there might be levels where you can't see the bad guys because of the dense jungles, but you'll still be able to track them by looking for moving plants, trees and grass. A very cool concept.
The game will have about 30 missions when it's completed, many of which will be repeatable. There will also be some other elements that will add to the experience, like other mercenaries occasionally attacking your safe house. Another is the ability to use cover without ever leaving from your first-person perspective. This allows you to stick to a cover, peek around the corner, without anyone seeing you, and then pop-out to lay out a bad guy in slow motion. Finally, the developer showed me how their unlockable grappling hook will work. Essentially you can fire the hook from your gun into a solid object and then have it pull you up. You can also use a second hook and like to allow you to hang between objects and move back and forth, a very near grappling feature.
They didn't show me multiplayer, but said the game will support up to 32 players in a match.
