60 Second Preview of…

Nexagon: the Pit at E3 2001

The Specs

Your base is basically a huge floating slab of rock. Between combats, you build walls, turrets, and traps around the flag in the middle of your base. You can also hire a group of up to ten fighters, drawing from four different races, each with four types of units. Each race has a slow powerful unit, a weaker fast unit, a missile attacker, and a support unit with some sort of special ability, like being able to carry units across the map or magically open holes in walls. One you've spent your money building a base and hiring your fighters, your base attaches itself to an arena, with an enemy base on the other side of the arena. During real time gameplay, you'll command your units to get across the middle and try to get your opponent's flag. But in addition to fighting your opponent, you'll also have to contend with an arena filled with tricks and traps. Because these bouts are televised, you can earn extra money by parking one of your units near a billboard to pose for the cameras. As you progress through matches, your units gain experience and get more powerful.

The Speculation

Tom's Comments: There was an Activision game called Netstorm where your floating base moored to an arena to fight another guy's floating base. Nexagon looks like a combo of Netstorm's floating base battles with quick-and-dirty real time tactical combat. My main reservation is that there may not be enough units or special abilities to give the gameplay much variety. Also, it may be a little ambitious to suppose a player can control ten men in real time. But it's a great idea to subject a persistent team to the perils of a series of deathtrap arenas. To paraphrase Beyond Thunderdome, "Up to twenty men enter, not as many men leave."

Mark's Comments: Another game where the premise is essentially that the future sucks, and if you're a criminal, it really sucks but you can be on TV. I hope that it plays a bit like a board game with specialized pieces, but I'm worried that the real-time gameplay may overwhelm players and remove any tactical subtleties. The best thing this game has going for it is that Strategy First is creating it, and they've been one of the stellar publishers of late.

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May 22, 2001