UbiNintendo: C.O.P. The Recruit
posted:
7/14/2009 11:56:00 AM
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C.O.P. The Recruit
I’ll admit, along with Red Steel 2 this was one of the two games I was most excited about at UbiNintendo. I though GTA Chinatown Wars was absolutely fantastic, so I was eager to see how Ubisoft handled a sandbox game on DS with C.O.P. The Recruit. Luckily developer Nouredine Abboud was on hand to explain the particulars of this still mysterious DS title.
COP made quite an impression at E3 (one of the few notable games in Nintendo’s half interesting, half boring press conference), mostly because it uses a real behind the back 3rd person view in an open world game, and on the DS no less. I went hands-on at UbiNintendo and it’s for real—three boroughs of Manhattan, 6 square miles, completely free roaming and all running on the DS at a rock solid 60fps. It doesn’t look too shabby either; sure the character models are a bit blocky but the streets and cars are quite pretty.
Part of what makes the game possible is the engine developed by VD Dev, a small studio in France that Ubisoft contracted for the game. It’s hard to believe it’s running on Nintendo’s gimpy little handheld, and once you get over the amazing scope and graphics it’s a solid sandbox adventure too.
You play as a young ex-con street racer who was picked up by the cops and given a choice between jail time and a job on the force (C.O.P. stands for Criminal Overturn Project). This means that you’ll ultimately be battling criminals, but that occasionally you can bend the rules by using your underworld contacts to get leads and influence. Noredine said that they wanted to avoid the “empty sandbox” feeling you get from most open world games—a great bit city with nothing to do in it. COP will always be pressing you to get something done, some new crisis to meet or crime to solve. You won’t be forced into any of the missions, but there will always be a sense of urgency and plenty to do.
There are around 60 missions plus randomly generated sidequests, and while there isn’t an in-game clock or day/night cycle, you will be doing missions at all times of day, in inclement weather like snow, and even during a blackout. I tried out the casino mission from the E3 demo which had an even balance of gameplay styles. I tooled around a bit in my cop cruiser, “commandeered” a civilian vehicle or two (hope they have insurance) and then followed the handy touch screen map to my destination.
The ensuing warehouse/casino shootout switched the controls over to the stylus, which is used to aim in over-the-shoulder Resident Evil 4 fashion. The aiming was a little slow but Nouredine said it wouldn’t be a problem later when there are many more enemies on the screen. Thanks to some debug cheats they punched in I could try out the whole arsenal, so rest assured that COP has a deep armory of pistols, automatics and high powered rifles.
The combat felt fine but I have some issues with the driving sections. Maybe I just need practice but navigating the congested New York streets with a D-pad felt unwieldy; I was smacking into other vehicles every few seconds just trying to reach my destination, so I can’t imagine how tough the street races will be. With so much area to cover there will be a lot of driving, so I hope my experience was just a fluke. As a side note there are no airborne vehicles but you can drive boats, considering your jurisdiction covers the ports as well.
Nouredine said the original impetus for the game was to do a sandbox title that would only be possible on DS, and as such you’ll be using the stylus for police work ranging from placing roadblocks to hacking keypads. Some of the minigames use stylus control and are incorporated into the missions, such as checking through security cams for a suspect, but I didn’t see many other examples so I hope these stylus sequences are just as creative and well integrated as the ones in Chinatown Wars. Once thing is for certain—COP is absolutely brimming with content. There is so much packed into this game that the programmers are running word counts on their lines of code just to fit everything onto the DS’s tiny 128MiB cartridge. There’s even an achievement system in place.
COP The Recruit was certainly the most ambitious game at UbiNintendo. I could tell that Nouredine was really excited about how it was turning out and he couldn’t wait for us to try the final build. Neither can I—this one’s September 30th release is marked on my calendar.
COP made quite an impression at E3 (one of the few notable games in Nintendo’s half interesting, half boring press conference), mostly because it uses a real behind the back 3rd person view in an open world game, and on the DS no less. I went hands-on at UbiNintendo and it’s for real—three boroughs of Manhattan, 6 square miles, completely free roaming and all running on the DS at a rock solid 60fps. It doesn’t look too shabby either; sure the character models are a bit blocky but the streets and cars are quite pretty.
Part of what makes the game possible is the engine developed by VD Dev, a small studio in France that Ubisoft contracted for the game. It’s hard to believe it’s running on Nintendo’s gimpy little handheld, and once you get over the amazing scope and graphics it’s a solid sandbox adventure too.
You play as a young ex-con street racer who was picked up by the cops and given a choice between jail time and a job on the force (C.O.P. stands for Criminal Overturn Project). This means that you’ll ultimately be battling criminals, but that occasionally you can bend the rules by using your underworld contacts to get leads and influence. Noredine said that they wanted to avoid the “empty sandbox” feeling you get from most open world games—a great bit city with nothing to do in it. COP will always be pressing you to get something done, some new crisis to meet or crime to solve. You won’t be forced into any of the missions, but there will always be a sense of urgency and plenty to do.
There are around 60 missions plus randomly generated sidequests, and while there isn’t an in-game clock or day/night cycle, you will be doing missions at all times of day, in inclement weather like snow, and even during a blackout. I tried out the casino mission from the E3 demo which had an even balance of gameplay styles. I tooled around a bit in my cop cruiser, “commandeered” a civilian vehicle or two (hope they have insurance) and then followed the handy touch screen map to my destination.
The ensuing warehouse/casino shootout switched the controls over to the stylus, which is used to aim in over-the-shoulder Resident Evil 4 fashion. The aiming was a little slow but Nouredine said it wouldn’t be a problem later when there are many more enemies on the screen. Thanks to some debug cheats they punched in I could try out the whole arsenal, so rest assured that COP has a deep armory of pistols, automatics and high powered rifles.
The combat felt fine but I have some issues with the driving sections. Maybe I just need practice but navigating the congested New York streets with a D-pad felt unwieldy; I was smacking into other vehicles every few seconds just trying to reach my destination, so I can’t imagine how tough the street races will be. With so much area to cover there will be a lot of driving, so I hope my experience was just a fluke. As a side note there are no airborne vehicles but you can drive boats, considering your jurisdiction covers the ports as well.
Nouredine said the original impetus for the game was to do a sandbox title that would only be possible on DS, and as such you’ll be using the stylus for police work ranging from placing roadblocks to hacking keypads. Some of the minigames use stylus control and are incorporated into the missions, such as checking through security cams for a suspect, but I didn’t see many other examples so I hope these stylus sequences are just as creative and well integrated as the ones in Chinatown Wars. Once thing is for certain—COP is absolutely brimming with content. There is so much packed into this game that the programmers are running word counts on their lines of code just to fit everything onto the DS’s tiny 128MiB cartridge. There’s even an achievement system in place.
COP The Recruit was certainly the most ambitious game at UbiNintendo. I could tell that Nouredine was really excited about how it was turning out and he couldn’t wait for us to try the final build. Neither can I—this one’s September 30th release is marked on my calendar.
