Cowboy Bebop, a new beat-em-up title for PS2, was playable at the Bandai E3 booth. The game had a line of players thanks to a t-shirt promotion with each play. Bebop is still very early in the development process, but there was enough action to be excited about.
Cowboy Bebop looks a lot like its anime counterpart with cel shaded characters and flat shaded backdrops. The game relies on a combat system that conveniently uses the top triggers to fight. Two L triggers and one R trigger all served as combo buttons that could be interchanged to pull off different fight moves. All the moves are very much like the fast paced choreography of the cartoon, and added a good numnber of smacks to each enemy. Players can also bust out a gun to shoot enemies that have their own heat. Shots didn't instantly kill enemies, but it knocked them to the ground to give players time to shoot again or run up and do hand-to-hand combat.
There were inconsistencies in the short demo. Once a combo was started and the enemy was already dead, the main character would continue his combo at nothing and wind up getting hit by an enemy. The animations also did not match up with each button hit and at times had a life of its own.
Cowboy Bebop still has a lot of time before development will finish, but it has enough initial smacks to keep interest. It hits in 2005.
RSS
