Escape from Paradise City game preview - Page 2 of 2

Escape from Paradise City
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Once you've conquered a neighborhood that holds a bar, in addition to being able to buy stat-enhancing drinks (a sip from a "Pink Ninja" grants an added 10 percent to dodge), you can enlist up to three henchmen from the establishment. These companions attack and operate on their own, but eight different varieties (medic, scout, etc.) offer some diversity in your posse. Henchmen are one example, but Paradise integrates another RTS element into its gameplay with power skills.

Characters boast abilities and attacks of their own, but power skills are the ace cards you'll drop to dictate the play. Drawing from a power meter that recharges slowly (and increases in capacity as you free more neighborhoods from criminal control), power skills are unlocked as you progress through the game, and deployed from a gridded section of 18 buttons on the top left part of the screen. They include feats like "car bomb," which mines a specific vehicle with a timed charge; "crime scene," which sends in a squad of police officers to assist, and "rob money," which calls in a thief to steal money from an enemy-controlled area.

Combat in motion. The life-bars make Paradise look more like an RTS, but the game most resembles an RPG with dungeon-crawling mechanics.

Power skills were one of the more rewarding aspects of Paradise we encountered -- deploying a small army of police, phoning in a medic, or even dropping an air strike to break up foes with a quick click was gratifying. For more drawn-out rewards, players will likely look to Paradise's traits system. Each character has a mostly-unique tree of 24 traits available to them. These passive abilities govern what they're good at: assigning "basic leadership" at level two allows a henchman to tag along, or you can opt for Nick Porter's "demolitions expert" trait, which decreases the focus cost (MP, essentially) of throwing grenades. Proportionally stronger buffs are available at higher levels, like "expert automatic" for Nick, which decreases his bullet spread by 20 percent and allows the use of automatic weapons. Tied to most traits are specific, executable skills, like "spray 'n pray," which kicks out more ammunition at the cost of accuracy.

Paradise's multiplayer integrates the character development and territory control elements found in single-player in a competitive setting. Up to eight people can opt for co-op or versus play across more than a dozen maps, and multiplayer essentially operates as a race to improve your avatar enough to stake a monopoly over all the neighborhoods -- one we enjoyed in the brief time we spent with it. Visually, despite Paradise's dilapidated state, the game sported some sharp textures and lightning effects, impressive for a smaller developer.

Paradise's environments were nicely detailed. Though it isn't far removed from GTA 'villes like San Andreas, there wasn't too much repetition despite the city's scale.

The level of mission variety remains the only major question in Paradise: most objectives we played simply centered on taking control of a set number of neighborhoods. Otherwise, the build we played offered a nice blend of at-your-pace combat, customizable characters, and accessible interfacing coupled with uncomplicated controls. Paradise may not produce the level of depth we're used to in titles like WoW, but players can look forward to time-honored mechanics migrated to a satisfying urban setting.

Preview by Evan Lahti.