Dungeon Hunter: Alliance Hands-On
Posted by Eric G on November 10th, 2010 | 5 Comments | Tags: Dungeon Hunter: Alliance , Gameloft , Screens
I visited Gameloft’s NYC studio today to get a hands-on demo of three of their upcoming games. One of them, Dungeon Hunter: Alliance, has been on our radar for quite some time. It was nice to finally get a hold of the game and see how far along it is.
The game will feature 4 player online or local multiplayer. I asked about whether or not a mixed multiplayer option would be available (like the kind found in Hoard), but they weren’t sure if that would be an option. I played with three other people in a local co-op game. One of the Gameloft reps used a PlayStation Move controller to play. Yes, Dungeon Hunter will have Move support. The implementation wasn’t 100% polished, he assured me as he was fumbling through menus, but it does work. All you have to do is point the cursor to where you want your character to go and hold the Trigger button down. Since the Move controller has all four face buttons, spellcasting and attacking isn’t a problem at all.
There are three classes: The warrior, the mage, and the rogue. All characters have a handful of equipment slots ranging from left and right handed weapons/shields to gauntlets, rings, and boots. I played as a mage and was surprised to see how massive my skill tree was. I didn’t get an exact count of how many spells could be spec’d into, but it looked to be something around 40. Each spell can be upgraded as well. Along with spells, your character has a fairy that follows behind him and can be called upon to aid in battle once every 60 seconds. The fairy attacks I saw do a massive amount of AOE damage. I found a fairy page when toggling through the menus, so it seems as if you can customize your fairy as well as your equipment and spells. The graphics at this point are pretty good, but will likely see some polishing before the game releases.
The loot system in Dungeon Hunter works differently than the ninja-looting-fest that is Diablo 2. Items have color coded rarities. From least to most rare: White, green, blue, purple, gold. When an item drops, it is encased in a colored box. That color corresponds to one character’s color. Thus, if a gold item drops and is surrounded by a red box, only the red player may pick it up. I’m not sure how it sorts and assigns the loot, but I’m sure we’ll find out come early 2011.