Frame City Killer E3 2005 Preshow Impressions

The ancient battle between assassins and terrorists reaches a fever pitch in Frame City Killer, a game developed by Namco and powered by the Unreal 3 engine. In it, you play the titular killer, who's out to take down a gang of terrorists before they succeed in their nefarious scheme.

Unfortunately, details are pretty scant on Frame City Killer at this point, but the game did get shown off briefly at Microsoft's E3 2005 press conference. Our peek at the game consisted of quite literally around five seconds of video from the Microsoft demo reel. However, what we've seen looks pretty impressive. It seems to be visually inspired by the Matrix films, what with a black-clad hero with sunglasses who's running around taking out terrorists with guns and extrapowerful fists. None of the action was shown in any length, but we did see some over-the-shoulder shooting that was somewhat akin to Resident Evil 4, but with, you know, movement while firing. There was also a brief shot of rapid-fire sniping action. The footage wraps up with some hand-to-hand action. The action here is slowed down and sped up, again a la the Matrix, although it's difficult to tell whether these effects will appear in actual gameplay.

Overall, Frame City Killer looks pretty promising, just from a stylistic standpoint. Whether Namco can improve on previous action game efforts, like Death By Degrees, is an open question. We're hoping to see more of the game soon.