When you think of a party game, you probably think of fun, happy titles such as Mario Party, Fuzion Frenzy and Sonic Shuffle. Almost every title to date has been a combination of mini games where you race against your opponents and/or the clock to accomplish some simple, yet totally entertaining task. Never in the history of multiplayer party games have you actually been tasked to hack, slash, chop and just plain clobber the other players to win the game, that is, until Stake came along. Stake is a new title being developed by Gameness Art Software and will be published by Metro3D this Spring. Stake aims to turn the party game genre on its head by mixing the traditional multiplayer aspect of the genre with fully 3D fighting elements.
Stake is played out in a 3D third-person format using the Xbox's four-player split-screen capabilities. Players can choose from eight unique characters, each utilizing a custom collection of attacks and defenses ranging from magical attacks to punches, kicks and "power attacks".
The combat environment is also an interactive one. Players can use grenades, pots of flaming oil, statues, ice, rocks and much more as weapons during gameplay, which ensures a wide variety of attacks to unleash upon other players.
As far as game modes go, Stake will offer a basic deathmatch and team deathmatch mode so players can either go it alone or team up for friend-fighting fury.
The developers promise that Stake will take full advantage of the Xbox's graphics capabilities, pushing out 4,000 polygon characters, full lighting effects, smooth camera motion and fluid animation.
When Stake is released this Spring, we'll all see how well Gameness has managed to meld two completely different genres into something that promises to be different yet wholly entertaining.
