E3 08 Hands-On Preview: Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer

by Rangebar Merani on July 17, 2008 at 4:01 am

Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer is another game from SouthPeak Games that I got my sweaty palms on.

A third person action adventure game that was originally made for the PS2 but is now making its way onto the Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo DS. I got to check out an early Xbox 360 demo.

Set in a world based on the mythology of Native America, you play as Brave, a young Native American boy who is on a journey to save his tribe. Brave is on a mission to find the Spirit Dancer, the greatest Shaman who ever lived, to rescue his tribe from the evil Wendigo.

Being a shaman (one who communicates with nature), Brave is able to learn new traits and abilities from different animals to help him on his quest. I was shown one part of the game where Brave is actually using an eagle to fly him through the level. This part kind of looked and felt a bit like the Spyro games.

I was told that the Wii version will take advantage of its motion capabilities and will even include mini-games. The DS version is supposed to be a different type of game entirely, but I wasn’t given much info about it.

The game definitely looks like its aimed towards a younger audience with cartoon looking graphics and easy to grasp controls, but seems challenging enough for more experienced gamers.

Being an early demo version, the graphics didn’t look all that great and I could tell it was originally designed as a PS2 game. The level I was shown had Brave on top of huge tree trunks in a lush forest, jumping from one branch to another while attacking enemies. The environments weren’t all that bad, but for a 360 game, they should look better.

I like the idea behind this game because it’s really unique. At first it looked like any other adventure game, but the story and idea of using shamans and Native American mythology in a game is different, and I like different.

Hopefully developer Evolved Games will tweak the graphics before the game is released this holiday season.

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