American McGee's Grimm
Preview
Make Grimm's fairy tales grim again
by Vyle
previewed on PC
Grimm, the hero (cont.)
Where there are enemies, there's sure to be combat, and Grimm has his own way of fighting back that is in keeping with the storytelling style of the game. Rather than battering adversaries with Kung Fu, slashing them with knives or filling them with bullets, Grimm has access to verbs. Should he encounter a fire, Grimm can extract the verb 'burn' and carry it around to use to his advantage, be it throwing it at enemies or using it to solve puzzles. This mechanic is certainly unique, blending point and click adventures with action. It'll certainly be interesting to see what other verbs and actions become possible.
Grimm visuals
Visually, the game is impressive, sporting 3D environments and an art style that seems to, inadvertently at least, draw inspiration from Gregory Horror Show. The colours are bold and clean, revelling in their cartoony look. Even when changed to their dark state, the art remains colourful, swapping pinks to purples, and reds for darker reds. Of course, the dark versions are more than just a palette swap of their counterpart, but the colour schemes are consistent, and make sense.
Another nice touch regarding the light to dark conversion is how characters behave when they change. A lumberjack may just wander around harmlessly when in his light form, but as soon as he is changed, he will become an axe murderer. In this form, he won't just focus his attentions on Grimm, but will also attack other characters and any nearby animals. It'll certainly be interesting to see how many ideas the team can come up with to keep the art and interaction interesting.
McGee has stated that the artists have produced more than a thousand concept sketches for the first 12 episodes, and with 12 more to go, we can expect another thousand. With that much art being produced, there are sure to be a lot of gems to keep things exciting.
A lot of potential
At this stage, Grimm has shown a lot of potential – granted not much of the gameplay has been shown, but the idea is gloriously old school, and the passion of the team certainly leads one to believe that they are going to make the best game they can.
With the first episode currently scheduled to be released in July, there's still plenty of time to make sure that everything plays as it should. Here's hoping that the ending of this story is anything but Grimm.
