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Atlus Maps the Way to New Games
Product: Atlus' E3 2007 Game Lineup
Company: Atlus
Date: 07/19/2007
Avaliable On:

Atlus had a booth or, I suppose, group of kiosks, in Barker Hanger. This was the closest thing to the expo show floor of previous years that E3 2007 provided, diminutive though it was. Atlus made good use of their space, however, as they had several games to show, many of which were for the Nintendo DS.

Trauma Center: New Blood is a new installment of Trauma Center on the Wii that is all about 2-player cooperative play. Now, you can ask that hot girl to play doctor with you without the need for embarrassment. New Blood will utilize the online component of the Wii to maintain and share online score rankings and is expected to ship this holiday season.

Growlanser: Heritage of War is a new Growlanser game for the PS2 which will speed the action up a bit with its real-time combat engine and mix things up a bit with an all new story. This title will provide RPG gameplay and will come in a special edition that includes lots of cool, collectible goodies. Growlanser: Heritage of War is expected to ship this September.

A new Persona game makes its way to the PS2 as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 ships on July 24th, as a special edition boxed set. It's been 8 years since the last was heard from this series and now it's back with a game that provides a fresh, new experience, while remaining true to the core gameplay in the series. We are currently working on a preview, so look for that very soon.

Ontamarama is an interesting little music game for the Nintendo DS that is slated for a Fall 2007 release. This game is a cute game and plays similar to Dance Dance Revolution, that is, you have to hit the correct direction at the correct time. The catch is, before you can do that, you have to capture little Ontamaramas (cute creatures) by tapping on them on the touch screen or circling several of the same color. These Ontamaramas then fill up the notes that you're going to be pressing the D-pad to activate when their time comes up. It starts out easy enough, but the gameplay can get frantic quickly as you progress.

Touch Detective 2½ is the sequel to Touch Detective and looks pretty neat. When you interact with others, there is dialogue that takes place between characters on the touch screen, and then an inner dialogue that your character has in the top screen, giving it a narrative feel similar to Film Noir movies. In Touch Detective 2½, you're a detective on the heels of a mastermind. You have to track him down by determining why he's doing what he's doing and where he'll strike next. The writing in the game is a distinct writing style that will be fun for younger gamers, but that has in-jokes that will be appreciated by older players. Great care has been taken to keep this game from being a "pixel hunt" as some players complained about that in the first one.

Draglade is a one-on-one fighter with over 100 moves that will allow wireless online play against players from around the world via an infrastructure wireless gameplay mode. One interesting feature of Draglade is "custom beats." You can define your own custom beats outside of fights and save them, and then use them during your fight to increase your attacks' power by timing your attacks to match the custom beats you made earlier.

Luminous Arc for the DS is a new strategy RPG with wireless online gameplay that will, supposedly, feature a lot of spoken dialogue. Luminous Arc is in the same vein as Final Fantasy Tactics, where strategy is important. This game will also feature a strong single player game.

Geck0 aka Robert Perkins

GameVortex PSIllustrated