Dungeon Hunter: Alliance Previews
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IGN:
If one of your partners dies during combat another player can bring him back to life by standing over him and hitting R1. So long as another party member is alive you can keep bringing back fallen party members. The loot drop system is also a fairly streamlined operation, with gold automatically divvied up between players. There are occasional treasure chests throughout each level with class-specific weapons that you can pick up.
After dealing with the Cremator, we made our way through the last half of the dungeon fighting slightly more challenging clusters of Goblin Crawlers and Goblin Sorcerers, ranged magic users who'd hurl fireballs at us from a distance. Once out of the dungeon, we arrived in Thanos Village, one of the game's hub environments where we were able to buy new weapons and items with our gathered gold, assign skill points, and talk to villagers to learn more story tidbits and get directions for future assignments.
PSN Stores:
The game will feature 4 player online or local multiplayer. I asked about whether or not a mixed multiplayer option would be available (like the kind found in Hoard), but they weren't sure if that would be an option. I played with three other people in a local co-op game. One of the Gameloft reps used a PlayStation Move controller to play. Yes, Dungeon Hunter will have Move support. The implementation wasn't 100% polished, he assured me as he was fumbling through menus, but it does work. All you have to do is point the cursor to where you want your character to go and hold the Trigger button down. Since the Move controller has all four face buttons, spellcasting and attacking isn't a problem at all.
There are three classes: The warrior, the mage, and the rogue. All characters have a handful of equipment slots ranging from left and right handed weapons/shields to gauntlets, rings, and boots. I played as a mage and was surprised to see how massive my skill tree was. I didn't get an exact count of how many spells could be spec'd into, but it looked to be something around 40. Each spell can be upgraded as well. Along with spells, your character has a fairy that follows behind him and can be called upon to aid in battle once every 60 seconds. The fairy attacks I saw do a massive amount of AOE damage. I found a fairy page when toggling through the menus, so it seems as if you can customize your fairy as well as your equipment and spells. The graphics at this point are pretty good, but will likely see some polishing before the game releases.
PS3 Attitude:
Graphically, although it won't be winning any awards, the game is colourful and cartoony which makes the game pleasing on the eyes, especially for a PSN game, and effects look powerful enough that they look like they pack a punch. The camera is fixed at an angle above the action, and players are marked by a coloured ring on the ground. Loot is marked accordingly; the green player can pick up loot with a green ring, red player; red ring etc.
The inventory system is largely comprehensive; you can sell your loot for gold, buy new equipment, and auto-select the best combination from what you currently have. The skill trees are also pretty big; showing a lot of potential for levelling up your character.
