E3 2014: Hands-On With ‘Project Giant Robot’ and ‘Project Guard’

When it’s announced that Shigeru Miyamoto is working on a new IP, people pay attention. The famed creator of Mario, Zelda and many more of Nintendo’s most popular franchises has a strong track record of releasing fun, innovative products. So when it was revealed that there would be not one, but TWO new IPs credited to his name, you just know we would have to try them out.

Starting with Project Giant Robot, the game puts players in the pilot’s seat of a giant mech. After customizing your colorful robot with a variety of parts that can be made as big or small as you want, it’s time to take it through the four in game missions the demo provided. Plodding through the city towards various threats, taking them out requires use of both your body and the buttons on the game pad.

This physics based game’s unique control scheme is where Miyamoto really leaves his trademark on the game. Alternating the trigger buttons moves the mech, while the face buttons shoot your optional gun and the analog sticks swing the robot’s arms. The winner of each round is the one that can knock their opponent over, which can be difficult if your own mech is set up unbalanced.

Combining motion controls with the buttons, players will have to rotate their bodies with their punches, lean back and forth to regain their robot’s balance or risk ending up on the losing end. While the controls were a little much to get used to, once things clicked, the game was a lot of fun to play, and I’m excited to see what the final product might look like once the concept is fully fleshed out.

Project Guard is more of a multiplayer game, placing the player in a type of command center surrounded by gun mounted security cameras. Each camera shows robots that are trying to invade your base, and winning or losing is dependent on whether or not you can destroy a certain amount of robots before too many get into your base.

But it’s hard to keep track of 16 cameras all at once, especially when spread across the television. That’s where your friends come in, encouraging others to shout out which cameras are in danger. From there, the player will use the Game Pad’s map to switch to the proper camera and turn the robots into scrap.

Project Guard had its moments where it was really exciting and hectic, while encouraging crowds to back seat game with you. The experience was fun, but it’s hard to imagine this turning into a full fledged game, much like how Giant Robot seemed like it was just scratching the surface on what could be possible with the concept.

With that said, this is my biggest concern with these two demos. Rather than experiencing two individual IPs, I walked away feeling like they’re more likely to be two mini games that will be apart of a larger collection. While I have nothing against a collection of smaller games as long as they’re good, I’m not sure this is what most people had in mind when they were expecting a brand new Miyamoto game.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Keep your eyes on Geekscape.net as we bring you the news on these two titles as well as the rest of what was on the E3 floor.