TGS: Game Announcements in Brief

The 2005 Tokyo Game Show is now fully underway, and more game announcements are coming from the halls of the Makuhari Messe convention center. Among those are a new Ace Combat game from Namco, a "mature"-looking Bomberman for Xbox 360, and a new project from the Prince of Persia team. - Ace Combat Zero, developed for PlayStation 2, will be a direct prequel to Ace Combat V, released in 2004. Officially titled Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, it will use older models of jets than those found in AC5 but otherwise retain the same style of gameplay. The graphics engine will be enhanced over the already accomplished visuals found in AC5. - Little of Bomberman Act Zero for Xbox 360 has been seen so far apart from a brief clip at the beginning of Microsoft's video reel at the keynote speech. The dark and moody video shown is a drastic change of pace for the lighthearted series -- the game appears to be Bomberman's answer to Shadow the Hedgehog in terms of tone. It's difficult to tell if what was shown was prerendered intro footage or actual gameplay, but if the explosions on display were from the game proper, then the realistic concentric blast radii will make it a very different game from previous entries in the frarnchise. - Finally, Ubisoft's Montreal studio, the team behind the current-gen Prince of Persia series, has used TGS as a platform to announce its new game, with the working title of Project Assassins. The genre and gameplay is hard to discern from the footage, but the setting is definitely established as a medieval kingdom of some sort, with an armored knight running around stone streets.