While at Electronic Entertainment Expo, I hooked up with Nathan Fouts. He’s the developer of the award winning Xbox LIVE Community Game Weapons of Choice and probably soon-to-be-award-winning Community Game Grapple Buggy — a game announced only weeks before the huge event.

After Nathan and I shook hands for the first time, I dived into the game.

Grapple Buggy is like Bionic Commando, except you’re not in control of a smallish man with a freakish arm. Instead, you control an alien automobile (buggy) with two freakish arms, whose mission is to explore a new and odd (stress on odd, mine) planet. The car’s wheels can grip the planet’s surface, but the preferred method of travel for anyone playing the game is through the buggy’s mechanical arm — an arm that can grapple and grant the alien craft to take to the skies and propel it throughout the game’s environment.

Aside from the artistry, there were two things that grabbed me: controls and puzzle complexity. Grapple Buggy’s swinging mechanics are fluid like the Xbox 360 rehash Bionic Commando. The puzzles are organic and challenging. While I would have preferred a bit more of a clue at some points, I enjoyed having to consider what the buggy can do and what the level focused on. The first puzzle in the demonstration, for example, has you spit a captured creature into the mouth of a larger creature blocking a cavernous doorway. Seems simple, but the catch is that the creatures you can capture are located at the beginning of the level. The puzzle, therefore, required awareness and not just an immediate solution.

Keep your eyes peeled for this one and check out the screenshots in the gallery and the video available after the break. Grapple Buggy looks enjoy it could be spectacular.

Via Destructoid

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