Attack on Titan: Wings of Freedom, simply referred to as Attack on Titan in Japan, is a third-person action game that has been out in its home country since February. Us Europeans won’t get the anime adaptation game until August 26th, though- meaning most will have to wait a bit longer to get their mitts on the thing. Luckily for MCM London attendees, though, a demo of the game was available to members of the public over the past weekend. I was one such participant, and I’m glad to say that the property has been executed quite well.

If you’ve watched or read the excellent anime or manga (or both, if you’re me), you’ll understand that perhaps the main pull of a playable Attack on Titan lies in the realisation of the 3D Manoeuvring Gear. If you haven’t followed the anime, this gear is essentially a harness that soldiers don to fire dual grappling hooks and zoom around vertical environments assisted by gas-powered thrusters. They need this hyper-mobility to outmanoeuvre titans- giant, carnivorous humanoids- to protect humanity’s last walled city.

I must admit that I doubted the translatability of the 3D Manoeuvring Gear to games. Spider-Man 2 showed us how to do swinging mechanics back in 2004, but there are several caveats to Attack on Titan’s setting that might’ve hindered the fulfilment of swinging in this game. Firstly, the buildings of Attack on Titan’s walled city aren’t exactly skyscrapers. The majority of the architecture doesn’t exceed three or four stories, meaning there’s less of a vertical buffer in the environment. Furthermore, the speed at which soldiers zip about is much faster than established swinging mechanics have exhibited. The need to accurately swing around and target weak points on titans at such velocity means there’s a slew of challenges to realising this mechanic.

The demo that I played was set during a battle to defend a portion of the city of Trost that’s been breached by the titans, in line with early episodes of the anime. The controls were a little bit bizarre to start out with, but I soon got the knack of controlling Eren on the PS4 controller. The X button is, as ever, the jump button. Pressing square launches you in the whichever direction you’re moving, and much like in Spider-Man 2 you’ve got to time your grappling hooks with for maximum speed of traversal through the environment.

When you do close in on a titan, it’s time to lock on to them using R1. At this point you can use the right stick to flick between several parts of the titan’s body- knees, elbows, and neck. A press of square in this mode attaches a grappling hook to the highlighted area, allowing you to circle around the anchor point for a short time. Pulling the L2 trigger at this moment causes the grappling hook to reel in, and a well-timed push of the triangle button launches Eren into a spinning sword slash to sever the appropriate area.

Much like in the anime, titans are a varied bunch. This means you’ll have to tackle individuals differently: more docile specimens can be dispatched quickly and easily by going straight for the kill-spot at the back of the neck, but more alert creatures won’t go down so easily. One might track your movements with their face, meaning you need to sever a leg to trip them up without risking the chomp. Some are unusually grabby, and require an amputation at the elbow before you’re able to zero in on their neck.

I must say that I’m very impressed at the execution of these mechanics. Rocket-powered swinging could’ve easily devolved to a nightmare train wreck of uncontrollable fumbling, or slowed down to the point of losing that characteristic dynamism. As it is, the system deftly juggles speed and precision to really capture the essence of the show’s fight scenes. It remains to be seen whether the game’s length is supported by varied and interesting scenarios to facilitate this action, but colour me very interested for now.

Image credits: koeitecmoeurope.com