High Voltage Software was having a great showing at E3 2010 despite the sheer number of hurdles in its way. In addition to the travails with the Wii version of The Grinder that we've discussed in these other pieces, the company's booth had somehow gotten left off of the E3 floor plan, meaning that I (and a few of my other journalists-in-arms) were over half an hour late for our demo presentation of The Grinder. Nevertheless, representatives from High Votage Software were eager to show off the top-down shooter/RPG-hybrid title for us in a somewhat lengthy hands-on session.

Thats right, top down. Unlike its Wii counterpart, The Grinder for the "next-gen" systems bears very little resemblance to Left 4 Dead. Instead, the game feels substantially closer to Hunter: The Reckoning than it does to Valve's co-op-centric FPS. Players take control of one of four sassy monster hunters while they blast and slash their way through endless denizens of the dark and work their way through mines, caverns, and other dangerous lairs. The action is all pretty quick-paced, with players jumping from one enemy encounter to the next in pretty rapid succession.

The build we played focused on 4-player simultaneous co-op, though David Pellas, design director on the title, indicated that High Voltage was striving to allow for as many simultaneous players as possible, maybe even reaching up to twelve players at a time. This could prove to be pretty fun, a sthe four-player was already hectic and somewhat thrilling. There were several different weapons available in the title (of both the realistic and sci-fi variety), and all of these could be upgraded substantially using money earned by killing baddies. Enemies supposedly have different weaknesses to differing weapon types, although this wasn't really clear in the demo, since it only took a few shots to take out pretty much all of the enemies.

There is also an experience point system in place in the game. Each of the game's four monster hunters is a distinct character with distinct capabilities. The experience points players earn in the game can be used to upgrade your character's abilities in a skill tree akin to Borderlands or Diablo. Unfortunately, this wasn't yet working in the build we played, so we pretty much had to extrapolate what this could be like (and it could be awesome). Without these abilities to distinguish the playable characters, it was hard to sort out why anyone would choose the characters without massive boobs (and bouce physics to match).

Though there are tons of enemies to tear through and a good amount of firepower with which to do so, I couldn't shake the feeling that the action in The Grinder seemed a little too much like it was just going through the motions. There wasn't enough weight in any of the enemy encounters for them to feel truly meaningful, and the lack of real substantial boss fights was a problem with the demo. The first time we fought a Frankentsteinian monster it seemed pretty fun, the second time less so. I'm assuming by the time we reach the fiftieth encounter with these guys we'll be over the whole thing.

There was one minor addition to the game that HVS seemed pround of, but that actually struck me as a little odd. That addition was multiplayer QTEs. In case you just don't play any videogames at all, QTEs are those little sequences in games where players watch cutscenes and press buttons when prompted in order to continue watching said cutscenes. I'm not particularly fond of them, and I really didn't jive with their inclusion in The Grinder. As the game's director pointed out, this game is the first to try to implement QTEs with multiple players. However, maybe that's for good reason. HVS seemed to have some good ideas to make use of this mechanic, but it reamins to be seen if anything comes of it. The one we played just involved players pressing the correct button when prompted until we either succeeded or failed. It was pretty lackluster, and definitely not something of which I really need to see much more.

Boob physics and multiplayer QTEs aside, this game still looks like it could surprise in the end. What I really want to see at this point is the skill tree and possibly the rest of the transformations that players can pull off in game. During the E3 demo, we only got to try out the werewolf transformation, and though it was cool, it was just enough to pique our interest in this mechanic. Additionally, I'd kill for some sort of loot system, if only to help accentuate the RPG-side of the game and lend more importance to most of the fighting in the game. The Grinder is still a long ways off, and despite having plenty of kinks to iron out, could end up being a fun b-movie slashfest when it sees release sometime in 2011.