E3 2009: Hands on with Ubisoft's DS urban free-roamer Cop: The Recruit

Considering the commercial failure of Rockstar's decision to bring GTA to DS in the shape of the 18-rated Chinatown Wars, you might be thinking that someone at Ubisoft is either especially ambitious or, as the double-edge management compliment goes, very brave in bringing urban free-roamer Cop: The Recruit to the platform.

Not according to its producer Nouredine Abboud. "This isn't a mature game. We think it will be rated at 12. Also it's true 3D and not a topdown view. I think people prefer 3D for these type of games," he explains.

It's certainly a very playable experience with both the vehicle handing and the on-foot thirdparty shooting mechanics stable in terms of control. The game runs at a steady 60 fps and the graphical quality is about as high as you could expect to get in a 3D DS game.

As for the game's premise, it's fairly routine and lightweight. You play as Dan Miles, a one-time street racer, caught and turned into an undercover cop. That you have license to steal any vehicle you want and crash into as many street lights and other cars as you want to, not to mention wiping out vast swathes of the criminal underworld with weapons ranging from pistols to uzis and AK47s goes without comment.

The opening missions had us tracking down a contact at a casino. These varied from driving around the city to marked locations and then entering buildings for interior scenes.

Most of these are action run-and-gun affairs. In terms of control, you move with the D-pad and aim with the stylus. This felt solid and the lack of precision was helped by an automatic lock-on when your crosshair scrolled over an enemy. The system wasn't always spot on though so hopefully will get further tweaking before release.

Mixing things up was a sort of mini-game using the casino cameras to find the target. You selected between the four cameras, panning them around with the stylus. When you spotted the target you had to tap a touchscreen button or shout 'Go' into the microphone. We'd expect more of such interludes in the game.

Driving around the city was mixture of timed missions and free-roaming. You can pick up any vehicle you want, hitting 'X' to enter and exit. As you drive around - crashing into things of course - its damage meter will go up so you'll have to swap vehicles before it finally explodes.

In terms of destruction, a lot of the street furniture can be bashed into, but trees were unbreakable. Pedestrians didn't run out of your way, but equally you don't run them down either. They just seem to disappear. Whether this is a design decision or due to the lack of processing power considering everything else going on was unclear.

Abboud said the game came about from an experienced Paris-based handheld team who spent two years working on a 3D DS engine. They were then boosted with outsource resources both in France for 3D art, and Singapore for 2D art to get the game finished.

Its statistics are quite impressive too. The city consists of six square miles of roads with 30 interiors scenes. There are 60 missions to play through and everything is streamed so there's no loading times.

"This is a PlayStation 2-quality game for the DS," Abboud proudly explains.

We'll get to see the finished results sometimes in the autumn.