while back, Namco held a special pre-E3 event to show off some of their upcoming titles. Well, today we finally get to bring you the juicy details about their upcoming game Death By Degrees. Originally titled Nina, the game has undergone a slight name change, but the trademark main character is still present in all her looking good, butt kicking glory. For those of you unfamiliar with her, Nina Williams is a mainstay character from Namco’s Tekken series, a highly trained assassin with a mysterious past. Death By Degrees, however, will actually focus on Nina prior to the Tekken series and fittingly, her dangerous occupation as a highly trained assassin and general bad ass.

While not much was disclosed about the story, we did manage to learn that in all there will be over 140 different rooms and areas to explore in the game. Along the way she’ll also have the help of another special agent, Alan Smithee. It seems that a mysterious group of enemies has gotten their hands on an incredibly powerful super-weapon, and in an attempt to gather more information and stop the enemies, Nina and Alan are dispatched to take care of the problem. But, like more games that feature mysterious enemies and subplots, nothing is usually as it seems, and as Nina fights her way through the enemy ranks, she has a few surprised sprung on her.

The real draw of Death By Degrees comes in the game’s unique fighting system. Quite similar to Sony’s Rise To Honor, the game features a fully analog system for combat. While the left analog stick is used to move Nina around, the right analog stick is used for combat. Pressing the stick in certain directions will cause Nina to attack and by combining directional presses in a series, you’ll be able to pull off a number of different combo attacks. Essentially, the system allows for some pretty intuitive combat that really gives you the sense that you’re in complete control of Nina’s actions. The other use of the analog system comes in the fact that since the game is taking place in a three-dimensional environment, you’re going to be attacked from all directions. The analog system allows for a full range of motion during your attacks, so it’s pretty easy to be unleashing attacks in front of you and then quickly transition to attacking an enemy who may be trying to sneak up on you. And, outside of hand to hand combat, Nina will be able to pick up a wide variety of different weapons, including things like guns and swords. The short time we had with the game only saw us toting around a wicked katana. The system of combat still worked pretty well, with the analog directions mapped to different kinds of sword swing.

The most interesting aspect of combat comes in the special “focus gauge” that is part of your on-screen display. As you pull off combos and defeat enemies, the gauge will fill up. When completely full, you’ll be able to pull off special “focus” attacks that target specific body parts of enemies. So, for example, say you fill your gauge and then unleash a devastating attack on the chest of an enemy. To accompany the attack, the view in the game zooms into a special X-ray view of that enemy’s torso, showing how your blow basically tears up his insides and causes his death. Visually, it’s a jaw-dropping show and adds a great degree of style to the somewhat blasé combat presentation.

For all the action and head-bustin’ that Nina dishes out, you’ll also run into certain situations that call for a lighter and more feminine touch. Now, get your mind out of the gutter, we’re talking about stealth. Many times in the game you’ll be faced with certain situations that require you to sneak around. While we didn’t get to see all that much of the system in the action, we were able to spot a few instances where Nina did her best Solid Snake impression, either inching along walls or sneaking up behind unsuspecting enemy guards. These moves prove to be handy considering that often times you’ll need to do things like access fingerprint scanners or take out enemies without their buddies spotting you. So, while you may want to just rush into a group of bad guys and clean the walls with their worthless bodies, you’ll need to pace yourself and recognize which situations call for more level-headed approaches.

While the analog combat system is pretty cool to experiment with, I do have to say that I did find quite a bit of room for improvement. I admit, it’s pretty ambitious for Namco to basically try and translate the action and fighting of Tekken into a three-dimensional presentation, but so far, the combat seemed a bit sluggish and unresponsive. I hate to drop names, especially names of games that players speak of with disdain and disgust, but a lot of Death By Degrees reminded me of Square’s The Bouncer. You see, the real draw of using an analog system for combat comes down to the ability to being able to create both engaging and fast-paced action. The Bouncer, while not using analog for combat, failed in this respect, resulting in combat that seemed way too lose and unforgiving. Death By Degrees, in my short time with it, also seemed to fall into this category. Combat so far was loose and actually getting the 360 degree ability to fight it out working was a bit cumbersome. Since the game still has plenty of development time left to iron out things like this, I’m most looking forward to how the combat system will eventually come together. If Namco manages to make the combat more responsive and engaging, they could be sitting on a potential franchise spawning series. But, if they don’t, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Death By Degrees simply fall by the wayside.

Visually, the game is shaping up pretty well and the title features some nice graphics. Nina features some nice animations, particularly during combat and watching her pull off multiple combos is both satisfying and visually stimulating (maybe it’s because of her barely-there outfit). The “focus attack” animations were particularly cool, and it’s pretty neat to see how one of your powerful attacks can really ruin the day of that certain enemy who was the target of it (as well as his heart, lungs, ribcage, and basically any other internal organs that were turned to mush). But, while the character animations were pretty neat, I did find some pretty drab environments, many of which suffered from a bad case of “gray wall syndrome.” Granted, I didn’t’ see all that many environments overall in my time with the game, but the ones that I did see weren’t overly impressive.

Overall, I’m really looking forward to playing more Death By Degrees, if nothing more than to satisfy my sick curiosity as to where the game will eventually end up. At one hand, Namco has the unique opportunity to create a fun and fairly deep Tekken-based 3D action game, one that features not only an engaging main character but also a pretty darn cool fighting system. But, on the other hand, they still seem to have quite a bit of work ahead of them. But, if anything, the time I spent with the game offers up a nice teaser into the workings of the game, as well as a nice glimpse into the potential that the game has.