Indiana Jones game wins faux-prestigious SPOnG award.

Our official selection for "game most worth writing about right now" is the highly anticipated, non tie-in to the even more highly anticipated (or dreaded, depending on you perspective) new Indiana Jones Movie, tentatively titled "The new Indiana Jones Game".

Due out sometime between January and December of 2007 the game has the distinctive honour of being the first title to benefit from the strategic relocation of Lucas Arts and ILM to the same brand spanking new campus. The idea behind the move is to allow the two camps to share assets and tools more easily, enabling both sides to benefit.

For instance it was pointed out that in one of the two demonstrations shown, where Indy has to fight off attackers while riding on the roof of a careening trolley car in San Francisco, said trolley car's normal map was actually rendered on the same render farm as the feature film "Poseidon". Does that mean that this particular graphic looks better than it would if it was rendered in any other way? Probably not, but we suppose at this early stage in the collaboration that this is about all they have to shout about. Less on that later.

Now the real point of interest isn't the nice but not staggering graphics of the game, but instead the rather amazing physics driven animation system that it employs. The particular bit of technology in question is know as Euphoria and is provided by the apparently very clever folks at Natural Motion. Basically it is an entire character movement control system. The characters have standard issue, canned animations, of the motion-captured variety to be sure, but they also are somewhat self-aware and will, for example, attempt to catch themselves if knocked over.

The first example we were shown involved Indy standing perfectly still and grabbing a thug within reach. He then shoved the demo gangster back into a nearby car at which point Euphoria takes control and the character stumbled over the front of the car attempting to right himself by putting a hand on the bumper. Once he regained his balance the attacker made another go at Indy at which point Indy, still in the exact same position, grabbed and shoved him again this time with the assailant hitting straight into the side of the car and slumping to the ground in an really natural way. This same process was repeated about 5 times, each with drastically different results, before the would-be Jones killer was no more.

Further on in the same level, the gents at Lucas Arts also pointed out another bit of new tech called Digital Molecular Matter, provided by game tech upstart Pixelux Entertainment. While no real great depth was gone into to explain it, what it basically breaks down to is that a great deal of things in the game, instead of being hollow polygonal models, are actually being rendered as solid objects that can break and deform just like their real world counterparts.

We were shown, via enemy shoving again, an example of a character being tossed into a wooden door that then proceeded to flex against the weight of the impact and splinter in a very natural way. While this does indeed look rather stunning we don't exactly feel it will have the same impact on the game as Euphoria does, but we suppose every little bit helps.

Next up in our demo was the previously mentioned trolley car scene. The task, hang out on top of a runaway trolley and kick the crap out of anyone who tries to join you on your joy ride until their rag doll asses go tumbling. In a word, beautiful. Every time an enemy leaps from their moving vehicle onto the trolley, first they have to try and grab on, which doesn't always work, then they kick and flail to get a hold and scuffle up on to the roof. One even kicked in a window in order to use the frame of it for a better foot hold. And then once on the roof they get smacked about by Mr. Jones and upon exiting the top of the trolley are followed in slow motion by the highly intelligent camera system.

There are few things in the history of gaming quite as satisfying as watching a goon go for a swan dive into a moving vehicle only to have it swerve to avoid him, get smashed into by an uphill bound trolley car and thrown on top of the character it was trying so desperately to avoid. Really, really superb. We literally watched people get tossed off the same trolley car for about ten minutes straight and could have easily sat and watched for another hour. Just imagine how much time we will waste on this once we actually get hold of the controller for ourselves.

In conclusion, the new Indiana Jones game, whatever it ends up being called, looks set to be an absolute blast. A true taste of what all this Next-gen hardware can be used for when in the right hands. Continue to check back over the following days and weeks, as we try to make sense of our copious scribbled hastily-scribbled notes, for more hits from the floor of E3 and be sure to place your guesses for the new Indy game's and movie's tag lines in the forums below.