Gameloft is at it again, borrowing popular ideas, concepts, and mechanics from established franchises and dropping them into an iOS release. This time the studio is setting it sights on Naughty Dog‘s Uncharted series, which has shown other big-time studios how to combine good action, adventure, reality, cinematics, fantasy, and superb writing elements into a single, mind-melting package. The Gameloft game we’re referring to is called Shadow Guardian, an upcoming iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch joint whose first trailer has just debuted on the Internet. Check it out for yourself.
The above trailer shows what it needs to: huge and foreign set pieces, a third-person cover-based shooting system, wall scaling, and hand-to-hand combat. It also reveals a protagonist who doesn’t quite look like Uncharted‘s Nathan Drake, but could probably win a medal at a Midwestern fair’s lookalike contest.
To be clear, we haven’t played Shadow Guardian just yet, so this comparison might be a tad on the unfair side (provided this trailer is being, in turn, unfair to the game, too.) For all we know, Shadow Guardian could be 20 percent Uncharted and 80 percent space combat simulation. However this shakes out, we hope Gameloft manages to put its own spin on these familiar concepts and presentation-styles while keeping the game touch screen-friendly. If so, we could have a very exciting iOS game on our hands.
