PICASSIO - Beta UNRELEASED! [Dolphin - GC - PS2 - Dreamcast]

http://www.unseen64.net

An art heist game with stealth gameplay as players sneak into well-guarded locales (armed with non-violent gadget tools such as a dart gun, mini cameras, night vision equipment, and Shadow Hologram Generator) to make off with priceless artifacts.

This game was expected at the end of 2001, but never materialized, and the developer has since gone out of business.

http://cube.ign.com/objects/013/01392...

March 21, 2000 - Nintendo's Cube console has a few projects already in the works, thank goodness, and we're happy that Picassio, the art thievery "sim" from Promothean Designs, is one of them. With three dimensional sound integrated into gameplay and super sophisticated artificial intelligence, Picassio should take full advantage of the Cube's processing capabilities even though we don't know all of the specifics. The game is being developed concurrently for all next generation platforms but for obvious reasons we feel that the Cube game should stand head and shoulders above the others.

While the story line behind a game is only secondary to the fun of actually playing it, knowing the whys and hows behind a character in a game serves to round out the experience. In Picassio, your character has been hired by a rich art collector to steal the most impressive pieces of art available. The guy that hired you wants to prove once and for all to his rich art collecting buddy that he has the biggest most impressive art collection. So of course the other billionaire hires a cat burglar himself to beat you to every punch and keep you from getting the goods.

While that's a nice background story the best part is that it's fully integrated into the game's strategy. That is, when you're on a mission to steal stuff, that other burglar is on the same mission as you and he or she will try to sabotage you, steal your equipment and more or less screw things up for you while still trying to get that high priced piece of art. You're forced to be both offensive and defensive at the same time.

Picassio is billed as a nonviolent game. It will combine the first person interface of many familiar shooting games, but all you'll have is a dart gun. You'll be able to knock out museum guards but they will wake up and they will try to get some help from their security guard buddies as soon as possible. You'll also be able to incapacitate enemies with chloroform but all of these offensive attacks are only intended to give you time to complete your mission. There's no need to go around taking out every enemy in a level if all you're supposed to do is get in, get the loot and get out.

Equipment and high tech gadgetry has lead Promethean Designs to compare the game to GoldenEye. Crossbows, mini cameras and night vision equipment are just a few of the toys your character will get to use. We can't wait to see how the heck you can use the Shadow Hologram Generator, but we know it's going to be good. Mastery of all these weapons is likely to be a requirement for success. The developers seem intent on preventing Picassio from becoming a fast paced shooting-faster-than-they-can-shoot-me type of game. Using the gadgets well, sneaking around and attention to detail seem to be the skills that will get you far in this game.

The game is using a brand new engine that's designed for the high performance PCs and consoles that we're going to get in the next couple of years. A multiplayer game is expected to be in there where teams of thieves will be running around achieving goals.

While the game is being developed on a maxed out PC, Promethean Designs seems confident in the Dolphin's potential processing power and published specs and intends to bring Picassio to the Big N's next console.

Realism is huge part of the Picassio experience and so expect to be breaking into and stealing prizes from recognizable places. Likewise your cat burglar will only be able to carry a certain amount of equipment on his or her body, but they can stash their gear wherever they want around the building they're operating in. That's great stuff, but when consider that the other cat burglar can find, steal and use your gadgets himself or herself and you see what this game's is trying to accomplish.

Comparisons to the films Entrapment and the wacky Hudson Hawk are likely because of the burglary theme. But let the record show that we don't expect Picassio on Dolphin to be anywhere near the emotional letdown that we experienced during Catherine Zeta Jones' back-arching laser beam slithering scene in Entrapment.

• Category

  Entertainment

[3v17c]

haha! blast from the past this one - i worked on this!!!

potentially could have been a good game but as usual the idiot boss kept interfering and screwing things up. oh..and not paying us for months at a time!!

nice one

peace

c

[liveswired]

offical dreamcast magazine made up anything sometimes to make the release list look better!

[SpashBanjo]

Are you going to release an iso/gdi or anything of it? That would mean a lot to us hardcore gamers. :)

[Gono Maniax]

Fuck this game looks cool. Metal Gear Solid meets Mission Impossible

[theunknowngame]

beta? :D

[RPKGameVids]

Seems like it. I'm sure Jack Thomson, Fox News, and The Daily Mail would've had a blast with this one.

[RPKGameVids]

I was really looking forward to this game when I saw the screen shots of it in a magazine back in the day. It's a shame this never came out. I'd still love to play it.

[sf2able]

How far did you get with it? If you still have copies of the betas, there are people out there who I'm sure would want to make this playable :P

[jamesowen237]

Is there any chance whatever was developed could be salvaged in any playable or developable format?

I was so excited for this game, and am still after all these years highly disappointed that it never came out.

[PullusPardus]

i remember seeing a Screen shot of this game, the guy with boxes on his back with a brand Called "Nosy" or something like that, in the Same shape as the Logo of "Sony" the graphics were better than this tho the details were alot better

[Grahamx227]

Too bad it wasn't released, it looks pretty cool.