Sony goes hunting for big game
On August 28, Sony released for PlayStation 3 in Japan its long-announced, shrouded-in-secret game "Afrika," in which a single player assumes the role of a National Geographic photographer on an African safari to shoot wild animals in the grassland.
Each of the player’s photos is then judged on angle, target, distance and technique, and the photographer is rewarded in "cash," which can be used to upgrade his or her camera to models based on Sony’s latest Alpha-branded single-lens-reflex cameras and lenses.
The game’s graphics are effectively stunning, while sound effects include hooves treading lightly on the savanna, as giraffes and antelope walk slowly away once you’ve snapped that Sony moment.
"Sony is pushing the game’s art style in a much more photo-realistic direction, which is a departure from most video games," says Ricardo Torres, editor in chief of GameSpot. "Rather than create a stylized, fanciful world, Sony’s Japanese development studio has pushed to create graphics that match the real world."
