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Gamescom 2013: Blue Estate

If you are not aware, Leap Motion is a new input device which is able to track the users hand motions. It has many different uses but of course it can not get better than using it for gaming and Indie game developers HESAW did just that.

Blue Estate is a classic arcade shooter much like Time Crisis or House of the Dead based on the comic written by Viktor Kalvachev. You do not control Tony Luciano the character directly all you control is his hand / gun and the game does the rest for you like the movement around the levels. Instead of using what you are used to a Light Gun, Wiimote, Kinect or Move you have the Leap Motion device which is plugged into your PC.

The Leap Motion tracks your hand motions while you wave your hand in front of it and allows you to aim your fingers like a gun and point it towards the screen. To fire all you need to do is aim on a person or interactive object and the gun will start shorting, to reload you move you hand quickly to the side away from the Leap Motion and to change weapon you swipe your open palm downwards. All the motions are quick to do and easy to remember in the madness, the Leap Motion does a good job at tracking but a couple of times while playing it did seem to miss some motions. Either our hand was not in tracking range or it was a calibration problem but most of the time it did things perfectly.

The game does well at bringing back nostalgia from playing but what was most memorable about the game was the dark humour. Playing the game you will find your self laughing at the main character and his unfortunate series of events which has lead him shooting down waves of people to rescue his stripper girlfriend all the while making sure your long fringe does not get in the way of your face. Don’t worry if it does though all you need to do is swipe your hand up on the Leap Motion.

The game will probably become a strong niche, the only downfall is that it is mostly about the Leap Motion. If you did not play it with the Leap Motion device it would not be as fun, the humour in the game does help keep you engaged but only if you enjoy that type of dark humour. Overall, we enjoyed playing it at Gamescom and look forward to getting more hands on time with it and the Leap Motion.

Would you play the game? Are you interested in the Leap Motion? Let us know what you think in the comments below.