We were denied entry behind Square Enix’s closed doors (hooray scheduling confusion!), but the only game on the show floor we weren’t allowed to get video footage of was Project Cube, a work-in-progress for Live Arcade.

Their first foray into the twin stick shooter genre, Project Cube did well to put its own spin on the genre. The fray took place on a large square, and the opposite for my tiny ship was a bunch of cubes with eyes on them. Blasting the cubes, oddly, caused a bloody explosion of epic proportions and, while it didn’t make any sense, the excessive carnage was reasonably rewarding. From there you could boost, which was quite traditional, but boosting near an enemy caused a state of mass confusion, which rendered the enemy temporarily incapacitated. Eventually a new humanoid enemy appeared, and I had to use a different power to “collect” the lasers it was shooting at me. After I collected enough lasers I could either shoot them back all at once, or kamikaze my opposition in a melee (of sorts) attack. It would have been nice to hang onto the shield forever, but unfortunately it only lasts a limited amount of time before it wore off and I started taking damage.

Anyway, the game ended with me getting access to a massive, screen filling laser, which did well to completely obliterate everything on screen. Was it short? Yes. Could it have been more inspired? Sure. But right now, as a work in progress, it felt like it was well on its way to defining itself in a genre that’s quickly becoming over populated.