Namco Fighting Game Teams Working on a New PC Exclusive Arena Combat Game

Back in January Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada said on Twitter that he would be announcing maybe 2 or 3 new games this year that were not Tekken titles. Rise of Incarnates seems to be one of those titles he was hinting at, but a PC exclusive free to play title certainly comes as a surprise.
 
Free to play fighting games from Namco Bandai are certainly not something new, Soul Calibur: Lost Swords just hit PSN and Tekken Revolution has been doing very well there as well. Even the Ace Combat series has a free to play entry, but this is the first time they're building a new IP from the ground up with F2P in mind. Rise of Incarnates also isn't the typical fighting game from Namco Bandai, and actually resembles their Japan only Gundam VS series... which is no coincidence considering it is being developed mostly by that staff. 
 
This also seems to be one of those weird instances where Japanese developers are trying to make a game specifically for a western audience-- for why that is usually a bad thing, check out my oped from last week. The character designs look ripped straight out of American games... I actually thought it was crossing over with Prototype for the first couple seconds of the trailer. The official site also has a comic tied to the game, and it lands in the all too familiar setting of a post-apocalyptic future full of zombies. While Rise of Incarnates surely won't be winning any awards in the looks/originality department, the gameplay is what really matters here-- and the 2v2 formula of Gundam VS is a huge hit in Japan. The free to play formula used by League of Legends has been a tremendous success, so it makes since that this is launching as a PC only game. The game launches later this year and I've already signed up for the Alpha, I'll be bringing hands on impressions of the game as soon as I can.