Alternate reality games have been popular for a while now, and while most of the time they see our characters fly into outer space to defeat marauding alien races or face other seemingly insurmountable odds in the name of self discovery, plenty of games forego historical accuracy in the name of fun. Damnation, Codemasters' upcoming third-person action adventure title twists the alt-reality convention on its head, and using the premise that the American Civil War raged on a lot longer than it actually did, continuing well into the 20th century. We got our hands on an Xbox 360 version of the game to find out if the south will rise again.

The modern steampunk setting of Damnation means that weapons have advanced considerably. Muskets have been replaced with sophisticated automatic pistols, while shotguns, machineguns, and even sniper rifles are commonplace. Satchel charges are no longer a pipedream and can be found lying scattered around the battlefield, waiting to be used. A mechanical army which was originally designed for peacekeeping has been modified to add assault weapons, and is being used as part of the ongoing war between states.

With the scene set, you assume the role of Hamilton Rourke, the leader of a rag-tag group of rebels who are attempting to overthrow Prescott, the leader of a group called PSI, and the guy with the biggest finger in the pie of the broader storyline. You're joined by two AI sidekicks, sensible Englishman, Winslow, and busty local native, Yakecan. The level we played picked up with the three in an outdoor environment on the side of a cliff. Our job was to find a way to infiltrate a PSI compound and then eliminate any enemies standing in our way. The trio are incredibly athletic, and you'll spend your time jumping between gaps, scaling walls, hanging off ladders, and performing ridiculous backflips onto tiny ledges. We scurried along rooftops, climbed light poles, and hung precariously from zip lines. Unfortunately, interaction with walls, ropes, and ladders can take a few attempts as their trigger points seem to be quite small. Jumping is easy once you get going with simple presses of the A button and the odd bumper hold to switch lean directions, but it became a bit of an exercise in frustration trying to scale some points--think Uncharted: Drake's Fortune without the ease of movement.

Damnation is your fairly standard twin stick third-person shooter, meaning you'll use the left analog to manoeuvre your character around the environment. That said, we commonly got stuck on walls, debris, and even clipped inside whole structures when attempting to move around the world. When you're not bouncing around like a hyperactive monkey you'll use the right stick to aim. There's no shooting from the hip here, so you'll need to press and hold the left trigger to bring up your reticule. Clicking the right stick increases your zoom, while right trigger fires your selected weapon. Switching which weapons you'll carry and fire are toggled with the d-pad, but since you'll only be able to carry three weapons at time--two two-handed weapons and a one-handed pistol. Since the world is so open and you'll be shooting across large gaps we found ourselves swapping shotguns for something with a bit more range. Gunplay felt a bit unfinished and need of some polish in our playtime, but we're hoping it's something patched after release as the game is rapidly approaching its June 4 launch on the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3. Check back soon for our full GameSpot review.

--By Dan Chiappini