Posted 7/17/2008 at 12:09 AMBy GamingShogun

Today we got the chance to play Grin's upcoming Bionic Commando. We would like to thank Grin's Gunnar Johansson for graciously giving us a peak at this title. They have three levels on display for us to play in: two within a nuked city and the other in a densly-wooded forest.

We start off in our destroyed city, buildings collapsing around us with smoke billowing out like liquid in every direction, enveloping the shattered streets. The scene is fairly eerie and reminiscent of 9/11 - further enhancing the gravity of the situation. Unfortunately, with the city being as torn up as it is, the quickest way around is to make use of your VERY cool bionic arm. Swinging from broken street lamp to broken street lamp is a very cool experience, if you can master the technique of using the arm.

It took us about thirty minutes to really get a grasp on the system, which involves pushing and holding the left trigger button on your Xbox 360 controller in order to shoot out the bionic arm and keep it attached to your target. Then, in mid-swing, you let go of the left trigger to release the arm, followed by shooting it out again to grasp your next pendulum point. While sounding easy, the strange human habbit exists to let go of the trigger at the apex of your swing, which will send all of your momentum straight up...then straight down again, not good. Ideally, you will let go of the trigger just at the bottom of your swing to fully make use of your built up kinetic energy. There is definitely a learning curve to making use of the bionic arm. However, once you get the hang of it - it is a thing of beauty to watch.

The bionic commando of the title has a variety of weapons at his disposal, including machine guns, grenades, shotguns, etc. However, the coolest weapon he has is the arm. By shooting it out to grasp bad guys you can hurl them great distances, zip-kick over to them, knocking them down, bringing them to you, and a whole lot more that the developers are planning to implement.

Enemy troops we fought in the E3 demonstrations version seemed intelligent enough to seek cover as well as press their attack at the right moments. Eventually, you can learn new moves aside from using the bionic arm. You can learn to uppercut large objects (even cars), jump up, and then punch them in the air towards the direction of your enemies. There is nothing quite as satisfying as killing your opponents by dropping a car on them.

Overall, Bionic Commando looks to have great promise and fun when you get the hang of it. While the game has no announced release date yet, we would guestimate it to be early next year.

(Continue reading 'E3 2008 - Bionic Commando Hands On Impressions'...)

Posted 5/8/2008 at 10:02 PMBy GamingShogun

Cities XL is an upcoming city-building title with strong online-featureset being developed by Monte Cristo. We got the chance to ask Project Director Patrick Marchal some questions about it. We would like to thank Patrick Marchal and everyone at Monte Cristo for the opportunity and for their hard work.

Q&A for CITIES XL™
GS: So let’s first talk about the change of names. Cities XL was previously known as Cities Unlimited. What exactly brought about the name change and has there also been a change in scope of the game with that change?
MC: We started talking to city builder fans back in June 2007. The aim was to feed our development with their ideas, criticisms and suggestions. At that time the game was still in its early stages of development and its internal codename was Cities Unlimited. Simple as that: we used the codename to communicate with the early community. Before we decided to go public with the project we started to question the relevance of the title and for many reasons, it seemed to us that Cities XL was a better option. The title had no influence on content and scope of the project.

GS: I wanted to give you the opportunity to squash a rumor going around various Internet forums where some folks say you doctor your screenshots with image enhancement programs before releasing them. What would you say to that claim?
MC: YES we used Photoshop…. to include the CITIES XL logo on the screenshots =). More seriously, what you are seeing is coming straight from the game engine. Time will prove this to be true.

GS: What kind of inter-player/city interaction will be allowed in Cities XL? Will there be inter-city trade and industry?
MC: It’s still slightly too early to give you precise details about the inter-player/city interactions. However, we can already tell you that players won’t be confined into their city's economy and will, if they wish, be able to participate in a global exchange. Import- export, specialization of cities … these are clearly areas where we think the genre can see big improvement.

GS: On the website, it says players will be able to ‘walk’ around cities. Does this feature place the player in a first-person shooter-style game? Minus the shooting, of course. If so, and you can interact with the environment, will players be able to meet each other’s avatars inside these cities? Perhaps inside restaurants and bars that have sprung up in the town?
MC: Yes, players will be able to walk around in their own cities using a first person camera. It’s a wonderful feeling to walk through your own creation and see how your citizens actually live and interact there. Moreover, players of the Planet Offer mode will have the opportunity to visit other player cities and meet other players’ avatars in their public places with classic 3D chat functionalities. We are expecting a lot from the social interaction of players as they will be able to more effectively discuss things like strategy, achievements and trade.

GS: Can you comment on the minimum and recommended system specs right now? Also, will it utilize DirectX 10?
MC: The minimum and recommend system specs are not yet defined. However, we know our audience doesn’t necessarily own the latest PC machine. We are aiming to run the game smoothly on older computers - of course, in that case, you won’t have the shiny effects you may see in the screenshots but player cities will definitively still be better looking than in current city builder titles.

GS: As far as city-building goes, how does building placement work? Will it be a ‘zone system’ ala Sim City, direct building placement, or something else?
MC: The construction toolset is one of the most important aspects of a city builder game because you spend most of your time using them to build your city. Some players focus on making sure the overall economy of the city runs smoothly and love to sit back after defining zones and placing services to see how the simulation behaves. Other players focus in the visual aspect of their cities. They generally start with a good idea of what they want to achieve (a sprawling but visually appealing city, an industrial port, a business downtown, etc.) and they cautiously place every single building or road.

As a response, we invented the Mass Placement Tool. In CITIES XL, you use the MPT to build a zone and pre-assign to this zone a mix of buildings thanks to a cool tag system. A tag can be visual (architecture style, colors…) or simulation- related (residence, industry, wealth, size…) properties.

We actually have a dedicated blog entry on the topic and we invite you to read more about it at http://www.citiesxl.com/index.php?/content/view/16/24/lang,en/

GS: And finally, the question we always close these with: Is there anything you would like to leave our readers with about Cities XL or any other projects you are working on?
MC: We are ourselves city builder players and we want CITIES XL to be the game we always wanted to play. This is one of the reasons we started talking right from the beginning to other fans of the genre to make sure our ideas were close to theirs and eventually gather some other great suggestions. You can join our discussions on www.citiesxl.com if you are interested.

(Continue reading 'GamingShogun Talks Cities XL with Patrick Marchal of Monte Cristo'...)

Posted 5/6/2008 at 9:48 AMBy GamingShogun

We got the chance to interview 'SWAT_OP-R8R', founder and project leader for the Swat Development Group, which is currently working on a new Starlancer game developed using the FS2 Open game engine. This is a fan-made project, and will be free to obtain once it is finished. We would like to thank SWAT_OP-R8R and the rest of the SDG for their hard work. We can't wait to play Starlancer: The Sol War....

GS: So, tell us a little about Starlancer: The Sol War and what it was about the original Starlancer that drew you guys to work on this particular project?
SWAT: Starlancer: The Sol war is being developed by the SWAT Portal, a big Lancer community, and the original Starlancer was the first game we ever covered at SWAT. That was many years ago but we still loved to remember the old times and played the original Starlancer long after Microsoft made the decision to close the game rooms. We thought it would time to bring this great game back to life and so The Sol War Project was started. First we the plans for this new game looked a bit different... a different engine and just one campaign... no multiplayer. But fortunately these plans did change very soon an so we switched to a game engine that allows everything that we need for this new Starlancer game. We also decided that we want to tell more than just the original Starlancer story. Since the release of Freelancer in 2003 is known that the war between alliance and coalition did last almost 100 years so we decided to tell a story with 3 campaigns showing how this war actually developed from the view of the alliance. So we practically cover 3 different time lines showing how the war did start, how the alliance managed to win important fights and finally how the Freelancer sleeper ships have been build before the alliance had to leave to the Sirius sector. One of our developers also came up with the idea of a prequel that is meant to learn how to play and to tell a mini-story about what happened in the few weeks before the great war.

GS: How many people are on your development team and are any currently working in the industry?
SWAT: Starlancer: Sol War is a pure fan project and our development team is pretty small. We have a coder working on game engine, a few modelers for the ships and stations and a bunch of mission designers. Many members of the SWAT community already volunteered to help with the voice recording so basically even though we are not many we still can cover the necessary work. It just takes a bit longer.

GS: Which game engine are you modifying for use in the game? Also, are your in-game models being re-used from the original Starlancer or has the team recreated them? If so, which 3d modeling program are your modelers using?
SWAT: We decided to use the FS2open engine as it is still one of the best after all those years and since Volition made the source code public we easily can modify it to our needs. Since the original Starlancer is already pretty old the original ships wont be used as they are. We only use them as a base to rebuild them in a higher detail grade. In the end we want to create a game that looks better than the original one. Well I noticed that we modelers have different preferences as to which tools we use. That is very likely because we have been working on other games before and everyone of us learned to model with a different tool. Personally I don't see a big problem in that since nowadays you can include the different files in almost every modeling tool.

GS: As this is a whole new game engine, your possibilities are much greater than if you just modded the original game. Is there any chance of walking around your capital ship in first-person before getting to the space-combat?
SWAT: We concentrate our work on the playing and fighting factor. It is not planned to have a sightseeing tour on the Yamato or the Reliant. But cut scenes will give players and impression about those locations. The player mostly will deal with the Starlancer ITAC where he can do training missions, get info about ships, weapons or pilots and plan campaign missions. Even though we have a new engine and basically a completely new game we still try to use elements of the original game so the player can identify with it.

GS: Will your standalone game feature cut-scenes as well as in-game voice acting? If so, will your voice actors come from the team or are you planning to hold auditions?
SWAT: The game will of course contain cut scenes. Those are simply necessary to create a deep gameplay and keep the players interested. And yes we are going to work on voice acting. The SWAT Portal which meanwhile is a big Scifi Game community will help with this.

GS: Will you be implementing support for Force Feedback® enabled joysticks?
SWAT: Of course!!!! That is a must.

GS: Speaking of controller-related items, will you have integrated support for the Track-IR head-tracking system?
SWAT: Honestly we have not thought about that possibility yet but now that you mention it we will see what we can do.

GS: Will there be a co-op campaign option for players to rally and take on the story together?
SWAT: The Multiplayer will cover a co-op mode with the 3 main campaigns and a deathmatch mode. You can play the missions together with friends if you want.

GS: Is an official project website in the works as of yet, and if so, where can our readers find it? If not, where is your project information located now?
SWAT: There was an official website for this project but unfortunately the site was attacked by a hacker. We have not rebuilt it and due to all our other projects (in total 10 Lancer related projects) we have not much time working on it at the moment. Once I have a few days free I will try to bring the official project site back online. For now the project can be found on our forum at www.swat-portal.com. Under 'SWAT Projects Gallery' on our main site you can also find screenshots of an early version.

GS: And finally, is there anything else you would like our readers to know?
SWAT: Yes. Starlancer is not dead yet! ^^

You can find the Swat Development Group website here.

Images After the Break!

(Continue reading 'Starlancer: The Sol War Interview'...)

Posted 1/30/2008 at 10:14 AMBy GamingShogun

We were able to conduct an email interview with Atanas Atanasov, CEO of Masthead Studios about their upcoming Sci-Fi MMO, Earthrise. Set a few hundred years after the third world war, Earthrise chronicles mankind's re-emergence from clone storage into a world much changed from the one it knew. Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Mr Atanasov.

GS: What inspired Masthead to begin working in the sci-fi genre as opposed to the more familiar territory of the 'fantasy' MMO?

AA: When designing Earthrise, we wanted to make a game, which the MMO community wants to play, but can’t find among all those titles. After doing some initial research, we came to the conclusion that a skill based Sci-fi MMO with a well developed economy and crafting is needed.

GS: While reading up on Earthrise, we encountered a rich back story to the game. Who was your writer on the project?

AA: We have a team of professional writers in the studio, who have produced hundreds of pages of rich detailed sci-fi setting material, a massive backstory that we will be releasing piece by piece in the future. A lot of events did happen after humanity emerged back on the surface and those events led to the time when Earthrise players will join the world and decide the faith of mankind.

GS: Earthrise has a 'skill-based' advancement system, but how does combat play out? Is it similar to a skill-influenced shooter ala Tabula Rasa? Or is it similar to the more traditional 'server-calculated' outcome combat seen in titles like World of Warcraft?

AA: The outcome of battle in Earthrise will rely more on the traditional RPG system, where avatar skills and equipment are important. However the combat will be more dynamic, resembling a third person, first person shooter.

GS: Earthrise is said to feature a way to continue advancing your character even while the player is not in-game. I can only think of EVE Online that offers a similar feature. How will this offline progression work in Earthrise?

AA: The offline progression is different than the one in EVE online. All combat and crafting skills will advance online. While offline, the players will have the opportunity to gather income and advance in a more social aspect of the game.

GS: The game is said to be friendly to 'solo' as well as 'group' players, however, something we find with many other MMOs out there is that when it comes to high-level content, they usually are fairly oriented towards guild/team play. Will Earthrise give 'solo' players content at high-levels as well?

AA: It is natural that MMORPGs offer player experience from solo gameplay towards guild and team high level play, be it PvE raids of mass PvP, and in that aspect Earthrise will still provide the same smooth experience. But make no mistake: high level solo players will have many opportunities to make a name of themselves that overshadows that of even the most powerful guilds. Thanks to the extensive crafting system and the way it influences item distribution in the whole game, a high level crafter might become powerful and renowned enough that even guilds would bow before his technological genius.

GS: What kind of subscription system will Earthrise use, if it has even been decided yet, a pay-per-month type or a pay-per-expansion type?

AA: Earthrise will use subscription based model. The game is designed in a way that it will offer a “complete” MMO experience, giving equal opportunity to everyone.

GS: Are there plans for a public beta of Earthrise before it launches?

AA: Yes we have plans for public beta, but I cannot give any estimates when it will happen.

GS: Currently, Earthrise is listed as the only game in the Masthead Studios' stable. Do you have anything else 'officially' planned yet for the future aside from probable expansions to Earthrise?

AA: The engine that powers Earthrise is our product and we plan to make new games with it. We already have some unofficial plans for a next product, but will make it more specific later this year.

GS: And finally, is there anything you would like to let our readers know about Earthrise before we adjourn?

AA: Earthrise is designed ground-up with the idea to provide a complete virtual world sandbox experience with emphasis on the player’s freedom to choose his own career, and these choices will have real impact on the world. Military careers will extend in faction wars and true territorial conquest that will manipulate the global market of Enterra, while crafting and manufacturing will be the staple for military developments throughout the contested territories.

Thank you so much for the interview, Mr Atanasov, it is greatly appreciated and we look forward to seeing more from Earthrise and Masthead Studios in the future.

You can find more info about Earthrise here.

(Continue reading 'GamingShogun Interviews Masthead Studios' CEO Atanas Atanasov'...)

Posted 9/14/2007 at 12:25 AMBy MondoPest

Brass Tacks: The game plays alot like an MMO version of Sid Meier's Pirates! would. Graphics and sounds are very nice however the melee combat portion of the game is somewhat clunky.

(Continue reading 'Pirates of the Burning Sea Preview'...)