Huxley: The Dystopia back from hibernation

Forget everything you thought you knew about Huxley. Which wasn’t much, because let’s face it, the game’s been quieter than a mime’s funeral and seen more delays than LAX in a snowstorm.  But that’s not to say it doesn’t exist. On the contrary, plans are to get it into consumer’s computers by sometime later this year. Here’s what you need to know.

PC Only

The game is only coming to the PC, and at this point there doesn’t seem to be much of a push for porting to the Xbox 360, like we had once believed. This is bad news for 360 players obviously, but beats the hell out of getting massacred round after round by PC players with ultra-hacks, thousand dollar keyboards and matching LED mice while you fiddle with your thumbsticks.

Lifestyle Choices

There are two playable species to choose from: The Sapiens, which are essentially the boring but tough human characters, and The Alternatives, who apparently spend all their time making sure their hair and armor are always more badass than the Sapiens’.

Of these two factions, there are three classes. The Enforcer plays the part of the heavy armor shotgunner, The Avenger is the midrange, rocket launcher-touting warrior, and the Phantoms are the light armor, sniper characters. Each class has unique sets of skills at their disposal and during the games that we watched, characters turned invisible, scouted out other invisible characters with thermal vision, set up decoys, and dashed, instantly appearing several feet in front of where they had been.

Gameplay

Huxley is based off of the Unreal Engine 3, and it shows. We watched characters jump around shooting absurdly awesome weapons at each other in a fashion that could only be described as a mixture between Unreal Tournament and Team Fortress. The games are fast-paced, the guns are sweet, and everything feels crisp and clean.