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As I watch a hands-off demo for Project Spectrum, I think I've played enough Escape from Tarkov to see where it's going. Admittedly, on the surface, the two FPS games are only marginally alike: while Tarkov is deeply realistic, the player controlling my Project Spectrum preview is inching through the zombie-infected grounds of a comically spooky mansion. But when they pause to fish a soda can from dead leaves, fashioning it into a makeshift silencer to quietly pick off the undead with careful headshots, the tension is unmistakable – I've felt it myself in a million Tarkov raids, in quiet stretches so taut it's almost a relief when the shooting starts.
Yet Project Spectrum isn't that easy to categorize. While its tactical shooter DNA is visible from the get-go, streaks of horror muddy the waters – and when developer Team Jade reveals the PC game's trump card, all comparisons go out of the window.
Monster mash
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Our goal today is to investigate Nightfall Manor – the creepy home of a missing scientist, which is as Resident Evil-esque as it sounds. Project Spectrum is PvPvE though, which means on top of supernatural monsters, we're also contending with other players during our investigation. As another group of rival players turns up at Nightfall Manor, the pace of combat shifts from measured violence – quietly picking off enemies as necessary – to frantic callouts and trying to stay one step ahead of the other group's position. Guns are weighty (I love the way individual bullets can be loaded into a pistol) and pack a punch, taking down players in just a few shots. An on-the-fly crafting system also comes in handy, as rigging a tripwire explosive across a doorway and waiting for the enemy to push takes down their last member.
Searching Nightfall Manor culminates in a low-key boss fight against the home's former owner, albeit he's now wreathed in shadows and capable of teleporting between targets. The battle is comical – he's weak to fire, so the player uses crafting to set their shovel on fire and bonk him to death – but it's also not really the main event. As soon as our group leaves Nightfall Manor, they're set upon by a monstrous mass of tentacles and killed almost immediately. The kicker? That was another player.
That's right: while players fight amongst themselves to get their agents out alive, there's another player – called an Executioner – trying to kill them all. After the gory reveal, I get to see Project Spectrum being played as a Venom-esque Executioner. They're vastly stronger than any one agent, but easily outnumbered – meaning that if you're an Executioner, you'll need to play smart. The Executioner I'm watching slithers up walls and over rooftops, inky tendrils keeping it low to surfaces. When two groups of players run into each other and fight, the Executioner slips in and picks its targets off in the chaos, tearing one to shreds before repositioning in the cover from another player's smoke grenade.
In those brief minutes, I want to play an Executioner more than anything else. As someone who's played hundreds of hours of Escape from Tarkov, the thought of playing a tactical game asymmetrically is an exciting shake-up. Players choose whether they'd like to play as an agent or Executioner before heading into a match, though I'm told that the Executioner in the preview is particularly powerful. Usually, the Executioner must slot into the session's ecosystem – hunting and devouring targets to gain strength, until eventually becoming the powerhouse I saw in action.
While that intentionally uneven playing field may bring Dead By Daylight to mind, Project Spectrum would be more accurate to compare it to 2015's Evolve – a pioneering asymmetrical game where one person played as a monster against a team of player-controlled hunters. "Our team are all Evolve fans," says one member of the team during a group interview. "Evolve did not make it because of many, many reasons. So we try to study [...] Also, we think that the asymmetric genre is not that crowded – like the FPS genre – so there will be a chance for us to explore more."
It's early days for Project Spectrum, as a release date for the PC shooter is yet to be announced. While a small part of me worries that its premise will be too niche – are there enough tactically-minded Evolve sickos in the world, myself excluded? – a larger part is just glad Team Jade is wading back into the multiplayer scene with something truly weird. Mostly, though, I just want to play as the monster.
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