The Horde hates the Alliance. When there’s a downpour downtown in City of Heroes, the villains don’t give the good guys a ride to work. A high elf archmage in Warhammer Online wouldn’t take a goblin shaman to prom.
Behind Unreal 3 tech, the loose combat prioritizes action over tactics, like The Club or Mercenaries 2; we sprint-roll between stacked shipping crates at a dockyard, recklessly sprinkling C4 and mines on surfaces, two of our three maximum abilities. Our other feat, optical camo, makes us invisible long enough to hole up in a corner and pick off a few targets through our custom scope. Active loot adds another chaotic element: At one point we rush to a corpse we didn’t kill to nab some dropped goods; later on, we use another loot-littered corpse as bait to lure an opponent.
EXP is earned when the round wraps up, but better, our gang rank also jumps, letting us unlock a new hideout item. We like the idea of gang hideouts, customizable private areas (animal-print upholstery!) where your crew can socialize and strategize, and operate crafting stations to create weapons or “substances,” less-than-legal consumables that enhance combat ability.
There are more than a few social shooters en route to the PC in ’09 (Quake Live, Parabellum, Global Agenda, Battlefield Heroes), a trend we hope spurs a multiplayer scene that actively preserves the time we invest. We want more persistency in our shooters - something that puts our rivalries and leaderboard rank front-and-center, flaunts our 10:1 kill/death ratio, and gives us enough offensive emotes to rub our foes’ faces in it. We’ll see if CrimeCraft takes this approach when the beta rolls out this summer.
+ Has promise as a platform for social shooting, over-the-top character customization, and third-person warfare in an innately conflict-encouraging setting. Integrated voice chat, instanced PvE, and leaderboard tracking are welcome adds.
– Will shoehorning MMO elements water-down the shooting mechanics? We’re hoping for a land-grab campaign or something similar to give gangs a way of competing month-to-month.
Feb 11, 2009
