By:
Arush Entertainment/Digitalo/Groove Games
Preview by: Frag-girlie and Luckee
February 21, 2003
Over this past week, we
have had the opportunity to play a press build
of Digitalo’s upcoming first person shooter
Devastation, sent out by Publisher Arush
Entertainment. The preview build had four levels,
all from different parts of the game and a
cinematic cut scene with some spoilers.
Devastation takes place in a post-apocalyptic
urban setting that is strewn with debris that you
can interact with. There are bottles lying around
that you can kick, boxes to move and throw and a
lot of little additions that help to immerse the
player in the environment. The game is powered by
the latest version of the Unreal engine, and it
looks pretty. The levels are all very detailed.
One part of the game has port-a-potties on the
street and when you go inside there are flies
flying about. Just the extra detail needed for
that realistic feel. The addition of the OFX
Visual FX system allows for other graphical
touches such as shooting the fire hydrants and
having realistic water shoot in the air and then
puddle as it hits the ground; or shooting the side
of a building and having it chip off creating a
great particle affect. You can even blow up the
pop machine and it will shoot out can after can
from the opening. And as you walk around in one of
the levels, you can shoot the lanterns and they
will swing back and forth.
The game uses the Karma physics engine for added
gameplay. One feature of this engine is the
ragdoll which is used to make death animations
different every time, something we’ve seen in
Unreal Tournament 2003 and other recent games.
You will also get some teammates that will help
you during the game. You can control them by
ordering them to go attack instead of following
and protecting you, or by commanding them to stay
and defend an area. A great addition when you find
yourself in a bind or in need of that extra bit of
help. The other AI in the game is also well done.
The enemy AI run for cover when they know they’re
in for trouble or hammer on you good when the
advantage is on their side. The character
animations are quite detailed as well; tattoos and
jewelry, hair styles and eyeglasses all bring
these characters to life. As they stand there you
can even see them breathing. The lip motion needs
to be tweaked just a bit to closer match the words
being spoken, because as it is now it looks like
they are chewing and not talking. But overall they
are very well done.
The weapon selection in Devastation is incredible.
There are 3 types of sniper guns, two shotguns, 3
variations of Uzi-type guns (both single and
double-handed), nail guns, all sorts of machine
guns, a laser gun with sight, 4 types of grenades,
and, a rat drone. What more could you want?
Gameplay isn’t the typical fps style of running
and shooting either. You do this, yes, but some of
the missions also require you to plant bombs, free
captured teammates, disable laser fences or use
the rat drone to get into areas the players can't
access. No matter what the objective, it is all
made a little easier because of a nice on screen
radar that indicates which way to go.
Devastation brings a whole new experience to the
table. We loaded it on our dual 1 GHz machine but
since this game doesn’t take advantage of dual
processors, we were playing with only 1 GHz
and we saw choppiness even at 1024x768. We
then loaded it on Luckee’s new P4 2.2 GHz rig that
has 512 MB of DDR RAM and a Geforce 4 TI4200 and
it ran like a champ. Even at 1280x1024, it ran
like a champ. (Luckee thinks you’re going to need
at least a 1.7 GHz beefed up gaming rig with at
least a 64 MB Geforce 4 TI4200 card to fully enjoy
this game.)
The build we received did not have a multiplayer
component included, but according to the manual
there will be four gametypes: Death Match,
Team Death Match, CTF and Territories, with
Territories sounding pretty interesting.
Here's a bit directly from the
manual about that ...Territories is a brand-new team-based
game. You and your teammates must obtain the
code to the opponent's base, take down their
defenses and destroy their spawning vehicles.
After completing this part of the objective, you
must hunt down and eliminate the rest of the team
in a "last-man standing" scenario. There
will also be a full-featured in-game browser and
server tools with lots of options for running the
game, 30+ weapons, and fifty different players to
choose from. The game will ship with 14
multiplayer maps.
Devastation is scheduled for a March 2003 release
and we are very excited to play the final version
of this game. This build had a few minor issues
but was still amazing to look at and fun to play,
so we can’t wait for the completed game. We think
Devastation will set the precedent for all games
to come and is a marvelous little treat for any
blood thirty fps shooter fan.
You
can check out the official Devastation website
here.
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