Raven Squad First Look

 Raven Squad isn't your typical first-person shooter. Nor is it your typical real-time strategy game. Rather, it's a hybrid of the two in which you can swap views to gather intelligence, move your squads, or take the action head on. Though the game's release this fall is rapidly approaching, we've just now gotten our first look at the game at the German Games Conference. 

Raven Squad begins with an elite group of mercs being sent to the Amazon to retrieve a package from a downed plane. As fate would have it, their plane soon suffers the same fate as it is shot down en route. Once the smoke clears, there are only eight survivors. This game follows their adventures as they first try to complete the mission as planned and then switch goals to survival when an a civil war breaks out. 

You can play Raven Squad either in the first person or zoomed out in a classic RTS overhead view. This, as the story goes, is made possible by a series of satellites positioned overhead that provide a full 3D view of your surroundings. When zoomed out, you can control the two squads of four individually. One is an assault squad, perfect for close range combat, while the other is an infiltrator squad that prefers long range attacks. While in this mode, you can maneuver the squads around and get an advance view of what lies ahead. This will give you the jump on any enemies camped out around corners or behind buildings. 

Of course, if you want, you can play the entire game in first-person. The two views can be switched to and from at any time and you also have the option of swapping between any of the eight players in first-person mode at your leisure. You won't get as much advance info this way, but it may be the way to go for people that hate real-time strategy games. 

SouthPeak stressed that Raven Squad is all about tactics. We watched a single mission where the squad moved down a jungle path and into a hostile village. The goal was to retrieve a package, but the local militants wouldn't make that easy. Thankfully, the player knows exactly where every enemy is in advance through the RTS mode. From there, you can simply swap back into first-person and hop around corners to get the jump on unsuspecting saps. 

The entire Raven Squad game can be played in co-operative mode through the net or on a local area network. In this mode, each player takes control of a single squad of four mercs. The game ramps up the difficulty if you do this since the designers found you could simply charge through the game, laying everything to waste without recourse, if you played with a friend. 

If there's one major drawback to Raven Squad, it's that the game is quite close to release and still suffering from technical issues. There's quite a lot of pop-in on the field of view, something that shouldn't be happening with a game of this visual fidelity. We'll have more on Raven Squad once we get our hands on it and can test out the different viewpoints for ourselves. 


Note: I do not own this article or its contents.

Rage Impressions - First Look at Shooting, Driving, and Story

We get our first look at this new shooting and driving action game in motion from id Software.

Over the years, Doom and Quake have been the first-person shooter games that people associate with developer id Software. But the studio has shifted gears to work on Rage, its first all-new property since Quake and a postapocalyptic action game. We finally got the chance to see the game in motion, including the on-foot shooting gameplay, the behind-the-wheel driving, and the story and quest elements.

Rage takes place in an alternate future where the world is recovering from an asteroid hit. You play as the sole survivor of an "Ark," one of several subterranean structures outfitted for about a dozen inhabitants and built by the government to survive the calamity. Though not all of the story details have been made clear, id has revealed that because of his background, your character's body is full of wondrous nanotechnology that will let his body automatically heal itself from injuries over time, as well as defibrillate itself should you fall in battle.

Your character has emerged wearing an "Ark suit," the distinctive clothing that you and your comrades wear, which will also draw unwanted attention from a mysterious and powerful entity in the wasteland known as the Authority. You emerge from the Ark to find a world much different from the one described to you because more people have survived than the government anticipated--cagey, rugged survivors scraping out a living in the deserts of the wasteland and fighting off encroachments from desert bandit groups and armies of angry mutants. You come under fire from bandits the moment you step out into the sun, but you're rescued by a trader named Dan Hagar and pressed into service to help the local settlements conduct trade with Wellspring, the largest hub city in the wasteland.

We began our demonstration with an area that comes up fairly early on--about two hours or so--in the game. Things started with a ride in our four-wheel buggy, which was apparently supplied to us by Dan. After a quick drive through the wilderness, we discovered a shack off the beaten path inhabited by Crazy Joe, a rambling nutcase wearing stained clothes and an enlarged foam novelty hat in the shape of a floppy alien monster. Joe will be one of a number of eccentric characters that id hopes players will find memorable, along with Dan and the other characters that give you odd jobs (and end up at odds with). We took two steps outside Joe's shack and found an ugly mutant skulking on the hill so we dispatched it with a toss of a "wingstick," a player-crafted boomerang that swiftly and effectively knocked out the brute before returning home. Apparently, Rage will have items you can craft and automatically build once you have both the formula and the parts, though designer Matt Hooper explains that the game won't have a giant list of junk. Rather, there will be a handful of useful and powerful items that will come in handy throughout the entire game.

After our brief conversation, we hopped into our buggy to head to Wellspring, but we were sidetracked by bandits driving similar buggies and witnessed our first onboard battle. The car combat in Rage looks fast and brutal, and because the buggies were extremely nimble and could make very sharp turns, the battle we watched was less of a back-and-forth joust and more of a demolition-derby-style smashup. All buggies were equipped with nitrous to grant instant bursts of speed, as well as onboard machine guns that chewed each other up part by part, sending fenders and headlights (and at one point, one of the buggies) flying through clouds of dust.

We dispatched our foes and made our way to Wellspring--a neutral zone where guns aren't allowed--to visit key locations, such as item shops and the local watering hole where you can take bounties to slay bandits. Wellspring is the location of your personal car garage, which will grow over time as you recover or purchase new vehicles. All vehicles will have four basic statistics: acceleration, suspension, traction, and armor--but you can swap out more or less any major part of your car to enhance its performance. These include stickier tires, a faster engine, and many different types of weapons. The town is also the place to meet key characters, including the mayor, a crotchety old Teddy Roosevelt-esque codger; the sheriff, a lean, tough-talking codger; and the race track manager, who is less of a codger and more of a race jockey. These key contacts are meant to be memorably quirky, but they will also give you a variety of missions that are kept on file in your character's journal. The next mission we took was to hunt down a tribe of bandits to the north known as the Shrouded Clan that was terrorizing the area with remote control cars armed with C4 explosives.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
We skipped ahead to the tribe's base of operations, an abandoned military base with a network of tiny tunnels for remote control cars. Fortunately, the sheriff will hand you the plans to craft these cars yourself, and you can send out a few of your own RC bombers to sniff out the gang's stockpile of explosives. Although most of the game is entirely seamless with no loading screens, there will be very brief loads as you transition across areas, such as into towns and missions, but fortunately, bandits won't steal your car while you're on foot.

The military base was full of twists and turns, as well as orange-hooded bandits who first sent out a small squadron of exploding cars before hopping over the railing and attacking us. Creative director Tim Willits suggests that different bandit clans will not only have different colors and signage to mark their territories, but they will also have different combat behavior. The Shrouded Clan, being holed up in a military base, has a more-organized approach and fights in groups and uses cover intelligently, which would have provided a stiff challenge for a single foot soldier armed with shotguns and pistols. But even the Shrouded Clan bandits had trouble when we reached into our inventory and pulled out crafted "engineering items." We had personal stationary turrets, which sprayed withering fire on any nearby enemies, as well as four-legged sentry bots that not only have mounted machine guns, but can also walk right up to enemies and smack them in the face with a melee attack. With the help of these aids, we took down the installation full of bandits, even the heavy-duty bandits in full body armor, which flew off in pieces with concentrated fire.

After eliminating the bandits, we skipped back to town to visit the track, where we competed for "racing certificates," which are notes that can be won through various race events and exchanged for vehicle upgrades. Among others, Rage will offer time trials, head-to-head races, and bandit-hunting car events. Fortunately, none of the damage your vehicle suffers in a racing event will be permanent or carry over outside of the track, so when you put the pedal to the metal, you can go all-out. We took part in a time-trial-with-bandits race that moved at a brisk pace on a desert track covered with power-up items to boost our ammo and nitrous levels, and we took first place in the race to walk away with the prize money.

We then skipped ahead to a later part of the game, where our goal was to acquire a more-powerful vehicle only accessible in sponsored races. In order to get into a sponsored race, we of course needed a sponsor, whom we found in J.K. Stiles, a fat-faced, grinning media mogul and head of "Mutant Bash TV." This station broadcasts aRunning Man-esque TV series that pits contestants against four waves of angry mutants armed with clubs, throwing knives, and fire-flinging jai alai paddles. This challenge is done on foot and takes place in a colorful warehouse-turned-funhouse, with various environmental hazards, such as floor spikes and a gigantic, rotating, blade-armed gorilla (yes, really). The challenge culminated at the fourth wave with a gigantic mutant that had a harpoonlike tentacle for an arm, which we brought down with about a bushel of grenades and a few bushels of shotgun shells.

Rage looks like it'll have a lot to offer--a heavy-duty on-foot shooting experience with lots of variety; an extremely fast arcade-style racer and car combat game; a graphical showpiece that uses the megatexture feature of the idtech5 engine to virtually stream a huge variety of textures into the game with very few performance demands; a story-driven single-player experience; and a multiplayer experience...to be determined in the future. Id describes the single-player game as "open but directed"--a game that won't necessarily require you to complete every single mission immediately and gives you the freedom to wander while keeping you along the path to completing the story. We'd describe it as an action game worth following.

note: I do not own this article or its contents.

Command & Conquer 4 First Impressions

Find out how the beginning of the end starts in our first look at C&C4.

Electronic Arts has promised us an epic conclusion to the current Command & Conquer series, with a grittier, darker tone; no more superfluous monologues; and a more cinematic feel. We got a first look at the recently announced Command & Conquer 4 during a recent visit to EA's UK headquarters.

Command & Conquer 4's campaign kicks off in 2062, over 10 years after the events of Kane's Wrath. The human race is close to extinction from the effects of Tiberium--the mysterious alien substance that the Brotherhood of Nod and Global Defense Initiative have been fighting over for decades. Kane, the enigmatic leader of Nod, has proposed a truce with the GDI in order to save humanity and bring Tiberium under control. Fifteen years later, the Tiberium Control Network (or TCN) has neared completion, and despite extremist unrest on both sides, Nod and the GDI have struck an uneasy peace.

Producer Jim Vessella revealed that the GDI campaign will be titled "The Men That Killed Kane," and Nod's campaign will receive the intriguing title "All Things Must End." EA has promised to reveal everything there is to know about Kane and what his goal is, culminating in a satisfying conclusion for faithful fans. The mission we saw requires you to hold off Nod units while a downed global stratosphere transport (aka dropship) is repowered. One of the biggest changes to the series is the new role-playing-game-like progression system. You level up by earning points through helping allies, killing enemies, activating TCN nodes, and finishing missions. In addition to levelling up as a player, units can level up during missions. Your crawler, for instance, can be upgraded with machine guns and cannons, although this won't persist through future missions.

Outside of the campaign, you'll also be able to earn experience points on skirmish maps and in multiplayer missions. You can unlock new abilities in multiplayer and then use these to complete difficult campaign missions. While were weren't able to see it, C&C4 will feature five-on-five multiplayer, with a greater focus on completing objectives--such as holding control points--beyond merely blowing up an enemy's base. A party system similar to that offered on Xbox Live will also be included, so you can jump from battle to battle with a group of friends.

C&C4 has offensive, defensive, and support class units, and depending on your preference, you might want to head straight to the frontline, hold back and protect your base, or rely on units that can heal and repair. The offensive-class titan mech makes a return with the new MK II. One secondary mission we saw requires you to use a titan to recover a crashed escape pod. We also witnessed the hunter and wolf units, light armoured ground vehicles, and the impressive mastodon. This beast, which bears a striking resemblance to the AT-AT walkers from Star Wars, is a top-tier GDI unit and boasts powerful missile launchers and heavy armour. We discovered one that was ready for the scrapheap, but all it took was an engineer to get it back up and running. Nod has some new units up its sleeve too. The centurion is a defensive soldier, which has a front-facing force field, so you'll need to flank in order to take him down. Meanwhile, the scorpion and stealth tanks make a return and are joined by the new spider tank.

A new set of units, the crawlers, double as both mobile construction yards and war factories, as well as serve to make life more interesting. Each unit class has a specialised crawler with increased weapons, stealth, or flying options to help support your team in that role. The crawler can be redeployed at any time, and if it's destroyed, you can easily call up another from orbit, which results in a massive impact crater and serious trouble for anyone underneath it.

The world of C&C4 is created in gorgeously crisp detail. Glowing Tiberium contrasts with the bleak wastelands of ash, debris, and scorched earth. Highly detailed units feature some cool glowing parts, as well as procedural damage, and break into multiple sections when destroyed. We're told that a new dynamic lighting system will make night missions particularly impressive, with lasers and explosions reflecting off nearby objects, and we saw plenty of satisfying explosions and fires take place.

Kane's days appear to be numbered, and we may finally see him get his comeuppance once and for all when Command & Conquer 4 launches next year.

note: I do not own this article or its contents.