14 DAY TRIAL // Damnation is billed as a shooter-gone-vertical game, in which the action is fought not only on the ground but also on vertical surfaces. Players will get a chance to climb up and take advantage of a good snipping position and a greater field of view, or stay low and enjoy the cover of vegetation and structures. After the recent unveiling by Codemasters, who are set as publishers, the developers gave a few glimpses into the game.
Blue Omega designer Joseph Minkoff really talked up the game, saying it would be different from every other shooter that's on offer. Of course, they all tell us that and then go on to disappoint with the games themselves. But let's trust Minkoff for a second and see what he has to say.
"What we really want to get across about our levels is that they're of a scale that you've never seen before in a hardcore shooter. Our goal from the very beginning was to allow the player to see their objectives in the distance from the start of the level and then work their way towards them in an intuitive and immersive manner." So, if a level features a boss in a tower somewhere, you'll have to cover several miles of open space and structures to get to the boss. Luckily, you get some motorized modes of transport, of which until now motorbikes and massive tracked artillery have been shown.
Some of the bigger game levels will have enough content to keep the player occupied for more than 3 hours at a time. And Blue Omega says it aims to have four of these major levels and two smaller ones, at the beginning of the game, to offer the player a chance to get himself acquainted with the scale of the challenges he is going to face.
Minkoff also spoke about the multiplayer part of the game, talking of how the vertical dimension built in the game affects matches and forces players to be adaptive and innovative in their approach to winning a game.
Well, talk is cheap so we'll see how the game shapes up until its estimated release date of winter 2008.