Devastation Preview

Perhaps thanks to director Ridley Scott's cult-classic film Blade Runner, bleak, futuristic cities have become one of the most popular settings around for games with a sci-fi theme. Developer Digitalo and publisher Arush are taking the setting and attempting to bring it to life with Devastation, a first-person shooter that will use the latest Unreal technology--the same featured in this year's graphically impressive Unreal Tournament 2003. But Devastation will go in a decidedly different direction from the trash-talking aliens and neon-colored body armor of Unreal Tournament.

Devastation will be set in the ruins of massive cities under the control of a powerful and sinister conglomerate known as Grathius Corporation. According to the game's story, the company has been known to engage in immoral practices. Its latest experiments involve advanced and rather mysterious biotechnology research, and it's up to you, the leader of a ragtag, technologically backward resistance group, to put a stop to the company once and for all. The resistance group begins with very little in the way of advanced technology--in fact, even though Devastation will feature more than 30 different weapons, most of these will be conventional firearms, such as shotguns, pistols, and assault rifles. However, you may be able to liberate a few experimental weapons from Grathius later on in the game, including the game's most unusual weapon, the rat drone. The rat drone is an actual rat that squirms in your hand and has a remote-control camera and explosives strapped to its back so that you can guide it wherever you wish and set it off like a remote-controlled bomb.

At a glance, Devastation's gritty urban environments may not seem to take full advantage of the game engine that powers them, but from what we've seen, the game will have some intriguing technical features, like enhanced particle effects for water, smoke, and fire. Devastation's brutal firefights in ruined streets and in laboratories full of flammable chemicals can result in many smoky fires onscreen at once. The game will also feature Karma MathEngine physics, which not only allows for the rag-doll character animation featured in Unreal Tournament 2003, but also gives you more opportunities to interact with your environments than you might expect from a standard shooter. Most of Devastation's environmental objects will have real mass and weight, so a pile of boxes may provide cover for only so long until they give way to enemy fire. You'll even be able to use vending machines to procure cans of soda, which will pile up on the ground. That may not sound very exciting, but the cans themselves have mass and inertia and make noise when they're moved, so if you're expecting an surprise attack, you can line a hallway with cans and other debris and actually use them as an alarm if some careless enemies try to storm the area. If you don't care to scatter cans on the floor, you can grab a smashed bottle and use it as an improvised weapon, instead.

The fights in Devastation's 21 single-player missions, which will take place in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and also in Pacific-Rim Asia, will initially be solo gunfights but will later become team-based battles in which you'll lead squads of followers who are sympathetic to your cause. In fact, one of Devastation's most intriguing features is that it will eventually let you lead up to eight computer-controlled teammates into battle in the single-player game. Though the game won't be an orthodox tactical shooter, Devastation will let you issue simple orders to your squad, such as clearing a closed door or providing cover fire as you run in. And since you can also simply tell your squad to stay in one place at the very beginning of a level, you can play the entire game without any squad members if you prefer--though in the later levels of the game, you'll need backup.

Hey, I Spawned Here First!

Even though your squadmates will have different abilities, like proficiency with a sniper rifle or the ability to hack security devices, in Devastation, you'll be up against Grathius scientists, security guards, roving bands of "pacification squads," and other, tougher foes. Thanks to the Unreal technology that powers the game, Devastation will have locational damage that will actually show injuries on your enemies' various body parts and even let you blast off your enemies' limbs and heads. And Digitalo is doing its best to program good AI for both your teammates and your enemies, who will take cover when they're under fire and may even retreat if you've got them outgunned with much heavier weapons.

One of the main reasons Devastation will be so challenging later on in the single-player game is that Grathius Corporation's top-secret biotechnology research involves cloning--or rather, respawning. The company has created "spawners," small prototype machines that can instantly create a new clone the second an existing one dies. That's right, Devastation's story will actually justify the age-old first-person shooter convention of respawning after you get killed. Early on in the single-player game, you and your resistance buddies won't have access to the technology, so you'll want to save early and save often, though once you recover a spawner, you'll be able to gradually take over each of the game's levels by respawning at your last point. However, you'll also be up against enemies that are equipped with advanced spawners that will churn out a nonstop series of hostile soldiers, so you'll need to neutralize your enemies and disable their spawner before they can respawn and attack you again.

Spawning and respawning will even play a role in Devastation's multiplayer modes. The game will ship with 14 multiplayer-only levels (though it will also let you play any of the single-player levels in multiplayer as well) and will feature standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag modes. However, Devastation will also feature an original team-based "territories" mode reminiscent of the conquest mode from Battlefield 1942. Specifically, in a territories game, each opposing team will have a certain number of spawners on the map and will attempt to not only wipe out its enemies, but also destroy their spawners. Successfully eliminating an enemy player or an enemy spawner will net you cash that you can spend on weapons and ammunition for the next round, much like in the popular shooter Counter-Strike.

And like the original developers of Counter-Strike, many members of developer Digitalo's staff got their start in the game industry with game editing and modification. That's why the team is making sure that Devastation will ship with powerful editing tools, including lots of "prefabs"--prebuilt architectural items like buildings, signs, and other fixtures. In fact, Devastation will ship with three times as many prefabs as Unreal Tournament 2003 did. Devastation will also feature multilayer animation blending for all of its character models, and the game's editor will let you mix and match existing animations and also let you create and edit your own player models. The editor will also let you create your own levels using prefabs; you can rotate and tilt objects or even sink them into the ground, and you can also use a camera flyby option that lets you see what your map will look like from different angles when it's finished.

Though Devastation clearly draws inspiration from other successful first-person shooters, it has several interesting features of its own. We'll see how the game turns out when it's released early next year.