Zero-G Marines Preview

An upcoming game from Strategy First may just revolutionize first-person shooters in the same way that Total Annihilation forever changed real-time strategy. Akin to the way that Cavedog's 1997 classic advanced staid 2D RTS gaming, Zero-G Marines takes shooters into the true three-dimensional world for the very first time. Even though we've been running and gunning our way through 3D landscapes since Quake hit hard drives at the end of 1996, FPS design has never taken advantage of the full range of human movement. That won't be the case for much longer.

The big difference between Zero-G Marines and other contemporary first-person shooters is that the majority of its missions take place in the zero-gravity environment of outer space (not exactly a revelation, considering the title). Gameplay blends elements from standard shooters like Serious Sam with aspects of 3D RTS games such as the aforementioned Total Annihilation and similar efforts like Dark Reign and Ground Control. This serves to create an experience that is both familiar and very different from what we have seen before.

Right now, however, that experience is still in pretty rough form. Zero-G Marines isn't expected to be ready for public consumption until the end of this year or the beginning of next, so all the promise outlined above is only that at the moment. Still, it's impossible not to see a lot of good things in the basic design on display at Strategy First's Montreal headquarters during a pair of recent visits. Executive Producer Jamie McNeely and product manager Adam Phillips put an early build through its paces for us, showing off a number of innovations that should be a welcome surprise to those bored with FPS conventions that have grown more than a little stale in recent years.

"The zero-gravity setting gives Zero-G Marines a different twist than other first-person games," comments McNeely. "You can do more here than in the standard shooter, where your feet are pretty much bolted to the floor all the time. There are no such limitations in our game. You can fly up, down, sideways, and go anywhere you want at virtually any time. As you'd expect, this makes for some interesting combat, not to mention some fascinating missions."

Said missions take place in the year 2353, when something goes wrong at an orbiting biochemical research facility. Experiments with a microbial virus have been derailed by a mysterious terrorist group known as the Council of 9 and its fearsome leader, Nihilo. As it turns out, the bad guys have infected scores of people with this virus. Sooner than you can say "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," these former innocents have turned their guns on poor, unsuspecting you, a Zero-G Marine officer. Your mission, of course, is to get rid of this alien presence before it reaches Earth, and you must do so by scouring every square inch of five space stations orbiting planets throughout the solar system.

Getting Around

These space stations form the backbone of Zero-G Marines. All of your adventures take place either inside or just outside of these huge, airless facilities, known as clusters. Each will be found circling one of Earth's neighbors, so expect to take jaunts to such cheery vacation locales as Mars and the moons of Jupiter. The current build featuring the Mars station comes complete with a breathtaking view of the red planet from orbit. Jetting about around the outskirts of the facility shows off the impressive vastness of space to great effect. The spooky mood set as you fly toward the base at the start of this first mission is as ominous as anything conveyed in the movie Alien. Some gamers will no doubt be reminded of the "haunted house in space" approach taken in System Shock 2 as they near the entryway to the hushed complex.

Clusters are broken into huge sections connected by tubes. Transitions between these sections are seamless, with no loading screens getting in the way of your total immersion into the gaming universe. Solo campaign missions will often take you from one part of a cluster to another. Some will feature directed goals--such as the liberation of a particular area--while others will be more open-ended and will permit the use of varied tactics, including the capture of security cameras, turrets, and communication arrays. You can even set up your own minimissions, like raiding an ammo dump, for example. The designers have a real commitment to getting away from the linear plot development that characterizes most first-person shooters.

The player has complete freedom to wander throughout these bases, which are somewhat similar to the space stations seen in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in that they've been designed for the weightless environment. This makes traditional FPS map conventions irrelevant. Instead of walking up and down stairs, you fly up and down through empty passages. This should add a lot of spice to both solo missions and multiplayer deathmatch and team-based modes.

This might not sound all that different from what we're accustomed to, but the changes onscreen are fairly dramatic. For example, enemies (and the cunning gamer) can set up ambushes from above or below. Baddies are also often positioned in strange areas, like floating in the high corner of a room, for example. The designers are working on encounters where you have to use the full three dimensions of your surroundings to get through a scrap in one piece, so don't expect to simply hold your ground and open fire on these flying foes.

A slightly altered control scheme makes this sort of maneuvering possible. The standard first-person setup has been augmented with two additional keys so that vertical movement is available on command. It takes a little getting used to, of course, but soon becomes second nature. The adjustment is actually very similar to what's required when going from the 2D world of StarCraft to the 3D world of Dark Reign, and it's just as rewarding.

Final Thoughts

Yet Zero-G Marines isn't all about floating and fighting. Befitting Strategy First's reputation as a developer and publisher of top strategy titles such as Disciples and Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, a tactical angle has been added to the gameplay. Up to three wingmen can be added to each squad, and each can be given basic orders such as Follow, Defend, and Cover. These strategic elements aren't quite on a par with Rogue Spear, but they do take the game to levels beyond the typical "kill everything that moves" philosophy governing the likes of Quake III: Arena.

"This is more cut and dried than what you'll find in Rainbow Six and games like that," says Phillips. "It's been put in there to give Zero-G Marines more of a military feel. You're supposed to be a space marine, so having that is a nice touch."

As you might expect of a space marine, you've been outfitted with a spacesuit known as an Exoshell. This handy outfit comes complete with an airtight helmet (providing a claustrophobic breathing sound that further enhances the spooky environment), gravboots that can affix you to the space station deck just like you were walking about on terra firma, and lots of typical FPS weapons. Technologically advanced apparel or not, you still can't ignore the laws of physics. Firing a weapon creates a recoil effect that pushes you back somewhat. Being fired upon pushes you back even more, to the point that you'll need to compensate at times with your thrusters. Fail to take this into account, and your hapless marine might be bounced all over the place--or blasted so far into space that he'll take an eternity to get back into the action.

Further contributing to the tactical angle are three different Exoshell loadouts. The standard scout model emphasizes speed at the expense of less armor, while the all-purpose class tries to be the best of both worlds and the heavy option comes complete with world-beating weapons such as rocket launchers. This variety of Exoshell models doesn't make them good for all purposes, though. When travel over greater distances is required, you'll be able to take the yoke of three different vehicle types. The most common is the outrider, a one-man contraption that will get you from point A to point B in the shortest possible time. The others are the shuttle, which can carry your entire squad, and the transport, with its impressive weapons system.

Vehicles also provide you with the ability to tour what's shaping into a very attractive gameworld. Zero-G Marines is being built with a proprietary 3D engine that does an excellent job of recreating the loneliness of the extraterrestrial surroundings. The designers are currently working on adapting the graphical engine to take advantage of all the new bells and whistles introduced in DirectX 8.0. Phillips promises that "some real goodies" will be available for people "with GeForce 3 cards and the like."

Although a number of details have yet to be filled in, the corridors, domes, and complex rooms of the clusters evoke a working world feel appropriate for such structures. Colors are the subdued blues and grays that you'd expect to find in an industrial setting. This might not please those dedicated to the vibrant hues of Unreal Tournament, but veterans of Quake engine games should feel right at home. Authenticity is a priority of the entire visual design, right down to the accurate starfield that forms the backdrop around each space station.

As much potential as Zero-G Marines possesses, it remains to be seen whether Strategy First can pull all the pieces together into an entertaining game. Much work remains in every area of the design, though the building blocks are certainly in place. Stay tuned for further updates on its progress.