Dropship Preview

Dropship is one of the games currently in development at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and was announced at the PlayStation 2's introduction. New screenshots appeared every now and then, but the biggest improvements happened behind the scenes, meaning in the gameplay area. We have had a look at the latest build and fill you in on a few details about the story and gameplay mechanics.

Prepping for takeoff.

The story of Dropship is set in the year 2050 and deals with political conflicts in the Far East. It seems that in China, a new political party is taking over the government without being democratically elected. This is troubling to the United Nations and the NATO forces, particularly since the new government in China is squashing all opposition and resistance. The new regime is even working on a new technology, which would make world peace highly impossible. With this threat in mind, as well as the very limited power of the UNO and NATO forces, both organizations have agreed that it's about time to form a special unit that will be given the task to fight threats like the present one. This new organization is called United Peacekeeping Force (UPF) and has been formed to identify and eliminate any hostile threat anywhere in the world.

Looking for trouble in the desert.

And this is where you come in. As a member of the UPF, you will be in charge of various vehicles, either to transport troops directly to the crisis zones or to battle on board a ground vehicle like a tank. Missions will bring you to locations such as the Sahara desert, Colombia, and Kazakhstan. At first, you will be best off if you dive into one of the training missions, since the controls are fairly complex--although you'll already be getting used to them. Three training missions are at your disposal, and they teach you the basics of flying, hovering, and combat. Pressing the L1 and R1 buttons at the same time will get your dropship off the ground, while pressing L2 and R2 at the same time lets it descend. Pushing the buttons independently lets you cycle through weapons, while L2 and R2 can be used to rotate the axis of the ship. You control the direction of your ship with the left analog stick. Pushing the right stick forward gives you a sniper view, and you can zoom in on objects and landscapes that are in the far distance, which will let you examine units that might look suspicious to you. With the square and X buttons, you accelerate and brake. As in Warhawk on the PlayStation, keeping the square button pressed will allow you to fly slowly backward. The speed of your vessel can be controlled very easily. Once you're out of your base, you can push the X button twice, which will fully start your engines, sending you at high speed over the landscape. You then can reduce your "high speed" with the X button, but for drastic braking, you need to push the X button twice, sort of to snap out of the high-speed mode. To land, you reduce your speed to zero and end up hovering over the ground. Pushing L2 and R2 together will then slowly let your ship descend to the ground, unloading troops, jeeps, or goods.