By Kieron Gillen on August 20th, 2007 at 1:42 pm.
While you may not realise it from reading this blog, there are other PC shooters other than Bioshock we give a damn about. No, really.
Firstly, Eurogamer head off to Germany to actually speak at length to the Crytek guys about their forthcoming Crysis, including getting hands on with the multiplayer section (Deathmatch sounds much as you’d expect, but the Power Struggle seems an interesting cross between a territory-control and base-capture game). Also, predictably, the multiplayer doesn’t look as impressive as the single player graphically. Bally Electric Internet not keeping speed with our DX10 explosions.
While Crysis is the one everyone will be excited about post-Bioshock, I’m personally keeping an eye on White Gold, which PC gamer have lobbed up a short preview of online. You may not be aware of it. It’s basically the sequel to Boiling Point, the most critically divisive game of last year. You may remember that Games TM gave it 9 and Edge gave it 2. Meanwhile, me, being a smart-arse, came close to literally giving it both. Enormously ambitious and enormously bugged in about equal measures, the real question with White Gold is whether developers Deep Shadow will somehow manage to keep it under control.
When I had it demoed to me, they stressed they’d learned a lot and all that but… well, White Gold isn’t their only game. They’re also working on Precursors, which is basically Boiling Point… in space. While White Gold is a natural step on from Boiling Point – including Giant Spiders, which will gain extra points from me – Precursors lobs a load of influences from things like Freelancer in there too – space missions, flying between planets, whatever.
So rather than, after Boiling Point, concentrating their efforts… they make TWO ambitious games. Sharing a lot of technology, admitedly, but still. You salute them and fear for them in about equal measures.
When I went back and played Boiling Point on a machine that could handle it, I had a lot of fun. Particularly liked the way that once you got access to helicopters you discovered a whole separate game was taking place above you, and that was why you occasionally ran into anti-air crews when you were traipsing through the jungle… or had the odd chopper crash in flames on top of you. White Gold sounds basically identical – the videos feature an identical-looking Saul Myers. I wish they’d focus on Precursors… someone’s got to make the game I’ve been waiting for for 20 years dammit.
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