By Kieron Gillen on April 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am.
We haven’t mentioned WorldShift before because its developers foolishly refused to pay the enormous tithes we demand before we write about anyone. Black Sea Studios have seen the wisdom in submission, and crawled before our great obsidian throne to deliver precious jewels, trinkets rare metals and spices most pungent, chanting our Hosannas in our name. Which is just in time, as they’ve released a demo of this forthcoming cyberfantastical RTS, and now we can link to it. Phew.
We’ll perhaps link to some videos beneath the cut. Our magnanimity is boundless.
This is the single player video, which features the game’s actually neat art design, some really beguiling pop-up messages (“3000 objects?”) and an oddly laid back narrator.
This is the co-op game. Yes, it’s one of those new-fangled co-op RTS we’ve been hearing so much about from (ooh) Edge magazine, probably. They’re first with all the hot new ideas, that Edge.
The Game modes trailer shows of some modes of gaming with the WorldShift videogaming product. This video is especially charming because it starts with a note that it’s pre-Beta code and apologises for the cursor bug, before going on displaying its RPG-as-applied-to-RTS ideas. Strikes me as a cross between Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires 3, basically.
Finally, here’s some deathmatch footage. I’m not sure the word deathmatch should be used in an RTS. That may just be me.
And, that’s enough. Jim – kindly pass the Frankincense. I wish to get enormously high on our ill-gotten bounty.
Er… demo’s here. About a CD-full-worth-of-Peggles to download.
Phew, now we can get back to smoking gold and forcing our slaves to wrestle ruby-encrusted alligators.
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Forgive my ignorance O Gracious and Magnificent Ones, but I still don’t know what in RPS’ Name a “peggle” is in the sense of file size. If I promise an offering of three goats and a keyboard made of magic would you be deign to tell me what a “peggle” is the equivalent to?
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A Peggle is 14Mb or so. This is a CD sized amount of peggles, so about 700Mb.
KG
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I’m finding the mmorpg slang a bit offputting. Apart from that, looks great.
A “peggle” is equivalent to the size of a download of peggle.
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Reminds me most of some of the custom maps for Warcraft 3
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Since playing supreme commander for the first time last week, very few other RTS games appeal at all.
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Very nice level design in those videos. The commentator seemed so relaxed and withdrawn, not disimilar to David Attenborough voice, “Now, let’s face the beast”.
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Wow, I got the info without payment. Does this mean I can keep my keyboard made of magic? :D
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Oh no. What happened to my hilarious “World of Warcraft 3″ comment? Did I imagine posting it? Am I going mad.
Where’s my dinner.
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Humble: Don’t worry – We just took your soul.
Janek: Try, try again.
KG
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Does anyone else have the problem that whenever they see ‘mmorpg’ written down, they hear Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw saying it Zero Punctuation style, his Anglo/Aussie voice dripping with sarcasm?
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Surely it’s just an English voice. But yes!
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I like to hear it as “mammorpugg”.
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I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that much mmorpg in an rts game. Aggro, tanks, healers, loot drops? Looks like a top down WoW with some cannon fodder units to make it look like an army.
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the trailer looked interesting, but the demo was multiplayer only, passing.
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Watching the co-op trailer, it seems one of the co-op missions separates players for the entire first half of the level. BAD IDEA! Even if you’re combining to fight the boss by the end, you shouldn’t separate players like that in the CO-OP mode :P.
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Played the open beta a while back based on the awesome trailers (good to hear an English accent!)
Let’s just say, I find myself using the words “conceptually sound” and “flawed execution” in the same sentence for the nth time this year. ;[
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@Dan Harris
I’ve been saying it like that for years, so… maybe?
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That narrator reminds me of the narration from the tedious science videos that schools used to use in place of real teaching back in the 70s and 80s, the sort of thing you’d find on the Open University courses on BBC2. It’s almost impossible for me to watch these videos without feeling like I’m being condescended to.
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Tried it, got confused, quit. ADHD.
Maybe reading a faq or such would help, but no ingame button configurations? What does what from where?
I tried a coop mission with two random internet pals from Germany, I suppose (they insisted on talking German). We started near each other with armies of our own and we all died together trying to hurt a giant scorpion. Clearly we didn’t get the idea and just tried something, because there’s no guidance. It’s the 21st century and no hand holding “this is how you use your mouse to look around” tutorials?!
The other game was about some kind of 1on1 basebuilding ‘n stuff, without the basebuilding except for a mine of some sorts, for income. Or I got it wrong. Nevertheless, my opponent left after I lost all my units(?).
Interesting game, tho.
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Bloody thing keeps triggering my firewall by trying to access the net, then crashes when I ALT-TAB to get rid of the pop-ups. Is it really that difficult to allow ALT-TABing?
Never mind that…
**** Gamespy and **** your game!
*Goes back to playing SoaSE. Thank you RPS for that one*
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Kieron, is that narrator in the first vid the guy who gives you the briefing in Hidden & Dangerous?
nabeel
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quite likely the most poorly-thought out demo i’ve ever played. multiplayer only, with no bots and less than 6 games going every time i’ve loaded it.
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