By Kieron Gillen on November 27th, 2008 at 5:49 pm.
We’ve mentioned Eipix’s forthcoming Pyroblazer before. But we haven’t actually mentioned that it forthcame for thirty dollars on all your favourite digital download places. And from that forthcoming forthcame and just-less-than-800Mb demo which you can download and play. It’s a futuristic tunnel racer/shooter which is a collision between Wipeout, Ballistics and – er – a high speed collision. A video of it in action, some initial impressions and something you must do if play the demo, beneath the cut…
What’s it like? Well, it seems to be going for a record of the number of circa-2000 games that only RPS like references. Along with Jim’s Ballistics (Though he stresses there was only one level he actually liked), there’s a splash of the only-I-liked-it Flying Heroes (minus the militarised teapots, alas). While you’re dealing with a basically linear course (i.e. Occasional branches) rather than the arenas of Flying Heroes, the controls and combat systems to feel somewhat akin. Well, most people would reach for Descent with its multi-directional-full-flight model nut – really – this feels a lot like Flying Heroes.
Well, Flying Heroes with a turbo button. Which is Tab on default, if you’re interested. And you should be, because you’ll be hammering it a lot.
The two races I played were frenetic to say the least. I’m not sure how coherent it is as a game, but it certainly goes for it. As a multiplayer game, I suspect it’ll appeal in a Mario Brothers for futurist meths-heads way.
Oh, and if it doesn’t feel fast enough, here’s one thing you’ve got to try. It’s a game which leaves you to manually select its options. One of them is motion blur, set off by default. The actual settings appear to be reversed, so low is actually high and high is low. Go for the latter, and you’ll get a suitably modern neat high-speed effect. Go for the former, and it’s like you’re trying to fly a jetflighter drunk.
Like so:
Wa-hey!
You can get it from here.
Compare and contrast:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XyHkYKJm6h0
In Ballistics you kind of stick magnetically to the tube (although it is zero-G) which makes things faster, I think.
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Jim, I want a baby with you… Mainly because you also love ballistics ^^
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I once played Ballistics on my laptop at a social gathering, pretty much to give the impression to the people there who don’t play games that THIS IS WHAT VIDEOGAMES ARE LIKE.
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Reminds me a bit of F-Zero, or at least the cars do. It looks cool, actually.
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Wow Jim, Ballistics looks nuts. Downloading the demo. Wait, what was Kieron talking about?
Some other game?
No, its gone.
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“Over 2 hours of ethereal music”!
“An epic story”!
I laughed when the footage following both of these appetite whetting snippets was things-going-well-fast-and-shooting-stuff.
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Anyone else reminded greatly of “POD GOLD”, the awesome yet mostly unheard of racing game that had some of the best level design i’ve ever seen.
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I remember buying POD GOLD from Staples when I was about 8. The box looked so exciting and fun. But it WOULDN’T BASTARD WORK on my (Dad’s) computer and I was distraught. Now you tell me it had awesome level design? Why?! Why did I have to miss out?! :’(
…I had to settle for bloody Rayman instead.
/repressed childhood memories
(I’m confused about which game I should be downloading to relive my (imagined) gaming youth. Ballistics or Pyroblazer?)
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POD was absolutely the best in terms of level design, feeling of speed and multiplayer at the time. At least on the pc.
Anybody know where to find that nowadays?
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I’ve found it here (hope abandonware site is ok to link? (or search Google for “pod gold”, 3rd link)), but apparently it needs some patches/magic to make it work on modern computers.
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Pod ruled, I played the crap out of it on a pentium2 266mhz, good times, good times, I’m also not ashamed with high octane or slipstream 5000 either…
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KXTZTNkErRA
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_P74fjqhHb4&feature=related
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It’s nice that the remaking-old-games-because-new-ones-are-too-risky/difficult trend has reached the Descent / Ballistics era. However, the full title’s 20+ hours of tunnel zooming seems like a recipe for motion sickness rather then a good time. For now, the demo seems just about right. Swoooshzooom!
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I clicked on Flying Heroes and their website resized my browser – which pretty much instantly killed my lust for flying teapots.
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Looks like it could be fun. The original Rollcage (for PC) is still my favourite arcade racer of all time, at least in two player split screen mode.
People should play it. It’s on various “abandonware” sites now.
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Wooo! Some Flying Heroes love right here! Possibly the second best wooshy dog fighter after Crimson Skies.
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Is it just me, or was there something horribly off about the music in that trailer? It wasn’t so much *bad* as just, well, flirting with not being music at all. I found the effect very disconcerting. (And this from someone who likes Autechre and Gridlock.)
And yes, Flying Heroes was awesome, even if something like 40% of actual gameplay time was spent looping repeatedly so your slightly better turn radius could eventually get your opponent back in your sights …
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SOMEONE ELSE MENTIONED ROLLCAGE
Abandonware you say? Intrigued I am…
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Big red racing.. that is all.
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Meh, looks like a DX10 version of Sewer Shark to me, but maybe thats the hangover talking.
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ChaosSmurf: I’m glad to find a fellow devotee. It’s still just about the only PC game other than perhaps Tetris and Puzzle Bobble that I play with my siblings at family gatherings. Sure we’ve had brief dalliances with newer games, but we always come back to Rollcage. The tracks were interesting and varied, but not so many that you couldn’t learn them all, the AI players all seemed to have different characters, even if it was just a result of their car’s parameters, the power-ups were well chosen and in two player split screen worked even better as you could drive defensively in the knowledge of your opponents power-ups. Ahh I could go on. Sure it was a Wipeout clone, but it perfected the form in a way Wipeout never did (damage! pah!).
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Rollcage was one of the first game I reviewed for PCG back in the day. I thought it was pretty average.
KG
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I played the Pyroblazer demo yesterday. It had some of the worst collision detection that I’ve seen in years, which is pretty much killer for a racing game. Particularly one as confined as Pyroblazer gets.
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Yeah, I bought this game the other day and was also put off by the collision detection BUT then I tried it in first person view, and it wasn’t an issue anymore. For some reason the collision detection in third person is messed up. It’s ok though because everything looks cooler (and faster) in first person. I’ve having fun with this game now. Woo, rocket in my pants.
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Well I was really looking forward to a futuristic racer… any futuristic racer. But installing this thing seems to have fubared my directx install and that, kids, is a very bad thing. No games will launch. Answers on a postcard.
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