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.
27/11/2008 at 18:00 Jim Rossignol says:
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.
27/11/2008 at 18:20 RiptoR says:
Jim, I want a baby with you… Mainly because you also love ballistics ^^
27/11/2008 at 19:29 Smee says:
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.
27/11/2008 at 19:48 Davik says:
Reminds me a bit of F-Zero, or at least the cars do. It looks cool, actually.
27/11/2008 at 19:49 EyeMessiah says:
Wow Jim, Ballistics looks nuts. Downloading the demo. Wait, what was Kieron talking about?
Some other game?
No, its gone.
27/11/2008 at 22:19 Dan says:
“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.
27/11/2008 at 22:35 anti says:
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.
27/11/2008 at 22:58 Stuk says:
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?)
27/11/2008 at 23:05 Rudolf says:
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?
27/11/2008 at 23:11 Stuk says:
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.
27/11/2008 at 23:29 N says:
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
27/11/2008 at 23:47 DigitalSignalX says:
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!
28/11/2008 at 00:36 Polysynchronicity says:
I clicked on Flying Heroes and their website resized my browser – which pretty much instantly killed my lust for flying teapots.
28/11/2008 at 01:31 cfp says:
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.
28/11/2008 at 01:51 Bhazor says:
Wooo! Some Flying Heroes love right here! Possibly the second best wooshy dog fighter after Crimson Skies.
28/11/2008 at 06:01 Rhygadon says:
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 …
28/11/2008 at 09:22 ChaosSmurf says:
SOMEONE ELSE MENTIONED ROLLCAGE
Abandonware you say? Intrigued I am…
28/11/2008 at 10:08 AbyssUK says:
Big red racing.. that is all.
28/11/2008 at 11:46 rob75383 says:
Meh, looks like a DX10 version of Sewer Shark to me, but maybe thats the hangover talking.
28/11/2008 at 14:31 cfp says:
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!).
28/11/2008 at 14:41 Kieron Gillen says:
Rollcage was one of the first game I reviewed for PCG back in the day. I thought it was pretty average.
KG
28/11/2008 at 22:20 Corbeaubm says:
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.
04/01/2009 at 23:10 Cycle says:
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.
01/02/2009 at 16:03 Kua says:
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.