By John Walker on February 15th, 2012 at 11:18 am.
Have you ever played a third-person shooter and thought, “Well, this is all well and good, but why isn’t it underwater?!” before screaming and throwing your property out the window? Put down that hatstand, because there’s a demo for Deep Black: Reloaded. And it features jet packs and harpoons.
This is, I should stress, from Biart, the same people who brought us Depth Hunter. The “Reloaded” comes from its being a version of a 360/PS3 digital game, but, um, the console’s Deep Black hasn’t been released yet. My brain hurts. It’s a near-future sci-fi, that promises a story involving espionage and bio-terror, and a smattering of world supremacy.
Biart really are sticking to their niche of being underwater. Previous games include Reef Aquarium, Craig’s favourite Depth Hunter, and something called Diving: Jurassic Monsters. I must now play Diving: Jurassic Monsters at the cost of all other things.
Oh dear me – the demo does that vile thing of taking over your whole screen as it installs, while playing its own music. I was listening to The Books, Deep Black – I was happy with that choice.
The proprietary engine seems pretty decent – it all looks nice enough, although it’s a bit clippy. It’s a shame their water effects don’t include showing it flowing, instead opting for some rather 2001 style blurry spray effects, but otherwise it all sloshes around as you’d hope. From what I can tell, it’s a cover-based shooter, but with swimming, and clearly from the demo it’s not possible to get a good enough feel for whether that can be sustained for a good length of time. But still, check it out for yourself. And have a trailer:
15/02/2012 at 11:24 Jim9137 says:
I remember reloaded. Fun times.
15/02/2012 at 11:27 The Sombrero Kid says:
I doubt.
15/02/2012 at 11:41 MikeBiggs says:
It tickles me that when this inevitably gets pirated it will be called ‘Deep Black: Reloaded – RELOADED’
That aside, this could be interesting.
15/02/2012 at 18:41 Dhatz says:
Skidrow is the leading force
15/02/2012 at 11:42 Moni says:
Dark Void underwater, with jetpacks.
15/02/2012 at 12:34 LTK says:
You mentioned jetpacks twice.
15/02/2012 at 18:52 Dhatz says:
also mentioned shitty controls in port to PC at least once.
15/02/2012 at 11:50 BobbleHat says:
Bummer, from the title and screenshot I had my hopes up for this being a deep-sea horror game; a genre which has some real untapped potential.
15/02/2012 at 11:54 Eagle0600 says:
What, Call of Cthulhu doesn’t count? (That word is apparently part of Firefox’s dictionary. Huh)
15/02/2012 at 15:14 Hoaxfish says:
I don’t think underwater TPS jetpacking is particularly common either
15/02/2012 at 12:23 Khemm says:
Someone please make SubCulture 2 already. I remember wasting hours just swimming around, admiring the underwater world, soaking the atmosphere.
15/02/2012 at 12:34 LTK says:
This looked interesting… until I saw the trailer. Then it became clear that the underwater thing is just a gimmick. I honestly didn’t see any practical difference between being underwater and out of the water, aside from the weightlessness. Did you?
15/02/2012 at 12:59 battles_atlas says:
Whoever funded this must have taken one look at the trailer and stepped off a high ledge.
15/02/2012 at 14:12 jezcentral says:
With UFO: Enemy Unknown getting the FPS treatment, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Terror From The Deep had the same thing.
15/02/2012 at 15:36 Koozer says:
“OIL HAS RUN OUT”
*sees helicopters, flying freighter thing and big stompy robots*
They seem to be doing fine without it.
15/02/2012 at 17:22 LTK says:
Glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed that.
15/02/2012 at 15:52 Jupiah says:
It looks pretty cool, I really like the aesthetics, but is there any practical difference between the underwater combat in this game and the airborne jetpack combat we’ve already seen in a hundred other shooter games? It just looks like a gimmick to justify the rather basic looking 3 dimensional combat. Hopefully they’ll add stuff like buoyancy, water currents, flow dynamics, stuff like that to make it really feel like water.
15/02/2012 at 17:13 ZIGS says:
Deep Black huh? Reminds me of a porno I once watched
15/02/2012 at 17:20 L3TUC3 says:
I got a pretty good Dead Space vibe coming from it.
Also, guns underwater? Really?
15/02/2012 at 17:28 LTK says:
I think guns work underwater. They’re spring-loaded, right?. Still won’t be very effective though, considering that water is about one thousand times denser than air, so bullets won’t get very far. They’ll probably be using some sort of energy weapons that also have no real reason to be effective under water.
18/02/2012 at 14:59 lijenstina says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APS_amphibious_rifle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADS_amphibious_rifle
There You go.
20/02/2012 at 01:49 lijenstina says:
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.” :|
Search on the wiki for APS amphibious rifle (ADS is the new version).
15/02/2012 at 19:15 PJMendes says:
I specially liked the music, very James Bond-Danny Elfman-Hans Zimmer esque.
15/02/2012 at 19:51 clippa says:
Wow, horrible stuff.
Shoddy fov, aim locking (even with aim assist set to off), you can’t rebind the controls, cover mechanics.
A quick and dirty contemptuous port.
Steer well clear, if you want a console game, get it for your console.
15/02/2012 at 20:10 ZIGS says:
The game seems technically solid but yeah, this looks like it was tailor-made for consoles. When I played the German demo that came out a few months ago, there was no aim locking. The fact that it’s still active after you disable it in the options leds me to believe it’s a bug.
UPDATE: apparently the aim locking only occurs underwater (why? Dunno, the game plays exactly the same as on the surface) and the English demo is like 1 third of the German demo. It’s a demo of a demo!
16/02/2012 at 04:12 CaptainVolcanoes says:
Watched the video, spotted the turret segment, rotated 180 degrees and then realized I couldn’t walk away.
DAMMIT!
16/02/2012 at 06:14 Grover says:
If you enjoyed Dead Space’s combat you might enjoy this. If it goes on steam for around $10-20 USD I’ll certainly support these guys. Deep sea stuff is a very under-explored genre and lots of people want more (for instance: ‘Pressure’, the imaginary “perfect game” that was often talked about on 4chan’s /v/).