Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I think they should have had a go at explaining it in semaphore, but instead they’ve gone for the fashionable route of a glitzy video which shows off the space-time rip story that serves as a backdrop to Firefall’s territory-conquest alien-world crossover activities. Go take a look at that, below, and then at my preview, which is the most handsome preview you will read all day.
Read the rest of this entry »

I love this sort of stuff: Red 5 Studios talking about the world-building process within Firefall. You get to see a bunch of the tools in action as they create the game environments, and the team talk about some subtle details of how the game has been put together, like the living processes in the game, cut & pasting entire cities, and the PvP maps being incorporated into the open world. Worth a watch.

The video also teases that the beta will be expanded “soon”, so I’m looking forward to getting in on that.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been waiting for a large-scale sci-fi MMO shooter ever since the original Planetside, and it looks like 2012 will do it’s best to provide. Before I fuel up Firefall’s jetpacks, or scrawl penises over Planetside 2′s map, it looks like I’ll be dropping into Line of Defense: of all those games, it’s the first with a release date, end of June, so I’d imagine the beta form that I just signed up to will deliver me from orbit to the action a tad sooner than the others. You know what? I’ve just noticed all those are free-to-play*. I mean, I knew that all were, but lumping them all together makes it quite the thing. As is the not-at-all-MMO-but -rather-shooty Tribes: Ascend. I wonder if I’ll ever need to pay for a shooter ever again? Line of Defense trailer is herein, btw.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a sneaky way to get a hold of a lot of Firefall footage. Developers Red 5 Studios are hosting a competition for their fans, asking them to create a trailer from unreleased footage of the free-to-play shooter. So while you can totally get involved and whip out Windows Movie Maker templates, if all you’re interested in is watching 10 second clips of the game, all you need to do is download the files and have a peek.
Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a bunch of new content appearing in the Firefall beta, and Red 5′s bossman Mark Kern has been wheeled out to explain precisely what is going on in a new dev diary video, which you can see below. Basically signing up gives you a chance to sign up, and then to invite others. Kern also does some clever stuff with a map made of lasers. I’m genuinely interested to see how the PvE world works, which is what Red 5 are beginning to roll-out properly now. If there game can give players a genuine sense of urgency in fighting the NPCs, rather them just being a conveyor-belt of MMO-style targets, then it could make for an interesting proposition. I’m a bit less interested in the PvP because, well, Planetside 2, or Tribes Ascend. Anyway, there’s some new footage in there, so take a look.
Read the rest of this entry »

Firefall developers Red 5 are going further than simply expressing their denunciation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in words. On January 18th, the studio will close the Firefall beta and website for 24 hours in a show of protest. More drastically, the developers are also refusing to show the extremely promising free-to-play multiplayer shooter at E3 this year because of the organiser’s support of SOPA. Commendable. More below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not content with the impressive CG versions of their main characters from multiplayer open-world shooter Firefall, Red 5 Studios have gone a bit overboard on the cosplay and brought in pros to play the parts of a couple of their armoured cartoon soldiers. I don’t think the jetpack actually works, so he won’t be making a Jingle All The Way entrance to PAX or anything. Yes, it’s more than faintly ludicrous, but I couldn’t help playing into the hands of this bizarre promotional strategy: seeing a grown man and woman enthuse about wearing plastic space armour is something we should all witness. As, you know, a warning.
Read the rest of this entry »

There are the jetpacks, of course, which instantly drew out a nod of approval, but my first impressions of Firefall were only of mild interest. The marketing campaign has been rarely effective though, not because of increasing bombast or social network integration which would be more likely to make me ignore it’s attempts to inflitrate my life, but because it has increasingly taught me what it will actually be like to play. The latest developer diary is another convincing burst of information. It sits before me and tells me how the various classes will work and, most importantly, why that will be fun. Observe.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was years before I stopped writing “jetpack” on my Christmas present list, when my parents sat me down and told me that they didn’t exist. Also that I was adopted. That second bit wasn’t true, but I really wanted jetpack and they were trying to soften the blow. I’ve never forgiven them for taking my jetpack dreams away. But a new Firefall trailer is adequate recompense. It has jetpacks in an open-world that’s built to take advantage of the vertical movement. It’s pretty as a picture to boot.
Read the rest of this entry »

Red 5′s Tony Park (who runs the Singapore studio) has been talking to Gamespot about the art style of Firefall, as well as showing off some gameplay footage and touching on the PvP and PvE aspects of the game (below, with some new game footage, and some old). The shooter-MMO, which has talent from both Tribes and World Of Warcraft directing it, is currently undergoing closed beta-testing, and is scheduled for a December launch. I am quite keen to take a closer look.

Amazingly incongruous music, too.
Read the rest of this entry »