Orion: Dino Horde Announced, Free To Beatdown Buyers
Orion: Dino Beatdown was the best-named of all the videogames. Unfortunately, it then had to go and ruin that by being very glitchy and generally un-fun to, you know, play. That in mind, Spiral wants you to consider Orion: Dino Horde both a) an apology and b) a, er, finished product. It seems like more or less what they were aiming for with Beatdown, and thankfully, they're making it free to everyone who purchased the first prehistoric jetpack blaster. "This is the sequel to Dino Beatdown and you receiveing it for free shouldn't even be a question on anyone's mind. We are extremely sorry about falling short on our first release and the problems you may have experienced," Spiral wrote. Details and a couple trailers after the break.
Spiral's touting Dino Horde as a sequel that's "three times bigger" than Beatdown, with the biggest new feature of all likely being playable dinosaurs. For now, however, it's just five humans versus one player-controlled T-Rex (and some equally Jurassic AIs), so Primal Carnage this ain't. The other major addition is something called Arena, which sounds exciting until you hear its full, non-abbreviated name: Adrenaline Tutorials. Erm, yeah. But oh, there are lots of smaller things, too! Here's the full list:
- 50+ Weapons & Gear (20+ new)
- 5 New Game Modes
- 6 Vehicles
- 9 Dinosaurs
- 7 Levels
- Lobbies, Matchmaking, Server Browser
- 100 Steam Achievements
- Spiral Store (Premium Content - Hats, Taunts, Char Packs)
- 30+ Augmentations (Mutators)
Hooray, a store. I mean, we can't have fun without those anymore, right? Anyway, Dino Horde sounds like a far more robust take on Beatdown's hot lead-on-lizard action, though I'm still definitely approaching with caution. Spiral's heart is in the right place, but that didn't stop it from going into a proverbial tailspin last time around. Still though, baby steps are good - even for treetrunk-legged dinosaurs.
Plus, come on: can we please have a good humans vs dinos blast-'em-up already? Beatdown even had jetpacks, and they still couldn't get it right. Really now, how hard is it to make Videogame: The Game? Usually, I believe in this industry with all my heart, but sometimes... sometimes I just don't know.
Orion: Dino Horde will be out sometime early this year. You can sign up for the beta test here. Thanks, Indie Statik.