RPS Feature Bunkum
Somewhere there exists a line that marks the point where FMV releases switch between clicking on a film to make it keep playing, and being a meaningful game. The Bunker [official site] is way, way over to the left of that line – it can barely be bothered to ask you to click. Here’s wot I think:
When they first appeared in the skies, you knew what to do. While your family stood in the streets watching the flocks of winged toasters, you ran. When the ground shook to a latin beat, you dug your nails into your palms fighting urges to raise your right arm, your left, flip right hand flip left, to shoulder to shoulder, to head to head, to hip to… Days pass, somehow. You’ve dodged the shambling shell suits, so far, and are almost- there! There it is, the bunker! Just as the evacuation notice said! You run in, slam the door, turn the wheel, and collapse, gasping. After your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see cameras? Actors you half-recognise? No. Oh no. This bunker is the filiming location for The Bunker [official site]. You’re in an FMV game. The Nineties have you now.
Soul Axiom [official site] doesn’t mess about. Hitting “New Game” immediately tosses you into the nameless, faceless shoes of a character falling through a clouded seeming-infinity. After a few moments of lightning illuminating huge, vaguely humonoid shapes, you land face first on a boat floating through the air, and thus the Early Access puzzleventure and first person weird-goings-on-’em-up begins. Its spooky cyberspace heart is very much on its sleeve, even though it doesn’t reveal that this is a digital afterlife for storing the souls and memories of the human race until a half hour in. Trailer and some more thoughts below.
What a strange screenshot. I thought Infinity Runner was a game about hubris. Humans, over-reaching as ever, build a spaceship so big that it falls over. The player character is a prisoner who must escape from the ship, fleeing in first-person, dodging security systems and enemies while leaping and performing funky futuristic parkour.
That all sounds good. I was wrong about the hubris bit though. The size of the spaceship isn’t the problem – the werewolf is the problem, carving through the crew as if they were pillars of Pedigree Chum. I didn’t know about the werewolf until it popped its snout into the launch trailer below.
Doddering old fools that we are, sometimes here at RPS we miss games when they’re announced. Perhaps we were busy shouting at the television, or simply enjoying a nap to escape the bright afternoon light. That’s okay. First-person sprinters are always of interest, no matter how late we come across them.
Master Reboot developers Wales Interactive last month announced Infinity Runner, a run ’em up with a chap dashing about to escape a collapsing spaceship. So we decrepit folks might better imagine we’ve tossed our walking sticks aside, it has an Oculus Rift mode too, and multiplayer so we can pretend we’re out with our friends again.
As much as E3 can generate that sad feeling in your socks, it’s important to remember that our world of gaming is FAR bigger and more interesting than that awful corporate circlejerk. And what better example to land before my eyes than Sarah Crossman’s Master Reboot. From concept to art style to the wonderful trailer, it’s a breath of fresh, creepy air. Created with the desire to explore the concept of life after death in the form of saved, explorable memories, this is a first-person “psychological puzzle adventure”, and it looks splendid.
