I might be remembering the 80s and 90s wrong, but I think you used to be able to tell one video game from the next by how their main characters moved. "Mario" games were the ones with the guy jumping on other characters' heads. "Sonic" games had the animal that ran fast, sometimes in loop-de-loops. "Metroid" games featured a person who could roll into a ball. "Strider" had tube-traveling dude; "Bionic Commando" had a grapple-hook-swinging guy.
And then at some point in this skewed, not entirely accurate history of video games, character movement stopped being as frequent a selling point, not compared to what kind of guns a character shot. So I considered it surprising and refreshing to check out two games at a Capcom press event yesterday that appear to be built on how their characters move: one was the well-documented 3D swinging of the new "Bionic Commando;" the other a jet-pack action game I knew nothing about called "Dark Void."
"Void" has some interesting movement. Like the old Batman TV show.
The game stars a hero named Will, a former cargo pilot who gets sucked through the Bermuda Triangle into an alien landscape where there's a conflict between Watchers and Survivors. Will wears a jet pack and looks a little like the Rocketeer. He's starring in an Unreal Engine 3 game, so his world is dark, gritty and full of warriors -- himself included -- who snap to cover and shoot high-powered guns.
Will has a jetpack, something "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"'s CJ still has on "GTA IV"'s Niko Bellic, and Will can use this pack to nearly break his own game, jumping and flying from skirmish to ambush. If someone shoots at him, he can jet around back, across a chasm and shoot their flank or rear. Imagine Marcus Fenix's expanded arsenal if he could ride a Yoshi, and you should have a sense of Will's enhanced toolset. Will can also fly and sky-jack at least one UFO in the game, turning "Dark Void" into an aerial vehicle combat shooter.
Imagine Marcus Fenix's expanded arsenal if he could ride a Yoshi |
What impressed me most was what the game's producer Morgan Gray described to me as "vertical combat." I told him it reminded me of the campy old Batman TV show. The creators of that show liked to have Batman and Robin scale buildings. They also liked to have celebrities pop their heads out of the building's windows to greet Batman and Robin as the heroes walked over their windows. To film this, as I understand it, they put a prop façade of a building on its side and had the Batman and Robin actors walk across it, while holding a rope. The celebrities stood below the prop façade and stuck their heads through the window holes. And then -- this is 1960s special effects for you -- they footage that was shot was turned on its side.
"Vertical combat" sort of employs that Batman approach in "Dark Void." Will approaches a cliff face covered in outcroppings and encamped enemies. The press of a controller button makes Will clutch the lowest outcropping on the wall while the camera swivels and turns the cliff wall into the floor. Gravity still functions traditionally and can pull Will and his enemies down that wall, but the perspective is switched. Ducking behind cover looks like "Gears of War" ducking, but Will's really dangling from cover, not ducking. Hustling up to the next cover point involves defying gravity and leaping to the next, higher ledge. That ledge, of course, looks like it's just a stroll away, but it's not. It's a leap "up" and beyond. The switched combat angle is a clever design technique. Gray says it will be prominently featured for skirmishes that involve both scaling up and down walls.
"Dark Void" has been in development at Airtight Games for about a year. Gray said the game's about another year from completion. It's slated for a PS3, Xbox 360 and PC release. If it truly can present a new way to move in games, I'm certainly interested.
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