Eurogamer this weekend has been definitely a weekend to remember. Getting a chance to get my grubby gaming mitts on all the upcoming games has really put a huge geeky smile on my face. But much like last year, it’s not all about getting your hands on the games. There are also the developer sessions, where you and about five hundred other gamers pack into a room and are given a presentation by a games developer on their next big thing. Last year we all packed in to see heavy rain. This year  went out of my way to catch a glimpse of RAGE by Id software, and I am really glad I did.

For those of you who don’t know Id software are the creators of the FPS genre, they made the first ever FPS game back in the early 90′s called Wolfenstein 3D. SO you could probably understand my excitement. The presentation was headed by Tim Willits who is pretty much the mind behind RAGE. You could really tell he was very passionate about the game, which indeed made the presentation a lot more interesting and in-depth.

He started with the back story of RAGE. Basically earth has been hit by an asteroid pretty much destroying life as we know it. You take the role of a character who had been selected for the Eden project, a project that had to rebuild the human race once the asteroid hit but something went wrong, and that’s the basic outline of the story. Tim didn’t get into the story that much as he mainly wanted to show us the main gameplay and mechanics of RAGE.

The whole presentation consisted of a demonstration of three levels. The first of which was a mission where the player had to go to a town called Well Spring to fix a problem with the town water system. Firstly we had to get to Well Spring, this is where we saw the vehicle game play. When it comes to vehicles the game play in RAGE it’s not that different from what we are already used to from titles such as Halo and Borderlands. But what I did like about the vehicle mechanics the sheer variety of weapons and indeed vehicles you can get. If you find the parts you need you can pretty much kit out you mundane dune buggy to be a huge armoured, huge speed death machine.

So after demonstrating what chaos you can really have in a souped up death vehicle, we hit Well Spring. We were shown around the post apocalyptic town briefly, Tim then took the opportunity to say each town and city in RAGE will be different, Well Spring was a kind of cowboy town where other locations will be more developed and industrial, or more poverty stricken and under developed. So there is a lot of thought and variety that has gone into each location of the game.

We were briefly shown a mini game in Well Spring, in RAGE there are a variety of ways to earn money and playing these mini games in one of them. It was a simple dice game where you had to leave it to chance, there were five holograms on a board and when you rolled the dice the hologram in the middle shot the other four. Tim didn’t explain the game much, but from what I could tell, if the four other characters got to the guy in the middle you lost the game.

After the mini game had finished we then proceeded with the Well Spring mission. A clan of misfits had pretty much taken the main well hostage and were threatening to poison the water supply if the town didn’t meet their demands. So it was up to the player to pretty much go in there and sort them out. This is when we were introduced to the different ammo types you can have in RAGE, in this mission we were shown the electric bolts you could use for your cross-bow. So as you can imagine water plus electricity can make for some fun killing. As we ventured into the well the electric bolts were demonstrated, electrocuting about three of four enemies in a pool of water it was very cool to watch, then it pretty much turned into a classic Id game which I loved. Id are infamous for their corridor shooters and this is pretty much how the rest of the level played out. The clan we were fighting were very acrobatic, jumping off walls and over rails to try to slice our heads off. It was very cool. But one thing I we were shown was some of the gadgets you can construct in RAGE. We were shown a spinning blade you can throw and behead people with and a RC car which you can drive around with a bomb strapped to it. This made the game pretty much play how you want to and I was happily watching the screen grinning like an idiot.

The second level was a short one where we were shown a different clan, this demonstrated that not all the enemies in RAGE are different, again another classic Id feature. Id love to add enemy variety into their games. This clan was more barbaric and blood thirsty than the clan in Well Spring. Less acrobatic, but more berserk. In this mission you had to invade their hide out to get some car parts for your vehicle. This was pretty much shoot what you see. The great bit about this level was when you got to the garage and a cars headlights suddenly lit up in the distance, and before you know it a car was creaming towards you. This clan will do anything to kill their enemies.

The last mission we were shown was one in a great city. A mutant out break had happened and we were sent there to sort it out. There was a lot of killing of mutants and this basically showed us how tough the game can really get. After killing a mini horde of mutants a monster about the size of a small bungalow broke out of a building with a grenade launcher, so after disposing of that with a rocket launcher a huge thus could be heard that shook the whole of the city, and as the player turned round you could see a monster the size of a sky scraper come round the corner, and there was where the demo ended.

RAGE looks like a fantastic game, the Q&A session after the demo was shown told us some interesting facts. For instance RAGE will be coming on 2 DVDs for the XBox, you can create a hell of a lot of weapons and that the Id Tech 5 engine is very unique.

This is a game that I will be looking forward too, and is due out around september next year on PS3, PC and X Box 360.

Garv

So what is Rage? Are we going to see if this is the next FPS marvel from the original creators of the FPS genre? Well sit back and find out.

What we know of the story of Rage so far is that an asteroid has hit Earth turning it to a barren waste land. You play a character that has been kept in an Ark. An Ark is a group of people who have been put into cryo-sleep so that when the asteroid dust clears you can get started on rebuilding civilisation and the world. When you wake up you realise that things have not gone to plan. Firstly the particular Ark you were in has malfunctioned and you are the sole survivor and secondly the Earth has turned pretty non salvageable, mutants in habit the waste land and civilisation has taken a turn for the worst just to survive.

You may be thinking that this game is on the same sort of card as say Borderlands or Fallout 3. But this is id software we are talking about, and these guys know how to innovate games. Rage is more than a bog standard FPS game. It is an open world FPS which also relies on a lot of classic Quake and Doom style FPS game play coupled with the innovations to customise your own weapons, vehicles and gadgets. A perfect example here is that you can build and RC car bomb, meaning you can control a radio controlled toy car equipped with a bomb and detonate it into a pile of unsuspecting enemies. It’s little ideas like this that will make Rage fun and unique from all the rest.

That’s not all though, I did mention vehicles, and you get the opportunity to build vehicles from scratch meaning that your vehicle will be your very own creation. There is a lot of scope for customisation in this game which I am certainly looking forward too.

Rage is built on a brand new game engine built by id called the idTech5. id boast that this game engine is based on terrain and buildings that have literally been hand sculpted by the designers. What this means in literal terms I am not to sure but it seems to me that they may have imported sculptures somehow into the game engine. I’ll do some more reasearch into that and I’ll get back to you.

One of the things I am most excited about in Rage is the enemies. id are notorious for creating a variety of enemies. From what I have seen they have not skimped out here either. The AI in this game is amazing, there was some game footage I saw where the player was fighting against a clan ninja clan of sorts, and these enemies were jumping off walls and bridges to get to you, they were even wall running and doing back flips to dodge your bullets. This literally had me jaw dropped. There was also another piece of footage where the player was fighting against a gang of mutants and these enemies were more savage, animalistic types. So you will get a lot of enemy variety which I cannot wait for.

id have also said that they have incorporated a new pain mechanic into the AI system, meaning that enemies will generally react to where you shoot them. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? I am fed up of seeing some FPS games where an enemy is running at you and you shoot them in the leg and they are completely unphased by it. After seeing some gameplay and the pain mechanic in action I am actually pleased to see enemies holding their arms or legs in pain. Sure they are hard asses and will keep trying to kill you but it’s nice to see them experience pain.

So Rage looks like its going to one hell of a game. And before you guys out there say anything, this game was actually announced back in 2008 so pre dates Borderlands, so don’t start the whole Borderlands clone thing. Oh and unlike Duke Nukem Forever. Rage has a definite release date of September 2011. Thank god for that. It also got IGN’s game of E3 so its bound to be pretty good at least.

Garv

Let me lay down some facts here, as you are all aware by now I grew up with the FPS genre - so when I say Classic FPS I mean games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. The principle of the single player - and indeed co-op - campaign in these games is simple. You run through the level gunning down everything that moves, until you get to the end of level goal - usually a big button that says end of level, and finally you get your level statistics. It was very simple gameplay back then, but hell was it damn effective; nothing compares to unloading a clip of ammo into any unsuspecting demon, nazi or indeed alien.

First Person Shooters nowadays have evolved. When you pick up and play the campaign mode in Halo, or Modern Warfare you are thrown into a different kind of gameplay that is more objective based. Instead of just gunning you way through hordes of enemies to get to your one and only goal, you have to fulfill objectives that go towards obtaining that end level goal. Now this is definitely a more in depth style of gameplay that most gamers have come to expect these days, but I find that this new style of first-person shooter is less of a stress reliever that Doom and Wolfenstein were.

The original Doom had the option of punching demons to death, now that's what I call an FPS.

Ever since the first Halo, I have come to accept this objective base style of First Person Shooter. The Unreal Tornament franchise tried to keep to the classic style with its tournament based killing spree, but for me it just wasn’t the same. Then Serious Sam came along, which was damn good for just non stop killing, but in my mind it lacked something, (AKA Story) and wasn’t the serious survival FPS I wanted. I was about to say goodbye to the old style FPS, but then I played Left 4 Dead 2.

Now I have got my hands on this demo I have been kicking myself quite hard. Mainly because I should have been bitten by the Left 4 Dead bug a while ago with the first game. Granted I had a little go on the first game over my mates house but I really didn’t take it in and I regret doing so. To my mind Left 4 Dead is the next generation FPS game I have been hunting for. It returns to the classic FPS game genre with its simple, run, gun and get to your goal in one piece, but not only that, it brings lovers of this type of FPS game play together. Being mainly a co-op driven game, it somehow gets the balance of single player action and team based survival just right, meaning you can either play this on your own or with friends, no problem. Kind of reminds me of the Doom Co-op campaign days, ahhh memories.

The one thing I love about the ‘kill everything that moves’ game design is that pretty much anyone of any skill level can pick up and play it, not only that, they can also get good at it. To be honest I did struggle a bit with my first encounters with a Tank and a Witch, as I hadn’t played the first L4D much, if at all. I really didn’t know what to expect when a Witch was around. Basically I heard the crying, saw a sobbing zombie, thought it would be great to put her out of her misery with a shotgun shell to the back of her head. Next thing I know I am on the floor screaming AHH MY FACE!!! Can anyone say N00b!1!

The beauty of this game and indeed style of First Person Shooter is that you can attack it in any way you see fit. Some people like to stay behind and pick enemies off. I personally love to grab the nearest melee weapon, smother myself in Boomer Bile and shout something along the lines of “Here Zombies!! Lunch Time!!” and see how many of the undead buggers I can decapitate, it was the same with Doom, find a horde of pinky deamons and hack them down with the chain saw.

I gave the Left 4 Dead 2 demo to GuitarGirl to try, seeing as we did the expo coverage together I thought why not. She had a go, and her approach to the gameplay was somewhat different to mine. I love to lead the group and kill as many zombies as possible, where as she likes to hang back and pick them off. Both methods are effective. It’s just I remember GuitarGirl playing the demo and accidently setting a car alarm off. It happenes to all of us in L4D at some point. So the zombie horde came in their thousands and she survives it. Thing is, her team mates were on the brink of dying and she remarkably still has pretty much full life and was standing on a table. Then she says “I think I pissed my friends off because they’re nearly dead - But I’m OK because I am standing on the table!”….Facepalm.

As you can see. Left 4 Dead to my mind is a welcome return to the classic style of First Person Shooting. With simple controls, non-stop killing and one goal in sight; to survive the zombie apocalypse. I will no doubt be putting both Left 4 Dead games on my christmas list, and now I breathe a sigh of relief that the classic, kill-everything-that-moves style of gaming is back. I welcome it with open arms, lets just hope a charger isn’t going to mow me down in the process.

Garv.

For me the Wolfenstein franchise has been one of the classic FPS game series that will have a little place in my heart, probably due to the fact it is pretty much the grandaddy of all First Person Shooters. So what does the new outing offer us?

It’s a remake with a twist, Again you are B.J Blaskowitz from the original Wolfenstein 3D. But instead of being a man made of pixels escaping castle Wolfenstein, you are in fact an american spy, trying to foil the 3rd Reich’s plans, and just generally make a nuisance of yourself. A pon destroying a boat that was going to bomb London you come across a strange artifact, that gives you power to control something called the Vail, this is a dark realm of sorts which gives you a number of abilities, weather its to slow down time or to pass through some walls. All very cool indeed.

As with all demo’s this one gives you just a taster of what the full game has to offer. This is a classic style FPS with a modern twist, you are given an array of guns which you can cycle through with ease, the levels are run, shoot, run again and there varying degrees of enemies. From you normal Nazi guard,to your supped up Vail Powered demon machine. As for the modern twist? Well you get things like the Black Market, where you can upgrade any of your weapons, and when I say upgrade, I mean upgrade. You can enhance the rate of fire, the amount of ammo in one clip, the amount of damage the weapon does etc etc. What I do love is the option to add silencers, lets hope the full game you can add things like scopes, that would be cool. The great thing here is you don’t just get human weapons, you also can obtain Vale weapons, these beasts are powered by the dark realm. The only one I found was a beam cannon of sorts, that vaporised a whole flurry of Nazi soldiers, nice.

The level design in the demo was pretty liner, but it’s a classic FPS franchise so thats not really that surprising, what I did like though was the varying ways levels acted, for example, I stepped into one room, and some sort of Vail power turned off the gravity, next thing I know I was floating around shooting flailing Nazi’s which had no idea what the hell as going on.

Graphically, Id have done well here, the cut scenes are pretty much flawless, and the in game graphics are what you would expect from a HD compatible game.

Quite frankly this game does the old school FPS justice, liner game play, loads of weapons and just general run and gun. With the nice added extras it feel like this game could go along way. I must get me a copy.

Garv