Though this term accurately represents my sleep schedule, I'm actually referring to a game I saw last week.
As soon as I called Kentia Hall the Gaming Ghetto, an inauspicious back lot where nothing of substance is ever displayed, I should have recognized that I was tempting fate. Arush and Digitalo were talking to Fate actually, and they were like, "We should show our game there just to kinda fuck around with him."
I considered scanning it, but a few gifs wouldn't do their press kit justice. It's set up like the vile Grathius Corporation's dossier on the main characters, with photos paperclipped to quick summaries of their misdeeds. The folders that contain the information are distressed (Jargon: Trade, Crafts - made to look worn). I don't know if they just took them out back and threw rocks at them, or what, but it was a really good idea. In fact, I was looking though it pretending to be an executive when I decided to write this.
A man could run out of adjectives talking about their particle shit, which they call "OFX." Devastation has the best particle effects for liquids I've ever seen, and I'm not some guy off the street who hasn't seen Goddamn particle. I just got back from E3, for Chrissakes. Everybody is trying to make water come out of a pipe or a barrel and theirs doesn't look as good. If they can maintain a caliber of level design approximate to what they showed off - and what they showed off was as much a living place as it was a file on a computer - then we'll be hearing a lot from these guys.
The guy giving me the demo kept doing cool stuff, he picked up a bottle and then broke the end off - the jagged edge does more damage, I asked. See, I'm looking out for you. The bottle was just one thing though, you can pick up or otherwise interact with many things in the environment, while powerful physics handles the interactions between them. The guy suggested something I hadn't thought of - by placing a row of cans in an alleyway, one might get early warning of intruders through there in multiplayer games. I applauded his cleverness. I titter when I imagine what could happen from a multiplayer perspective, just in general - the filthy city, gametypes which pit corporate shock troops and revolutionaries on the fringe of future society at odds with each other - well, it's something to celebrate. I've got their cards, I'll just start sending them fully formed multiplayer concepts and see if any make it in.
They're using the term "cyberpunk" to describe the context all this takes place in, but you can't just throw something like that out with me and expect to get away with it. I told them to put me in touch with the guy they've got writing it, because I think that the reason cyberpunk is done so seldom in gaming - a natural home for it - is that it's very easy to do wrong. They agreed with me on that point, so hopefully I'll be able to baste and grill their man on the finer points of the genre, and see if we've got somebody who knows his Sterling from his Stephenson.
(CW)TB
