You'll get a good idea of the spooky story line by watching this trailer
The blood spatter in Project Origin is very detailed and very gruesome - violence ahoy!
Lara Croft's sister makes an appearance
William Barker on a good day...
Ah, now this is part of the level we played: you have to re-energise the mech to use it
And this the mech, complete with cool heads-up display and unlimited ammo - bring on the carnage
Everyday at about 3:30pm in the afternoon I get a
bit
sleepy, a bit drowsy.
I often read the Old Testament, a tome written
potentially 3200 years ago, to pep me up (caffeine gives me hives).
Generally speaking this historically curious book
serves only to send me back to the land of nod...
But
one fateful afternoon, not long after my habitual afternoon grandpa
nap, as
lunch began working its way through the gastric tract in
earnest, I was summonsed to a hotel in a place not unlike paradise.
I call this place, the Hyatt.
In
this strange establishment, full of fanciful masonry and obsequious
motifs, I came to a room in a dream-like state, in which I found
Project Origin.
A control pad was handed to me, and I
delved into Monolith's latest creation....
Project
Origin is the sequel to F.E.A.R, a rather spooky, slightly supernatural
first person shooter which is set for an late 2008 launch.
Before I talk about Project Origin's story, which
begins where the previous game ended, I have to talk about the graphics.
Using Monolith's new Jupiter EX graphics engine,
the game is exceedingly pretty. If you thought Mandy Moore was a hottie
tottie, you're probably right.
Boasting
the kind of attention to detail that made Leonardo DaVinci famous, the
Project Origin gameworld is very detailed, but gritty and seedy at the
same time: there's a subtle sepia tone to
the look of the game which adds a strange sense of foreboding
to
proceedings.
Being a first-person shooter, your weapons
are your tools, your oxygen, and during my time with the game I came
across about
half a dozen booms sticks (and a boom box), all of which looked very
cool in a quasi futuristic kind of way.
There's the usual culprits: pistol, SMG, and a
much larger assault rifle of sorts, complete with scope for zoomed-in
bursts of fury. The shotgun is also a nice fire arm and good for close
combat skirmishes and sniper rifle packs enough punch to take out your
foes in one or two shots, complete with gouts of blood.
Of course the rocket launcher is the big daddy of
them all and is very cool to use, firing off rockets complete with
classy looking contrails and capable of mass destruction.
Another
impressive aspect of the graphics is the slow motion feature. Like
F.E.A.R, this game lets you enter a slow-motion 'bullet time' mode for
short periods, which is considerably useful because the AI in this game
is tougher than your average shooter.
Peppering baddies with round after round of high
calibre ammunition looks excellent in slow motion, and let's just say
that you enemies, um,
they're bleeders...
The controls are tight and responsive which will
please the die-hards, and this time around you can store four weapons
at once instead of two, and most guns can be set to single shot or
burst fire too.
I almost forgot about the story, which is an
integral part of the game and it actually compels you to play, whereas
normally the incentive to keep playing first person shooters is to
unlock
all the guns and special abilities then slay your mates online.
So, Project Origin is a shooter in most
intrinsic sense - enemies shoot, you retaliate - but the story is not
so
simple.
It's a supernatural tale of a psychic child, Alma,
who is creating all sorts of havoc for reasons both clear and murky.
Alma has created a very unstable situation thanks
to her paranormal powers, and it's these unstable powers which are
threatening to turn reality into
something more like pumpkin goulash.
Indeed, she's one freaked out
little kid and it's your job to figure out why.
Who
are you? Well, you're a solider who had an operation - not unlike a lot
of your enemies who appear mutilated and bandaged and missing lips
- but somehow you survived. Perhaps you'll discover why you survived
during a grisly visit from Doctor Crooked!! Hahahahahah!
I mentioned before that the AI is fairly good, and
I should qualify that comment by saying it's down right savage at times
and
highly challenging, which I really liked.
You can't really just run in a start dropping
enemies because a)
they've got fairly good body armour and take a few hits and b) they're not dumb
and getting a clear shot isn't guaranteed.
The game's developer, Monolith, has created some
excellent AI scripts, and you're enemies are proactive too. As
well as constantly taking cover and being difficult to hit (although
the slow motion 'reflex powers' help to strike targets) I that
enemies come searching you out if you camp too long in one
spot.
Satisfying gaming? Affirmative!
Another cool feature of the game is that there's a
bit of problem solving here and there. For example, I came across a
large mech robot suit but couldn't operated it. It had no power.
So you shoot the power lines nearby which just so
happen to fall onto the assault mech and power it up.
Getting into the suit and powering it up results
in a very cool animation sequence as you clamber into it and an
heads-up display moves into place.
While much slower than walking around and
about as stealthy as an elephant using a blender, the mech suits have a
lot of firepower, and unlimited ammunition.
Chain guns and missiles are fired with the left
and right trigger buttons, and the only thing you have to be careful of
is overusing them, which causes the weapons to heat up and jam.
Taking out humans is a piece of cake with the
mech's chaingun which minces through them ease, and it doesn't matter
if your foes are hiding in buildings because the sheer firepower you
have at your disposal can tear holes in concrete
walls.
The rockets meanwhile are tailor made for taking
out other mechanoids but do tend to create a lot of havoc and obscure
your vision with all the smoke.
All in all there's a lot to like about Project
Origin, which shaping up to be a quality product.
We
only played the one level where enemies included human soldiers and a
few different classes of mechanoid robots, but as you can see from the
trailer, there's plenty of horrific beastieswith which to contend, who crawl the walls in Japanese horror-movie style.
I like what I've seen of Project Origin so far. It's already a lot of fun to play, dropping you
into an inhospitable and sometimes spooky world. It's
got atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a spork,
and with a strong story line and plenty of scares (if you've
played F.E.A.R you'll know what I mean) it's not you're average action
game.
Check out the official
website to get a feel for the game's horror leanings.
Level design is excellent, both indoor and outdoor
areas, the controls are tight, the eye candy is sumptuous and with
plenty of other cool features it could be one of the better
story-driven shooters to hit the scene.
It's not as gripping as the Old
Testament, but at the same token Monolith's new shooter won't
put you to sleep and there's enough intrigue in the story to make this
more than just another run and gun game.
Coming out on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, Project
Origin is set for release in late 2008 just in time for the winter
solstice. I mean Christmas. Am I dreaming? Change the channel Marge...
