Endgame
Empire Interactive jumps into the light gun fray with a shooter that promises to add some brains to go with all that trigger happy brawn. Impressions and screens are just a click away.
Published: April 10, 2002
Quick, what's the story behind Lethal Enforcers? Now what about Time Crisis? Virtua Cop? Point Blank? Notice a lack of depth behind all that action? So do Empire Interactive and developer Cunning Developments, and they're out to add more than poorly translated fluff between missions in their upcoming light gun shooter, Endgame. What's this? A light gun game with some substance? How can this be? Read on and find out.
The biggest roadblock for most light gun shooters is that they usually start out as an arcade game first, and then get ported to the home market. Because they're designed to be a short-but-sweet quarter munching experience, little details like characterization or plot are pushed aside in lieu of a gimmicky (and usually incredibly fun) gun with which to blast your way through the game. With Endgame, you're afforded the luxury of plenty of storage space, and the prospect of a potentially incredibly immersive experience. After all, what better way to tell an action story then through the eyes of the action hero (or in this case, heroine)? The first-person perspective has been proven time and time again to be a fantastic way to unfold a well-constructed narrative, and that's exactly what Cunning Developments has realized.
Endgame places you in the usually sprinting shoes of Jade, a woman who happens to be the target of EuroDream, your standard issue uber-capitalist megacorporation. See, in the very near future of Endgame, games are alive and well, and plenty of people are jacking into a virtual world to play out their fantasies. Jade's current digs in London allowed her to meet up with Tyler, who works for EuroDream, and romance blossomed between the two. While everyone seems to be gung-ho about playing around EuroDream's VR parallel digital world, Jade prefers to stick to old-school shooters. After a panicked call from her boyfriend warning of danger, Jade's forced to survive an attack from EuroDream goons that bust into her posh (and quite interactive) apartment. From then on, it's a life of constant run and gun action as you try to piece together exactly what it is that EuroDream is up to, and find a way to help rescue Tyler. Branching storylines offer not only new levels to blast away to your heart's content, but completely different and unique storyline details that you won't get should you pick another path.
Endgame uses the nigh-ubiquitous Renderware platform as its base, so at the very minimum, you know the game will look rather good. The graphics engine kicks out impressive visuals that react to impacts from bullets; lamps rock back and forth, glasses shatter, picture frames tilt, and so on. Bullet holes from missed shots appear and remain for the duration of your stay in the level (which usually isn't long, but it's a nice touch), and when you do manage to drive a slug into some grunt's body, location-specific motion captured animations kick in, so if you pop a shot into a guy's shoulder, he'll actually react by spinning around should-first before crumpling to the ground.
While the build we played was plenty crash-prone, and lacked most of the videos and levels of the full version (placeholder images and movies were everywhere), it shows remarkable promise, easily standing toe-to-toe visually with anything else out there, and baiting us with the promise of a storyline deeper and more engaging than anything other light gun to date. Granted, that's not tough, but the fact that Cunning Developments is actually making a real effort to make this home-based shooter something to play for longer than 20 minute sessions is plenty exciting. We'll be sure to update you with more impressions and story specifics when we get a build that's closer to the final.
The biggest roadblock for most light gun shooters is that they usually start out as an arcade game first, and then get ported to the home market. Because they're designed to be a short-but-sweet quarter munching experience, little details like characterization or plot are pushed aside in lieu of a gimmicky (and usually incredibly fun) gun with which to blast your way through the game. With Endgame, you're afforded the luxury of plenty of storage space, and the prospect of a potentially incredibly immersive experience. After all, what better way to tell an action story then through the eyes of the action hero (or in this case, heroine)? The first-person perspective has been proven time and time again to be a fantastic way to unfold a well-constructed narrative, and that's exactly what Cunning Developments has realized.
Endgame places you in the usually sprinting shoes of Jade, a woman who happens to be the target of EuroDream, your standard issue uber-capitalist megacorporation. See, in the very near future of Endgame, games are alive and well, and plenty of people are jacking into a virtual world to play out their fantasies. Jade's current digs in London allowed her to meet up with Tyler, who works for EuroDream, and romance blossomed between the two. While everyone seems to be gung-ho about playing around EuroDream's VR parallel digital world, Jade prefers to stick to old-school shooters. After a panicked call from her boyfriend warning of danger, Jade's forced to survive an attack from EuroDream goons that bust into her posh (and quite interactive) apartment. From then on, it's a life of constant run and gun action as you try to piece together exactly what it is that EuroDream is up to, and find a way to help rescue Tyler. Branching storylines offer not only new levels to blast away to your heart's content, but completely different and unique storyline details that you won't get should you pick another path.
Endgame uses the nigh-ubiquitous Renderware platform as its base, so at the very minimum, you know the game will look rather good. The graphics engine kicks out impressive visuals that react to impacts from bullets; lamps rock back and forth, glasses shatter, picture frames tilt, and so on. Bullet holes from missed shots appear and remain for the duration of your stay in the level (which usually isn't long, but it's a nice touch), and when you do manage to drive a slug into some grunt's body, location-specific motion captured animations kick in, so if you pop a shot into a guy's shoulder, he'll actually react by spinning around should-first before crumpling to the ground.
While the build we played was plenty crash-prone, and lacked most of the videos and levels of the full version (placeholder images and movies were everywhere), it shows remarkable promise, easily standing toe-to-toe visually with anything else out there, and baiting us with the promise of a storyline deeper and more engaging than anything other light gun to date. Granted, that's not tough, but the fact that Cunning Developments is actually making a real effort to make this home-based shooter something to play for longer than 20 minute sessions is plenty exciting. We'll be sure to update you with more impressions and story specifics when we get a build that's closer to the final.
