Due out next month, this PS3 exclusive is getting a healthy amount of press as it’s yet another game this year that could prove the PS3 is making a comeback from its less than impressive current game library. Developed by Free Radical Design, who made the successful Timesplitters franchise, but this has a more serious FPS tone, with more adult themes incorporated. You play as a Mantel soldier, who make use of the Nectar drug to give them enhanced speed, accuracy and strength. This drug can also be used by Mantel to control the minds of its soldiers. It has the effect of a hallucinogenic drug, which alters the soldiers’ perception of reality, and an overdose of Nectar can be dangerous, leading to serious side-effects such as loss of mental control or even death. The Mantel are fighting against a group of rebel soldiers, but here’s where the twist is…
The character you play as is Shane Carpenter, a 25 year old Mantel soldier. But, after he sees what effect Nectar has on his fellow soldiers (and after he starts suffering withdrawal symptoms of the drug — seeing what the world is like without it), Shane turns rogue, joining the rebel army and fighting against the Mantel. While this may not be the most original twist to the story ever, it should be interesting to have essentially fought both sides of the battle, seeing it from both perspectives. The rebels have a variety of different fighting techniques that the Mantel’s don’t. They can go into a play dead state to allow them to allow them to regenerate some of their health. They can steal the Mantel’s guns and bury grenades under the ground to be used as mines. On top of that, they have the ability to exploit the Mantel’s dependance on Nectar by attacking the Nectar injector and using the drug to create new weapons such as Nectar grenades.
Of course, with Carpenter having been a Mantel in the past, I’m sure it will have some effect in his fighting during the game. He might still be having side-effects of the drug, giving him some enhanced abilities over the others. And, it should be fun to fight against the Mantel, who would all have the same enhanced skills. Lots of weapons are available from pistols and assault rifles to laser guns and flamethrowers. The game also supports a wide range of multiplayer modes, including a variety of co-op games over the internet or split-screen and then the general 24-player online battles which I’m sure will contain the normal game types such as deathmatches and capture the flag. From the screens available, the graphics do look beautiful, if the environments do appear a little bland and generic sometimes. There’s a lot more to this game than I’ve outlined above, and as we crawl closer to the release date I’ll be sure to keep you updated with some more details. It’s a highly hyped and highly anticipated game, but will it be another Killzone and ultimately disappoint? Apart from the Nectar drug, there isn’t a lot else which I can say makes it stand out, but we’ll have to wait and see if it’s another game that sounds good on paper but fails in execution.
