Raven Squad - First Look Preview
Gwynne Dixon
17/07/2008
Could Atomic Motion be the first developer to successfully blend RTS and FPS gameplay? We take a closer look at Raven Squad to find out...
RTS-FPS hybrid games have popped up on our radar before, but we're racking our brains to recollect one that's successfully made it onto the marketplace. Sure, there was Command & Conquer: Renegade, but that was actually a pure FPS game that adopted some aspects of the C&C format (e.g. primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives). Other than its setting within the C&C universe, there weren't really any RTS elements to its gameplay.
So, can Raven Squad be the first game to successfully merge the two genres? If our recent first look at the game is anything to go by, then it's actually got a fair shot at this lofty task. There's certainly the risk that the game could be spread too thinly across both genres, producing a title that will please neither hardcore RTS fans nor seasoned FPS veterans. That said, nobody is suggesting that the RTS elements of Atomic Motion's Raven Squad will rival those in games such as World in Conflict or Company of Heroes.
Instead, Raven Squad should really be seen as a squad based FPS with a large side order of RTS gameplay to boot. You take control of two squads in the game, each of which has four members. One squad (called the Assault Squad) are experts in heavy weapons - they're your all-guns-blazing portion of the outfit, led by the inscrutable Paladin. Then there's the stealth section of the brigade called the Infiltration Squad, which is led by the wits of the eight man team, Shadow.
These eight militants are from a team of mercenaries who were sent into the Amazon to retrieve a package (at a hefty cost to their contractors of course), but everything goes awry when their plane is shot down over the jungle - only the Infiltration and Assault squads survive. It's then up to Paladin, Shadow, and their band of soldiers to continue the mission, the primary objective of which soon turns to survival after the two squads get caught up in a civil war (the Amazon jungle being as likely a place as any for such a conflict).
Players can switch between the members of each squad at will, which will be the key to getting the most out of the game's weapons. Each team member can be suited up with a primary weapon (which has infinite ammo), and a skill weapon with limited ammo stores. And then there's the RTS mode itself, which moves from the first-person perspective into a familiar top-down camera at the touch of a button whenever you please. An Atomic Motion rep explained to us that the soldiers can see themselves from this aerial perspective due to satellite imagery of their position and computer generation of the data. Right... and you can switch between characters with some kind of clairvoyance presumably.
Anyway, the transition into the RTS mode is seamless with no loading screens. In fact, it's all part of the same streaming game world within the same game engine. The way you use the two squads in this RTS mode is crucial. Because you can only move one squad at a time, the best way to advance is with a leapfrogging strategy (i.e. ordering one squad to advance while the other supplies covering fire and vice-versa). During combat we saw a number of basic RTS commands in action including defensive and active stances (which affect the squads' operational areas), while basic attack orders could also be made such as opening fire and throwing grenades. We're sure that the final game will have much more complexity in its strategy than this (our first look was with an early beta build), but the basics seemed to be well integrated from what we could gather.
FPS gameplay also looked fairly solid. Again, given the early state of the build and our lack of hands on experience, it was difficult to get a good look at what Atomic Motion had under Raven Squad's hood. Even the weapons were placeholder at this stage in development, and the character models were certainly in a stage of transition (we were told that textures still have to be added to some of the NPCs). The environments, on the other hand, looked stunning from both the RTS and FPS perspectives. At ground level, Raven Squad's jungle environments were lush enough to put it in Crysis' league. If Crytek's visual masterpiece is a Man Utd or Chelsea in the league of tropical game environments, then Raven Squad is perhaps a Blackburn, but that's very impressive for such an early build of a game that straddles both FPS and RTS gameplay.
Atomic Motion is also promising a 2 player co-op campaign for Raven Squad. As you might expect, players will take command of one squad each, which could get interesting if you can only move one squad at a time in the RTS mode. Nevertheless, Atomic Motion hopes to get both the PC and Xbox 360 versions out simultaneously and the game is currently slated for release during the tail end of 2008.
Anonymous
Date Added:Thu 17th Jul 2008 19:23