Studio Update 29

Meet Seager. He's a bad ass...

Thursday, August 16 2007

Adrian being lame at GWG So the last few weeks have been pretty fun at Bizarre Creations. Not only has the amount of interviews ramped up as we get closer to "Holiday 2007", but the games themselves are all getting pretty damn close to being finished. Certainly all of them are in a phase where they're fun to play... everything is locked down and the last few bugs are being ironed out.

PGR4, The Club, BBR DLC, and GWG are all in almost final states now, meaning that life as a tester at Bizarre has never been harder! It also means that there are plenty of multiplayer games happening, and virtually everybody in the office hasn't been able to resist taking 5 minutes out to have a blast of their favourite level or race.

Yesterday I was playing a lot of Galaxies with Cakey (the Wii version this time). We've got it set up in the smaller meeting rooms, with all the sofas kicked aside to make room for gaming. One of our testers, Adrian, came in earlier to go for the high score... but he hasn't managed it yet!

The guys at Kuju delivered a new build to us this week, and lots of new features have gone in. It's now possible to play with both the Wii Remote, or the dual-stick Classic Controller. When playing with the first method you move with the nunchuk analog stick, and point your Wii Remote at the screen to shoot. The dual-analog method plays just like it does on the 360; left stick moves and right stick shoots.

You might be surprised to hear that I actually prefer the nunchuk method to the Classic Controller. It makes the entire experience more fun, jumping around like a loonie when a bunch of spinners circle spawn all around you! Don't get me wrong, the Classic Controller method is still Geometry Wars as we know and love it, but the Wii Remote makes it a whole new experience. Two thumbs up from me.

However, probably the craziest time we've been having recently has been with The Club multiplayer. At the back of the Shared Tech Studio we've got a dedicated system link setup so the designers and network coders can test their builds. However, come lunchtime and a gang of us get together and go crazy with it. The most played game mode/level combo so far is Team Siege on Manor House; that one will certainly ruin a few relationships!

SEGA have also removed the reigns so to speak, and let us announce a few more things about the game. The first is my favourite character in the game, Seager. He's an athletic extreme sports fanatic, who'll do anything to win. Absolutely anything. After trying all sorts of death-defying sports (bare knuckle boxing, illegal street racing, you name it...) Seager has found nothing to truly test him and push his abilities to the limit. That, of course, is before he heard about The Club.

Seager Not just anybody gets into The Club. It's the world's most influential and secretive organisation for a reason, and those in power have learnt that they can never trust outsiders... Renwick is a living example of that. None of this matters to Seager though; he's spent months of his time and a fortune in cash tracking down any tiny piece of information. This one is too good to slip through his fingers...

As you know, the characters in The Club all play slightly differently to one another. Seager is not as strong as Dragov (the hulking Russian), but he can move drastically faster. As The Club plays out so quickly in multiplayer, choosing a character which matches your play style is absolutely essential. Personally I like faster characters, but Kuro is just that little bit too nippy for me to handle effectively. Seager hits a nice middle ground... he's fast to get around the map but he's still got enough health to survive a decent firefight.

Oh and he's also got dreads and wears sunglasses inside, meaning that he's doubly bad ass.

You'll find that mid ranged rifles seem to work best when playing as Seager. He doesn't have the health to get in close and use shotguns effectively, and grenades are a similar sort of problem. Sprinting through the level and taking out enemies from medium to long range seems to suit Seager best. Oh, and if you see a rocket launcher lying around make sure you pick it up. There's simply nothing better than catching one of the bigger characters with a rocket in a game of Killmatch!

Speaking of game modes, we'd like to unveil three new options today. The first is played in the single player Tournament, and is called Survivor. It's an unusual mode for The Club, as it doesn't involve point-to-point racing like most of the other game styles. When playing Survivor you are locked into a fairly large area (think an open courtyard, or a particularly large hallway or meeting room), and face off against an impossible number of bad guys. The aim, funnily enough, is to survive for as long as possible. Keep your combo going to increase your score multiplier if you want a spot on the leaderboards.

Depending on the difficulty you select, the points target changes. If you play on a harder difficulty not only are the bad guys tougher to kill, but you must score higher to pass the level. Fail to achieve your target and you fail.

The next two game modes are multiplayer only, and are team based. Two teams face off against each other, whilst one player on each team is the "fox". In Team Fox Hunt the objective is simple: kill the other team's fox. Of course, this brings all sorts of crazy tactics into play... do you defend your fox, or go and hunt the other teams? Or, if you're the fox, do you hide in a corner and try to escape the carnage, or do you pitch in with your team and help defend? After all, three people defending is better than two.

The second fox-based multiplayer mode is Team Fox Objective. Again both red and blue teams have a fox, but this time the aim is to have your fox stand inside the opponents base. For every second your fox is in their base, your score increases. But likewise, if their fox is in your base then their score will go up. The game is a race to see which team can achieve the points value first!

You already know two of the locations that will feature in The Club: Steel Mill and Prison. The third of eight, and probably the most famous, is Venice. Yes, that's right: Venice, Italy... city of canals and culture. How did The Club manage to organise a game of death in one of the most recognisable cities in the world? Read on...

Whilst being one of the most unique cities in the world, Venice is also sinking. The Italian government and world heritage organisations have devoted considerable resources to engineering projects to save the city. The expense has been considerable, so an offer of financial assistance from a consortium of wealthy philanthropists was all too gratefully received. The consortium's resources were all devoted to one particular area of the city, an area so badly affected by structural damage that it was abandoned years ago. However, some of the materials used in the rebuilding and restoration process were extremely hazardous and many of the buildings in the affected area were dangerously unstable, so, for reasons of public safety, the area was completely sealed off. To compensate, extravagant and noisy fireworks displays were often put on for the people of Venice, all at the consortium's expense.

The effort and expense of all this to The Club was considerable, but the final result was worth it. A showpiece deathgame arena, right in the heart of one of the world's most famous and beautiful cities reflects the power and invulnerability of their organisation.

If that wasn't enough, we've also got a total of 20 new screenshots of The Club. Click the thumbnails below to view them full-size. They're also available on our Flickr site if that's your thing...