E3 2006: Lock 'n' Load Lovin' Part 2

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on May 11, 2006

Specials: A scintillating selection of six sweet shooters.

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Yesterday we took a brief look at three of the top six upcoming shooters that are bound to kick ass. Today we examine the last three of these sexy FPS action games that are aiming to keep your trigger finger happy for months.

Battlefield 2142
Without question, the Battlefield franchise has become synonymous with ridiculously fun team-based multiplayer. It started with 1942, was modernized in the sequel, and will leap 200 years into the future with the upcoming third installment. The story has two opposing factions, the EU and the Pan-Asian Coalition, fighting over precious resources devastated by a new ice age.

But before you get visions of lasers, light sabers and Death Stars dancing in your head, know that developer DICE wants to keep things both futuristic and realistic. This means that there will be no energy weapons; instead, they envision future warfare with conventional projectile-based weaponry but updated with future technology. For example, squad leaders can use a small hovering gun drone to follow them around and provide covering fire. You will also be able to activate Predator-like УinvisibilityФ camouflage to sneak around relatively undetected.

What's really cool are the new vehicles, which include hovering gunships, powerful mech-like Battle Walkers and APCs that can shoot troops sitting in pods into the air Ц an unusual little feature that will be essential to winning the new Titans gamemode. The classic Conquest mode will return, of course, but will be accompanied by a new mode where you will have to defend your huge Titan mobile base while trying to destroy the enemy's Titan.

The class system also returns, but will be reduced to only four: Assault, Anti-Vehicle, Recon and Support. It may sound like a step backwards but consider that each class will be fully customizable with the Persistent Character System. Based on your performance, you will be able to unlock new weapons, upgrades, equipment, medals and so on Ц in fact, the customization options will allow for about 1500 different combinations. Nice!

With support for up to 64 players, huge maps, new field upgrade incentives to reward people who play in squads, and the classic Battlefield gaming goodness, this one will be at the top of most PC gamers' Christmas lists. Sadly, it's PC only for now but is bound to hit next gen consoles sooner or later Ц preferably sooner.

Crysis
Crysis will be the showcase for the stunning new CryEngine 2 Ц which as Gaming Target's own Nick Doukas might put it, creates jaw-droppingly mind-blowing eye candy. The new engine is truly a thing of beauty, creating volumetric clouds, soft shadows, real-time motion blur, foliage that bends and reacts realistically when you touch them, realistic water and fire effects, and an incredibly high level of detail that will make you go, УOooh, perdyЕФ Not surprisingly, the engine will require some serious horsepower, including DirectX 10. This is why it is currently a PC exclusive, but it's pretty much a given that it will eventually make its way to next gen consoles.

But pretty graphics do not a good game make, and so developer Crytek is working hard on the gameplay too. Crysis is a new franchise unrelated to their freshman hit Far Cry, and so Jack will not be making an appearance. It seems that an asteroid has smashed into a Southeast Asian island which North Korea claims as its own. The US isn't too happy about that and sends in a recon team to investigate. It turns out the asteroid is hiding an alien ship whose occupants have little intention of leaving the planet and start freezing the landscape. Needless to say, the Koreans and Americans let bygones be bygones and work together to fend off the invasion.

You will have customizable weapons and ammo, and special power armor that also acts like an exoskeleton to increase your muscle strength. By diverting power to the legs, your armor can make you run faster, and assigning more power to your arms will help you carry heavy weaponry. You'll need all the help you can get, since you will be up against some tough opponents, like the massive tentacled Hunter war machine.

Gameplay is fast and furious, with multiple options and consequences for completing objectives. It will also feature online multiplayer with a vastly improved network code over Far Cry. Crysis is definitely shaping up to be one of the best looking and most enjoyable games ever.

Huxley
Huxley is probably the most unique and unusual game amongst the crop of upcoming shooters. First, it's named after humanist Aldous Huxley, best known for his 1932 dystopian novel, Brave New World (which inspired the game's story and design), chronicling his psychedelic drug trips in The Doors of Perception (which inspired the name of the influential rock band, The Doors) and for taking a final hit of LSD on his deathbed.

Second, it's a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter, a rare genre that hasn't been terribly successful in the past. So what makes Huxley different? It will support a whopping 5000 players simultaneously per server, all interacting in non-combat activities in one of the two main cities, Nostalonia (home of Sapiens, or non-mutated humans, which are split into two factions called One and Syn) and Eska (home of the mutated Alternatives, which are split into the Alteraver and Alternix factions). A third non-playable race called the Hybrids live outside the cities. Needless to say, no one gets along and so they end up duking it out over precious Lunarites, a rare and valued resource.

Battles will take place in separate areas capable of hosting small 4v4 skirmishes all the way up to a mind-boggling 200 players blasting away in team-based warfare. Think about that: 100v100. The chaos and carnage would be to an unprecedented scale Ц and the scary thing is that it could have been a lot larger, but developer Webzen capped it at 200 since they felt this offered the best balance between fun and manageability. Whoa.

Gameplay will not be RPG-based, where your chances to hit and damage potential are based on your character level. Instead, you will have to rely upon pure twitch shooting skill, similar to Unreal or Quake. Based on your performance, you can earn experience points, money and qualifications to level up and unlock new weapons, armor, skills and favors from the city's NPCs. You will also be able to use a wide variety of vehicles to not only lay down some serious hurt, but also to transport you and your buddies across the massive maps. You will have full freedom to choose your battles, either against other people or playing co-operative missions against the Hybrid AI.

Finally, what really makes Huxley unique is that it is the first announced game that will bridge the gap between the PC and the console. That's right, Huxley will allow PC gamers and Xbox 360 gamers to go head to head. Cool! Of course, there are some concerns Ц such as will PC gamers have to subscribe to Xbox Live, how team communication will work since many PC gamers don't have voice chat capability, and how to deal with the inherent aiming advantages of the mouse over a controller Ц but no doubt these issues will be resolved as we get closer to the release date. At the very least, gamers will finally get to answer the great age-old question of which is better: the keyboard/mouse or the controller. (*Cough*keyboard/mouse*cough*)

Final Thoughts
So there you have it, a six-pack of shooters to watch out for in the coming months. Honorable mentions should also go out to Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, Call of Duty 3, F.E.A.R. Extraction Point, Just Cause, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Prey and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (if it ever comes out). Get your trigger finger ready.