DAY 133 / GAME 133
Apocalypse
Back when I was in high school I remember seeing a newspaper article about a new game for the Sony PlayStation that was to star Bruce Willis. This new game, Apocalypse, was to feature a digital likeness of the actor, who was to fight alongside you in a virtual world ending scenario.
This was one of the first games to really push this as a feature. Digital renditions of actors had been used in past games, but then again they were all pre-rendered and other than Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller I can't really think of many. Eventually Apocalypse was released to the market, only with a few changes from it's original concept. Instead of fighting alongside Bruce Willis, you now controlled him as the player character. Which was probably for the best since AI for that kind of thing was still in it's infancy and didn't usually function very well. (AI assistants tended to get stuck or die frequently holding you back or making levels much more difficult than they were intended.)
Apocalypse was released shortly after ONE, also for the PlayStation, which felt very similar overall. I was a little surprised to discover the two were completely unrelated during development considering how closely they turned out. Both games used dual analog stick controls, one for directional travel and one for directional weapon fire a-la Robotron and Smash TV. The camera was third person and sat high up with almost a top-down view, giving the whole thing a very arcade feel to it. Both games also had a future setting, including various laser weapons and robotic enemies.
Apocalypse is about just that. Bruce Willis is the only one who knows how to stop an insane evil scientist who wants to ensure his predicted apocalypse. In order to achieve this he has created his very own four cybernetic horsemen to carry out the necessary destruction. As Trey Kincaid, (Bruce Willis) you wield a number of weapons as you clear away wave after wave of enemies, which is a ton of fun as most of your weapons work as streams. Machine guns, laser beams, a sweet looking flamethrower; each swiping across the screen obliterating robotic monster after monster. I remember being particularly in awe at the look of the flamethrower since it was so rare for fire weapons to look half decent in a video game at the time. It usually just consisted of a stream of circular fireballs instead of a single animated drawing or effect that reacted to your movement. Basically, if anyone's ever played both, it's Alien 3 for Genesis vs Alien 3 for SNES. (The SNES one was much nicer.)
Man, I could just torch dudes all day long.. Beautiful. (Let's not read into that the wrong way.)
Apocalypse was developed by Neversoft who worked on Spiderman, MDK, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. It included tracks from Poe and System of a Down and the game engine even allowed for their music videos to be displayed on various billboards throughout the game. A feature which was apparently used in Tony Hawk as well. The switch from sidekick to main character for Bruce Willis was also advantageous for them simply because they could now cut out a ton of voice capture that would have been used for back and forth conversation and instead just had him read out some one-liners.
I enjoyed this game quick a bit back when it was released. It's available now on the PlayStation Store, which I may consider grabbing sometime soon. It featured some great gameplay, fantastic level design and a solid overall feel. And hey, it's Bruce Willis. How many times has he saved the world now anyway?
Apocalypse
Back when I was in high school I remember seeing a newspaper article about a new game for the Sony PlayStation that was to star Bruce Willis. This new game, Apocalypse, was to feature a digital likeness of the actor, who was to fight alongside you in a virtual world ending scenario.
This was one of the first games to really push this as a feature. Digital renditions of actors had been used in past games, but then again they were all pre-rendered and other than Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller I can't really think of many. Eventually Apocalypse was released to the market, only with a few changes from it's original concept. Instead of fighting alongside Bruce Willis, you now controlled him as the player character. Which was probably for the best since AI for that kind of thing was still in it's infancy and didn't usually function very well. (AI assistants tended to get stuck or die frequently holding you back or making levels much more difficult than they were intended.)
Apocalypse was released shortly after ONE, also for the PlayStation, which felt very similar overall. I was a little surprised to discover the two were completely unrelated during development considering how closely they turned out. Both games used dual analog stick controls, one for directional travel and one for directional weapon fire a-la Robotron and Smash TV. The camera was third person and sat high up with almost a top-down view, giving the whole thing a very arcade feel to it. Both games also had a future setting, including various laser weapons and robotic enemies.
Apocalypse is about just that. Bruce Willis is the only one who knows how to stop an insane evil scientist who wants to ensure his predicted apocalypse. In order to achieve this he has created his very own four cybernetic horsemen to carry out the necessary destruction. As Trey Kincaid, (Bruce Willis) you wield a number of weapons as you clear away wave after wave of enemies, which is a ton of fun as most of your weapons work as streams. Machine guns, laser beams, a sweet looking flamethrower; each swiping across the screen obliterating robotic monster after monster. I remember being particularly in awe at the look of the flamethrower since it was so rare for fire weapons to look half decent in a video game at the time. It usually just consisted of a stream of circular fireballs instead of a single animated drawing or effect that reacted to your movement. Basically, if anyone's ever played both, it's Alien 3 for Genesis vs Alien 3 for SNES. (The SNES one was much nicer.)
Man, I could just torch dudes all day long.. Beautiful. (Let's not read into that the wrong way.)
Apocalypse was developed by Neversoft who worked on Spiderman, MDK, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. It included tracks from Poe and System of a Down and the game engine even allowed for their music videos to be displayed on various billboards throughout the game. A feature which was apparently used in Tony Hawk as well. The switch from sidekick to main character for Bruce Willis was also advantageous for them simply because they could now cut out a ton of voice capture that would have been used for back and forth conversation and instead just had him read out some one-liners.
I enjoyed this game quick a bit back when it was released. It's available now on the PlayStation Store, which I may consider grabbing sometime soon. It featured some great gameplay, fantastic level design and a solid overall feel. And hey, it's Bruce Willis. How many times has he saved the world now anyway?
This was one of the first games to really push this as a feature. Digital renditions of actors had been used in past games, but then again they were all pre-rendered and other than Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller I can't really think of many. Eventually Apocalypse was released to the market, only with a few changes from it's original concept. Instead of fighting alongside Bruce Willis, you now controlled him as the player character. Which was probably for the best since AI for that kind of thing was still in it's infancy and didn't usually function very well. (AI assistants tended to get stuck or die frequently holding you back or making levels much more difficult than they were intended.)
Apocalypse is about just that. Bruce Willis is the only one who knows how to stop an insane evil scientist who wants to ensure his predicted apocalypse. In order to achieve this he has created his very own four cybernetic horsemen to carry out the necessary destruction. As Trey Kincaid, (Bruce Willis) you wield a number of weapons as you clear away wave after wave of enemies, which is a ton of fun as most of your weapons work as streams. Machine guns, laser beams, a sweet looking flamethrower; each swiping across the screen obliterating robotic monster after monster. I remember being particularly in awe at the look of the flamethrower since it was so rare for fire weapons to look half decent in a video game at the time. It usually just consisted of a stream of circular fireballs instead of a single animated drawing or effect that reacted to your movement. Basically, if anyone's ever played both, it's Alien 3 for Genesis vs Alien 3 for SNES. (The SNES one was much nicer.) Man, I could just torch dudes all day long.. Beautiful. (Let's not read into that the wrong way.)
I enjoyed this game quick a bit back when it was released. It's available now on the PlayStation Store, which I may consider grabbing sometime soon. It featured some great gameplay, fantastic level design and a solid overall feel. And hey, it's Bruce Willis. How many times has he saved the world now anyway?
No comments:
Post a Comment