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Codemaster's Damnation moves in with a bit of wild west style shooting thrown
into early twentieth century USA with a twist. We got our hands on the preview
build and loaded up the game. It was a nice surprise to see that the game loaded
up very quickly. The preview build begins with the second level in which a
rescue operation has to be carried. The cut scenes of the game are quite well
done, but the audio and video were a bit out of sync. What really impressed me
were the huge, open environments in the game. The graphics are absolutely
amazing and the game runs smooth as butter; courtesy Unreal Engine 3 of course.
Damnation has been gaining attention owing to the use of 'Verticality'. In
layman terms, verticality gives a player freedom of movement. It has been used
in Mirror's Edge before and basically allows the player to perform various
tricks and stunts in any direction. It gets rid of the flat surface combat and
provides multiple ways to reach a target. Because of this, Damnation gets an
added advantage over other similar shooters.
In terms of weapons and combat, the player can carry 3 guns at a time, or opt
for hand-to-hand combat. The guns range from single-shot pistols to sniper
rifles, though I didn't much care for the aiming system. The spirit vision
system is helpful and works great; it allows you to look through walls and
predict enemy movement. The AI of the game needs a lot of work considering the
fact that enemies hardly move even when they are being shot at. Being a preview
build, we did get to see the graphics going haywire a couple of times with odd
lighting here and there.
Damnation seems to be an interesting title. As it also has a multi-player
component, we are really looking forward to see how verticality comes into play
there. Currently, the AI, aiming and graphics need a serious amount of tweaking
to make the final product an impressive one.
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