Hands on: Damnation

[rajoe]

Hands on: Damnation

Prince of Persia meets a run-of-the-mill third person shooter is how developer Blue Omega's latest title, Damnation could be described in a nutshell. I know that isn't the most interesting of descriptions but then again, neither is the game. Damnation puts players in the boots of Hamilton Rourke, a freedom fighter of sorts who along with his loyal posse are in the process of liberating a war torn, alternate Steam Punked America from the hands of a tyrannical dictator.

The preview build kicked off from the Second Act in which I had to rescue an "old friend" called The Professor. After shooting the crap out of hostile miners and climbing my way through a labyrinth of caves, I started to make my way up to the surface, where I encountered even more angry miners and more platforming.


So yeah, Damnation could be broken up into two aspects – Platforming and Shooting. The Platforming part is pretty entertaining to a certain extent as Hamilton can scale pretty much any object he can get his hands on. His animations are nowhere as fluid as Altair's or Lara Croft's but at least he's got decent reflexes that allow him to grab onto the ledge in case you go over.

The shooting on the other hand felt pretty weak. Unlike most shooters on the block today there's isn't a cover system so you have to make sure you take cover manually by ducking behind an object or you'll die pretty fast. You can only carry two primary weapons at a time and with a game like Damnation where the draw distance is pretty impressive, I found myself sticking a lot to the sniper, picking my enemies off from a safe distance. On a more up, close and personal basis, the shotgun and the machine gun seemed to perform just fine.


While there's nothing flawed with Damnation's shooting mechanics, they just seemed pretty bland and boring. In my opinion they should have taken a key from Blood in the Sand or The Club if they were going in for a fast paced arcady shooter. Instead we have something that's part realistic and part arcady, which in reality isn't all that much fun.

To provide a certain amount of respite from all the shooting and platforming you'll even get to operate bikes to traverse areas you couldn't on foot or to make insanely huge jumps. Bikes control all right but like the shooting, they're just all right; nothing to scream about or distinguish it from the rest of the crop.

Now I know this is a preview build and all but the AI in this game seemed downright brain dead. They either rush at you like mindless zombies or just wait around in one place even though I killed all their associates in front of their eyes. Also for some reason enemies are under the impression that they're invincible as I rarely saw them even move from one spot. Does no one like taking cover anymore?


Visually the game was a mixed bag. Running on the Unreal 3 Engine, Damnation's outdoor environments look beautiful and even better is the fact that the game sports a pretty huge draw distance. On the other hand, the indoor levels looked bland, monotonous and dull. A decent amount of effort went into creating the game's primary characters but I can't say this for the game's generic grunts.

I'm not going to lie to you. As of now Damnation is looking very average and unless developer Blue Omega radically improved gameplay since this build, the game will just sink without a trace. Either way, expect our fully detailed review as and when we get our hands on the final product later on this month.

source:tech2