Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 Preview

Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 is one of the games whose appearance (even though it has not yet appeared in any playable sense of the word) made me think it was going to be something prodigious in 1st and 3rd person shooter genre.

F.A.K.K.2, that is "Federation Assigned Ketogenic Killzone" was a game I kept searching on the net because of its somewhat peculiar announcements. It all started with some nice concept art comic book looking pictures. I was not too sure if it was all about a game, cartoon or comic book, but I backed up the pictures to a CD, and now, about a year or two later they came in quite handy for this preview. About a year after I initially found them, a pal of mine (a skillful porn-surfer... If he doesn't find something on the net, it's not there : ) diverted my attention to a very pretty looking girl, no other then miss Julie Strain in person (and not much else). I immediately saved the whole collection, and my kind heart made me grant you at least one of those (not to do with FAKKs). For those of you who don't know anything about her: Julie Strain was a Penthouse Pet of the Year 1993, which basically wouldn't have anything to do with this text if it were not for her famous roles of sword-armed heroines. This is where we get back to FAKK as she has been rendered into this 3rd person shooter (not only she, of course, but I have a strange feeling that there's going to be a lot of her about).

F.A.K.K.2 should completely justify its heavy-metal genre, as the latest information gives us insight into the already compiled soundtrack for the game, effectively entitled: "No False Metal: Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2's Game Soundtrack Will Rock Your World." That might prove to be true if we consider the list of performers: Pantera, Biohazard, Coal Chamber, APT-26, Monster Magnet, Machine Head, System of a Down, Bauhaus, Days of the New, MDFMK (formerly KMFDM), Insane Clown Posse, Billy Idol, Queens of the Stone Age, Zilch, Puya, Sons of Domination, Full Devil Jacket, Apartment 26 and Econoline Crush. Not all of those are HM bands, still they all promise adequate noise.

Ahh...

Little guy acting funny!

So, there you have your three prodigious things... Try to find anyone who wouldn't fall for at least one of them, at least because of the brunette in question... The word is that FAKK2 has all odds to become THE SEXIEST VIDEO GAME ever (ooooo Lara, you're no fun any more...) 

Storyline:

The story of Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 is located in distant future. FAKK is short for "An area with a pestilence so dangerous that it will kill any carbon-based life forms that enter" and everyone tries to stay as far away from it as possible. When a planet has a FAKK beacon circling around it no one will even attempt to land on its surface. There is a planet so rich and beautiful (doesn't sound like Earth, does it?) that it has been made a FAKK planet just to be protected from all possible space travelers and cruel industrial exploitation.

That all sounds very nice, but there's always bound to be someone who spoils it all. In the original 1981 movie, there was a malicious bloke who tried to take over all water resources on the planet, and now, thirty years later, the peril is still there. New evil-bent industrial giants emerge, inducing our heroine to take up arms again take the name FAKK2 and take the long and arduous road to liberty.

The game is supposed to appear about the same time as the movie 'Heavy Metal: FAKK2’ which will have a similar story to the game. The fifteen million dollar budget film is based on a graphic novel entitled "The Melting Pot"’ signed by Kevin Eastman-a (famous for his ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’), Eric Talbot, and Simon Bisley (Lobo, Batman, Judge Dread, Slaine). In a way, the game should be an unofficial sequel to the film. Still if you're not too much of a moviegoer, and happen to miss the film, you will not be made short of information... 

Graphics Engine:

Let us see what lurks behind this distant outer appearance. If we take a peek at the heart of the matter we find the Quake 3 Arena engine, which will take care of the polygons and 3D surrounding. Ritual Entertainment obviously stands firm concerning the already tiresome "Quake vs. Unreal" dilemma, as their previous game was the Q2 based "Sin".

If I am not much mistaking, this is the first game to use the new Q3A engineA both good and expensive choice (I read it somewhere that the license was some $700.000), still, everyone seems to be satisfied. The developers devoted their attention to high-quality textures and are very content with the way the Q3A engine manages to put almost any effect on a surface. There is also the arbitrary attachment points and dynamic polygon subtraction capability, which means that objects can be merged one to another, which gives a lot of new possibilities concerning the game and add-on design. There will also be a possibility of precise targeting of extraneous parts of the body (I am NOT talking about Julie Strain), so that you can hit and sever enemies fingers arms legs, and so on, and so on, and so on... The models will have much more polygons than Q3A characters, so that, for example, the heroin will consist of some 1,400 polygons and the rest as much as they deserve. How is the poor CPU going to cope with that, remains unknown. The developers seem very confident about their level-of-detail polygon reduction system, which will reduce or increase the number of enemies' polygons relative to their distance. Characters' faces will have a noticeably greater number of polygons because of the lip-synching feature enabling real-time lip movement synchronized with the currently played WAV file.

To compensate for the vast number of polygons used for the characters, the environment will be much simpler. That of course dos not mean that they will push it too far: there will be leaves, fires, torches, smoke effects, rain... Speaking of which, there will also be some interesting background features, like varying weather, day and night changes...

Gameplay:

I wonder what it will be like to play the game because, somehow the 3rd person shooters never seemed to be as appealing as the 1st person ones, usually because of the poor playability and disorientation, and of course the always misplaced camera. Ritual Entertainment picked a camera system similar to the one in Heretic 2, with two camera types (camera offsets and fixed cameras) where the first camera rotates around the hero trying to catch whatever the player wishes to see, and the other is fixed and used in dangerous situations which require full concentration, like boss levels. It sounds as a good concept, and all that is left is to se how well it functions in game. We will not be able to pass further judgments before we get our hands on the first copies of the game.

It seems that the accent will be put on the action aspect of the game rather then on the puzzles. They said that they did not want to frustrate players with difficult puzzles, and that they will intensify the action instead. A strange notion, for as far as I know too difficult action sequences can be equally frustrating. Anyway, they did promise interesting levels (in four worlds altogether) and a high-level fun-factor, which will make the players go through one level after another, and each of them (levels) will have a unique atmosphere (Don’t do that guys... when I was playing Quake 2 and Half-Life I kept staring at the screen all day long in spite of the raving headaches). If we also take in regard the scripted gameplay (like the one in Half-Life), the single player mode sounds promising indeed...

As for the playability, the most interesting thing there is the possibility of simultaneous usage of two weapons. That means that there will be two fire buttons (remember Unreal Tournament and its multi-purpose weapons?). On one hand this might intensify the action, and on the other, it may serve for protection of the character if the second weapon is a shield, or better still, one weapon might be a rocket launcher, used for the distant enemies, while the second one may be a sword to slash through the closer ones. Another supported feature is special "Fatality" moves.

Multiplayer:

This feature still remains behind a veil of mystery. It is obvious that there is going to be a multiplayer mode, not only because it is the most popular mode of playing nowadays but also because it uses the most powerful multiplaying engine ever. The programmers are not willing to compete with Q3A, but they would like to make FAKK2 unique. Apart from the certain FFA (free-for-all) mode, there will possibly be CTF and Team Deathmatch modes. The programmers seem to have run out of ideas, but they are still set on creating something unique. Go for it guys, Unreal Tournament got all the praise for it original multiplayer modes...

A lot of questions still remain unanswered. There are still a lot of details to be done. I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of a programmer who has to deal with a 3rd person game. It seems to take a lot of courage to do something like that. No 3rd person game has ever been as successful as Quake or Unreal, the camera is a constant problem, and there is always one additional character to be rendered. The developers even thought of creating a 1st person view for multiplayer mode, but as that would cause a lot of additional programming they are probably going to abandon the whole idea.

All we can do is wait for another month and see what the finished game will real look like. About the same time we'll be able to see the movie (Sony Entertainment and Columbia Tri-Star), or buy some toys, because ‘Moore Action Collectables’ already prepared a set of 7inch action figurines to match. My mind is still set on 'The sexiest game ever’....