One Must Fall: Battlegrounds Preview

Does 'One Must Fall: 2097' ring a bell? For those of you who don't have any idea of what I'm talking about, it was back in 1994 that One Must Fall was one of the best hand-to-hand combat games. It brought a pretty unusual assortment of huge robot fighting units, which were somehow a lot more fun to control than ordinary human characters and it was a vary original game concept at the time. The battle zones added an extra-special feel to the gameplay and an innovative aspect of the combat style. Besides "nailing the other guy" principal, players had to plan their strikes and steer clear of dangerous objects. If you dislike the notion of controlling a mass of iron junk, the developers have livened the game up a bit with human characters, which control the robots from within. With all of these broadened features, the game proved to be a great success and was popular amongst a huge range of gamers. Naturally, such an appealing game was to have a follow-up.

Initially, there was an official sequel in development, but the programmers were suddenly caught in a pretty rough financial crisis, and the game progress came to a halt. Now, six years later, Rob Elam, the project's leading programmer and designer is back with a powerful team of developers by his side. These guys call themselves Diversions Entertainment. Judging from what we've seen on the game shots so far, and knowing Rob's previous involvement with Epic Games, we can contemplate that Diversions is well on its way to make a magnificent sequel.

One Must Fall: Battlegrounds will have the same basic storyline as its predecessor. Which means the planet is still governed by multinational corporations that battle each other using enormous robots that can be controlled from the inside. Originally, these robots were designed for working in the outer-world colonies and they were called HARs (short for Human Assisted Robots). After three years of fighting to gain control over the colonies, the cute robots also became the main sporting event of the Universe, replacing basketball, football, and baseball. Although the storyline in One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is not of great importance to gameplay, it is only fair to emphasize that it is going on twenty years after the previous game. Moreover, many of the famous pilots from the earlier game will be returning in Battlegrounds.

As announced, a lot of features from the old One Must Fall are going to find their place in Battlegrounds, but there's also an imposing diversity of new ones, including fresh battle units, arenas, hazards, and of course the brand new game graphics engine. This enhanced engine is the most significant change in One Must Fall; it will have a standard Direct 3D and Open GL support. In short, there will be the strict necessity of a hardware accelerator (no software modes whatsoever). Also, it allows your fighter to move about freely and attack his opponents from whatever angle he prefers. Featuring a kind of 3D person over-the-shoulder camera view the game gives a player the opportunity to perform any possible move and even strike on his foes from behind when they least expect it.