Will Rock Hands-On

In the FPS business it has become increasingly difficult to come up with something inventive, particularly in terms of gameplay. During this year's E3, ActionTrip's jolly editors encountered many games that are geared up to enter the highly competitive world of first-person shooters. Upon our return from the E3, we discovered a rather nice surprise in the mail - the kind people from Ubi Soft have sent along a near-review press copy of the upcoming action game, Will Rock. The game is being created by Saber Interactive, an up and coming team of programmers and game designers. Half of the development crew is stationed in NY, while the other half is situated in St. Petersburg. An admirable combination, wouldn't you say?

Off they go!

Back off skeleton-boy!

The storyline is set in present time and follows the exciting life of renowned American archeologist Will Rock, who spent most of his career and life studying the mythology of ancient Greece. After a powerful landslide, a rather determined group of students made an amazing discovery. They came across the gateway to Lost Olympus, the mythological realm of the Greek Gods. In an attempt to penetrate the gateway, the students heave stumbled upon a set of ruins, which were clearly part some mysterious cryptogram. Accompanied by Dr. Headstrong (Ed. - seriously that's his name) and his virtuous daughter Emma (Ed. - once again, no joke, she's really a virgin), you have been hired by the students to decipher this ancient riddle and unlock the doors of a centuries old dominion. It wasn't easy, but after quite some time, you manage to unravel the secret and open the doors to the realm of the Gods. As you marvel at your work, you learn that you have been deceived! You realize that the students are, in fact, members of a fanatical cult, dedicated to restoring the power of the Greek deities and unleashing it upon the world. In the ensuing struggle, Dr. Headstrong gets killed, his daughter gets kidnapped, and Will barely makes it out alive. Throughout the scuffle, Will managed to free the imprisoned spirit of the Greek Titan Prometheus, who agrees to help him rescue Emma before she's sacrificed as a virgin to the supreme God, Zeus. Will Rock was indeed fortunate to receive the aid of Prometheus, because thanks to his intervention, Will can occasionally use Titan-like powers during his quest.

When we started playing through the first couple of levels, our instantaneous impressions were that the game was undeniably similar to CroTeam's gloriously colorful FPS, Serious Sam. Sadly, if you enjoyed the Serious Sam games, Will Rock might seem like downer. In fact from what we've seen at this point, the game show signs extreme resemblance to CroTeam's renowned FPS; enemies always attack in groups (hardly ever individually), bosses are huge, tough mothers that are usually surrounded by swarms of creatures, and the main character often uses catch-phrases that sound exactly the same as good ol' Serious Sam does. Not to sound too picky, but I'm think true-hearted Serious Sam fans might not appreciate these replications. Additional similarities can be found throughout the game, especially in terms of weapons, ammo, and armor and health boosts. It all looks the same. Will Rock uses the same kind of firearms as Sam, and that includes pistols, shot-guns, machine-guns, cross-bows, the fireball thrower (which is actually a lot like Sam's rocket launcher), and so on. Then again, Will does get to use a number of unique weapons such as the acid rifle, the Medusa gun, and the atomic gun. The acid rifle produces a rather interesting effect; when you bull's eye monsters with this handy thing, they will inflate until they explode. If a creature is struck by the Medusa gun, it will immediately turn to stone and subsequently burst into a thousand pieces - it's actually a pretty cool weapon. Each statue crumbles differently, as well - instead of it being a standard script, the model's shift to stone, and crumble in a ver realistic manner. Also, burning enemies will literally turn to ash and crumble at your feet. Both of these are nice graphical effects. And finally, the atomic gun emits an extraordinary ray that melts any enemy that stands in its way. Quite a powerful little device.

Okay, so it's not entirely like Serious Sam. Instead of gaining various abilities by collecting power-ups, Will gets to use Titan powers that were granted to him by the mighty Prometheus. These powers can be picked up on shrines that are scattered throughout the levels. It's quite simple, you gather treasures and gold during the game, and then you find a shrine that harnesses a particular power.

Die!

Eww! Nasty! That’s a liver I think!

As you buy these abilities you are allowed to trigger them at any time during the game. Once you've activated a particular power or skill, a timer will appear giving you a brief period of about twenty seconds, during which you can spread terror quickly and effectively. Some abilities like immortality and are common and should be well-known to FPS gamers. Others include, "Titan Damage" (fairly similar to sort of like Quake's quad damage) and "Titan Motion" (gives you a chance to take out enemies in a Matrix-style slow-motion mode).

The variety of enemies is commendable. You will be running into minotaurs, centaurs, skeletons, lions, tigers, satyrs, atlas, diskobolues, gladiators, cerebrus, and many more. Each one of these possesses a unique set of long-ranged and melee attacks. Most of the times we found that all opponents are very tough and extremely precise when they fire at you, or throw something in your direction. Like in Serious Sam, all monsters and boss-creatures simply don't know the meaning of the word 'retreat.' Which is good, as it makes the game a lot more exciting and it perpetuates the action. The AI is good, but frankly we must stress that it tended to falter on certain occasions, displaying some very weird enemy behavior. Sometimes, when foes act in groups, they can be quite challenging and hard to defeat, but they often get confused when an obstacle gets in their way. Quite frequently enemies don't seem to have the intelligence to go around a wall - instead they just jam and continue ramming into it until you come into their line of sight. We sincerely hope that these issues are tended to in time, or else they could turn into a major drawback.

If we put this AI mishap aside, technically, the developers appear to have done a decent job of the game. Everything works smoothly and we didn't encounter any obvious bugs or sever problems with the engine. All in-game models were vividly animated and presented with a considerable amount of polys. Once the action begins, players will be able to witness a vibrant and colorful blast festival (yep, once again, it all looks like Serious Sam). Contrary to that, the textures are somewhat poor and can hardly be highlighted the game's redeeming visual feature. Nonetheless, the physics are good and there's a lot of background objects that can be destroyed or damaged. Statues can come alive and attack you when you least expect it (an accurate and well-incorporated portrayal of Greek mythology). By the way, when you pop one of these statues, there's a rather nice particle effect at work, in addition to the smoke and mist that whirl up into the air. This aspect enriches the in-game atmosphere a wee bit (since the levels are rather poor in detail). On top of that, Will Rock has a distinctive visual treat, which was never used in any FPS title before (I think). When players fire upon the enemy at close range, they will see Will's hands and weapons all covered in blood. Quite nice. The levels present three distinguishing architecture styles - Greek, Roman, and Middle East. We have to emphasize though, that there hasn't been much of a break-through as far as the level design is concerned. Some levels are very large, with vast outdoor levels. On the other hand, most of them are in dire need of more complex areas - it gets really monotonous at times.

Alrighty, let's not condemn the game too much at this time. The sounds are high-quality and cool at the very least, and we've been singing the Will Rock main theme here at the office for several days now... 2lions how does it go again, ehm: "I wanna rock!" ROCK! I waant to rock..."

Thankfully, Will Rock doesn't appear to suffer from any major technical foul-ups - other than the slight hitches in the AI I mentioned earlier. The similarity to Serious Sam also carries and curious addictiveness, so it's bound to be interesting to FPS fans. When the game hits the shelves this June, we're dying to find out how the gaming population will receive it... The developers still have about a month to fix these details, and when they do, we think that Will Rock could turn into a fine FPS franchise. Provided of course, it's only played by people who haven't seen or tried Serious Sam :)