Illfonic is a small studio with big ambitions. They’ve taken Nexuiz, a PC shooter based on a modified Quake engine, and are rebuilding it from the ground up for Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. And they’re doing it with the Crytek’s new CryEngine 3 game engine. You know, the one that’s powering Crysis 2.
At its core, Nexuiz is a first-person shooter in the same vein as Quake or Unreal Tournament. This is apparent in the weapons and armor shards littered about each level. What is different is that Nexuiz is using what has become the standard health system: wait long enough, and your health will regenerate. While the game will have the classic team deathmatch and capture the flag modes, what sets it apart are dynamic mutators.
Dynamic mutators are modifications you earn by getting killing streaks. When you’ve earned one, you’ll be allowed to pick which one you want out of three. After that, the mutation will change how you play the game. Examples I heard were lower gravity, higher rate of fire and being able to run faster with a flag in CTF. There will be different mutations exclusive to each game mode.
The interesting thing is that it’s all random chance as to which mutations are given, at first. As you play the game, you’ll accrue points. These are spent to increase the chance of certain mutations you want to show up. And as you gain ranks, you’ll unlock more mutations. These can be new abilities, or they might be more powerful forms of previous mutations.
The Illfonic team has been hard at work figuring out ways for players to be ranked with like-skilled players. It’s not going to have the Call of Duty 4 problem where if you’re just starting, you randomly get thrown into a game with people that have logged
One thing they’re changing from the late-90s era of shooters is that there will be aim assistance. It won’t be like Halo where it’s always on. Turning off aim assistance will net you bonus points when you get kills. So it’s balanced out in a way, people that aren’t ultra-competitive MLG-ranked sorts will have a little help to balance odds, and those that don’t need it will get bonuses.
Illfonic is also breaking away from classic FPS multiplayer in that Nexuiz, players will rank up. I assume this will be similar to Call of Duty or Halo, or really any modern shooter. As you play and gain ranks, you’ll be matched up with players of around the same skill as you, so you won’t be randomly matched up with high-level players when just starting out. The nice thing is, when you rank up, you’ll gain a small but permanent stat adjustment (i.e. +5 health). In addition, any achievements/trophies earned will also give an in-game bonus. The developers really stressed that they want to reward their players with more than just a number increase in their profiles.
If playing against random strangers you’ll never meet again isn’t enough for you, Nexuiz will have an automated tournament system that will schedule tournaments globally. In addition, there will be a LAN-based tournament system for offline play.
Nexuiz will support in-game clans, and will have a robust clan management system. As clans play together, they will gain a clan rank that is independent of player ranks. In addition, clans will be able to challenge other clans to challenges. The winning clan will get awards. As of the time of writing this, the only award I know of is a badge, denoting the clan has beaten another clan. Clans will also have calendars and reminders letting players schedule and look up when a certain clan match is, or telling them while they’re already playing. Illfonic was really adamant about players not leaving the game to do any of this clan organizing.
But for those that don’t spend their entire lives playing games, there will be social networking integration. Currently, the only confirmed integration is Facebook. You’ll be able to post to Facebook your current leaderboard status, or the results of a game. Facebook won’t be the end of it though.
Illfonic tells me that they’re aiming for an early 2011 release date on Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, and that Nexuiz will be priced somewhere near $15. If they do meet their deadline, this will be the first game to launch using the CryEngine 3.
They plan to have both free and paid downloadable content. Free DLC will be in the form of new dynamic mutators, while the paid DLC will include new weapons, levels, and even game modes.
They also let me know that they will be releasing it for PC in the future, but they’re going to have a lot of work to do. The PC version will be custom-tailored for PC gaming. In addition, a custom video editor will be released after launch that will allow you to edit your games into clips and upload them to YouTube. I’m not sure if this is only for PC, but it’s a good touch to the social media integration.
In talking with them at PAX, it took me a while to fully comprehend the full scope of the game they’re building due to the unfinished game they were demoing. The game will launch with nine different levels, nine or ten different weapons and two confirmed game modes, capture the flag and team deathmatch. I’m uncertain whether free-for-all deathmatch will also be included, though I doubt they’d launch without it.
When I said the game was unfinished, I meant it. The game was essentially an alpha build. They had no mutators available, there were graphical problems with weapon explosions, and as I was having the game demoed, a bug happened that caused the character to fall half-way into the floor and get stuck. But you know what? That didn’t stop me from having fun. The game has only been worked on for about three months, but they’ve come far enough for me to have a fun time playing a CTF game in a beautiful futuristic map.
If the team at Illfonic stay hard at work, I have a feeling they’ll have a good, cheap, downloadable shooter that can bring people together. And if they can keep all of these features in the game, it might actually draw a dedicated first-person shooter audience to downloadable titles. Hopefully a better audience that Cellfactor had. Nexuiz is a game I’ll be keeping my eye on and reporting on as news occurs.
