Mobile Forces

In Summary

Take the Unreal Warfare engine, make a selection ot easy-to-control vehicles, add an assortment of real-world weapons and code some Impressive AI so Bllly-no-mates can play with bots in his bedroom. Then sit back and hope it takes off on the Internet as well.

What's The Big Deal?

The world Is crying out for team-based multiplayer games with bots intelligent enough to tie their own shoelaces. Rage has a pretty impressive back catalogue of great looking games, and their first foray Into the FPS arena is well worth sitting up and taking notice of.

Counter-Strike might be the weapon of choice for most online combatants, but there's one thing it's never managed to get right in any of its incarnations and that's the inclusion of driveable vehicles. As the name suggests, Mobile Forces is the latest attempt to plug the gap, and, although it's a multiplayer game in essence, it's also going to include bots from the outset, which should assuage fears that it's little more than a mod, albeit with the lush graphics we've come to expect from the Liverpudlian developer. As always, it's being claimed that these are intelligent enough to jump into a vehicle while you're behind the wheel and provide the firepower, or act as your driver while you sit in the passenger seat and take pot shots at your opponents. We saw the game running at the recent ECTS soiree, where we managed to drive the jeep (the only vehicle running in the demo) for a few minutes. This was enough to confirm that an impressive and complex physics model is in place, though with enough of a forgiving arcade leaning to get you round the maps without constantly getting stuck. What's more, you can shoot out tyres on vehicles, rendering them hard to control for a set amount of time and even take out the gas tank, which has the satisfying effect of taking the whole show skywards.

While it seems that no story-based single-player mode will be offered, Rage has promised 12 distinctively styled levels each with unique objectives. The single-player game will require you to complete a variety of tasks and amass a certain number of points on each level in order to progress - Rage tells us to think Tony Hawk's rather than Quake. The eight types of game on offer will range from standard domination and CTF flavours to a promising Trailer Capture mode. Due to ship in spring 2002, the team still has plenty of time to code the sort of AI needed to make the singleplayer experience work, but the game is going to make or break over Netplay. Concern here is that the switch of focus from foot to vehicle could dilute the action. With the emphasis on vehicles, too many players mighi be happy to get in the nearest Mini Metro and charge about without any desire to "win'. You can still play the game on foot, and there's the usual array of weapons from the sniper rifle and machine gun to Laser Trip Bombs, but as was shown in Counter-Strike, if you put something with wheels in a game, most players want to sit in it. Or complain that they never get to go behind the wheel. Translating this into gameplay will be Mobile Force's challenge.