Grave Gamer News & Views — pc

Welcome to the Umbrella Corps – an online third-person shooter set in the Resident Evil universe

We caught a slight wind of this last month but the hurricane known as the RE2 Remake blew it the hell away.

SCEJA, a Sony-centric press conference held in Tokyo today, featured Capcom’s first unveiling of Umbrella Corps – a competitive third-person shooter planted in the Resident Evil mythos. The game’s promised to play host to fast-paced, close-quartered skirmishes in battle zones that recreate historic RE environs.

If you’re having sudden and terrible flashbacks of Operation Raccoon City, you’re not wrong (also, have a sit and let the nausea settle). “Make an online third-person shooter outta Resident Evil” was verbatim Slant Six’s mission objective on ORC. Here, though, instead of forcing a threadbare, canon breaking story into the affair, Umbrella Corps takes place in modern day, over a decade after the pharmaceutical company’s demise.

Other diabolical corporations have taken hold of Umbrella’s research and are now pitting mercenary squads against each other in virus-soaked testing grounds. Bobbing and weaving through hordes of the undead (and other happy horrors), player teams will have to master an arsenal of guns, axes, and shields to best other mercs. Savvy players won’t just dodge zombies – they’ll use them against opponents, and gadgets like the Zombie Jammer, which repels the dead from a player, will help you do just that.

Okay, on paper, it’s a solid idea. But Operation Raccoon City was a solid idea on paper too. It’s all about execution. It sounds like Capcom is trying to create a leaner, tighter experience over UC’s spiritual predecessor… but as history shows, Resident Evil’s track record for spin-off’s is horrifically mixed. Oh, the horror.

Umbrella Corps ($29.99) releases digitally sometime next year for PS4 and PC.

Ninja Theory’s ‘AAA Indie’ Hellblade Gets a New Trailer

Taking root in real world history, the PS4 and PC third-person adventure follows a Celtic warrior battling her own psychosis, having been left mentally scarred by a viking invasion.

From the trailer, it’s easy to mistake this as a big budget actioner developed by a hundred person team. In actuality, Ninja Theory has only 15 developers working on the game. The ideology behind production is one NT calls “Independent AAA” – in other words, a title made with all the freedoms an indie dev would enjoy except benefiting from AAA production values.

NT’s Chief Creative Director, Tameem Antoniades, explains, “Digital self-publishing means that we can offer a smaller, but high quality game at around half the price of retail games.” It’s essentially the Robert Rodriguez approach to filmmaking applied to the gaming arena. Rodriguez, if you’re unfamiliar, was once described as capable of making a $40 million movie look like a $100 million.

Official Deus Ex: Mankind Divided cover art. 

Say it with me now: Day-Us Ecks. You’re very welcome.

Life Finds a Way in Jurassic Park: Aftermath

One Fan’s Tinkering with CryEngine Brings Us Attractions So Astounding, the Whole World Will Want to Play It

The screens above are not from an official Jurassic Park game. It’s a painful truth, and, oh, how I wish it weren’t the case.

What you’re seeing is the one man effort of an intrepid modder that goes by “cindercrash.” What began in March 2013 as a way of familiarizing themselves with CryEngine spawned into a two year journey to recreate one of the most famous locales in movie history.

“Pet project” is better coined here than “full-on game,” however, since cindercrash’s goal is to only recreate a chunk of the environment and allow players to explore it. There are dangers, as anyone should expect to find on an island lousy with untamed and unleashed prehistoric creatures, but it’s not a shooter. You won’t be mowing down raptors.

But they can harm you. Just as in the original film, there’s an underlying horror to the grand adventure and it’ll be enough to keep you on your toes as you search the park grounds, now left abandoned, on Isla Numblar. We’ve covered fan projects attempting to virtually rebuild Jurassic Park before, but none have looked so enticing.

Despite 22 years of gaming tech, exactly one developer has ever thought to make an open-world Jurassic Park game (that was Trespasser, by the by, a PC game still supported by the modding community to this very day even though it released in 1998). But who knows? It’s a new era and we actually have a new film to look forward to this Summer. The cogs must be turning somewhere behind the scenes and, hopefully, today’s devs look to Aftermath for some inspiration.

Unfortunately for us, there’s no clear timeline on when the world at large will get a taste of Jurassic Park: Aftermath, either. It is the efforts of one modder’s spare time we’re talking about, after all. Feel free to check on its progress right here. Otherwise, you’ll have to keep dreaming of taking a stroll through the park.

[Story courtesy of Kotaku]

Holy shit, I love it. IT’S ON.