I’m not sure what I expected from Star Citizen’s first-person mode, but I know it wasn’t something this impressive. The new footage of the FPS module, revealed at PAX Australia, shows some cool (if conventional) squad-on-squad combat and some less-conventional zero-G firefighting… in a warehouse full of crates.
Yep, it’s a shooter.
Still, I have to admit that Star Citizen’s first-person combat looks a lot more in-depth than the tacked-on feature it initially sounded like. Take a look at this 10 minute clip of two multiplayer matches at PAX East.
I’m still a Star Citizen skeptic at this point, since the project triggers every single “it sounds too good to be true” warning bell in my head. I’m just not convinced any game, even a $50 million dollar crowdfunded space game, can let me have my cake and eat it while riding a pony to Santa’s workshop.
But I would love to be proven wrong, andthis looks pretty neat. I’m still a little curious how this aspect of the game will fit into the larger whole, but it at least looks like a proper tactical shooter that will slot in nicely alongside the fictional universe that Roberts Space Industries are building with Star Citizen.
The demo shows what appears to be some more objective-based attack-defend play, as well as some nifty gadgets like mobile shield generators. I hope we got a lot more of that, because I don’t need more “guys in armor shoot each other with SMGs” in my life. Give me Starship Troopers and Tribes, guys, and we’ll be just fine.
It’s interesting to note, by the way, that this demo definitely takes a page from the Ubisoft playbook by having a group of the most professional-sounding gamers approach a multiplayer session like they’re Special Forces deploying to go kill Osama. “On me! Stack up! Contact right!” The Ubisoft Division multiplayer demo featured this kind of role-play, and this is definitely channeling the same military sci-fi fantasy.
It’s definitely better than what you normally get in a multiplayer session, of course. But I had to roll my eyes just a tad when the dude playing through the zero gravity demo asks, “Hey, are we losing gravity? Oh man…”
Yeah, buddy. You are losing gravity. Because that’s the point of this demo. You’ve rehearsed this. You don’t have to pretend to be in suspense.