Story
You are dropped into a future time where the gladiator arena's have made a return with the most almighty competitors. Your quest is to fight through the ranks to be the number one ranked fighter by gaining the support of fans by battling through waves of enemies. With every fight, your notoriety either increases by chaining kills together and utilising the crowd rage mode, or decreases by dying a lot.Gameplay
This is a genuinely fun game to play. By that, I don't mean "fun for a budget game", "fun for a first game" or "fun for a cheap game", it's just plain and simple, fun. Gameplay is familiar, but strips down stupid button combos, killstreaks, duel weapons and over complicated aiming/shooting controls in favour of a simple: run, jump and shoot mechanic.
This works excellently and instead of bailing on new unlockables and abilities like all new releases inevitably do, everything is kept simple. New weapons are exchangeable by running over them, massive leaps across the arenas are triggered by running over pads on the floor, crates for collecting barrels are picked up by (you guessed it) running over them etc.
This works well in the game's favour. Flicking between cameras becomes second nature and natural and really helps in accurate aiming. Guns are satisfyingly different and familiar ('nade launchers, machine guns, shotguns, lazer beam shooting guns) to most shooters from the past, and if compliments are to be given, then this is the biggest I can give it:
This is the closest experience I've had to all out fun shooting action since the Quake/Unreal Tournament era.Graphics
Now, with the Indie Game genre of the marketplace come restrictions, whether they be development time, size of files, budget etc. What Safari Studios have achieved whilst staying faithful to the laws of Indie Gaming is brilliant. Battles begin with a thin beam of light shining through the pen doors where you character lies in wait, listening to the countdown from the crowd before they fling open and hurl you into the arena.
Placing the action in 3rd person top down view is where you experience the best graphical experience, it's fast and frenetic but for those moments when you crave for the accuracy of a 3rd person, ground level aspect view a quick flick of the right bumper sees the camera fall from the sky behind the character and everything changes.
Movements appear to slow slightly, but that is to its benefit allowing for faster, sharper aiming and satisfying melee takedowns with accuracy. Characters are detailed enough, crowds are not rendered to allow for the better detailing with lighting and movement which is fair enough. Enemies are satisfyingly rich and varied and are all satisfyingly unique and distinguishable and are again, detailed from both sky level and floor level.
Sound
It's an Indie game, so obviously there's no hollywood actor's involved. Crowd chants are believable however, and they do create a fine atmosphere. Guns are slightly cheesy sounding, but it's more charming than embarassing.
My personal favourite was the opening scripture after the tutorial level which was read out in such a way to make it sound super serious, but it was so incredibly cheesy I must admit I did chuckle. I got the impression the makers had quite a laugh making that voice over.
Summary
I pretty much summed it up best earlier on, where I said that this has its soul mates firmly routed in Unreal and Quake. It's taken it into the top down and 3rd person aspects brilliantly and if a decent publisher where to stump up the cash to help the makers fund the extra development required to reach the bigger customer base of the Xbox Live Marketplace, it would sell and sell massively.
As it is now, it's a charming first step that's turned the quality level of Indie titles up to 11. Remember these guys, as they're the future.
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