The Next Great Mod?

By Hardflip

Having watched the Half-Life 2 modification scene for quite some time, I knew there was something different upon seeing the first bunch of screenshots from the Dystopia game. It started off looking like some average neo-punk/mecha shooter, but after that the flashes of Tron look-alike screenshots struck me. I didn’t understand why this game had two worlds.

The game itself consists of two worlds; the one of a class based system; light, medium and heavy. Each class gets a selection of three guns, and every player gets a selection of 10 augmentations to choose from. To access the ‘Tron’ world which is called ‘cyberspace’ you must use a hacking implant and find a terminal. The hackers in this game can really turn the tide. For example, you can capture strategic turrets with them, open and close doors, and password or encrypt terminals to slow the enemy team down. But the dangers of the real world are also in cyberspace, for example, getting killed, or outnumbered.

The hackers essentially command the game, while still in a first person view. They make use of Doom 3 like panels with real-time cameras on that let you view part of the level, depending on what you’re hacking. The grunts, such as heavy, where you get a guided rocket launcher (you have a camera on your rocket launcher to guide it), are pretty impressive and essentially hold the fort. Medium allows for snipers and regular bullet work, and scouts usually go around in stealth mode as a Predator would, hacking people up with their katana.

The game is fantastic. It’s art style combines Deus Ex and Tron (depending on which world you’re in) and has some great object features. In the demonstration map there are three different objectives; capturing the docks to enter the ‘Corps’ stronghold, hacking the middle spawn to provide a new spawn for your team, and destroying the core which has a defense that needs to be hacked. Obviously for the other team it’s the opposite.

With a coordinated team, usually aided through the in-game voice chat, this game becomes rather strategic and you’ll find people working together to keep winning. For example, in a game with some fellow IRC friends, we had two hackers. A hacker eventually runs out of energy and needs to recharge in the real world; we would do shifts, constantly menacing the enemy. In the real world we would sneak around cloaked to get behind enemy lines, or would bombard hallways with gunfire to keep the enemy back. But once the turrets are hacked and turn on you, you’re pretty much a goner.

I like that this game depends on the hackers, since anyone who is in the system usually knows what they’re doing and can always be replaced instantly. Sort of like the commander mode in Battlefield 2, but more mobile and fast paced. The real world maps still need a working; I can’t say they look fantastic. The cyberspace maps however look brilliant; vibrant and with a lot of glow. Anyone with Half-Life 2 should play this game on a public (dedicated) server and try to learn the ropes. It might be a little hard at first but it’s an easy learning curve.

I hope this game becomes another hit for Valve and the modding community, since to me it feels like what Natural Selection was to Half-Life already. They’ve worked off that formula and provided one of the best modification demos (or betas) I’ve ever played.