In the much-praised Anomaly, players took on the other side of the Tower Defense equation, running a small team of vehicles through enemy territory, either taking out or just surviving the barrage of towers. In Anomaly 2, the equation balances out a bit. Of course, there is a still a single-player campaign of alien tower assault, and I’m sure it’s super cool, but the exciting thing is the multi-player mode, in which one player assaults while the other defends. Most multiplayer Tower Defense games to date (as few as they are), have made it work by having both players on offense and defense simultaneously. Trying to balance a game like this with each player taking on such a different role must be a great challenge. It will be interesting to see how—and how well—they’ve done it.
DUST 514 has been a long time coming, first announced over 4 years ago—and delayed several times—the game is an experiment in cross-genre gaming. EVE Online is a lifestyle, and many of the players invest a lot of their time and energy into maintaining their vast space empires. Mostly, it’s an economic game with some space battles thrown in for fun. Players can choose to run their commerce in the safe zones, or take the risk in contested grounds for the potential of greater profit. Out there, massive fortunes rest on planetary ownership and conquest.
When DUST 514 hits consoles this week, players will be given a new option for planetary combat: hire mercenaries from DUST to fight it out. EVE players will be able to spend their hard-earned credits to attack and defend their holdings with marines, who will be controlled by the players of DUST in first-person deathmatch combat. Just hiring them is not the only way that EVE players will interact with DUST players, however. They will also be able to affect the battle in real-time, as they bombard the enemy troops from orbit. Not every match will be fair, or even winnable. If your employer is unable or unwilling to spend the credits necessary to win the conflict, then it will be lost. The soldiers on the ground have no control over that—they just get their orders, and get paid to fight.
Each DUST player takes on the role of a customizable, immortal soldiers. Using similar technology to the one that makes it possible for starship pilots in EVE to return from the dead, these soldiers can send clones of themselves into battle over and over, each landing utilizing a copy of their ‘dropsuit’ with the weapons and augmentations the player has purchased over the course of their career.
It will also be possible to fight on behalf of the mercenary companies themselves, but it’s unclear how that will affect the EVE universe.
Following is a full list of this week’s announced North American releases:
Windows
- Metro: Last Light
- Ocean City Racing
- Trave
- Anomaly 2
- Fire & Forget: The Final Assault
3DS
- The Starship Damrey
Xbox 360
- Metro: Last Light
PS3
- DUST 514
- Metro: Last Light
Vita
- LEGO Legends of Chima: Laval’s Journey
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