Plain Sight: Preview

The computer entertainment industry pleases the average consumer with variety and innovation. It would seem that in the age of total testing of all genres, we have no right to expect original ideas from developers. But, oddly enough, they surprise us time after time, and at all levels. Both the giants of the gaming business and independent development companies are never tired of finding fresh ideas and shaking up the gameplay. Here are the developers from Beatnik Games, who had previously missed the stars from the sky, suddenly announce a product Plain Sight, which turns the canons of multiplayer action on its head, and at the same time our stagnant stereotypes.

The game takes place in an abstract environment, the sight of which brings to mind two associations: space and TRON 2.0. A pile of geometric shapes drifts in a dark space. All this multi-level accumulation of cubes, cylinders and paraboloids, often forming quite recognizable outlines of skyscrapers, highways and other urban “utensils”, is still lifeless and monotonous, but this is for the time being. At this moment, the main characters of what is happening enter the arena – glowing robots with samurai swords on their backs, a sort of cross between Bender from Futurama and the latest examples of Japanese robotics. They are called upon to color this world.

Each robot leaves behind a bright neon trail when moving, and also paints the surrounding objects it touches in its own color. Thus, every opportunity to sit down in some secluded place and attack on the sly is cut down at the roots; there is no way to hide – they will definitely track and find. The time period during which the color trail will last is fifteen seconds, so you can imagine what kind of doomsday awaits us.

In order for the collected frags to https://everumcasino.co.uk/ be counted, the player must resort to an unexpected action – kill himself… If you do not have time to do this and lose your life not on your own, but at the hands of another robot, then all the points you scored will go to him. And here several interesting nuances are added, developing the general concept.

Firstly, the more points scored, the larger the robot, and the easier it is to be noticed by other players – this is an excellent motivation for the enemy to start hunting you. But here a reasonable question arises: why can’t you just commit suicide after each point scored, respawn and continue to score frags without exposing yourself to special risk?? The developers solve this problem elegantly. The player’s suicide is carried out through an explosion, and the larger the robot under control, the stronger the explosion. This means that by “feeding” your robot with collected frags and gathering a sufficient group of opponents around you, you can put an impressive amount into the bank.

Plain Sight wants to force the player to constantly balance between the relatively safe "slow and steady" approach and the intense "all at once" approach. This is reminiscent of the folk card game "point". Stop at eighteen? Or still try to collect twenty-one? But then there is a risk of running into overkill..

Flirting with gravity adds even more excitement and unusualness to the game. Approaching the edge of a particularly large cube, the robot can easily jump over the edge and walk along the perpendicular side, as if nothing had happened. And the fact that these same cubes are on different levels suggests that we will again be able to experience the sensations given to us by the game Prey with its battles in different spatial planes.

The only thing that is causing concern at the moment is the combat system. All battles are based on only two actions: strike and block. This minimalism, in principle, fits well into the overall design, but one should not forget that the process of earning frags should also be enjoyable. In any case, the gameplay of multiplayer action games is a very subtle matter that can only be objectively assessed at the testing stage.

The mood of conservatism in computer games is no longer noticeable. The industry is moving forward at full speed and the established genre of multiplayer shooters is no exception. Glowing robots of changing sizes, leaving multi-colored traces and suicide as a gameplay tool – how pleasant it is to be surprised again and again.