Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.

Overview

Join the Army! See the world! Wage war against interstellar invaders! Can you stop the Bug threat?

Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M., one of the latest releases from Acclaim, is a story about bugs, war, and the gimmick of putting characters into powered armor. As Private Tony Lewis (or Private Myra Lane for you ladies out there), you’ve been chosen to wage war on the bug invaders who have taken control of most of the planet.

Long ago, an alien race fearing overpopulation and extinction fled their homeworld in search of another world -- one prosperous and ready to colonize. You know this species as the Bugs. Landing initially in Siberia, they bred a strike force and overwhelmed the Asian continent, quickly moving on to secure the entire planet. Conventional forces have proven useless, forcing the government to field the Armorines, power armored troops that were originally designed for battle after a nuclear war.

Can you win against the greatest enemy that humanity has ever known?

Gameplay

Armorines is a FPS, or "First Person Shooter." A 3D environment, seen from the viewpoint of your character’s eyes, allows you to move around in a 3D world and interact with it as if it were our own. Normally this kind of game would be relatively boring, save for one thing: firepower. Overwhelming firepower and overkill weapons have become a staple of the FPS genre, as blowing things up proves to be one of the most entertaining things to do.

Armed with three weapons to begin with, you’ve got the formidable task of killing lots of bugs. Normally, on a PC a FPS is controlled with the keyboard and mouse, an ideal combination. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible on the Playstation and it shows, since the gameplay suffers horribly. Movement is awkward and jerky and aiming would be nearly impossible if it weren’t for the autoaim feature of the guns.

Beyond that, once you’ve started the game from a ridiculously simple main menu, all you really need to do is shoot, run, turn, shoot some more, and occasionally press a button. So simple even a trained monkey could play. Gameplay travels through four separate ‘worlds’ -- each comprised of different levels, usually short and blindingly frustrating in their difficulty.

Graphics

Armorine’s graphics are subpar for a Playstation title, with blocky and pixilated graphics. The design of the enemies is relatively interesting, but once you get a good look at them in the game, you’ll probably want to look at the online shots of them instead (high quality renderings, don'tcha know). Reminiscent of the original Quake, it appears that the designers of Armorines weren’t able to design the graphics engine to Year 2000 PSX standards.

Audio

As far as I could tell, this game doesn’t have a soundtrack and it has got even less in the way of sound effects. With that in mind, I can only say that this game doesn’t have very good audio.

Bottom Line

Armorines is a good effort at making a FPS for the PSX platform, but ultimately falls short in several important categories. First, the PSX was never really designed to handle FPS games, as the amount of controls and movement options make it a formidable task. After my look at this game, I must conclude that it really has no good points. Clunky controls, poor graphics, abysmally simple levels, and no soundtrack to speak of combines to make Armorines painful to play.

Ultimately, this game is going on my ‘give away’ list, as I don’t think I’d ever want to play it again. Completely unsuited for the PSX platform, perhaps they’ll think a bit longer before creating Armorines 2.

The time: the near future. The place: Earth. The event: invasion! In a storyline that will have the screenwriters of Starship Troopers reaching for their lawyers, the Earth has come under attack from a race of giant bugs. These bugs have mounted their offensive against the Earth by launching spores from their home planet and are now busy reproducing like crazy and killing anything that stands in their way. Enter the Armorines!

These cybernetically-enhanced troopers are Earth’s last, best line of defence. With special armoured suits that incorporate complex weapon-systems, the Armorines stand the greatest (and probably the only) chance of stopping the hordes of hideous, drooling multi-limbed creatures intent on wiping out humanity. Armorines: Project SWARM is a first-person shoot-’em-up based around the Turok 2 game engine. In fact, think of Turok 2 with better graphics, better weapons and thousands of huge slavering alien insects instead of dinosaurs and you should get the general idea. The game consists of 20 missions which are set in and around five different environments: Siberia, Volcanic Island, South American Jungle, Egypt and the Hive Mothership. Each mission is compartmentalised which means it comprises a number of different levels making this a very large game indeed!

Armorines has been in development since July 1998 at Acclaim Studios London and it’s now looking very sharp. Like Turok 2 there’s a one-player mode and also a deathmatch facility in which you can take on your friends as Armorines and also as the giant bugs themselves! In addition, enhancements have been made to the game engine to allow an all-new two-player split-screen co-operative mode which lets you wade through all the one-player missions accompanied by a friend! As well as three standard weapons built into their suits the Armorines have access to a wide range of other gadgets and weaponry like mines, nail guns, infra-red goggles and a device called a thumper. Most of the weapons have three levels of power and the latter item, when activated, repeatedly pounds on the ground attracting all bugs in the vicinity – which is perfect for getting shot of a few grenades!

Like Turok 2, Armorines isn’t all just wandering around on foot; there are also some on-rails sections where you man the guns on a small monorail train or take the gunnery position in an Aliens-style dropship.

Armorines runs with the Expansion Pak and offers hi-res and widescreen TV modes. At time of writing, Acclaim Studios is putting the finishing touches to the game but even now it’s looking pretty damn impressive, with loads of bugs on screen at any one time. With Perfect Dark now pushed back until at least Easter next year, Armorines will be the only first-person N64 shooter about at Christmas (well, apart from Turok: Rage Wars) so it’s bound to do well!

Imagine. The world's a desolate place. A barren, forgotten, lonely place. A blanket of toxic cloud sweeps across the plains; the howl of car horns has been replaced with that of the wind whistling through once-proud buildings that now lie twisted in still decay. [Sounds like Birmingham – Ed]

The tide of dust and debris stirs in silence. Something lives. Small stones begin to trickle and skip across the soil, and now the larger pebbles rumble and shift to join in the procession. A gleaming black spike pierces the scorched crust and thrusts upwards, scything the murky sky. This is shortly followed by an eye, a dull, soulless eye. The creature crouches, huddled against the ragged horizon it flicks the air with crane-like tentacles before dragging its hulking shell into the burning sun. Pleased with its placement atop a small car, the creature screeches. A wail so terrifyingly pitched that it could shatter bones. Other black bodies scuttle from the rubble, large, small, spiked, pitted; six legged, four legged, they come together. They merge to view their new home, their new world. This is the Earth. Not our Earth now. But a distant Earth, a future Earth, an Earth that only you can save.

That Ends The Pseudo Sci-Fi Bit

Well, there you have it. Doomsday. The end of the world caused by big termites from outer space, yikes. That's the premise for Acclaim's newest first-person blaster, Armorines: Project Swarm. Starting in the frozen wastes of Siberia, but quickly spreading across the face of the planet, a race of worryingly intelligent alien insects has landed on Earth and begun to spawn, and they intend to take over and make the planet their own – by slaughtering the current inhabitants!

Like the fantastically gory Starship Troopers, this game takes its pulp sci-fi nonsense very seriously. A spread of text and visual messages direct the ever expanding plot from remote nuclear ice stations to waging war on the giant alien mothership that soon comes to orbit our lovely green ball. And it's to the game's credit that this works so well. The camp yet oppressive atmosphere and mission-led levels lend a solid grounding to the blasting action.

Help Meeeee!

The levels start off fairly easily, with a simple find-the-switch, open-the-door game structure. But further play unfolds ever more complex mission tasks, like destroying all the eggs in the jungles of South America or finding abandoned war machines to tackle certain spider-like killers. It's a mammoth globe-trotting blast!

As you make quick progress through these differing worlds and environments – blasting sandstorms, freezing snowdrifts, rainforests, volcanic eruptions and the coldness of space – you'll notice an oblique pervading style. As befitting a backdrop of world oblivion, the game has a sinister air wafting about its flesh strewn corridors. These tight, dank subterranean passages give way to grand open spaces towered by glittering temples and fire swept military bunkers. It's just the thing to drag you back, to see just what's around the next corner. And even though at times the screen slows and drags its often lilting carcass from set-piece to set-piece, it's not enough to ruin the gory day.

You Wanna Live Forever?

Oh yeah, then there are the alien head-munchers. The chitinous instruments of human destruction come in various shapes and sizes, changing with their environments to stunning effect. Searching the hi-res (assuming you have an Expansion Pak installed) dust-covered caverns you'll notice a small movement – the timbers shift, but they ain't no timbers! The bulk of a beetle-like beastie hurtles towards you, back-lit by a horizon of lapping flames and twisted metal. Later invaders come in the form of freakish mutated wasps, acid-spewing mantises and slippery scuttling crabs. You'll need a strong stomach to tackle this blaster! Especially when you face the giant spidery thingies with razor pincers that make a horrid "nee, nee, nee!" noise.

No, Armorines is a shoot-'em-up, pure and simple. It's stuffed to the piercing pincers with massive explosions, silly weapons and monstrous drooling bosses the size houses, and despite the Metal Gear Solid-style semblance of an overall plot, it's the rapid-fire extermination of hideous alien mutants that drives the whole game! Armorines is the kind of game that should come complete with a free bandanna and bullet belt.

The sound will put a chill down your spine...

In fact, the sound throughout will put a chill down your spine. With distant clicks and shrill shrieks from dank corridors being backed by a thumping militaristic soundtrack, you'd be forgiven for taking things cautiously.

Bug Off

But all these novel little quirks can't hide what Armorines is at heart, and that's an old-school shooter. At the end of the day, these nuclear-suited death dealers have more in common with the gun-toting arcade riots like Mercs and Contra than the subtleties of Goldeneye or the over-complex mapping of Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. This is something that's made all the clearer by the excellent two-player co-operative mode complete with competition for power-ups and vehicles.

With insects outnumbering humans 200 million to one, it's no wonder we have some inferiority issues with our little exoskeletal friends. But instead of donning the heftiest pair of combat boots you can find for some hardcore bug-stomping, why not just play Armorines when it hits early next year?

In this first-person shooter, Acclaim Studios-London has taken some technological parts of Turok 2 and Forsaken and turned them into a bug-exploding, earth-saving adventure. See, some pods have come down to Earth, and before anyone knows it, there are these huge spider/beetle-things running around eating people and destroying stuff. Time passes, more stuff is ravaged and more aliens come.

Just when all was thought lost, an elite military force comes to the rescue with the help of an advanced armor--hence the name Armorines. Players control either Private Myra Lane or Private Tony Lewis through 20 insect-filled levels (five themed worlds, four levels per world). The bugs are plentiful and quite intelligent--or at least will be, according to Howard Perlman, associate producer at Acclaim. As you'd expect, there are a variety of Starship Troopers-inspired insect types--some bigger and badder than others, as well as huge boss creatures. But in this rather early version of the game, many of these "diabolically clever" insects didn't do much. No doubt they will closer to the game's release.

No first-person shooter would be complete without a four-player mode, and in this respect Armorines is not lacking. The four-player battle arenas are taken from the boss levels of the game, and pit two to four players in an all-out frag-fest. Unlike most multiplayer-enhanced titles however, Armorines also features a co-op mode-the details of which are still unclear. The game will also have a wide range of other multiplayer modes, including a two-player deathmatch with your bug pals, a king of the hill mode where one player defends a specific area, and bomb tag where a player marked "it" with some explosives tries to pass them off to someone else before the timer runs out.

In the tradition of Turok comes Armorines, a futuristic first-person shooter where you must blast bugs to save mankind. You play as one of an elite group of Marines known as Armorines, a squad where each member is protected by an experimental suit of armor against swarming alien bugs hell-bent on colonizing Earth. As the insects hit you, your armor is damaged, leaving you open to more lethal alien attacks.

Like GoldenEye's levels, Armorines' gameplay is mission-based--players will have to follow orders, not just run around and randomly squash bugs, and will earn awards and promotions based on how well they perform in battle and how thoroughly they complete mission objectives. Iguana even promises two playable characters to choose from along with a two-player co-op mode. Armorines is definitely a game to watch for this holiday season, especially if you're a fan of the movie Starship Troopers.

Ac claim is blasting onto the scene later this year with the first-person shooter Armorines. By using the Turok game engine, Iguana is creating a Starship Troopers-style adventure where gamers, loaded with awesome weaponry and protected by a living suit of armor, must clear out stages of bad-ass bugs while adhering to certain mission objectives, such as saving innocents and successfully completing reconnaissance missions. You can also buddy up with a friend for Contra-like action in the two-player co-op mode.