Tweet
While it's generally a good idea to get a new perspective on things whenever you can, Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian Games has taken this quite literally with Hollowpoint. Stepping into a presentation at Paradox's annual convention, I'm prepared for a procedurally-generated platform shooter, and that's enough to pique my interest already. What I'm not prepared for is enemies charging from the scenery itself, bursting out of the background as if they're going to leap through the screen.It's a slightly clumsy term, but Ruffian's creative director Billy Thomson calls Hollowpoint as a "2.5D game" and I can't think of a better way to describe it myself. At first, it looks and plays like a platformer. The player has control over two of those dimensions, sending their futuristic operatives dashing left and right through industrial environments, leaping onto gantries or ducking behind the inevitable and multitudinous crates. The third dimension is reserved for their opponents and while there is some face-to-face combat when (or if) enemies close in, much of the action comes from firing not left and right, but forward, inward. Hollowpoint almost turns from a platformer to a cover shooter and its detailed, busy backgrounds are quickly populated by drones, robots and soldiers.
I say "almost" because those two dimensions still rule the day, operatives moving from cover to cover and making use of previously irrelevant scenery to protect themselves from this new direction. The impression is that you're firing downrange, that the level has transformed into a shooting gallery, but a very angry one that gives as good as it gets.
Read more…
More...