1047 Games has announced that its early access shooter, EMPULSE, has gotten its third major update. It’s “the largest content update” to be shipped for the title throughout its tenure, and the core focus is the addition of Aim Down Sights across all weapons, along with a secondary anti-mech weapon – the Crescendo lightning gun. Check out the trailer showcasing some of the update’s features.
The studio noted that the introduction of Aim Down Sights to EMPULSE has been in the works since the launch of the Experimental Playlist system in Update #2. At the time, an early version of ADS was made available to players to gather feedback. With ADS now being available on all weapons, there are also new red dot sight attachments for the Coda, Percussion, Echo, Modulator, Compressor, Oscillator, and Opus.
The addition of ADS has also necessitated adjustments to crosshair behaviour, sight movement, and field-of-view shifts when a player is completely aimed in. As for the brand-new weapon, the Crescendo is designed around continuous fire, since its damage starts ramping the longer the player holds the trigger. Missing the target will reset this scaling damage effect.
Other major features of the update include Custom Games version 1, which gives players access to a lobby setup, as well as clean interfaces to select maps and modes. Players can also set up custom rules and kick off a lobby without digging through advanced settings, and even tiebreaker rounds can directly inherit the match configuration from the base game options. Players who want to explore maps together and not die can set player health to 0 for infinite health.
Finally, the update has introduced revamps for two maps: Plaza and Harbor. While the core layouts of the maps haven’t been changed, 1047 Games has instead focused on improving both maps’ atmosphere and mood. As a bonus, players on Harbor will even be able to see ships and vehicles moving in the background. In terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, however, the sightlines have been left undisturbed.
The update comes just a couple of weeks after 1047 Games was hit with a round of layoffs. Associate art director Jonathan Kuo confirmed that this was the third round of layoffs to hit the studio, with community specialist Jesse Griefenberg and director of QA Igor Krinitskiy departing.
EMPULSE is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details on its launch state, take a look at our early access review.
