Wanderer Seth – Metal Gear Survive

Agile, brutal and not like most wandering crystal zombies, Wanderer Seth seemed imposing at first. That is, until his poor AI and predictable patterns made it all too easy to topple him. Simply build some turrets, run away and repeat. It was both underwhelming and incredibly hilarious.

The game doesn’t waste time getting started. You’re immediately dropped into the power armor of a member of the Resistance, a group of tight-knit humans led by The Colonel (yes, most of the cast is a proper noun). Who are they resisting? The Mothergunship, who is leading an alien invasion of Earth. The main plot is pretty throwaway, to be honest. It’s most there to give you an excuse to get on alien ships and blow any hundreds of nasty robots.

What the plot and characters do offer, however, is a way to poke fun at video game tropes and the cheesy voice acting and video game humor is both surprisingly self-aware – there’s a particularly annoying anthropomorphic frog who clearly there at the expense of Star Fox’s Slippy toad – and fairly funny, at least most of the time. Some jokes land better than others – I never like being told how much I suck after failing a mission, personally, and some of the video game humor is too cute for its own good – but The Colonel and the crew provide some entertaining background chatter as you murder your way across various aliens ships.

"The core gameplay loop is pretty simple. You choose either a story or side mission – story missions advance the plot, while side missions give you parts for crafting guns – then you’re dropped into a series of randomly generated rooms where you’ll fight through hordes of alien robots."

The core gameplay loop is pretty simple. You choose either a story or side mission – story missions advance the plot, while side missions give you parts for crafting guns – then you’re dropped into a series of randomly generated rooms where you’ll fight through hordes of alien robots, gaining experience that can be used to upgrade your power suit and cold hard cash that you can spend on gun parts – more on that later. Like any good rogue-like, this system means that no two levels are ever the same, which gives the game an air of excitement and replayability it wouldn’t otherwise have.

There are some flaws with the game’s level design, however. While the overall layout of a mission will never be the same, the layout of specific rooms never changes, which means things will start to look repetitive after a while. In addition, the levels only come in three visuals style, so things can get very familiar very quickly. The game compensates by making sure the order of the rooms is different every time, and that the contents of any individual room, from the enemies spawned within it to the rewards they’ll drop, change, too.

There are also challenge rooms for you to enter, which feature special twists like a jump pad, a poisoned floor, or require you to survive for a certain amount of time, and offer enhanced rewards. The opportunity for more stuff is good because when you die – and you will, a lot – you’ll lose not only the items you chose to bring with you, but anything you may have found or purchased in that level, too, aside from experience. Die enough, and you might find yourself poorly equipped to attempt another run. That’s when side missions start to look really appealing.

"You can keep things simple and efficient by rolling with a modified machine gun that shoots really fast, but you can also do something insane, like making a twelve part gun that features a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and a railgun. And did I mention you can dual-wield?"

That’s where the ability to build your own utterly ridiculous weapons comes in. Mothergunship runs at a very fast pace (think DOOM or Quake) and age-old techniques like strafing are essential, but you only start off with your absurdly powerful hydraulic fists and a triple jump (which can be upgraded up to 40 jumps because staying on the ground is for losers). It’s up to you to build your own weapons. You do this with parts, which can be carried into a level with you or purchased at in-mission stores with cash dropped by enemies.

You have three core parts at your disposal: connecting parts allow you to mount other parts to them, modifiers alter the various aspects of your gun, and barrels determine what kind of gun it is. You can build and alter your guns at crafting stations mid-mission, and the level of freedom available is impressive. You can keep things simple and efficient by rolling with a modified machine gun that shoots really fast, but you can also do something insane, like making a twelve part gun that features a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and a railgun. And did I mention you can dual-wield? Imagine one of these bad boys – or one of your own creation – on each arm. Those robots don’t stand a chance.

The best part is that, just when you think you can’t make your guns any more ridiculous, you’ll find a part or rotate a piece of the weapon in such a way that will allow you to add to it. This allows you to make some pretty absurd guns that add fun effects, like pushback or gravity, forcing you to switch up your movement styles. The catch is that the more parts you add to a gun, the more ammo it consumes to fire. You can’t run out of ammo in Mothergunship – it’s a renewable resource for each weapon that recharges fairly quickly – but there’s nothing worse than waiting for your gun to recharge while you’re being swarmed by enemies.

" Mothergunship’s sound design is great, but my game had a bug that prevented me from ever hearing all of it at once. Everything worked fine when I was standing still, but the audio started skipping badly whenever I moved."

If there’s one disappointing thing about the weapons system it’s that the game doesn’t give you many opportunities to experiment outside of your HQ’s firing range. You’ll learn what works together fairly quickly, but the urge to experiment inside a mission is small since the costs of dying are so high. Another shortcoming is that missions can start to feel fairly samey after a while, despite Grip Digital’s clear attempts to keep things fresh. The endgame helps alleviate this, as it features a number of special missions that challenge you to run through them without dying, but it’s easy to become bored during long play sessions, especially if you’re having trouble progressing.

The game also suffers from a number of bugs. Enemies will sometimes get stuck in the environments, unable to move but perfectly able to attack. That, however, is a minor issue compared to the problems I had with the game’s audio. Mothergunship’s sound design is great, but my game had a bug that prevented me from ever hearing all of it at once. Everything worked fine when I was standing still, but the audio started skipping badly whenever I moved. I managed to fix this by turning the effects volume off completely in the main menu, but that meant that I couldn’t hear sound effects from enemies, my character walking, or what it sounded like when things took damage. This error persists despite numerous efforts to correct it on my part, and as of this writing, it still hasn’t been patched. It’s a huge flaw in an otherwise enjoying game.

When Mothergunship is firing from both (or all) its barrels, it’s a very good time. The action is fast and enjoyable and the gun crafting system is an absolute joy to use. Unfortunately, however, the game can be repetitive and frustrating in long stretches – this is especially true when you fail and lose good gun parts – and the bugs I experienced detracted from the game in meaningful ways. With some fixes, changes, and additional content, Mothergunship could be something special. Right now, it’s merely competent. It’s a shame, too. There’s a great core here; it just needs a little love, and maybe a few extra parts.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

We have been waiting a while to know when Mothergunship, the roguelike bullet-hell first-person shooter, will be releasing. The release date for the game has now been revealed and you won’t have to wait much longer to get your hands on the game. Along with the announcement of the release date, a brand new gameplay trailer has also been revealed.

The game is set to release on July 17, which is just a few weeks away. This means that players will soon be able to create their own weapons and then try these out in different environments. The new trailer also gives us a glimpse of the gameplay and the action looks fast-paced, chaotic, and a lot of fun. The trailer also shows off some of the amazing kinds of weapons that players will be able to create and use in the game.

You can check out the new trailer below. Mothergunship is set to release for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

The wait for Mothergunship, developed by Grip Digital and Terrible Posture Games (of Tower of Guns fame), has been more than a little long at this point. It’s still scheduled for a 2018 release and we have received a demo showcasing the depth of gun-crafting available. However, we’re interested to see how the rogue-like bullet-hell first person shooter will perform on consoles like the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

To learn more, GamingBolt reached out to Grip Digital’s marketing and PR manager George Mamakos about the resolution and frame rate of both versions. He responded that, “The resolution on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X versions will be Full HD and the frame rate will be from 60 to 30 fps. We are going to continue supporting the game after its launch with free content updates and improvements, so the plan is to increase the quality of the performance and resolution on all platforms.”

The “free content updates” part has us especially interested. Mothergunship will see players entering various randomized enemy ships to eventually defeat an invading armada. The ability to customize one’s arsenal to an insane degree while also playing with friends in co-op should help extend the game’s lifespan. What more could the developers add on top? Hopefully more information will be offered after Mothergunship releases for PS4, Xbox One and PC so stay tuned.

Call of Duty 2018

A new Call of Duty will be releasing this year. Surprise, surprise. Given how we know Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have had their turn, Activision would confirm that Treyarch is up next. Even more surprises! Now, the rumours that this may be Call of Duty: Black Ops 4? Even less surprising but it would be interesting to see where the franchise goes, especially given the augmented reality/mind-jacking mess that was Black Ops 3.

GamingBolt spoke to game director Joe Mirabello about Mothergunship, how it’s different from the studio’s previous efforts and what players’ expectations should be.

"Each mission is a fight through a (usually) randomly composited ship and is designed to be played in a single session, but there’s an overarching campaign to work through."

Tower of Guns was a very old-school FPS while Mothergunship is more of a bullet hell title with FPS elements. What motivated this shift to SHMUP elements?

Tower of Guns actually had quite a bit of the bullet-hell aspect too. That game was essentially a pure prototype for the cocktail of mobility and firepower that we’re refining for Mothergunship.

How heavy-handed is the campaign in Mothergunship, especially compared to Tower of Guns?

In Tower of Guns the story was randomly selected from a pool of silly stories. Mothergunship does away with that in favor of a single, unified, lore, but Mothergunship is still far from a serious game—it’s over the top and ludicrous and the lore reflects that. This is a game where we let the player build massive guns with 20 laser barrels on them, after all. It wouldn’t make sense to take ourselves too seriously.

What can you tell us about the randomized levels and enemies? Is it unique for each playthrough?

The first thing I should clarify is that Mothergunship isn’t “run based” as much as it’s “mission based”. Each mission is a fight through a (usually) randomly composited ship and is designed to be played in a single session, but there’s an overarching campaign to work through. The player is working their way through these missions in an effort to reach the final ship, the Mothergunship itself. I say “usually” random, because sometimes these missions can be locked with a certain sequence of rooms—the demo/first mission is a perfect example of this, as we introduce various elements to the player.

Anyway, each mission is composited together out of a sequence of handmade shells rooms, with several layers of randomized content over top. The result is something that is surprising and replayable, but avoids the feeling of “algorithmic fatigue” that is common to a lot of randomly generated games.

"It’s very important to me to make sure that Mothergunship limits the amount of times it tells the player “no”."

How many ships will players fight through before ultimately taking on the Mothergunship? Will there be different kinds of challenges to complete for rewards?

The length of the campaign is going to be something we’re tuning all throughout production, but it’s definitely not something designed to be played in a single sitting in its entirety, unlike Tower of Guns. As for challenges, the answer is yes. But we’re not talking too much about those just yet.

What kinds of enemies can we expect? Will there be any bosses that cover the entire screen?

Enemy variety was one of the things people were most critical of in Tower of Guns, so we’re taking great pains to make sure that more kinds of enemies appear more often. That said, quite a few familiar enemies (and friends) will be making appearances in Mothergunship too. Mothergunship is after all, at its heart, a complete iteration on all the things that we learned from building Tower of Guns.

How does the crafting system work in Mothergunship? Will players be running around collecting resources and what ultimately determines the kinds of weapons you can equip?

It’s very important to me to make sure that Mothergunship limits the amount of times it tells the player “no”. So we let them build almost anything, provided they can find the right pieces. However, every time they add another piece to their guns, the gun costs a little more “energy” to fire. They can build a 30 barrel gun if they want, but they might only be able to fire it once before recharging. This is where upgrading your player abilities becomes crucial, as that once-unfeasible gun may become much more reasonable later in the game.

What other abilities can players unlock and utilize in Mothergunship?

We’re not talking (yet) about the other things the players can unlock in Mothergunship, ask again in a few months.

"Exclusives always help sell systems, that’s true. Microsoft knows that, but I’m sure they also have calculated the cost/benefits of this release extensively."

How does co-op change the experience? How will players be able to “participate with the community” for beating the Mothergunship?

Heh, this is also something we’re holding off for a little longer before we talk more about. We’re excited about it though.

Why did you choose Unreal Engine and how has it helped you best realize the game’s vision?

I’ve been using Unreal for almost a decade now, starting with early UE3.0 builds. When you have been using an engine that long, your own abilities evolve around the unique benefits of the engine. Unreal Engine 4 is ridiculously powerful, and no other engine would allow for the look and feel we’re aiming for.

When can we expect Mothergunship to release?

We’re not talking about release dates quite yet. We only just announced a few weeks ago!

The Xbox Scorpio feels like a new gen for Microsoft, despite the company is hell bent on making it mid-gen refresh. There is a massive increment in memory and GPU TFLOPS, do you think the lack of exclusives will hurt the Scorpio given that developers need to maintain parity with the X1?

Exclusives always help sell systems, that’s true. Microsoft knows that, but I’m sure they also have calculated the cost/benefits of this release extensively. The “parity game” isn’t a new one though. Between opposing consoles there are often requirements that games have certain parity—original Xbox developers had to reconcile their gameplay with that on the PS2, PS3 and the 360 had their differences, PS4 and XB1 do as well. The fact that this is intra-brand and mid generation doesn’t mean it isn’t something developers aren’t used to. Additionally, engines allow for a lot more scalability these days, making the logistics of this branching slightly less painful.

"I love Nintendo and would love to see Mothergunship on a Nintendo system, but, quite honestly, I’m not sure yet how much of a fit the Switch is yet."

Sony has gone for a moderate upgrade with the PS4 Pro and instead resorting to methods such as 4K checkerboard rendering. Do you think that Sony should have gone ahead and released a more powerful mid-gen refresh just like the Scorpio?

That’s an interesting question and not one I’m sure I’m qualified to answer…but I will say that “Gone ahead and released” is easier said than done, especially if Sony has placed their eggs more in either the VR basket or is already more invested in “beyond 2017” stuff. Given their position, Sony might not see the need for a major mid-gen refresh the same way Microsoft does. I think the consumers will tell them if that was wise move or not.

There is already some speculation among games analyst and gamers alike about the PS5 and how it will feature more than 10tflops. Regardless of whatever hardware upgrade feature, do you think the next cycle will finally bring us close to photorealism?

Closer? Sure. We’re always moving closer. People thought that we had “hit” photorealism with the 360 generation. And then again with the Xb1 generation. But “photorealism” is a moving target that rushes away from you as fast as you run toward it. We’re not even “there” with offline rendering yet in film. In games, we’re getting environments much closer, and a better GPU helps that tremendously (have a look at Quixel Megascans for some teasers of the future), and we’ve made great strides on faces too (particularly on subsurface skin shading and hair shaders), but now we’re going to start realizing just how limited our animation tools are, and how stiff and unrealistic those faces are. Or how choppy our shadows look or how ghostly the screen space-AO feels in motion. There’s always room for improvement.

What kind of updates will Mothergunship have on Pro? Is 4K/60fps possible?

Not sure yet. 4k/60fps sounds glorious, but it really depends on how crazy we want the situations the player ends up in to get.

Just wanted to close off this interview with a question on Nintendo Switch. Nintendo aren’t going after the PS4 or Xbox One. They apparently already have the biggest game of all time in the form of Breath of the Wild but as a studio that pushes technology, what is your take on its processing hardware…do you think your studio has a future on it? If not, why?

On Switch? I love Nintendo and would love to see Mothergunship on a Nintendo system, but, quite honestly, I’m not sure yet how much of a fit the Switch is yet. That will be something we explore in the future.

Mothergunship is a fast paced first person shooter in which you face off against aliens and some of the biggest bosses you may have faced in this genre. One look at Mothergunship and you will realize how similar it looks to 2016’s DOOM which means that a “locked” 60fps is possibly a most wanted feature.

We got in touch with Joe Mirabello who is the game Game Director, and given the game is coming out on the PS4 we asked him whether the game will run at 4K and 60fps on the PS4 Pro. Mirabello stated they are not sure yet whether they will be able to achieve that but mentioned that such a performance parameters sounds “glorious” for the game. “Not sure yet. 4k/60fps sounds glorious, but it really depends on how crazy we want the situations the player ends up in to get,” he said to GamingBolt. Although, a full native 4K resolution may be out of the picture given the game seems to be using a lot of particle and post processing effects, a checkerboard 4K resolution might be a possible solution. Let’s hope the dev manages to pull this off.

Mirabello also commented on whether a Switch version is a possibility or not. “I love Nintendo and would love to see Mothergunship on a Nintendo system, but, quite honestly, I’m not sure yet how much of a fit the Switch is yet. That will be something we explore in the future,” he stated.

Thoughts on Mirabello’s statements? Let us know below in the comments section. Also, check out the game’s announcement teaser below.

Although the Xbox One Scorpio and PS4 Pro may end up extending the span of this generation by a few years, the fact of the matter remains that a proper next generation PlayStation 5 (and, who knows, a next generation Xbox as well- in spite of Microsoft’s claims to the contrary) will end up coming eventually.

If it does- what can we expect from it? 10 TFLOPs GPUs? Full photorealism in graphics? That was the question we asked Jakub Mikyska of grip-digital, the developers of Mothergunship. His response? Photorealism is, in the end, a moving target- a potential PS5 may bring us closer to it than we ever have been before, but actually hitting it is no guarantee.

“Closer? Sure. We’re always moving closer,” he said. “People thought that we had “hit” photorealism with the 360 generation. And then again with the Xbox One generation. But “photorealism” is a moving target that rushes away from you as fast as you run toward it. We’re not even “there” with offline rendering yet in film. In games, we’re getting environments much closer, and a better GPU helps that tremendously (have a look at Quixel Megascans for some teasers of the future), and we’ve made great strides on faces too (particularly on subsurface skin shading and hair shaders), but now we’re going to start realizing just how limited our animation tools are, and how stiff and unrealistic those faces are..or how choppy our shadows look or how ghostly the screenspace-AO feels in motion. There’s always room for improvement.”

Certainly he is right- there was definitely a time when people thought returns on graphics had hit a plateau back with the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube- but as we all know, graphics have continued to greatly advance since nonetheless. What kind of jumps in visual fidelity are brought to the table by the hypothetical PS5 remains to be seen- but we can hope they will be as impressive as every new generation of graphics tech has been so far.

The Xbox One Scorpio will be an incredibly powerful console– but ultimately, it is still a part of the existing Xbox One ecosystem, and it will be tied inextricably to the base Xbox One console. This is reflected in everything about the Scorpio’s design, and in the fact that it will have no exclusives- all of its games must run on the base Xbox One, too?

Given this, does the Scorpio actually stand a chance of appealing to a market the original Xbox One already failed to appeal to, much? Will the lack of exclusives end up hurting the system? When we got the chance to talk to Jakub Mikyska of grip-digital, the folks behind Mothergunship, we asked him if he thought the lack of exclusives may hurt the system’s chances on the market.

“Exclusives always help sell systems, that’s true,” Mikyska mused. “Microsoft knows that, but I’m sure they also have calculated the cost/benefits of this release extensively. The “parity game” isn’t a new one though. Between opposing consoles there are often requirements that games have certain parity—original Xbox developers had to reconcile their gameplay with that on the PS2, PS3 and the 360 had their differences, PS4 and XB1 do as well. The fact that this is intra-brand and mid generation doesn’t mean it isn’t something developers aren’t used to. Additionally, engines allow for a lot more scalability these days, making the logistics of this branching slightly less painful.”

Microsoft’s unique UWP scalability means that developing for the Scorpio should be rather easy and trivial for the developers in the end, especially given the massive gains in performance and graphics that they will see. Still, I imagine that if Scorpio had some exclusive games of its own, Microsoft may have sold more of it than they will now, where it is just a higher priced Xbox for those who own a 4KTV.

Terrible Posture Games and Grip Digital have today announced a brand new bullet hell game for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC- Mothergunship (which, the name should really give the genre of the game away, if you think about it).

While the game will be your typical bullet hell game, pitting you against waves upon waves of enemies to take on, you are also going to get the game’s gun crafting system, which the developers describe as the ‘one of the most modular gun crafting systems ever in a game’. So there’s that to look forward to, too.

You can check out the announcement teaser trailer for the game for yourself below- does this sound like the kind of game that you would be interested in picking up for yourself? Let us know in the comments section, and make sure to stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage and information on the game.