Devastation
Encyclopedia
Devastation is a first-person shooter
video game, developed by Digitalo Studios and released in 2003
.
The game takes place in an impoverished, dystopian near-future Earth, pitting an underground group of rebels against an oppressive, all-powerful mega-corporation. It is an action-oriented first person shooter based on the Unreal Engine 2.0
, that focuses heavily on team-based gameplay in both single-player and multi-player.
The game's protagonist is Flynn Haskell, the leader of a small band of terrorists/resistance-fighters determined to rid the world of Grathius and their evil schemes.Later the player meets up with a female scientist Eve whom Flynn regards as the best helper he could get. Flynn, while exploring once, is captured and put into jail but successfully escapes with another resistance member named Duffy who also helps him in his next destination Urbia, as she is familiar with their resistance leader Tara.
The game's main plot revolves around a new technology developed by Grathius, nano-machinery based cloning, that allows the corporation to resurrect its fallen troops and gives them an unstoppable immortal army. As the game progresses, the player travels from San Francisco to Taiwan to Japan, recruiting new characters into the resistance and capturing Grathius cloning devices for their own personal use.
s such as Counter-Strike
.
The single-player game focuses heavily on team-based gameplay. The player can have a squad of up to several NPCs following them at any given time. Each NPC can be issued one of 4 orders: attack, defend, follow, or stop. NPCs ordered to attack can independently make their way from the beginning to the end of the level without any guidance from the player, although they will stop moving and wait for the player to catch up if they get too far ahead of the player. In the game's initial levels, the game ends if any NPC squadmate is killed, but squadmate health regenerates fairly quickly to prevent this aspect of gameplay from being too frustrating.
The first 1/3 of the game features linear levels, with the player's goal being to make it from the start of the level to the end. About 1/3 of the way into the game, the player acquires a cloning machine that allows them and their squad members to respawn from death an infinite number of times. At this point, the only way to "lose" the game is to allow the enemy to capture and destroy the player's cloning machine. All levels from this point on are based on a capture the flag
style of gameplay, with the rebel and Grathius teams starting on opposite sides of a non-linear level, each one tasked with capturing the other's cloning device.
Devastation also features 28 different weapons, divided into 8 categories: melee, pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, squad support weapons, and miscellaneous weapons.
of enemy laser fence
s, making it possible to destroy the enemy spawn point, effectively defeating the enemy team.
Add-on Pack that the development team had previously been building. Deciding to continue to use the Unreal Engine, work began on a what would become Devastation in 2000. As development progressed the engine received numerous upgrades, by its release using a modified version of the engine used in Unreal Tournament 2003
. Additions included changes to the engines skeletal system, work on a new particle and special effects system called OFX, and the introduction of the MathEngine's Karma Physics.
Artistically the game is inspired by authors like William Gibson
, Ray Bradbury
, and George Orwell
, as well as film directors such as Terry Gilliam
, Jim Jarmusch
, Tom Tykwer
, Darren Aronofsky
, Alex Proyas
, David Fincher
, and Christopher Nolan
. The game also takes inspiration from real locations and environments, with lead designer Barry L. Gibbs commenting that "I feel that I can be, and have often been, influenced by simply walking out my front door, or just by driving down the street. When I see something that inspires me, I pull over and snap a photo." Work on the game was completed by the spring of 2003, and was it was finally released in North America
on March 25, 2003.
Soon after the games release Ryan C. Gordon
was contracted to port both the games dedicated server and game client to Linux
, with the first beta for the Linux client being released on May 1, 2003. Unfortunately due to the closure of Digitalo Studios, work on the port ceased in the summer of 2003. loki installers for linux gamers
later took the beta code and created a full game installer, along with a list of the ports three known bugs.
and a 64 on MobyGames
. While the games graphics, detailed urban environments, sound effects, and wide arsenal of weaponry were praised, it was criticized for having poor artificial intelligence
, derivative storyline and game aspects, mediocre voice acting
, and a flaky physics system. The game's Linux port also received fairly mixed reviews, earning a four out of five star rating from The Linux Game Tome
, while at the same time receiving some noticeably negative user comments.
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
video game, developed by Digitalo Studios and released in 2003
2003 in video gaming
-Events:*February 27 — Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts Yu Suzuki of Sega to the AIAS Hall of Fame....
.
The game takes place in an impoverished, dystopian near-future Earth, pitting an underground group of rebels against an oppressive, all-powerful mega-corporation. It is an action-oriented first person shooter based on the Unreal Engine 2.0
Unreal Engine
The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first illustrated in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of other genres, including stealth, MMORPGs and RPGs...
, that focuses heavily on team-based gameplay in both single-player and multi-player.
Storyline
The year is 2075. Instead of a bright and peaceful future, human civilization is in a state of polluted, dilapidated ruin akin to post-World War II Europe. A corrupt mega-corporation, Grathius Inc., controls the world by force, using pacification squads to kill any who oppose them.The game's protagonist is Flynn Haskell, the leader of a small band of terrorists/resistance-fighters determined to rid the world of Grathius and their evil schemes.Later the player meets up with a female scientist Eve whom Flynn regards as the best helper he could get. Flynn, while exploring once, is captured and put into jail but successfully escapes with another resistance member named Duffy who also helps him in his next destination Urbia, as she is familiar with their resistance leader Tara.
The game's main plot revolves around a new technology developed by Grathius, nano-machinery based cloning, that allows the corporation to resurrect its fallen troops and gives them an unstoppable immortal army. As the game progresses, the player travels from San Francisco to Taiwan to Japan, recruiting new characters into the resistance and capturing Grathius cloning devices for their own personal use.
Gameplay
Devastation features standard first-person shooter gameplay, comparable to that of Unreal 2, as the game is based on Unreal 2's game engine. Notably, the game can be played in either "arcade" or "tactical" mode. Arcade mode features fast-paced action similar to that of many first person shooters, while tactical mode features slower gameplay more akin to tactical shooterTactical shooter
A tactical shooter is a subgenre of shooter game that includes both first-person shooters and third-person shooters. These games typically simulate realistic combat, thus making tactics and caution more important than quick reflexes in other action games...
s such as Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe...
.
The single-player game focuses heavily on team-based gameplay. The player can have a squad of up to several NPCs following them at any given time. Each NPC can be issued one of 4 orders: attack, defend, follow, or stop. NPCs ordered to attack can independently make their way from the beginning to the end of the level without any guidance from the player, although they will stop moving and wait for the player to catch up if they get too far ahead of the player. In the game's initial levels, the game ends if any NPC squadmate is killed, but squadmate health regenerates fairly quickly to prevent this aspect of gameplay from being too frustrating.
The first 1/3 of the game features linear levels, with the player's goal being to make it from the start of the level to the end. About 1/3 of the way into the game, the player acquires a cloning machine that allows them and their squad members to respawn from death an infinite number of times. At this point, the only way to "lose" the game is to allow the enemy to capture and destroy the player's cloning machine. All levels from this point on are based on a capture the flag
Capture the flag
Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base...
style of gameplay, with the rebel and Grathius teams starting on opposite sides of a non-linear level, each one tasked with capturing the other's cloning device.
Devastation also features 28 different weapons, divided into 8 categories: melee, pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, squad support weapons, and miscellaneous weapons.
Streetwar
Deathmatch gametype, kill as many enemies as possible in the time limit or reach the kill limit before anyone else.Capture The Flag
The Resistance and Conformists teams go head-to-head to take each other's flag and return them, more than one flag per team can be added to a map.Territories
The objective in the Territories mode is to retrieve security codes from a machine. These codes will allow the hackingHacking
Hacking may refer to:* Computer hacking, including the following types of activity:** Hacker , activity within the computer programmer subculture** Hacker , to access computer networks, legally or otherwise...
of enemy laser fence
Laser fence
A laser fence is a mechanism to detect objects passing the line of sight between the laser source and the detector. Stronger lasers can potentially be used to injure someone or something passing the laser beam ....
s, making it possible to destroy the enemy spawn point, effectively defeating the enemy team.
Development
Work began soon after the cancellation of an Unreal TournamentUnreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is a futuristic first-person shooter video game co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It was published in 1999 by GT Interactive. Retrospectively, the game has also been referred to as UT99 or UT Classic to differentiate it from its numbered sequels...
Add-on Pack that the development team had previously been building. Deciding to continue to use the Unreal Engine, work began on a what would become Devastation in 2000. As development progressed the engine received numerous upgrades, by its release using a modified version of the engine used in Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003 or UT2003 is a first-person shooter video game designed mainly for multiplayer gaming. The game is part of the Unreal franchise's series of games, and is a sequel to Unreal Tournament ....
. Additions included changes to the engines skeletal system, work on a new particle and special effects system called OFX, and the introduction of the MathEngine's Karma Physics.
Artistically the game is inspired by authors like William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
, Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, and George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, as well as film directors such as Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
, Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch
James R. "Jim" Jarmusch is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer. Jarmusch has been a major proponent of independent cinema, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.-Early life:...
, Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer is a German film director, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing Run Lola Run , Heaven , Perfume: The Story of a Murderer , and The International ....
, Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. He attended Harvard University to study film theory and the American Film Institute to study both live-action and animation filmmaking...
, Alex Proyas
Alex Proyas
Alexander "Alex" Proyas is a Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for directing such films as The Crow, Dark City, I, Robot and Knowing. He is known for employing a stylish photographic techniques in his films, with dark overtones usually in a post-apocalyptic...
, David Fincher
David Fincher
David Andrew Leo Fincher is an American film and music video director. Known for his dark and stylish thrillers, such as Seven , The Game , Fight Club , Panic Room , and Zodiac , Fincher received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for his 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and...
, and Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer.He received serious notice after his second feature Memento , which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him,...
. The game also takes inspiration from real locations and environments, with lead designer Barry L. Gibbs commenting that "I feel that I can be, and have often been, influenced by simply walking out my front door, or just by driving down the street. When I see something that inspires me, I pull over and snap a photo." Work on the game was completed by the spring of 2003, and was it was finally released in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
on March 25, 2003.
Soon after the games release Ryan C. Gordon
Ryan C. Gordon
Ryan C. Gordon is a former Loki Software employee who is now responsible for icculus.org, which hosts many Loki Software projects as well as several new projects created by himself and others...
was contracted to port both the games dedicated server and game client to Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, with the first beta for the Linux client being released on May 1, 2003. Unfortunately due to the closure of Digitalo Studios, work on the port ceased in the summer of 2003. loki installers for linux gamers
Loki installers for linux gamers
linux installers for linux gamers is a website that supplies and builds game installers for Linux using the Loki and Mojo setup tools....
later took the beta code and created a full game installer, along with a list of the ports three known bugs.
Reception
Devastation received a mixed reception from critics, scoring only 64.50% on Game RankingsGame Rankings
GameRankings is a website that collects review scores from both offline and online sources to give an average rating. It indexes over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 games.GameRankings is owned by CBS Interactive...
and a 64 on MobyGames
MobyGames
-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...
. While the games graphics, detailed urban environments, sound effects, and wide arsenal of weaponry were praised, it was criticized for having poor artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, derivative storyline and game aspects, mediocre voice acting
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
, and a flaky physics system. The game's Linux port also received fairly mixed reviews, earning a four out of five star rating from The Linux Game Tome
The Linux Game Tome
The Linux Game Tome is a website which provides a comprehensive list of games for Linux.- History :The site was started by Tessa Lau in 1995...
, while at the same time receiving some noticeably negative user comments.
External links
- Devastation official website at Archive.org
- Digitalo at Archive.org