We are all eagerly awaiting the release of Unreal Tournament 2007, while we wait we can get a nice preview of what’s yet to come from some of the games developed on the new Unreal3 engine. One such game is RoboBlitz, which I have for review today. In my humble opinion, one word can really sum up this game and that word is ‘Beautiful’. RoboBlitz not only utilizes the new technology of the Unreal3 engine but also features Aegia PhysX software based physics to add an extra dimension of game play. Yes it uses PhysX but don’t worry, you don’t need a separate card to play RoboBlitz. I found RoboBlitz to be a lot of fun and very addictive, and a game with really no faults. So read on to learn a lot more about RoboBlitz, and check out all the screen shots and in game movies I have for you…
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: Naked Sky Entertainment
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
(Just so you don’t skip this section, below the specs and features are a couple questions I got to ask Naked Sky Entertainment about using the new Unreal3 and the PhysX engines. -D )
RoboBlitz is a humorous, physics-based action game full of inventive gizmos,weapons, characters, and environments. Players take on the role of Blitz, a multi-talented robot who must activate an aging space cannon to save his world from a band of maladjusted space pirates.
– 19 levels of puzzle-solving and high-intensity action, set in 7 unique environments
– Gameplay entirely driven by physics
– Advanced robot simulation and control theory
– Powered by Unreal Engine 3
– Customized Unreal Engine 3 Editor Included in the PC version
– Available in 8 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, and Chinese
– Entire game under 50MB via Xbox Live Arcade
Coming soon to the PC and Xbox 360 Live Arcade
Platform: Xbox 360 Live Arcade and PC
Category: Action
Developer/Publisher: Naked Sky Entertainment
Release: Fall 2006/ Available Now
One of the first games available using the Unreal Engine 3, RoboBlitz displays never before seen ProFX procedural texture generation and highly creative gameplay. Gamers will have to use both their brain lobes to come up with logical and creative solutions to the many puzzles and challenges throughout the game.
RoboBlitz is a humorous, physics-based action game full of inventive gizmos, weapons, characters, and environments.
Players take on the role of Blitz, a multi-talented robot who must activate an aging space cannon to save his world from a band of maladjusted space pirates.
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Key Features:
* 19 levels of puzzle-solving and high-intensity action
* Gameplay entirely driven by physics
* Advanced robot simulation and control theory
* Powered by Unreal Engine 3
* Customized Unreal Engine 3 Editor Included in the PC version
* Available in: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese
* Entire game under 50MB via Live Arcade
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Quick Q&A With Naked Sky
DSM: How was it to work with the new Unreal 3 engine?
NakedSky: We were some of the first people to start working with UE3, so it was really exciting. We got to watch the engine get developed (and helped a little) and really have time to explore the inner workings. We have to make quite a few changes to get the engine to handle a game as physics based as ours, and we also had a bit of modification work to do to make sure that everything could fit under 50 MB. The engine is just graphically beautiful, and the guys at Epic are very friendly and very good at what they do, so on the whole it was a very positive experience.
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DSM: What differences did you find compared to the original Unreal engine?
NakedSky: From a modders point of view, there are several important differences. The first is just that per pixel shading was designed into the engine at a very low level, so theres a lot of control over lighting, shadowing and materials, and a lot of new features to learn. The next major difference is that BSP is much less important than it used to be, because RoboBlitz doesnt use any zoning (as youll quickly notice if you open up the editor). On top of this, BSP is now additive by default instead of subtractive, so youre actually building your level in empty space instead of carving it out of a solid mass.
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DSM: Just how does the Aegia PhysX engine fit into all this as it doesn’t seem to (actually) need an Aegia PhysX card to play, and what enhancements are available with the use of a PhysX card?
NakedSky: The Ageia PhysX software is actually a complete physics simulation solution, even without a PhysX card. We used Ageia for all our low level physics support, and then built our custom robot control on top of that. We had to do some heavy modification of the Unreal Engine to support all that.
At this time, RoboBlitz doesnt actually support any performance enhancements from the PhysX card.
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A Better Look at Things
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Most of the screenshots will be contained in this section, with a couple in the next section. One note is that I’ve only scaled down the screenshots to 1024×768 from the 2048×1024 original resolution, making them any smaller just doesn’t do the game justice.
When you first click on the RoboBlitz icon on your desktop you are greeted with the game optimizing everything for your system, then you get to see the title splash screen.
The next screen you see is the ‘Power by Unreal Technology’ screen.
Then to the main menu, the main menu is sparse with not many options and not much to look at, easy to figure out though.
Clicking ‘Help and Options’ opens another larger menu with all the options that can be changed or adjusted.
Roboblitz is available in many languages.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
You have the option to use a joystick or gamepad as well with RoboBlitz, the main keys are also configurable.
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If you click the ‘How to Play’ option you get a very brief summary of the game.
Looking at ‘Game Options’, the only options you will find is to enable hints of not.
The ‘Audio Options’ tab also doesn’t give much in the way of changes, only music volume and sound effects volumes can be changed.
The Video Options gives you a few more choices in case your system can’t handle the settings.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
The next section of the Main Menu would be the Input Options, this is where you can change the camera mode, mouse sensitivity and other gameplay settings.
One thing nice is the ability to save games, and have it done automatically for you at certain points like starting a new section and finishing one. Back at the menu if you pick ‘Continue Game’ you can choose which one to load, you also have the ability to have a couple different games going at the same time, or different people playing and saving.
Ok, well enough of that. Let’s get into the game screenshots. First let’s take a closer look at Blitz, the star of the show. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Blitz is a robot. In the beginning of the game you are introduced to Blitz, and you learn what he can do through a short tutorial, after this tutorial you receive your first weapon which is a stun gun of sorts, more of an EMP gun. The following pictures are more to show you the quality of the game, and introduce you to blitz. So here is Blitz armed with his stun gun:
Of course you have hands as well, or claws I guess they would be called. Notice the smooth texturing of the metal of Blitzs’ body.
Here’s a close up of Blitzs’ arm and hand. There are some jagged edges but not much really, notice the lighting effect how it’s brighter on the top and then comes to black as it reached the bottom of his arm where there would be no light reaching it.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
Most of the gameplay is done with you looking at the back of Blitz, the main reason for this is because this is where his health and energy meters are. The green bar on the left is his health, while the blue bar is his energy. You need energy to fir your weapons and each weapon drains a different amount of energy. Energy will replenish itself slowly, or you can pick up power ups during the game.
Here are a series of five shots of Blitz from various angles so you can check out the details and work that went into creating him. Very nice work indeed.
Here are two shots from different angles essentially in the same spot though, just the camera angle moved. Look how the lighting changes in perspective and how the shadows fall naturally.
A lot of detail and hard work went into making RoboBlitz, it could easily sell for much more than it does. Big props got out to Naked Sky for all their hard work in creating such a beautiful game.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
As I mentioned earlier you can have various weapons, these are essentially purchased by Upgradium which you collect while playing the game. Purchase isn’t exactly the right word, according to the game you need the Upgradium to make the weapons, but it is essentially the same. A certain cost for a certain item. Once you have the Upgradium you can go to the machine located in the workshop and build your weapon with the Upgradium. Also in the workshop you will meet Karl who is another robot who helps you through the game by giving advice, cracking jokes and inventing new things to help you.
Each level has three parts, and each part is harder than the first, with the last part having a boss you need to beat called a NOED. In each level you are greeted with a small problem that you need to solve to open the elevator to reach the level. In the following picture, this is the ammunition depot level. To gain access you need to push the button and make the shell go into the chamber as I already did, as you can see the door is opened.
During the course of the game you will come across all sorts of nasty little creatures or well robots actually. Some, like the ones in the following picture are actually funny to watch. One cool thing about Blitz is that he will turn his head and look at the enemies or at things of interest so you get a hint as to what is happening or what you are supposed to do.
Here is a shot of Blitz stunning one of the baddies, notice the lighting effects compared to the picture before of the stun gun. Naked Sky did an excellent job in recreating real life lighting effects for everything in the game.
RoboBlitz is very funny, the game is very lighthearted and just fun to play. In one of the level the idea to to throw metal into a metal shredder to turn it into something useful. I wondered what would happen if I jumped in, of course I got killed.
The Physics used in RoboBlitz are very cool, you can almost feel the weight of things when Blitz picks something up depending on the size of the object the reaction is different. Movement is very well done also, Blitz does not just go when you push the button he accelerates up to speed and stopping is the same almost, except he does sort of have brakes, Blitz will wobble a bit to a stop, kind of spring back up from the movement position. Hitting things with the weapons also has a physics effect on them as well, depending on where you hit and object it it will do something different, trajectory angles, deflection angles etc are all used in RoboBlitz. I want to say it is sort of like ‘ragdoll’ effects but done with a much great efficiency, and professionalism.
Playing RoboBlitz is just fun, there really isn’t a lot of violence, unless you call robot on robot violence violence. There is no blood or oil spilled in RoboBlitz, so I think everyone will be happy with RoboBlitz as ti is very child safe. My children watch me play quite a few games, and yes they are boys and they think games like Quake etc are cool, they really liked watching me play RoboBlitz and wanted to try it themselves. They seemed to be more interested in watching me play Roboblitz than other games they have seen me play, like Quake, Doom, FarCry and others. Yes that kind of does say it is a game that children will enjoy, but adults will very much enjoy it as well. It is an overall excellent game, and I can highly recommend it to anyone.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
RoboBlitz includes an Editor also so you can make your own level or just edit the ones already there.
I have to say honestly that I don’t have much experience at this as I do not have the time, the Editor is the Unreal3 Engine editor so you can create everything and more that you saw in RoboBlitz.
There is a help file included for you to reference, and again I don’t have a clue about all this, but i just loaded up a level to use for the pictures and this is what I got on screen shown in the following picture. The editor seems like something that could be very useful for those that have the time to learn how to use it. It’s a nice added bonus to the overall package of RoboBlitz.
Before we get into the movies I wanted to mention the size of RoboBlitz. When downloaded it was only 181Mb, compressed of course. This is small for what it is, amazingly small actually.
When installed and uncompressed it is only 452Mb in size, an entire, beautifully rendered game in less space than a CD. Some games I have are five CDs and they don’t look half this good, it’s amazing what they did with the compression.
Well let’s move onto the next section, I have ten movies in there for you to check out…
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Installation, Testing and Gameplay Movies:
Installation is easy, once you download the relatively small 181Mb installation file you just need to click it and away you go. Everything decompresses itself to your hard drive and you can begin playing RoboBlitz or go into the included editor and create your own levels using the Unreal3 engine.
My Setup for gameplay:
Res: 1280×1024
Full Effects/ Everything Maxed
BFG7900GT OC/ XFX 7800GTX
(I have two cards listed as the 7900GT died in the middle of the review, so I had to switch to the 7800GTX both cards had no problems running RoboBlitz at full settings)
AMD Athlon X2 4200+
3 Gigs OCZ Ram
This section will basically cover gameplay and feature all the included in-game movies.
The first movie is when you start the game and a quick tour of the options menus.
The second movie is showing the credits and more of the menu.
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Gameplay Movies:
The next movie is starting the game and the opening cut scene.
Here is the continuation of the previous movie. Here you get to meet Blitz and Karl and you get to learn how to do things.
Here is on the way down to the workshop and you get to actually meet Karl where he tells you about what is going on.
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Gameplay Movies:
Most of the movies you have seen are from the introduction, I put them in because they show quite a bit about the game and you can see how Blitz moves and the effects of the lighting and physics in the game. I didn’t want to show movies from to far into the game as to give anything away. This one is a continuation of the last. Notice the physics effects and how things move.
After that you get to meet your first little baddie, a Space Pirate Scout and learn how to kill him.
In this movie there are more Space Pirate Scouts to kill, but I wanted you to see how Blitz moves around on his little ball, and show the games graphics.
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Gameplay Movies:
These last two movies I have are essentially a tour of Blitz from various cameras and angles.
Here is the second one with Blitz holding a barrel, same thing different cameras and angles.
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Summary:
RoboBlitz is a great game for everyone, it’s a lot of fun and very easy to learn and play. The graphics are excellent and you really don’t need a high end video card to play RoboBlitz. The price of RoboBlitz is very affordable, making it accessible to everyone. RoboBlitz really shows off what is to come for next gen graphics and physics capabilities. Naked Sky Entertainment created a wonderfully unique and creative game that everyone of any age can enjoy.
DragonSteelMods gives Roboblitz a 5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
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Pros:
-Beautifully rendered
-Addictive
-A lot of good fun
-Creative and original
-Some replayability
-Multiple solutions to problems
-Very low price
Cons:
-None really
(what cons could there be? for $15 you get an amazing game!)
I would like to thank Naked Sky Entertainment for the chance to review Roboblitz, and for their support of DSM.
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