Previews// Unity Engine: Jagged Alliance and UFO

Posted 18 Jul 2011 18:20 by
UFO: Fight for Earth
UFO: Fight for Earth
Unity is a word no longer associated with the aborted Gamecube game by Lionhead Studios and Llamasoft. That is very much in the dim and distant past as the word is now attributed to a game engine that allows the creation of fully featured video games to be played in a browser window.

Now I know what you’re thinking; this has been done before, there’s nothing new here! Have I not seen or played Battlefield Heroes? Or perhaps Quake Live? Well yes I have and neither run in a browser window. They instead install a sizeable client onto the PC before launching and then streaming content into the application, outside of the browser. Unity does away with the need for such a client by integrating itself with the browser, making for a very fluid transition from traditional internet browsing to playing a video game via a single click of a link.

One company that is exploiting this new technology is Gamingo. They specialise in free-to-play online games and were demonstrating two notable titles at this year’s E3. Below is a preview of each title, both of which have been developed using the Unity engine.

UFO: Fight for Earth
UFO: Fight for Earth
UFO: Fight for Earth

Ever since the arrival of the seminal Rebelstar Raiders way back in 1984, the turn-based squad combat game has remained a firm favourite for many. In 2011 we are about to see a new arrival in the genre that owes much to the ZX Spectrum game. UFO: Fight for Earth takes a lot of cues from the XCom series of games that required the player to fight off aliens using a counter-alien strike force. The difference here is that in this game, the aliens have already invaded and now humanity has to fight a guerilla war against them to retake Earth.

The game features three factions of resistance fighters, all fighting for the same goal but with their own agenda. The player starts off with a base of operations that can be expanded as they play through missions in the game. Mercenaries are hired and sent out to take down key installations of the aliens and thus undermine their operations. Alien technology can be captured during the missions and can be used for research to build items for the mercenaries.

UFO: Fight for Earth
UFO: Fight for Earth
The game supports both player verses environment (PvE) and player verses player (PvP) modes, with the latter allowing players to pit their wits against human opponents within pre-set scenarios and maps.

From what was shown at E3, the game is in a very advanced state with a fully realised 3D engine and interface in place. It looked on a par with a game one would buy from Steam and not run within a browser window, yet it was demonstrated on many occasions during the preview that the game was doing just that.

With it following a free-to-play model and being funded by micro-transactions, the game is shaping up to be quite special, especially for fans of the genre. It’s due to appear in Q3 of 2011. For more details you can go here.

Jagged Alliance: Online

A game franchise from the past, this time the much venerated Jagged Alliance series gets the Unity treatment. Two games were made in 1990’s with a DS title appearing in 2009. This latest arrival is a free to play online game that carries on from the previous titles by keeping with the turn-based combat while adding multiplayer online play and an updated engine running within Unity.

Jagged Alliance Online
Jagged Alliance Online
From what I saw at E3, the game is very much in a pre-alpha phase of development, but that didn’t detract from how impressive it looked and played. The use of cover, multiple targeting and devious and reactive AI were all on display and I was very impressed with what I saw. Multiplayer supports co-op play and the Jagged Alliance fanbase, which is extensive, has received the game positively. The game is set to appear in the early part of 2012. More details about it can be gleaned here.

Unity – running on a device near you soon

Unity is not limited to just running games in a browser, although that is still an impressive feat. It also supports most of the major game platforms that currently in use such as Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, iOS and Android. It may very well rival Unreal Engine 3 in its ubiquitous state in the future, mainly due to its ability to compress a significant amount of data. This allows devices that would normally grind to a halt when trying to display the kind of 3D rendered images normally found in more traditional boxed titles to shrug off such resource-hungry operations.

Jagged Alliance: Online
Jagged Alliance: Online
So what does Unity mean for the game fan? It means more games on more platforms including the humble netbook, whose main function is to browse the internet and watch programmes on iPlayer. This can only be regarded as a good thing and I for one look forward to what other games will arrive on platforms we're not expecting thanks to Unity.

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