22-Nov-2006 Counter-terrorism in North Korea - with real-life Navy SEALS Welcome to the burning world of Dick Marcinko. Dick is a real man. He doesn't sit around on the internet all day moaning about things and slagging people off. He doesn't play computer games for six hours in the evening before bed either. Dick gets things done. Dick goes outside. Dick is a military man, a crack member of the US Navy SEALs, a fighter, a winner, a straight-talking, usually swearing about something, proper man. Like your dad, only with a killing streak.
He writes books about his time in SEAL Unit SIX, the military counter-terrorism division he was asked to create and make the hardest collection of troops around. SEAL Unit SIX is real. It employs the bloke-iest, toughest and most dangerous military men who've shot proper bullets at actual foreign people. They are real men who don't have to call a plumber or their dad when the toilet breaks in their flat. Rogue Warrior charts Dick's time in SEAL Team SIX. He's joined in-game by his real-life mates, guys he fought alongside in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and hundreds of bars and nightclubs the world over, and is still friends with today. The four of you are dumped behind enemy lines. That's what Dick does best. Rogue Warrior abandons you hundreds of miles inside enemy territory, forcing you to play clever, steal enemy weapons and clothes to blend in, and try to remain unseen. Until you get seen - then you start shooting/ blowing up/setting fire to things.
Rogue Warrior's based in North Korea, the place Dick and the game's makers reckon is about to become the next global war-pot. The action takes places after commie North Korea has launched an invasion of the peace-loving, internet-gaming-obsessed South Korea, throwing the region into crisis. And when there's a crisis, there's a Dick Marcinko making it simultaneously worse and better by exploding things. The game's about disaster management. Missions don't go according to plan in Dick's rogue world; instead you get spotted, shot, blown up, forced to adapt and change plans at a moment's notice. Dick's major idea is 'attacking problems' - that tends to mean shooting at them until they die and go away.
Rogue Warrior has one very cool innovation up the sleeves of its combat wear. You know squad games? There's you and three others on screen all the time, right? Well, in Rogue Warrior's one-player game, any of your Xbox Live Friends can 'pop in' and start playing as one of your team-mates - at any time. There's also a separate multiplayer section too, but at any time during the single-player campaign one of your mates can join you. There's no quitting to a menu, no organising things or lobbies - you just get a message popping up on the screen letting you know that one of your three helper SEALs is now under the control of a real friend and not the Xbox 360 anymore. How cool is that?
As for proper online stuff - yes, there is some! The main innovation here is a tiling system that's used to build the game's online maps. Team one selects a map. Then team two selects a map - which team one can't see - and the Xbox 360 randomly picks a third map section. These three areas are then combined - probably thanks to some clever technical system with a cool name they've made up for it, like TriMapper or MapMaker4D - to build your online arena. The makers reckon there are 200 combinations as a result of this three-way map-making process.
So each online game area consists of three smaller map tiles stuck together to make one gigantic lump of terrain. This, according to the makers again, will stop you getting bored of Rogue Warrior's maps as there's no way you'll be stuck in the same one time after time. Even if you keep picking your fave, there'll be another two sections in there too. There's support planned for 24 people at once when playing online, so you shouldn't get fed up of playing with the same people all the time, either.
Technically speaking for all you boffins out there, Rogue Warrior uses the Unreal Engine 3 technology - the same computery stuff that's powering Gears of War - and this geek stuff is having a big effect on how the game looks, works and plays. Unreal Engine 3 can do lots of things; the most obvious here are flashy water effects, HDR lighting, bloom effects and a pretty amazing heat haze from the barrel of your overworked gun. Plus it's good at streaming data off the disc as you play - meaning the game worlds are huge, open affairs and not your usual enclosed corridors and grey military bases with the same floors and walls everywhere.
You might be, say, in a vast open-air shipwrecking yard, fighting to the left or sneaking to the right, planning your own route through the mission. And for once, touching water doesn't mean instant death - Rogue Warrior uses water as a hiding place, starting point and special effect, packing every environment with pretty glistening stuff. There will also be underwater missions too.
As for the rest of the stuff you do, well, it's all quite up to you. There's a clever damage system applied to vehicles and items in the game. Take the trucks - shoot their canvas canopies and nothing happens. But shoot the engine 20 times and it might catch fire and eventually heat up the fuel tank enough to blow the thing up after 20 seconds. Or stick one bullet in the fuel tank for an instant Korean barbeque. It's up to you. There will be missions where you're surrounded by delicate exploding things and forced to play carefully - it's not all blam, blam, blam, you know.
Dead bodies can be booby-trapped, with Dick and his gang having access to pressure-sensitive bombs that go off when touched, or range and timed remote devices you can dump and set off when it's smoking time. You can even set traps at alarm posts, so when some freaking enemy a-hole goes running to mummy and tries to activate the alarm, you can hit the switch and melt his evil face into the ground before he has the chance.
With manly man's man Dick Marcinko himself providing the narration for the pre-mission cut-scenes and in-game action, expect swearing galore. That's what real men do when something they were planning on using or getting into has just been blown up by some Korean warmongers. In the words of Dick Marcinko, you "go in loaded for bear. Screw the rules of engagement." In the words of us, Rogue Warrior looks like being brutal, dirty, war fun.
Here's how the multiplayer map tiling system works. Each level is made up of three sections - you choose one, the other team picks another, then the centre section is plucked out of the list at random by the Xbox 360. There's 200-odd combinations in total.
YOUR CHOICE: This is your favourite map. You pick the first section. This is the one where you know where all the good hiding points are, the one you've played before so are best at. That's why you chose it. Let's roll!
THE RANDOM CHUNK: This one was picked by the Xbox 360 at random. Xbox 360 is so powerful it can generate really random numbers very easily, so you'll definitely never get the same one twice in a row!
THEIR CHOICE: The enemy team's map selection is hidden from you so you have no idea what they're picking. Imagine the tension! What if they picked that one you hate with all the sniper points? Imagine how terrible that would be!
// CLEVER STUFF
MAN CONTROL: Each of the three guys on your team has an Xbox 360 button assigned to them. Point where you want a man to go, then press their button to make him comply.
NO ON-SCREEN STUFF: There is a display of sorts, but it only pops up when you do something that changes the state of your men. Otherwise it's all very minimal.
SIMPLE STEALTH: It's easy - you just sneak up behind them and press A. Or, tell one of your team-mates to go in, then watch the kill through your scope for a sick, voyeuristic thrill.
DEPTH OF FIELD: When spying on distant objects, the game focuses the view on whatever the reticule is over - nearer and further things go blurry.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
