Imre Fulop, Senior Interface Developer at Atomic Motion, and I sat down and took a look at Raven Squad a hybrid FPS/RTS. I love the word hybrid because it means innovative gameplay, sometimes. Fortunately for everyone involved this is one of those times. The single player Raven Squad gives you two teams of 4 mercenaries to control from either a top down RTS perspective or from a 1st person one seamlessly. The control systems for both options are easy to learn as they tried to make them as intuitive as possible and used standard controls for both genres.

After 1 year of engine development in house the game looks and feels really good. they have added some features that you might even realize like the level of zoom determines how fast the cursor moves on the screen, visual appearance tied to personality of characters and multiple AI types (4 or 5 in all).  These are the small differences that are going to help Raven Squad see some success.

The game is aiming to give you 5-7 hours of gameplay across 11 missions and a training mission. However the game also features online co-op allowing each of 2 players to control one squad of 4 mercs. But this is not a lock and load, run and gun shooter. Well it is but it is far more. Entire areas of the game can be done via stealth and one of the characters even has a decoy device which when activated creates sounds that would draw enemies away from one location so you needn’t fight them.

The story will be told through a variety of move full motion cinematic cut scenes as well as non-cinematic still scenes (mostly done for budget I was told). But it all had to be done because the story for the game is over 200 pages in length.

Since I was talking with Imre we talked about the interface and the simple iconic system they have implemented means you will quickly be able to know all you need to about the specific characters including which direction on the D-pad you need to switch to control them. The game is set for 360 and PC so you can use the same controller on both as well. Slated for a Q4 08 or Q1 09 release on both PC and Xbox 360 this has rapidly become a title on my watch list.

Features:

•  Set in the Amazon in the year 2011, players will experience lush jungle visuals, haunting ambient sounds, changes in the weather, and an enemy in their home element
•  Featuring the best of both worlds, Raven Squad has core FPS and RTS gameplay combined, for a new type of experience
•  A multiplayer co-operative campaign that allows players to take control of a squad and play through the entire game with a friend online
•  Multiple solutions to every conflict - every battle can play out differently and be resolved in many different ways
•  8 characters with their own unique backgrounds, personalities, behaviors, weapons and skills
•  Players can order their squads into vehicles and take the wheel in first-person mode