By: Patrick McCarron
Posted: May 22, 2000 2:00 AM CDT
Well first off I have to say this, I am very impressed with the game and can't wait for it to grow as testing continues. The game has been in limited, weekend only, testing at both Diversions Game Room in Chicago, IL and Brunswick Gala Lanes West in Naperville, IL for the last three weeks. It is now on all week for testing. It has grown to be the most popular game at both locations, even though it is only on for 3 days of the week, I am told. I would like to thank The Grid and Mortal Kombat game designer, John Vogel, for his hospitality and his time to answer questions that we had. Also, I would like to thank my friend Chris for allowing me to drag him with me.
THEME/STORY: First off, let me discuss the game's theme. It is a futuristic sports-arena mass-killing game. It sounds violent, but it really is not. What the audience and players see is all generated within a virtual reality, like the 'holodecks' in Star Trek: The Next Generation. When a player is killed, he transforms into a grid pattern and phases back into the "grid." This allows a player to respawn into the game once he is killed. The theme is a combination of the movies The Matrix (possibly what inspired the title), and the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man.
LEVEL DESIGN: The levels in the game are very different in many ways. Due to the VR aspect, the level designers are free to design levels with any motif they wanted and it would fit in pretty easily. There are levels with traps like a giant ball rolling around, electrified water that holds all the weapons, and a few more I cannot think of at the moment. Examples of some of the levels' themes are: a giant sports arena with cameramen and a crowd, levels with multiple heights, flat levels, an arena that is a section of a giant pool table, and another with an Austin Powers style '70s theme. Most the levels are either circular or squared and are not all that big, making them easy to navigate.
CONTROLS: The controls are as follows. The game's control panel layout is a flight-style joystick on the left-hand side, with a telephone-style keypad in the middle, a trackball with a thumb-button on the right-hand side, and the start button above the track ball. The joystick controls the player's movement, either FORWARD, BACKWARD, STRAFE LEFT, STRAFE RIGHT. The thumb button on the joystick is used for JUMP, and the trigger is for FIRE. The keypad is used for entering a 10-digit pin number for your keeping your statistics and records and entering game codes at the select screen. The trackball controls your turning and targeting. As of now, it controls only the X-axis aiming. Y-axis aiming has a Doom style auto targeting. This is the default way of aiming, but there will be a code allowing free-look aiming, similar to newer games like Quake. This setting will be saved in your players save information, eliminating the need to enter it again. In addition, there is a 'special moves' button by your trackball-hand's thumb. Examples of special moves in the game are teleportation, invisibility, run, hover, and other attacks like a flying kick. The start button was planned to change views between first and third person perspectives, but they never added the first person perspective.
MULTIPLAYER: Multiplayer is the main component to this game's entertainment. There can be a minimum of 2 players to a maximum of 6 playing at once. The cabinets can be ordered in 1 to 6 player assortments, depending on the arcade. I doubt you'll see any single player cabinets anywhere; this game's main draw is its multiplayer aspect. You start out each multiplayer game far apart from each other with no weapons in hand. This is where it becomes a race to see who is the first to the best weapons! Multiplayer battles last for a total of three minutes. When a player is killed, he drops his weapon, ammo, health, and money. It is good practice to pick up the health and money quickly. When you respawn you start out with just a regular blaster. There are many power-ups in the game at different points in the game. Upon reaching $2,000 in a single round, you become "powered up" in which you move and shoot faster. When you are 5-6 kills below the leader, you get the golden shotgun, allowing kills with one shot. This can be used for only 4-5 kills, after which it is taken away. This easily balances the gameplay, allowing all players to have a chance.
SINGLE PLAYER: I only saw a glimpse of single-player mode because you cannot play a single player game while there is a multiplayer game going on. At this time, there are ten towers to go through, each with varying levels. As you finish each level, the data is saved to your character information. As of right now, the only objectives in the levels on the towers are to defeat X number of enemies in Y amount of time. The X number of enemies to kill and their skill level all increase as Y amount of time decreases.
CHARACTERS: As of now there are a total of 8 selectable characters. There are six male characters and two female characters. I did not get all their names exactly, as it was not that important at the time. Some players can move faster than others, and some can take more hits than others. Each character has a unique special move triggered by the special move button. For example, April teleports throughout the level by digging into the ground and appearing elsewhere. Other characters can hover in the air, run fast with fire trailing, do a Liu Kang style flying kick, turn invisible, etc. Special moves are limited in someway that I do not know exactly by what yet. Hidden characters who were previously enabled in an earlier test version are: Sub Zero, Scorpion, The Announcer, Grid Man (a model made up of a grid pattern for when dying), a burnt body (results from the flamethrower weapon), three cheerleaders. There are plans for many more hidden characters.
WEAPONS: The weapons consist of a shotgun, grenade launcher, the ever-popular railgun, plasma gun, and a regular blaster. There were also new original weapons in the game. There is a cannonball gun that shoots a cannonball out. When impact is met with the player it will send them flying backwards into the nearest wall with the ball in their belly. Future plans for this include picking up more players as the ball goes farther. Another cool new gun is the poly-gun, shooting a spinning triangular polygon at the victim. This weapon can be charged by holding down the trigger to make it even more powerful by shooting more spinning triangular polygons at the victim, killing him almost instantly. Another cool gun is a sonic device, a big megaphone. When used, the victim drops their weapon and is killed if the onslaught of sound continues. There is also a gun that appeared to fire razors, which would ricochet off walls or pillars. Also there is an icicle gun that shot long icicles that would stick into a player. The railgun behaves the same way in Quake 2/3. Multiple people are shot if they are all lined up in the path of the rail. There were more, but my mind has gone blank at the moment. Weapons are abundant all over the level and easy to find and pick up; however, ammo is not as abundant. On the other hand, once you run out of ammo there are other weapons around to pick up easily.
STORED DATA: Each player can have unique stored data on the machine set. It is stored by entering a 5- to 10-digit pin number and up to an 8-character long nickname. This nickname is displayed on the scoreboard and above your player in battle. The game will store your longest killing streak, total money earned, total number of kills, % efficiency, and other information. Secret in-game characters and features are unlocked based on these stats for your character. It also stores which towers in single player you have completed. Only your pin is needed to login to the game as your player.
SOUND and MUSIC: The game has some excellent sound effects in the game, voiced over by the in-game announcer. He makes comments on who is in the lead, who has a killing streak, and makes comments about kills that are made. Not too sure on the details of what was said because my ears are still ringing from the all day concert I went to yesterday. So that is why this area of the game was not covered more. I will get more on this as I play it more.
EXTRAS: Future intentions of the game are to add a shooting gallery that is in the works right now. This would either be used in the single-player game and/or for practice when waiting for the next multiplayer game to start. Adding more features and more codes are still in the plans, as the game is only a month into public beta testing. As more people play and contribute ideas and issues, more features will be added as development progresses. I for one would love to see the game added to the Midway Tournament Network and watch as people battle it out for the best Grid player in each state or the entire US. Also, I think that having the ability to save your game stats to a Nintendo64 memory pak, like in Midway's other hit arcade game, NFL Blitz, would be a great addition to the game.
If anyone has any additional questions, please feel free to ask them in the message boards or email me, and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. I will be returning to check the game out as it progresses.
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