Multipass.
Sorry, couldn't help it.
Collateral is a 3rd person driving game, being made by Dancing Dinosaur Games Pty Ltd, out of Australia. You play a taxi driver, Zack Edgewater, who wants to escape this dystopian crapsack hell of New Bedlam, a futuristic cybepunk city that has been put on lockdown by the authorities. Complete missions with various factions in the game to earn their favor, so you can eventually get a passcode that will let you leave the city.
It's pretty clear where the game's inspiration comes from, which is no bad thing to me. Add 1 part Bladerunner, 1 part Fifth Element, place in a car and shake violently until awesome. The game's overall tone though is silly. If the fact a gun that shoots chicken is any indication. Apparently this game is also an homage to
Quarantine, which I have not played.
The taxi driving is full 3d so you can swoop down or rocket up as you want (although the videos don't really show this.) The action takes place in an open world so you're not stuck just doing missions, you can drive around. You can customize your taxi with various upgrades: weapons, performance enhancers, a boss push grille on the front. There's slots for many many weapons and everything seems to show on the vehicle after you equip it. They say they already have over 30 weapons to use.
The various factions track your reputation with them, and in addition to paying you, offer bonuses and perks (like faction specific weapons) for working for them. They also offer long-term benefits and consequences, like opening up new areas of the city to explore or resulting in some existing areas being permanently destroyed. Missions range from simple deliveries to police chases, rampages, escorts bank heists and more. There are 8 factions, each of which is diametrically opposed to another. Your choices are basically as follows: megacorp vs. homeless bums, a Cthulhu religion vs. a gene-splicing biotech corp, Burritos vs. Chicken, and Strippers vs. the Carnies Union. That's right, the Carnies of the future have unionized, God help us all.
The game looks a tad rough but it's still got a ways to go in development. What they're showing already looks pretty robust like it's been worked on for a while. It's asking for a paltry $15,000 to make this happen, so I'm guessing this is supplemental rather than necessary funding. They want $5000 for voice acting, $5000 to contract out work for additional content creation and $5000 for a 16-track soundtrack. It's interesting that all the things they list are supplemental rather than necessary to gameplay.
$20 gets you a digital copy of the game for release. From there you get the usual digital artbooks, soundtracks, t-shirts ect....At $150, you can start making contributions to content, beginning with consulting them on an in-game billboard. (Which feature heavily in the level detailing.)
I think I might be in for $20, more if I decide I want the soundtrack, because I loves me some electronica. While it doesn't look super deep, who doesn't want a Korben Dallas simulator? If they can manage to tighten up appearance of shooting and the handling of the game, it could be a gem. Time's already more than half up on this, so if you want in, better not dally.
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Topic: Collateral: The high-octane life of a cyberpunk taxi driver. On Kickstarter. (Read 3404 times)