The crazy cavemen over at Paleo Entertainment recently braved outside their developmental caverns, revealing a kooky plan for a new multiplayer game mode, Drug Wars, to be given out free to owners of Merchants of Brooklyn. Though the game was erroneously reported to be a stand-alone game on some other websites, as it stands, Drug Wars looks to be no more than an additional component to MOB. Here’s what the team had to say about it:
“Find the drugs, stash the drugs, defend the drugs, kill everyone and take their drugs! YOU MUST HAVE DRUGS!”
Based on the little promotional material revealed so far, Drug Wars seems to be taking some more advantage of CryTek’s more-than-boisterous CryENGINE 2, apparently sporting both drivable vehicles and larger levels, and is currently being prepared for a public release announcement at this year’s E3 gaming expo.
…In other, far less interesting news, I’m still yet to restart MOB from scratch due to the patches corrupting my save games…
This was to be the space for a review of Paleo Entertainment’s new game, Merchants of Brooklyn. In MOB, you play as Matteo, a cybernetically enhanced Neanderthal clone. Suffice to say, Matteo suffers a life-threatening dismemberment in combat but ends up being saved by a scientist who grafts him a new robotic arm to replace the lost one.
The problem? The game’s launch on Steam was unfortunately a miserable one, and Paleo Entertainment have now confirmed an alpha version of the game was uploaded to Steam at first: This meant the load game mechanism tended to break scripting and a degree of graphics settings were unavailable. Most importantly, however, the sound levels of the audio were such that players were completely unable to hear the game’s narration and thus follow the plot!
Go Matteo Go!
Luckily, Paleo Entertainment has jumped to the save instantaneously and a massive first-day patch, one that amounts to more than half the original size of the game (of 690mb), has already been released. So far, we’ve head reports that the menus have been improved (AA is now selectable), a difficulty setting has been added and the sound is now indeed correctly balanced.
When will Matteo be truly unshackled? While we wait for our patches to download and bugs to be fixed, you can read more about the game in our introductory post for the game.
While Zeno Clash might have been on the receiving end of some hefty accolades already, we shan’t forget there are others in line for a title shot at the crown of the new Dark Messiah! A trailer recently reared its head for a new challenger in the seldom-seen HTH-FPS genre, Merchants of Brooklyn (MOB for short).
This CryEngine 2-based, Steam-distributed PC-only game from Paleo Entertainment pretends to the throne from vastly different origins than the two aforementioned fantasy games, for it presents to us a Babelian Manhattan in the year 3100. The city has been rebuilt – entirely skywards, this time – after a devastating flood caused by global warming.
Casting Call
As its inhabitants ascend, not enough work force remains; meanwhile, human cloning has advanced immensely and has primarily refocused on the Neanderthal DNA for its physical resiliency. However, due to a contractual miscalculation in producing workers for the city, too many Neo-Neanderthal clones end up being produced and are outright outcast to be the bottom feeders of the new society.
To the save the local mob – the Merchants of Brooklyn – who discover a lucrative opportunity in the plight of the clones and begin to arrange lucrative Neonean fights to the death. The player, a Neo-Neanderthal himself, has his arm unwillingly replaced with a chainsaw and realizes he’s had enough of the fun and games, and then begins his journey at the very bottom of this violent, bottoms-up society to work his way up – via gratuitous violence – and ultimately exact revenge upon his former masters and take over the Brooklyn empire together with his fellow clones.
The first teaser trailer for the project presents to us an ultraviolent, comic book –influenced dystopia with an off-the-wall setting equally influenced by the new resurgence of martial arts and the combat sports as it is by the environmental panic and the economic downturn. Perhaps. After all, sci-fi has always been a magnificent vehicle for social critique, and although several other games tackle similar ideas as presented in the backstory to MOB, it will be very intriguing to see if there’s more to the game than the bone-crunching melee.
Check out the teaser trailer and pictures after the jump and stay tuned for an in-depth Side to Side on both Zeno Clash and Merchants of Brooklyn!
