Well, I have finally got around to writing a preview of this game. I'm
sure by now that many of you have at least heard of this latest 'Doom'
clone, and many of you have probably played it as well. There have
been many people 'slating' the game because of shortcomings that the
game currently has, what they seem to have forgot is that it is
only a demo to show the current stage of the engine, there is a lot
more work that will be done to this game before release. This is why I
will try not to judge the game based on what is a essentially 'work in
progress' demo.
One of the main reasons for the release of this demo is to show people that the game now includes Graphics Card support. This is done via the excellent RTG library by Steffen Haeuser. I wasn't able to test this myself but have been told that it is reasonably good. AGA users arn't left out in the cold though as the game performs very well on even the lowest powered machines. Talking of machine requirements to run this demo you will need at least an 020 with 2Mb Chip, 4Mb Fast, and a Hard-Drive. The final version will require 8Mb RAM and will come on CD-ROM only, finally a game that requires some decent specifications.
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Upon loading the demo you will be presented with the Cybernet
(Original, huh?). From here you will be able to alter preferences to
suit your machine such as window size, textures on/off, multitasking
on/off etc. Once past this your into the game itself, the first thing
you will notice is the frame rate, 
it is probably the fastest 'Doom'
clone on the Amiga so far. Also the game features some excellent
lighting effects, the flame thrower for example has to be seen to be
believed. As this is such an early demo there is not much to do apart
from walk around really, there are enemies dotted around but they don't
really do anything :).
There is a lot that is planned for the full game that is not implemented in this demo. Such things as enemy charactors/intelligence, some gameplay substance, sound effects and any form of level design are all missing from the demo, but are being worked on at the moment for implementation into the full game.
As to weather this game is going to be a hit or not...Well I'm not quite convinced. there are a few things going against it, one of which is the fact that it is only one level, no steps or slopes are in the game, in this respect it is more of a 'wolf' clone then a 'Doom' clone. Also all the walls are 90%, although the full game should have 45% walls as well this is still a limitation. Apparently this demo was outdated a few days after release that is how quick progression of this game is being made, hopefully there will be more demos released in the not too distant future to give us an idea of how the game is coming along. It still has quite a way to go in my opinion but with the backing of Vulcan behind it, and the programming knowledge of Ambrosia it could become a classic...
For more information about this and other Vulcan games check out there webpage at:-
