HANDS ON PREVIEW - Lincoln F.O.R.C.E.
By Chad Rock 03/13/10
After Carbon Neutral's announcement of the forthcoming Lincoln F.O.R.C.E.; I will admit to being among the skeptical crowd, but after this hands-on experience, I have to say I'm at least EXTREMELY excited. You would think that a game about a time travelling, kung-fu fighting, brain-in-a-jar toting Abraham Lincoln would not work, especially with so many games presenting alternate history as the plot being the opposite of what you would call "good." (I'm looking at you, Darkest Of Days). But Lincoln Force's combination of sophisticated storytelling, satisfying gameplay, and polished voiceovers combine to form a potentially superlative 3rd person action game, even with this early-ish build. Minor spoilers ahead!
The level we got to play is fairly early in the game, and featured the arrival of one Nikola Tesla (who is also a playable character for at least part of the game, apprently) from the year 2057 in a time machine originally constructed in the future by none other than Steven Hawking. The mission's goal is to find Honest Abe and recruit him into the Lincoln F.O.R.C.E. But there is one problem - Tesla has no idea where the White House. So, after navigating the streets of Washington on foot while fighting off hordes of handlebar 'stache sporting street toughs with a portable Tesla coil, he arrives at the white house and steels himself for the inevitable confrontation.
Lincoln, as luck would have it, notices the flashes from the street, and has come to the front of the White house to investigate. In a cutscene reminescent of Metal Gear Solid 4, Abe and Nikola banter back and forth, and after a few tense moments (Where the player must correctly navigate a long and complicated dialogue tree in order to avoid having to fight Abe) Abe will either attack or agree to accompany Tesla back to the time machine to begin the missions. Either way, Tesla will present Abe with a gift from the future - John Wilkes Boothe's head in a jar. I won't spoil anything more, except to say that the interactions between John Wilkes Boothe's brain (Voiced by Charlie Adler, who voiced Professor Monkey-for-a-head in the Earthworm Jim game) and Abe (Voiced by Nolan North, whose previous work includes a Dervish Kingpin in Everquest II), are nothing short of comedy genius.
We were a little perplexed as to why a hands on demo would not feature the game's main protagonist, so we asked Carbon Neutral why they would send us this particular build, the answer we got? "Dude - if we showed you all of Linoln's sweet stovepipe hat attacks and awesome beard-finishers, it would completely ruin the game. They are completely awesome - trust us. Also - Look forward to a little something we're calling 'shirtless avenger mode'."
Ignoring the fact that Lincoln does not feature prominently in this demo, The combat was nontheless a lot of fun. Who knew Nikola Tesla was a judo master? Most things in the environment are also destructible, flammable, or conductive (Or some combination of the three). The new Ultra-Dynamic Stiffler 4.5 engine developed in-house specifically for Lincoln F.O.R.C.E. features none of the ridiculous fade-in of the unreal engine, or the pop-in nonsense present in other engines, and the lightning effects are just awesome. I spent 30 minutes just figuring out different ways I could use my PTC to arc lightning through as many objects as possible in order to "Snipe" the street toughs from a distance.
That's kind of all I'm allowed to say about Lincoln F.O.R.C.E. for now - but look for more features in the future as details emerge. Set for release sometime in Q4 - Lincoln F.O.R.C.E. just may be the God Of War killer 360 owners have long sought.
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