Ghost in the Shell: First Assault - Stand Alone Complex Online (or just "First Assault" for short) is an online multiplayer shooter that apparently has a free beta(?) weekend on Steam right now! Very early impressions are that it is a basic team shooter with deathmatch, territory control, and bomb setup/defuse missions. Also of note is that most/all of the English dub cast from the Stand Alone Complex anime reprise their roles in this game.
Yep, you can play as of the main characters from the show (plus one extra OC created for the game), each with a unique cybernetic enhancement from a rocket-firing arm to sending out seeker drones. Even a Tachikoma and Chief Aramaki show up (though unplayable). On top of that, I really like how the game distinguishes between friend and foe, making it so that no matter which team you're on, your allies always appear as Public Security Section 9 members while the enemy are generic cyborg terrorists, so you don't feel like you're playing the bad guy or accidentally shooting your own team. Even when the Tachikoma is summoned in the territory control mode, the enemy team will always see it as an evil "ThinkTank." It's actually an interesting concept and I wonder if more multiplayer games will use it in the future.
There's no real story/plot to the game yet, so you might be a little mad at the liberal use of the GitS license, though the developers on a stream yesterday were open to the idea of adding a co-op story mode somewhere down the line.
Log in to comment