Unfinished: Storm United 04/21/2015

Lets storm and unite BOMBERS!

One of those guys looks a lot like Master Chief

I like the character design a lot.

Storm United sounds like an American soccer team's name

Push Kentucky Fried Children.

If the guns had alt fires and you told me this was a new Perfect Dark game, I'd believe you.

Gotta love the Drett QL team.

Epic paid these devs $10k to switch from an unspecified engine to UE4. Perhaps that is another sign that this is a well-constructed game waiting for a player base.

Its weird how get batches of a certain genre of games on early access started 2D platformers, survival games, rogue likes and now multi player first person shooters.

@mavs: It was originally running on the Unity engine.

http://www.stormunited.com/index.php/news/item/109-storm-united-goes-unreal-engine-4#.VT5nYK3BzRY

They talk about how difficult it is driving people to play your multiplayer game as a developer and I can completely relate to that. It's like trying to describe the color red to cat.

@hatking: ...because nothing says faster, smoother, cleaner shaves than Storm United.

I am all about sensations...especially in caps locks.

Drett & Drobot to the White House in 2016, I'm calling it now.

Watched 5 minutes before I started to get motion sickness.

Hell yeah new Halo! Let's do this!

Second guy from the left looks a Halo dude with a Battle Rifle a lot.

...Looks kinda boring, maybe if more people were playing it would help, but maybe not.

nope

It looks good.

Lance Storm approves Storm United as generic use of the word storm.

@hatking said:

The future is a dark, dark place.

I really wonder why the indie developers don't try making a single player FPS to start with instead of just launching with an arena deathmatch game. There aren't THAT many good FPS campaigns coming out anymore, so even something like SickBrick and the rougelike FPS games got some attention just because of the type of game it was. If a team started in Early Access with a solid single player game and then branched off into arena multiplayer, they'd already have an audience and wouldn't be starting from scratch and fighting a million other games.

EDIT: Drew actually bothering to read Jeff's clan name was great.

@hatking said:

EAT SMOOTHNESS!

Nice! This is an Unreal Engine 4 game. Epic seems to think this game and/or the developers have something here, and recently gave them a development grant.

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/epic-announces-unreal-dev-grant-winners-march26

Lots of base UE4-looking assets in here.

@larrydavis: Yeah, I'm pretty sure the rocks in the first level are straight off the marketplace. But it's looking good to me.

Those and the particle effects on the jump-pads were the main ones that jumped out to me. But yeah, it does look much better than most Early Access trash.

These kinds of games always seemed strange to release as early access to me, given how most of them always seem to struggle with getting enough people to play to make it playable for people past the first week.

@dberg: Big fan of halo? Those are some spartan ass looking characters. Like if you'd showed me a screen shot out of context I would have guessed new Halo multiplayer concept or promotional art without a second thought.

NEEDS MORE WUB!

Edit: WAIT, they used the words "Storm" and "United" and this has NOTHING to do with MANIA PLANET? lame

The problem with all these "indie" FPSs is that FPS is a deceptively simple genre. The core mechanics are pretty much the same from game to game and there isn't that many systems co-existing, so basically what they're doing is the same as trying to make Bejeweled with different graphics. Even if you actually do something sorta interesting it just won't matter, as selling these games is all about marketing these days. The reason games like Destiny or Evolve manage to sell well as "new" FPSs is purely because of production value and marketing, and that's just something you can't compete with as a small studio.

So are the people who made this from UCF, or did they just see the university seal somewhere on the Internet and thought it looked cool?

Definitely feels very polished, but that in itself means nothing to me. Storm United, Toxikk, Reflex, Unreal Tournament, etc. What's the difference? I sure as hell can't tell! Yes, some are more polished than others, but if that's the only difference between them, we have a problem.

Seeing this flood of polished "arena shooters" depresses me, because it feels like some Indie developers have become so obsessed with the graphics, that they've either forgotten or don't care about gameplay anymore.

It's ironic because the AAA Studios have already realized they need something more then that and are trying to innovate with games like Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III, etc. While indie developers remain dumbfounded by pretty graphics. Pro Tip: you need more than pretty graphics and polish if you want to be successful. Unfortunately, this game will probably be quickly forgotten by everyone except it's most dedicated fans, if any.

Actually they switched from Unity to Unreal after Epic announced the new licensing terms last year. The $10k was for a grant form Epic Games for "innovative projects" built with UE4, that they got this year.

It could very well be my personal tastes but this game seems near soulless (except for some of the effort!). It does things competently. Hell, maybe it would have a base with people wanting to get some on- people competition in the morning. Get ready for work. Some generic town or whatever don't matter.

Looks like a default UE4 test level. I don't get it what Jeff is seeing here.

ah so jeff is a kfc guy eh

Apparently I'm the only one who hears the words Storm and United and thinks of neo-nazis.

@pontoon_yacht said:

So are the people who made this from UCF, or did they just see the university seal somewhere on the Internet and thought it looked cool?

Yeah, right? What is up with that? I've been unable to find any information on the developers, with the exception of the headquarters for PixelBeam being listed in China.

Even if they're from UCF, I have a hard time believing they've properly licensed the images.

Glad to see Giant Bomb quicklooking [insert generic first person shooter here].

This looks like the mediocre and half assed boring multiplayer mode to a mostly fun and slightly memorable single player game. My guess is that fairly fun single player mode doesn't exist.

@ares42: Saying that the MMO+FPS structure of Destiny (Raids, etc.) and the asynchronous multiplayer of Evolve offer nothing different in the genre is unfair and uninformed. Those games offer a markedly different experience from not only each other but from this game as well. You obviously either don't play FPS's at all or you're being intentionally ignorant.

Storm United to play Blaze FC this year in the Cup Final.

@larrydavis: Exactly, Jeff is praising it here for it's looks and while it does look good, it looks like a base asset UE4 game. That said the game looks real interesting. UE4 is basically the next gen engine right now. We are all waiting for competitors. :)

This looks like a technically impressive game with no soul. There's a lot of talent here but it's a super generic COD/Halo clone.

@tuxfool: Yeah, me too. I've had problems with nausea in games before, but it has never struck _this_ fast.

Is this anything like Manchester United?

its kindof weird to put a multiplayer game on early access.

This single player game had more work put into it than Storm United did in its current state. Single player stuff is hard, generic deathmatch FPS #457 built on unreal is easy. You can put it up on steam for $20, it's playable after a fashion, it seems almost like a real game despite having incredibly little real content.

Freeze Tag is a pretty classic FPS mod. I'm surprised Jeff hadn't heard of it. It's a lot of fun too! Played it a lot in TF2.