Wii developer claims revolution with Raid Over The River DS
A shoot-'em-up with a plot? Wouldn't have happened in my day…
It's not often that the first screens we receive of a vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up are a couple moody pieces of character art. Screens infested with ant-sized aliens are more the usual run of things.
But then we've never before heard the claims that Nibris, the Polish studio behind Raid over the River DS, is making for its upcoming shooter.
"It is going to change the current image of a vertical shooter as a meaningless arcade game that only tests the speed of a player's fingers," says Marek Oko, the game's designer. "It's a title that is going to present the potential that this kind of game has."
Ambitious sentiments from the studio already causing a stir with its upcoming gothic horror game Sadness on Wii – although, in the nicest possible way, we'll believe it when we play it. After all, the sort of 'extensive storyline' Nibris is promising has crippled many a game before.
And this story won't even be fully concluded however well you do, since Raid over the River DS is one of a two-part series – and the second one is going to be released on Wii.
There's certainly a lot to pack in – Nibris says the story runs over some 3,000 years and across over six dimensions.
The plot's roots, like Paddington's, lie in Peru, where archaeologists discover an artefact of unknown origin. The knowledge it carries enables human beings to travel back and forth in time, leading to the founding of TARPA (the Temporal Advanced Research Projects Agency), a body charged with investigating different dimensions and prevent threats.
In the game you play TARPA agent Carrie Collins, a 29-year old pilot in an airborne quick response group, and pick up the story when a tunnel opens on Earth, issuing forth scouts from another dimension. (We presume these extra-dimensional scouts are fast and lightly-armoured attack vehicles, rather than earnest boys into camping and rubbing sticks together – only with three legs and no nose).
The plot will apparently see the history of Earth change back a bit, and the player forced to "make choices which will influence the future of our character, as well as the future of all dimensions".
To which we can only reply: what no smart bombs?
Raid over the River DS will be making us cry one way or another in the first half of 2007.