Zombie is working on a new Blacklight, Retribution, that is taking a new approach to their game and adding in some pretty cool new features. Of course, features like the Hyper Reality Visor
(HRV) are improved, it gives you tactical information including where your friends and enemies are (essentially a legal wallhack). It may have some purist gamers crying foul. Then again, there are plenty of games out there without it and a handful this year coming with it.
I personally like it because it makes the gameplay more streamlined in that when you spawn you can quickly find your teammates (as you spawn nearby but not always right on top of them. It also helps you pinpoint where the action is. That means more chance for interaction. I don’t know that it’ skews the game in any way because you’ve still got to have other skills to get the kills.
They have included Hard Suits which are basically mechs. HRV doesn’t work when you’re in the hardsuit (mech) and that means you need a teammate to act in a support role to help you out, spot enemies for you and point you in the proper direction.
I like this dynamic and it worked well when we were at E3, Mike was in the Hard Suit and I played support guiding him towards our targets by simply telling him which direction (since we didn’t have team chat and were sitting next to each other).
In fact, the entire game was fun. Granted, I wasn’t playing against hardcore gamers but against other journalists, some of which were better than me and some, I suspect, that were worse. That probably accounted for my success in the game. I also think the HRV had something to do with it as it was much easier to find the action and jump into it.meaning that there was more opportunity for actual gameplay and less running about aimlessly.
That’s also thanks to the new spawn system. There are no more spawn points, instead, as Jared says in the the interview on the second page of this article, you spawn near your teammates.
