Wrath of Earth

Wrath of Earth description

This is truly one of the most obscure and underrated games. Wrath of Earth is a futuristic FPS with lots of interesting innovations for the time. You play as a commander of space exploration, and you can go for two characters with slightly different characteristics for man and woman. The game is made with beginners in game development – a small team of enthusiasts from several people with low financial possibilities. Perhaps this "good" combination just identified a wonderful quality product and a lot of innovative approaches in the gameplay...

The story is simple. Late in 5 years to the Ground came an alarm signal from the planet Armadax, from a mining settlement, where people were mining for something valuable in the mines. At the end of the message, contained remarkable line: "...don't send help!". Your task is to sort out all this mess in place. There is information about the survivors, but the remaining majority of people are either mindless zombies or the colonists, which, unfortunately, are already controlled by an unidentified enemy. There is also information about the invasion on the planet of robot units...

The emphasis in this shooter made primarily on realistic interaction with the environment (objects, keys, characters), and also present a simulation of the effects of exposure to physical environmental factors on player: temperature, radiation, lighting and the condition of the floor surface. Unlike other games of the genre, you see the world through the window of the battle suit (or we can say differently- exoskeleton suit, biokosma...). Usually many for the first time erroneously think that it turned out a kind of a hybrid simulator of the robot and the "shooter", but the game clearly dominated by all the same properties of 3D-shooter. On the display of the costume you can see the abundance of various indicators and information labels. Bottom left - six key indicators (load, radiation level "outside" temperature, energy, force shield and health). There is in the game even the map, radar and the mode of infrared vision; the latter looks very nice (in scarlet) and is very useful, and sometimes vital on maps with unusual properties.

If to speak in more detail, the modeling of the interaction of physical factors in the game Wrath of Earth is reduced to the following: a consideration of the properties of the surface (changing the sound of steps), there is a dependence of the controllability of the battle suit in the cold (drifts), the simulated response of the character's health to the level of radiation is, of course, does not add points "of rotovisco" the main character. Additionally in the bitter cold you slowly and inevitably will lose health. Very touching and realistic moment (especially for avtomobilistov) – battery suit for extreme cold will inevitably be discharged. Hot environment (lava) almost instantly damages the system of the suit and takes away your health. All systems military suit have properties of slow-healing. The most basic and vital parameter (even more important than health) – electricity suit. Natural and bright artificial light used in the game as the charging source for all your high-tech spacesuit.

The missions in the game can be divided into two types: missions on the surface and mission beneath the surface (mines, pyramid). There will be those missions where also scattered batteries due to the lack of lighting other way of charging the player will not.

Interesting multi-level realization of the damage to your suit. First goes down the shield, then system suit and then starts to decrease your "precious". If you seriously "get", it is better to hide from the enemy in a secluded and dark place, and observe how gradually crawl to the norm indicators of the electricity and pump shield. Yes, recharging energy in order to save important select topics – batteries can and should be made in the light is the main tactic of the game when completing missions on the surface: from darkness to light, and then again into the darkness and fight. Some types of weapons take too much power, so I shoot a little bit – hid to "breathe". For other types of weapons need appropriate ammunition (rockets, plasma charges). And not every enemy can be hit by homing missiles. It is therefore important that the choice in the moment of any type of weapons you always have to think, and whether you want it now, whether will damage it to the energy balance of the costume, and is there for him enough ammunition on the map? While the protect shield, harm never will be, but if the shield and the biological system will stop working, then a few hits – and all Game Over – splash screen appears depicting the character lying on the floor with a bloody nose. You can switch in different modes display HUD navigation mode, battle mode, weapons systems, diagnostics systems, map and others. At the bottom right of the game panel there is a communication display for receiving important messages or tasks from the command. Very convenient in real time, that is, without detracting from the combat of work, to enable hints display and right each indicator will have signature signs that explain to the player their purpose. Sight is implemented like used in the game System Shock – he captures and identifies the goals or objects, and can see even through one wall of the map. For example, the wall is a robot, and you already know that it's there! And he does not know yet...

The variety of weapons in the game reaches seven species - it is in the glove or side on the shoulders of biokosma. The corridors in the levels are very intricate, but you can always include a map with easy navigation directly on top of the game screen, and with the possibility of placing labels. Map of locations depending on the knowledge level of the colonists (before the arrival of the main character) can be open, partially open or not open. Then you will come to the aid of sonar; by the cost of some shares of the stock battery you will be able to see if for the next wall, empty space or not. Not to "get lost", there is the possibility of placing marks, and this is useful because generally in games with volvomodel graphics well, just very hard to navigate the back streets, because a single corridor like the others very much because of the uniformity and regularity of the graphic grid square of the map sectors. The game has the ability to pick up, use or throw out items, communicate with the surviving characters are the ones who are not degraded to the level of the zombies or became enslaved. And friendly characters should not touch in the heat of battle, as by rough handling, they will be offended and you won't tell, and some will apply to you my weapons...

In the game Wrath of Earth are both closed and open spaces with a magnificent display of slightly animated (!) alien landscapes. The game takes place on three different planetary bodies, to the space station in space, and in the final game – even inside the lair of a giant alien beings. Musical themes are only four, but they alternate from level to level and thin plot correspond to the intensity of the events on each game map. And the sounds in the game are pretty much all messages of the speech of the informant costume, messages from the operators and command along with the text and dubbed 8-bit sound.

A bit about the graphics engine of the game. This is a Wolfenstein-like engine of its own design with the addition of dynamic lighting effects. Initially it was planned to make the game tactical shooter with a team of four. It was necessary to develop two graphics engine: the first is to display the external scene and one for rendering inside of interiors. But in the end, the release was only the second variant. The authors of the engine – programmers from a small group of developers called the Addix Software Development, Inc. – Dave Fuller, and mark Spink. And in this group included several people, each of them went about their direction in development: art design, sound effects, animation and music. Note, in 1995 to enter the market with a Wolfenstein-like graphics famous video game developers-professionals have strongly recommended, but beginners do it was not forbidden. And these guys did actually impossible, having squeezed all that could be squeezed out of the graphics engine of this type. After completion of the operation, when the output OS from one version of Wrath of Earth is a text-based screen, along with the numbers of contact phones and faxes, there was a mention about some kind of continuation under a similar name Return to Earth. But, unfortunately, Addix Software Development, Inc. after the release of Wrath of Earth almost immediately broke up and they had not planned on doing a sequel, so because of this "announcement" turned out to be just not very funny joke.

In conclusion, the game description should say such words: 3D-shooter, Wrath of Earth can and should be considered the final beautiful chord, a record top-quality creations for sprite era games flat architecture Wolfenstein-like 2.5 D to-Doom ovskogo period. Therefore, at least just to see the Wrath of Earth is bound by any once it started working, which really honors the great history of the development of the genre of games FPS.

Have you ever wondered what kind of video games were played in the good old days? Try playing Wrath of Earth online now and we are sure you will not stop playing again.

Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com