On the occasion of this E3 2019, we were guests of Rebellion, English software house, to test their entire line up. The titles they showed us were three: Evil Genius 2: World Domination; Sniper Elite VR and Zombie Army 4: Dead War.
Evil Genius 2: World Domination
The first title in the Rebellion line up we tried is Evil Genius 2: World Domination is the successor to Evil Genius, a simulation and real-time strategy video game released in 2004 for PC. This second chapter, like its predecessor, will see the light only and only on PC during the course of 2020. In Evil Genius 2: World Domination we will play the role of a super villain and our task will be to find financial resources to expand our secret base, recruit henchmen and then dominate the world.
We will be able to choose between four villains, two were already present in Evil Genius, while the others are unreleased and we will see them for the first time in this new chapter.
The lair from which all our misdeeds will start will be located on a tropical island. The base will have two facades, one open to the public where mere mortals can come on vacation and spend their savings inside the casino and the other super-secret where there will be laboratories run by mad scientists, henchmen who train and our super villain that we selected at the beginning of the campaign.
The base, including the casino, will be fully expandable depending on what we need. The constructions will not take place immediately, but we will have to wait a certain amount of time, this is because our henchmen will build it in real time under our eyes but there will be the possibility to speed up time in order to see our creation completed in time short.
Our world conquest operations certainly do not take place alone and for this reason we will need new henchmen. Whenever we recruit one, male or female, they will not be able to do anything and therefore we will need to build rooms dedicated to their specialization. We will also have to take care of their needs and try to keep the mood high otherwise they will leave. To make up for this, we will have to build dormitories, canteen rooms, recreation rooms, whatever makes them feel good. As mentioned a few lines above, it will be possible to build laboratories in order to carry out research to build new weapons and especially new traps.
The latter are very important because our lair will often be visited by spies and agents of good who will try to put an end to our evil operations. If we place our traps well we will be able to make the base completely autonomous and eliminate the spy as soon as he sets foot inside. Unfortunately we have not had the opportunity to see how the domain operations of the application will be managed. The game is still in the pre-alpha phase and will be available in the course of 2020.
Sniper Elite VR
The second title in the Rebellion line up we tried was a hands-on demo of Sniper Elite VR, title of the homonymous saga dedicated to Rebbellion snipers focused on virtual reality and Sony's VR sensor. The demo we played was extremely short, about 10 minutes and the level in question was set on a building roof: our task will be to eliminate all the enemies while they shoot at us.
During the game we used theAim Controller in order to make the gaming experience even more realistic. The game mechanics have remained the same as those present in the Sniper Elite saga, therefore an extremely refined and realistic ballistics where any external condition will affect our shot. As typical of the series, there is the iconic kill cam that will activate when we hit a vital organ of our enemy.
The graphic impact is certainly not the best, thanks to the fact that it will have to run on virtual reality. It will often be difficult to distinguish enemies from the game environment. Sniper Elite VR is an extremely fun title and taking up the Aim controller to wipe out enemies with the VR helmet on your head is really satisfying.
Zombie Army 4: Dead War
Zombie Army 4: Dead War is the most interesting title in the Rebellion line up. The title will be set for most of the campaign in our beautiful country and the year in which the events will take place will be 1946. Zombie Army 4 will be available in early 2020 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC exclusively on the Epic Games Store.
During this E3 2019 we had to try a demo of about 20 minutes and the tested version was that of Xbox One. We are located in a safe area located in the central station of Milan. After a moment of apparent calm we are attacked by a burning train containing an impressive number of zombies. Our goal will be to search the whole area and take out any walking dead in order to make the area safe again. The number of enemies on screen is impressive.
We will be forced to move quickly along the game map to avoid being surrounded by zombies. We can equip different weapons including the sniper rifle, a pistol and an automatic assault rifle. In addition to this we will also have grenades, fire grenades and booby traps available.
The weapons are completely customizable and we will be able to insert special objects, such as a wire connected to a battery, in order to use it as an assault weapon. It will be possible to make melee attacks to be used as a last resort. There are also some skills that can be used during combat only after having filled the appropriate bar. It can be filled by killing the various enemies. The difficulty level is quite high, mainly due to the high number of zombies and the low amount of motions. We can find them along the map but we have to carefully consider the shots at our disposal, because the magazines have a tendency to finish quickly.
We also find the iconic kill cam that will activate if we hit a vital organ of the enemy. There are different types that vary in weaponry, available attacks and difficulty in killing them. On a technical level, this third title of the Rebellion line up didn't seem like much to us, in line with its predecessors. The title seems to have a solid frame rate, in fact during our test they did not notice any kind of slowdown. The title looks very promising and will surely offer many hours of pure fun both in single and cooperative.
The Rebellion line up, albeit sparse and with few titles, really impressed us by presenting us with several fun and good quality titles.
