Streamjumper
(?)Community Member
Offline
- Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:13:53 +0000
Yeah, I'm asking about Trenched, the latest downloadable offering from Double Fine (lately, moar liek Ultra-Fine, amirite?). Combining highly customizable mecha (extremely so for an XBLA offering) and the signature humor stylings of Double Fine studio with a fine blend (think Columbian dark roast... maybe even Hawaiian Kona) of third-person shooter and tower defense.
One of the four games concieved during the period of divine intervention known as Amnesia Fortnight (a period during Brutal Legend's creation cycle where they were without a producer for two weeks. To maintain morale and keep creative juices flowing, DF's crew were divided into four teams and sent off to brainstorm up crazy new game concepts lest cabin fever cause them to consume one another in an orgy of murder and gluttony). Thus were born four excellent ideas good enough to each see the light of day. First came Costume Quest, then Stacking, and now Trenched. Also coming from that is an idea in line enough with Jim Henson Studios' properties and mission statement that it got linked up to the Sesame Street franchise and became Once Upon a Monster (the main reason I want a Kinnect in any way, shape, or form... to be able to join my 5 year old nephew dancing with monsters.)
In this particularly manly offering, you pilot a Mobile Trench, a post World War 1 mecha consisting of a field bunker with mecha legs and massive diesel engine (if this alone doesn't excite you, you're already dead inside). After choosing the size of your bunker (larger ones get to carry more and heavier weapons, smaller get less weapons, but a wider array and larger on-mech inventory of turrets and gadgets you can deploy), your weapons (with a wide array from categories consisting of machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, sniper cannons, artillery cannons, and electronic warfare suites known as broadcasters), legs, deployables, and even paint job, you head out to destroy the monovision menace. The sweet thing about this is that you can literally look at someone's Trench and tell their loadout from its appearance... all the way from exactly which weapons it has to which make and model the base chassis is (even the different levels of each of the 6 chassis types have visual differences). Hell, you can even choose from 4 different pilots (each with different lines and voices) and customize their hats and uniforms.
Then you head out into the field and engage in some well-concieved destruction of a television-based menace. Even the early maps have multiple avenues of approach that can handle different playstyles well. You can run around destroying everything yourself, hunker down by the objective and let them march to their inevitible destruction at the hands of your massive arsenal, crush them with the massive firepower of your deployed entrenchments, or use your deployables to slow and weaken them for easy destruction by you. Multiple avenues of approach and well concieved waves keep inflexible and stagnant strategies from working for long, but still allow for a decent variety of solutions. The game's pacing also introduces a new enemy type on nearly every non-boss map as well as regularly adding new gear to your arsenal, so you have plenty of reason to keep both your Trench build and strategy evolving. The story is somewhat minimal, but enough to keep me feeling like I'm out there for a reason... and keep me chuckling... and keep me wanting to kill the enemies.
Further enhancing both the initial playthrough and any replay value are 4 player online co-op with a focus on being a team rather than a more adversarial co-op (scrap used to build turrets is shared on pickup, as are loot crates), personal and team (both the people you're currently playing with, but the last four people you played with even if they're currently soloing) challenges, and a rating system (bronze, silver, and gold medals based on how much health your objective has remaining at the end of a mission or how quickly you beat the boss) challenges, and a decent range of lootable weapons, gear, paintjobs, and clothing to find.
So far, most people I know take a minimum of 10 hours to complete the campaign and cheevos, but stick around much longer for the challenges, collectables, comeraderie, and fun. Given the past history of Double Fine's downloadable games, we'll be seeing DLC in a month or two, and there's already a lot of demand on their forums for an escalating infinite horde mode... so I think we'll be seeing a lot more out of this beast. And that pleases me greatly.
Sadly, not all of Europe has this yet due to a Portugese game designer having a copyright on the title Trench! for tabletop and electronic gaming, and the EU's apparent feeling that the two titles are close enough for the electronic copyright to hold. I hope they get it soon, though I believe quite a few people have used US-based accounts and credit cards to purchase the game anyways. Sorry, Sonyfriends, this one is Xbox Live Arcade only, and with Microsoft as the publisher, it is highly unlikely you'll be seeing this bad boy on PSN. PC is possible, but I've heard absolutely nothing... so that'd kinda unlikely.
One of the four games concieved during the period of divine intervention known as Amnesia Fortnight (a period during Brutal Legend's creation cycle where they were without a producer for two weeks. To maintain morale and keep creative juices flowing, DF's crew were divided into four teams and sent off to brainstorm up crazy new game concepts lest cabin fever cause them to consume one another in an orgy of murder and gluttony). Thus were born four excellent ideas good enough to each see the light of day. First came Costume Quest, then Stacking, and now Trenched. Also coming from that is an idea in line enough with Jim Henson Studios' properties and mission statement that it got linked up to the Sesame Street franchise and became Once Upon a Monster (the main reason I want a Kinnect in any way, shape, or form... to be able to join my 5 year old nephew dancing with monsters.)
In this particularly manly offering, you pilot a Mobile Trench, a post World War 1 mecha consisting of a field bunker with mecha legs and massive diesel engine (if this alone doesn't excite you, you're already dead inside). After choosing the size of your bunker (larger ones get to carry more and heavier weapons, smaller get less weapons, but a wider array and larger on-mech inventory of turrets and gadgets you can deploy), your weapons (with a wide array from categories consisting of machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, sniper cannons, artillery cannons, and electronic warfare suites known as broadcasters), legs, deployables, and even paint job, you head out to destroy the monovision menace. The sweet thing about this is that you can literally look at someone's Trench and tell their loadout from its appearance... all the way from exactly which weapons it has to which make and model the base chassis is (even the different levels of each of the 6 chassis types have visual differences). Hell, you can even choose from 4 different pilots (each with different lines and voices) and customize their hats and uniforms.
Then you head out into the field and engage in some well-concieved destruction of a television-based menace. Even the early maps have multiple avenues of approach that can handle different playstyles well. You can run around destroying everything yourself, hunker down by the objective and let them march to their inevitible destruction at the hands of your massive arsenal, crush them with the massive firepower of your deployed entrenchments, or use your deployables to slow and weaken them for easy destruction by you. Multiple avenues of approach and well concieved waves keep inflexible and stagnant strategies from working for long, but still allow for a decent variety of solutions. The game's pacing also introduces a new enemy type on nearly every non-boss map as well as regularly adding new gear to your arsenal, so you have plenty of reason to keep both your Trench build and strategy evolving. The story is somewhat minimal, but enough to keep me feeling like I'm out there for a reason... and keep me chuckling... and keep me wanting to kill the enemies.
Further enhancing both the initial playthrough and any replay value are 4 player online co-op with a focus on being a team rather than a more adversarial co-op (scrap used to build turrets is shared on pickup, as are loot crates), personal and team (both the people you're currently playing with, but the last four people you played with even if they're currently soloing) challenges, and a rating system (bronze, silver, and gold medals based on how much health your objective has remaining at the end of a mission or how quickly you beat the boss) challenges, and a decent range of lootable weapons, gear, paintjobs, and clothing to find.
So far, most people I know take a minimum of 10 hours to complete the campaign and cheevos, but stick around much longer for the challenges, collectables, comeraderie, and fun. Given the past history of Double Fine's downloadable games, we'll be seeing DLC in a month or two, and there's already a lot of demand on their forums for an escalating infinite horde mode... so I think we'll be seeing a lot more out of this beast. And that pleases me greatly.
Sadly, not all of Europe has this yet due to a Portugese game designer having a copyright on the title Trench! for tabletop and electronic gaming, and the EU's apparent feeling that the two titles are close enough for the electronic copyright to hold. I hope they get it soon, though I believe quite a few people have used US-based accounts and credit cards to purchase the game anyways. Sorry, Sonyfriends, this one is Xbox Live Arcade only, and with Microsoft as the publisher, it is highly unlikely you'll be seeing this bad boy on PSN. PC is possible, but I've heard absolutely nothing... so that'd kinda unlikely.
