Abomination

DEVELOPER : Hot House
PUBLISHER : Eidos

EST. RELEASE DATE: Oct. 99

Hothouse Creations, the makers of Gangsters: Organized Crime, is set to offer another dose of real-time strategy in the form of Abomination.  You will be in control of a squad of bio-enhanced warriors set out to destroy a mutated menace called The Brood.  The game offers up individual stats and skills for each of your team members.  After each mission you will have experience points with which you can boost your heroes abilities.  In the full game, you will also being able to capture mutant creatures in order to advance your research into the alien technology.

This early demo version gives you three maps to play on, each with a different mission.  One requires you to eradicate the enemy from the map, the second to find some sort of toxin device and the third to find chemical bombs littered all over the city.  The gameplay is fairly straight forward, requiring little in the form of strategy.  You cannot enter buildings, but you can climb exterior stairwells to gain access to the roof.  Essentially, using an overhead map in the guise of a ‘scanner’, you locate the bad guys, put a cross hair on them and click.  This orders your troops to move within range and fire.  You can kneel and lie prone as well as use vehicles for cover.  You also have the option of setting up AI parameters for your troops if you wish to control only one.  The gameplay in the demo is a far cry from what I had hoped, with one of the games producers having worked on the X-Com series.  I was hoping for something a little more in depth.  As it stands in the demo, I was wanting a little score counter in the corner of the screen because the game felt like X-Com Arcade.

The graphics are bright and detailed, the mutant look evident throughout.  The troops and bad guys, 3D models, move and look great.  Though only the city is available, the game is to come with interior and jungle maps among others.  The enemy, composed of human brood worshippers, patrols a fixed area.  When you get in range, they come gunning for you, lobbing a few grenades to soften the blow you will deliver on them.  When badly hurt, they have the brains to run for cover. 

As it stands, I have my doubts about Abomination.  To reiterate, the gameplay was a bit of a let down.  That’s not to say that the full game won’t be great, though.  There are a lot of options not accessible in this demo version.  Abomination may be one of those games that needs to rely on the sum of its parts in order to be a good gaming experience.

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Reviewed by A. Sage