It would appear that the moons have aligned, the chevrons have locked and it has once again come time for a new Adrian Carmack/John Romero shooter to blunder into our lives, flailing wildly and shouting a lot. This time around, as appears to be the done thing in these crazy modern times, they’re asking for backing on Kickstarter. Or rather, John Romero is, Carmack is nowhere to be seen. The game is called Blackroom, and as far as I can tell, the idea is that an eponymous virtual reality matrix has gone haywire and people are in danger.
You appear to be playing as a grizzled, power armour clad, erm, engineer, who goes into the ‘Blackroom’ to solve the problem. This entails bouncing around various different locations influenced by many different time periods and decorating the walls with monster entrails using an array of guns and a kind of reality bending wrist mounted glitch-o-tron. Is it just me or does some (or a lot) of this sound eerily similar to Timesplitters, with virtual reality filling in for time travel?
Could be, but we won’t know what it is or isn’t ripping off until it actually gets the funding to do so. They’re after $700,000, and so far they’ve already netted over £50,000, with the page only having been active for a few days. Perhaps it’s just the way Romero talks or carries himself, but I can’t help but feel like he’s trying to subtly undermine his audience. It did amuse me that, when listing his previous successses in partnership with Carmack, he stopped one game short of mentioning Daikatana. It also amused me to hear him talk so much about the need for a fast paced, violent PC shooter harkening back to the days of old when the next instalment in his most revered franchise is on the cusp of release.
They’re looking at a winter 2018 launch, and I’ve no doubt they’ll get the funding. Despite a slightly damp release, Rage, Romero’s last shooter, still has a crop of dedicated fans, and his recent decision to build and release a new map for the original Doom for the first time in 21 years turned many heads.
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