Beasts Battle

Beasts Battle may not be the first movie based on a classic movie, but it’s the first attempt to capture the IP for the interactive format, with Brash Entertainment hoping to port it to a variety of platforms including PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Mac, mobile, and mobile.

The project had been in development for a while, but Brash is giving it a final polish in this year’s instalment of the title, but from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it could be very similar to the Battlezone games.

“We wanted to go for the hardcore crowd in the games market,” Brash says. “There are a lot of those in our games. The unique touch of the RTS is the ability to move units at the speed you’d expect them to go, so it’s a great way to bring that in. It’s one of the cool things about using console interfaces and then having some fun in the whole game.”

It’s clear that fans of Battlezone will want to see new game mechanics be included, too. As well as the World War II-era tanks that made the Pacific RTS such a hit in the early 1990s, it’s also a series that is heavily influenced by the real-life battles of World War II.

“The other thing we really liked about that game was that the combat and the world are very similar in nature,” Brash says. “They’re very different from each other. You can have a tank that’s really big and agile, or a tank that’s incredibly maneuverable.

“We feel we’ve got a great template for where our tanks go, so we want them to feel unique. We want to keep the things that people loved about the original games in the series, but we want to make sure that players are really engaged with the war, not just fans of the original games.”

Those same things also have to do with the game’s campaign, which Brash says is the best representation of the Pacific theater’s battles so far. “We tried to replicate that, and so to try and replicate that, we try to go to the U.S and use the same tactics,” Brash says.

A lot of this comes down to technology, which is not a big change in the process of creating a brand-new game, but a generational leap that pushes the game forward. With new technologies coming, we can hopefully see the same possibilities with titles like Battlefield 2042’s multiple global maps and vehicle types, in which teams are always changing and adapting.

The new campaign isn’t just a gameplay refresh, however.

There are two elements that Brash feels will make a return to the franchise.

“We can pull a lot of inspiration from the first Battlefield game,” Brash says. “It’s the same thing with the vehicles and the vehicles. They were very big, the gameplay loop was very fast-paced, we had the vehicles, it was a lot of fun and the dynamic maps and the new weapons and the weather effects that we had were something we hadn’t done before.”

To put it lightly, the emphasis in today’s shooters is the work that Brash feels towards creating content that will meet the needs of players while also maintaining the type of experience that they expect from them.

“We’re listening to the feedback from the players, but it’s important to try to get the balance right,” Brash says. “We do a lot of things, it’s much easier for us to do that, and as you can see in our recent balancing changes, we do a lot of things at the same time. I think we’re taking our time, but we do a lot of things and we think that we’re taking our time.”

“The action is a bit slower in the game, there’s a lot more room for a lot more strategy,” he continues. “So, we’re adding more layers to it, adding new enemies and more ways to deal with them, but it also adding more layers to the combat and having a really tight relationship with players, and a lot of ways to add complexity.”

And it’s not all about death, either. When one of your heroes dies, they’re respawned back at the drop point and, as we saw in our play-through with a preview build, has a host of new abilities to play with. For example, have your attacks replaced the former ability with a gun or two, or have your staff revive you at the same time?