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Rochard

Rochard

Jon Rochard is a simple man. An astro miner from Missouri and as he discovers the first proof of alien life he gets caught in a proper shit storm.

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It's kind of hard to start a preview of Rochard off without mentioning 3D Realms. Not only is Rochard voiced by Jon St. John, who also does the voice of Duke Nukem, but Recoil Games started out working on Earth No More, an epic scale AAA calibre game that was taken under the wings of Scott Miller's Radar Group. With the collapse of 3D Realm and the harsh market conditions a few years back, Recoil Games were forced to refocus and reshape themselves. Rather than the 100 man strong developer they were trying to build, they had to scale back and the resulting project was Rochard - a downloadable title set to hit PSN later this year.

Recoil Games somehow survived the ordeal and Rochard, while the game looks nothing like Earth No More it still holds a lot of promise. Jon Rochard is an astro miner (space miner would just be stupid, who mines vacuum?) and he's not had a great deal of success lately. In fact, he and his team basically have one last chance to bring home something valuable or the mining company will let them go.

Rochard

Rochard and his team discovers some kind of alien artefact on the rock they're mining and to their surprise their boss sends space bandits in to get rid off them and claim the artefact for himself (surely, part of some evil scheme).

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At its core Rochard is a side-scrolling action game with environmental puzzles to solve. The miners use gravity generators to normalise the gravity on the space rock, and Rochard cut turn them on and off at will. This means you will be able to jump further as its turned off and move heavy objects. This mechanic can be used both in combat and when solving puzzles. There are of course guns as well, but our impression is that this game is more about using objects and the environment to your advantage than squeezing the trigger.

The game makes use of a refreshing art style that reminds us of Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield Heroes. The environments may not have been overly exciting in the early part of the game that we got to see, but hopefully this is something that Recoil have taken into consideration. The campaign is estimated to be around 6-8 hours long.

Rochard

Recoil Games' Burt Kane confirmed that the game will not feature any multiplayer as the team wanted to focus on delivering a compelling single player campaign. It's a shame given the potential of co-operative or for that matter competitive play and the gravity manipulation mechanic. Think for instance of a game mode where one player has the power to change gravity and the others chase him. It could have been fun, but we fully understand the need to focus on the core component of the game and getting it out in a polished state. Recoil has been through enough turmoil in their young life as it is, and keeping it simple for the first release is probably a wise choice.

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It's rather simple to pinpoint what has us excited about Rochard. The gravity manipulation - it's fun, intuitive and frankly opens up a lot of options to the player. It remains to be seen just how much the player will be able to play around with it later on in the game as we merely played through an early tutorial-like part of the game, but there is certainly potential there.

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RochardScore

Rochard

REVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"If you're looking for something a bit different, polished and light-hearted in tone - Rochard fits the bill."

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Rochard

Rochard

PREVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"It's rather simple to pinpoint what has us excited about Rochard. The gravity manipulation - it's fun, intuitive and frankly opens up a lot of options"



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