Arena Tank Combat

Assault Rigs is the new real-time 3-D tank combat game from Sony Interactive (Psygnosis) due out early 1996 for play on the Sony PlayStation and PC CD-ROM. The game is based around the idea that in the future all international sports will be played over a network system, sponsored by the world's largest and most powerful corporations.

In this game, the world's most popular network spectator sport is Assault Rigs. A game in which billions of people log on from around the world to watch the Assault Rig jockeys compete for Power Gems in a fast paced 3-D killing arena for the right to become "The World Net Champion".

To become a successful Assault Rig jockey, not only do you have to deal with the prospect of being blown to smithereens, but you will also need to overcome skyways, trenches, push blocks, elevators, push rods and a whole host of enemies if you are to be crowned as Champion.

Assault Rigs features over 40 mazes to explore, each maze is based on one of four graphical environments: "Hybrid VR", "Steam Punk", "Military" and "World at War" (the tanks from three of these are presented for you to examine, along with video footage which shows some of the fourth). Each of the four environments has three dedicated interactive rigs for the player to control, each of which has its own distinctive look and feel. The rigs consist of one that is medium speed with average armor and a rotation capable turret, the second has slow speed with strong armor and varying rotation capable turret, then third has fast speed, minimal armour and a fixed gun.

All Assault Rigs mazes are multi-level, allowing the player to go up and down ramps to reach different sections of each battle arena. The game features real-life game physics which allows you to "feel" the rig's weight. Assault Rigs also features multiple power-ups that not only effect the gameplay but the visual feel of the game as well.

Assault Rigs also uses state of the art Gourard shading, texture mapping, light sourcing and a high frame rate to help give the player an extra sense of immersion.

And if all that wasn't enough, Assault Rigs allows PlayStation gamers to battle it out against one another with a two-player link and offers PC-CD Rom gamers multiple player options that include network support, modem and serial links.

Never has the notion of sport on the Internet appeared more exciting... and yet more frightening.

[Be sure to check Game Zero's Video Pit for video footage of this game!]

(12/95)