It’s strange to live in a time where people can make a feature list out of things their game doesn’t have, but here we are. Exceedingly Unreal-Tournament-esque shooter Toxikk touts no levelling, no regenerating health, no perks, no cover systems, no classes, no configurable weapons, and no iron sight aiming. And yet, it actually looks quite good.
It also will not be free-to-play.
The basic idea is to “bring back” the style of shooter that went out of style after Call of Duty (specifically the original Modern Warfare) re-shaped most of the genre in its own image. Developer Reakktor — who has used up the world’s supply of Ks, forcing us to rename ourselves Qotaqo — is really going all-in with the idea, too. Case in point:
“Instead [of modern shooter tropes] you get fast and precise movement (with deeply configurable mouse controls), double jumps, dodge jumps, booster pick-ups, nine iconic weapons to be carried around simultaneously, secondary fire modes for every weapon, vehicular game modes, jump pads, health-packs, lots of vertical gameplay, optional mutators (incl. instagib) and everything else that made these kind of games so addictive. And if you want to practice your skills offline, Toxikk also features a configurable BOT MODE.”
These are people who shout about BOT MODES. If that is a thing you would also shout about — say at a party, during a wedding, or in the middle of a funeral procession — then congratulations: you’re home.
Between this and Epic’s brand new, very-early-in-development Unreal Tournament, it looks like things are beginning to turn around for fans of old-school arena shooters.
The plan is to have Toxikk up and running on Steam Early Access in a few months, but until then Reakktor is taking suggestions for what you — yes you, and also the rest of humanity — would like to see in the game on their forums.
Speaking of forums, this post (the top one on there, as of writing) is perfect:
In other news, TIL that seeing two K’s sitting right next to each other immediately and irrevocably renders me blind.
Comments
17 responses to “New Shooter Wants To Be The Anti-Call Of Duty”
Wow, Call of Duty really has taken away so much from us gamers to appease the non-gamers.
I never actually realised how different Call of Duty is from old shooters until I saw this.
I for one would actually rather play this sort of game than CoD.
UT/Quake in steroids? Hell yeah!
We already have an Anti-Call Of Duty:
– Spec Ops – The Line
granted, it isn’t the Anti-CoD in terms of gameplay-mechanics (like UT or Quake),
but it is the Anti-Cod in terms of the general CoD-power-fantasy
and the US-military-bravado.
Yeah man spec ops was a great FPS shooter
well, except that it’s not an FPS – it’s 3rd person…..
still, epic game though
I was kidding ahaha
ahh, dammit! – you got me
It’s great.
…so long as you play it ONCE and avoid achievements and multiplayer.
I think maybe the name will keep it down a bit.
Well, sure, if that’s the game they want to make, let them make it. I wish them success, but I have the feeling that they’re reaching out to a diminishing market.
Looks good.
Good to see a love-letter to some of the best games of the 90s and 00s. The original Unreal Tournament had a major portion of our college held utterly captive, including a bunch of girls who didn’t consider themselves ‘gamers’. (Perhaps odd, but apparently they quite liked the ‘social’ aspect.)
I’m a bit skeptical at the gleeful departure from Free to Play.
In a multiplayer-only game, other players are content. It’s one of the things that makes F2P work. But for a thought exercise, I would suggest you take a look through the list of multi-only Steam titles and look for their servers. How many there are, how well-populated. The results may depress you.
This will be a problem for them, in this day and age, I predict.
Marry them!
-cue heavy breathing- This couples with Doom 4’s supposed return to the same formula makes me so damn happy.
Oh hell yes! LAN mode plzzzzzzzz
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!