It's been a few months since FiringSquad got it's first hands-on taste of Warmonger, the upcoming Unreal Engine 3 first person shooter from NetDevil that was all about destructible environments. Today as part of NetDevil's 10th anniversary celebration, we got a chance to visit the developer's new offices in Louisville, CO and play a new build of Warmonger, this time in an eight player capture the flag match

The game itself has evolved a lot in the past few months. The framerate has improved and more importantly we can see how the game's destructible environments actually affect gameplay. In one level we played the location was in a series of ruined parking garages. You can destroy stairs in the game that will cut off one path for your opponents to use. The game doesn't have a lot of weapons. You have what looks like a cross between a crowbar and medical instrument as a melee weapon along with a low powered pistols. The three main weapons are your machine gun with a sticky grenade launcher as an alternate fire. You also have a rocket launcher with a scope. Finally there is a chain gun that you can activate a energy shield that protects your front and allows you to fire but doesn't allow you to move.

In addition to the parking garage, we also played a level set in a wrecked subway with lots of little bits of shrapnel that can be created when you shoot tiles in the subway stations's walls. We were told that two more multiplayer levels will be set in a sewer and in a location with lots of buildings that can be leveled.

While the Warmonger build we played was fast and furious in its CTF mode, having a way to blow up buildings and structures certainly makes the game different than most other FPS titles. Having the Unreal Engine 3 graphics tech helps the game have a high polygon count and NetDevil put in some neat effects like wind that causes dust to blow around.

Currently the plan is to release the first version of Warmonger for free sometime in August as a digital download of four mulltiplayer levels plus one single player training levels. There will be bots for the multiplayer levels in case you don't feel like going online but we haven't seen how they work yet. The game is designed specifically to be played on PCs with the AGEIA PhysX hardware card installed. We haven't heard yet if the game will be playable in some way without the card.

What's really interesting is that Warmonger might turn into something other than a multiplayer FPS with a nice twist. The developers want to see if they can expand the game at some point to become an MMO title. Unfortunately they are not talking much about how that will happen as they are concentrating just on making this first version of the game be entertaining. We hope to get a more complete preview of Warmonger before its release later this year.

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