Six years ago, a small team of aficionados decided to get together and create a complete overhaul of Half-Life 2. The theme was set around the United States’ war in Iraq, and featured an extremely realistic play-style that was not very widespread at the time, especially for frequent players of any games that featured the Source engine in general. Needless to say, the mod, titled Insurgency, became a hit. In its first week of launch, the project amassed over one million downloads, and later received Mod of the Year awards from both ModDB and Steamfriends. Although most players have left, the mod still has a dedicated following, with servers online to this day. Meanwhile, the small team went their various ways, with most of them being picked up by studios the likes of Blizzard, Crytek, and Gearbox. Four years later though, they came back to plot the sequel of the project they had started.
Insurgency 2 is the upcoming realistic first-person shooter from that very same team, New World Interactive. Seeing as they’ve recently launched their KickStarter campaign, this game has got a long way to go, but it already has a good chunk of its fundraising complete. The game hopes to recreate the old style of the first title, whilst improving features and introducing new things that weren’t possible with the Source engine. They’ve also stated that if fundraising is successful, New World Interactive will commit to the following:
- Two Teams: Security Forces and Insurgent Forces.
- Seven Maps: Located in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.
- Twelve Primary Weapons: Powerful primary weapons that behave more naturally than most games and can get upgraded by performing objectives.
- Nine Personal Weapons: Sidearms, explosives and melee weapons are all considered personal weapons in the game. We will include a default personal weapon as well as two upgrades you can get over time for each of the above categories. We will also include various attachments you can get for the pistols including extended magazines, laser dots and silencers.
- Three Player Classes: The different player classes in the game are light, standard and heavy. They determine your speed, armor and ammo capacity, and players are free to combine these different gameplay styles with any primary weapon available in the game. For instance, if you are Light Class the game won’t stop you from using a Machine Gun if that’s the unique gameplay style you’re going for.
- At Least Two Game Modes: Our new king of the hill inspired “Occupy” game mode as well as a new game mode we are currently prototyping that can best be described as a “wave-based convoy escort / ambush game mode.” More information about these to come later.
- Focus on Objectives and Teamwork: Our game modes are not your typical deathmatch, they all have focused front-line objective-based gameplay. A new proximity indicator notifies the player of nearby teammates which allows players to more easily stick together in their approach. Teamwork is by no means required in the game if you prefer to lone run-and-gun, however those who do work with others will perform better and win rounds.
- Weapon Caches: Players instantly respawn by their team’s weapon cache. Weapon caches are the new way of arming yourself. Each time you respawn you may choose a different weapon, depending on how you feel. Players can upgrade their weapons by performing objectives and when they do so it actually upgrades the weapon caches in their team’s spawn area for everyone.
As much as the excitement is for this title, we’ll have to try it out for ourselves in order to properly judge it. Though it may be a while. In the meantime though, have this alpha gameplay footage!
