The Chinese blogosphere is abuzz with excitement over a demo for a new single player first-person shooter. Thatâs right, there is a lot of buzz for a demo. So what exactly makes this demo so exciting for Chinese players? Itâs a domestically made FPS, done by a one man studio over the course of one summer.
The demo, the first few levels of the game, WarStorm, was released last week, and news about it hit the front pages of Chinese gaming sites such as Sina and netEase. Immediately, Chinese gamers and websites started out on a quest to find out where the game comes from and whoâs behind it. The only clue that was given was that on the lower right hand corner of the loading screen, it says âcreated domestically by âFei Yan Islands Studiosâ a one man teamâ and that it was made with Unreal Engine 3.
Very little is known about Fey Yan Islands Studios, but rumors have it that the creator is only a university student. WarStorm isnât a Call of Duty or a Battlefield, but itâs still pretty damn impressive-lookingâitâs even got loads of destructible objects. From all reviews, the game plays like every other PC FPS; in fact, plot-wise, itâs also very similar to modern day shooters such as CoD
One thing that baffled me and that may have been answered by Chinese gamers, is that the spoken dialogue in-game was all in English. Iâm not sure where the voice clips came from or why the characters all spoke English, but I suspect it may have to do with the âanti-terrorismâ plot.
The only downside apart from the bugs (since itâs a demo) is that the AI is incredibly dumb. According to one video reviewer, the AI just stands there and shoots when it sees the player. It doesnât even move to avoid being shot at.
The free demo is available at the source link, though it requires some knowledge of Chinese to download.
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