It’s the year 1994. The Super Nintendo and the Sega Megadrive are dominating the video games market, and the PC is only just beginning to emerge as a solid gaming platform. Many classic titles were released at this time, including Donkey Kong Country, Art of Fighting, Alien vs Predator, Doom, Final Fantasy VI, Mortal Kombat II and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but there was one other game that made people sit up and take notice. The game was One Must Fall: 2097, developed by the little known Diversions Entertainment, and was really the first time a fighting title was made exclusively for the PC. Not only that, but it was also the one of the first PC titles that actually had solid network code to allow play over a network or modem (keep in mind this was two years before Quake was released). The game was a 1 on 1, 2D fighter with a difference. Instead of controlling a specific character, you actually controlled what was meant to be a huge robot, but you also needed to pick your robot pilot, who all had differing abilities that effected the way your robot worked. All these elements meant that the game won a huge fanbase at the time.

Fast forward back to present day 2003. It’s been nearly ten years since the release of One Must Fall: 2097, and finally, much to the delight of its fans, Diversions Entertainment is working on a sequel. Titled One Must Fall: Battlegrounds, the new title in the OMF series due out later this year, is again set to revolutionise PC gaming. And Blood-Sports.net has been lucky enough to be given a chance to play the work in progress beta of the game to write this exclusive preview!

The engine to One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is completely 3D, and you’ll again be taking control of a giant robot, needing to be piloted by various humans (and some non-humans) with differing abilities. Unlike the original though, OMF: Battlegrounds isn’t meant to be played as a 1 on 1 fighter. Even though it can be, OMF: Battlegrounds works best as a multiplayer title, and in fact supports up to 16 players playing over a LAN or over the Internet.

When you play, you can choose one of about 50 pilots to pilot your robot, in which you currently have 8 to choose from, although it’s entirely possible that Diversions could be adding more in a later release. You’ll recognise some robots from the original, and there’s some new robots that are making their debuts in the sequel.

As already noted, the OMF: Battlegrounds graphics engine is completely 3D, and supports up to 16 players online. Obviously Diversions needed to change the gameplay a little, and they have. You now take a 3rd person view of your robot as you move around the 3D arenas and inflict damage on your opponents. You also no longer have just a simple punch and kick button like you did in the original, now you control each of your robot’s limbs with more precision, explicitly controlling their left/right punches and kicks. Pressing a direction on your preferred control device (the keyboard is default, but you can completely change the default scheme, I actually set it up to use my gamepad) and a button also produces a different attack. Of course, your robots also have their own specific special moves as well, and these are executed in classic fighting game style…pressing combinations such as down, up, attack button, or right, right, attack button. The special moves are quite varied, from huge fireballs to exploding spiders. However you can’t just keep doing them over and over. You have a sort of power meter which depletes as you execute your special moves, and the only ways to regenerate it is to either pick up the blue powerups scattered around the arena, or by landing blows on your opponent. Each robot has their strengths and weaknesses, although there are still some balance issues to be sorted out before release date as some robots seem quite overpowered against others. For example, the slower and more powerful Warlord robot seems at quite a disadvantage against the faster and nimbler Katana robot. However Diversions are working on getting all the little issues sorted out before release so that needn’t be an issue.

How does the actual gameplay work? Very well, in fact. As I was playing, more and more players were joining. There was a point where there were about 12 of us fighting in the same arena, and amazingly the game didn’t seem to be lagging much at all. In fact, I’ve experienced more lag playing 6 player Starcraft than 12 player OMF: BG. With that many players in the arena, the action certainly gets very intense, and even if you are on your guard, chances are you won’t be lasting too long so you’ll need to be equally as ruthless in your fighting. The battlegrounds all range in size, some have a lot of blue powerups while some have none, meaning you need to rely solely on landing blows on your opponents to recharge your power meter. The controls are pretty simplistic and it shouldn’t take you all that long to get used to them, but that doesn’t mean the game is easy. Knowing how and when to execute your robot’s special moves is the key as each one has a short delay before it connects, meaning an alert opponent may have time to jump behind you and start pummeling you from behind. Some battlegrounds also have little weapons you can pick up and use to make the game more interesting, like a small tactical nuke or a little ball of energy that shoots lightning bolts.

One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is already looking quite polished. Of course in a beta there will always be some bugs, but that’s expected. Diversions have assured us that they will not be releasing the final product until they are confident that all the bugs are sorted out, so as a result they haven’t set a firm release date, but fans can be rest assured that the game will be complete when it is released. They are planning on finishing the game in mid to late July, however, so if all goes to plan it’ll be on store shelves most likely in August or September. For those of you who own a PC and are longing for a great online fighter, then this is your chance to start getting excited because one is finally coming. Unfortunately for Mac users, the game hasn’t been planned on being released for Mac, so this is strictly for PC users. You needn’t have a super fast broadband Internet connection to enjoy multiplayer either, many of the people I was playing with were happily playing on their 56k’s, which shows you just how good the network code is.

So One Must Fall fans, you don’t have much longer to wait before the game is released. It’s definitely looking very good and its clear Diversions have put a lot of thought and effort into this. One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is definitely shaping up as one of the best PC titles of the year.

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