Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Blue Omega Entertainment
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista; 2.8 GHz Pentium or AMD-equivalent CPU; 1 GB RAM; GeForce 7600 or Radeon X1300 or better graphics card; DirectX-compatible sound card; and 10 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
Release date: Available now

Alternative history stories in games have become popular during recent years. Speculating about history’s myriad possible paths opens up a wealth of storytelling possibilities. Developer Blue Omega has added a steampunk flavor to the “what if” scenario with Damnation, a third-person squad shooter that posits a bizarre, unexpected consequence of the War Between the States.

The American Civil War has ended with both sides almost down for the count. Filling the power void is megalomaniacal industrialist William Prescott, whose Prescott Standard Industries (PSI) is in the process of taking control of the remnants of the North and South through the terrifying use of mechanical battle suits and a drug that slowly turns its victims into mindless soldiers who obey only Prescott’s voice. A small but determined resistance has grown in strength, led by former soldier Hamilton Rourke, the Native American healer Yakecan, and inventor Charles Winslow, once a colleague of Prescott’s before being accused of treason. Rourke and his rebel cohorts search the cities, villages and canyons of the southwest for signs of Prescott’s whereabouts in an attempt to bring peace to a war-ravaged country.

Damnation is a combination shooter/platformer designed to keep player frustration to the barest minimum. You control Rourke in his pursuit of the evil Lord Prescott, accompanied by one or two AI-controlled companions, depending upon the situation. During your journey, you and your comrades battle Prescott’s fanatical followers, from ordinary soldiers and brainwashed Indians to fighters encased in mechanical suits and wielding deadly rocket launchers. The fairly meaty eight-hour campaign can be tackled alone or with a friend in two-player co-op mode, with eight-player deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture-the-flag and king-of-the-hill multiplayer modes available online and on a LAN.

One thing’s for certain about Damnation: you certainly won’t feel cheated by a lack of scenic variety. Unreal Engine 3 is used to create a vast, detailed western environment, from villages and factories sprouting from the walls of deep canyons, to the streets, sewers and spires of enormous cities. All of the campaign maps are huge, intricate affairs that offer you more than one path towards your ultimate destination. You can carry two rifles and one pistol with you at any one time, ranging from the standard handgun to hand-held gatling guns, grenade launchers and sniper rifles, which are mostly useless except when you have time to line up an always-fatal headshot. Character movement is smooth and responsive, and the occasional motorcycle jaunt through the maps nicely breaks up the standard shooter monotony.

But despite its impressive artistic variety, Damnation is ravaged by an embarrassingly high level of programming sloppiness. AI characters get stuck on obstacles in the middle of their run cycles, reach and fall through walls, and fail to react as you pump bullet after bullet into them. The game takes you by the hand and makes sure that you’re never lost; a swooping camera movement at the beginning of each plot section shows you exactly where you’re going, and your AI comrades sometimes run straight to the next decision point on the map and stand almost like hunting dogs, pointing you in the right direction. They also can become totally incapacitated at the beginning of a battle or find a safe place to hide, making them almost useless to you in combat. There are huge gaps of logic in the story (how do they get those 100-ton artillery pieces to those tiny outcroppings hundreds of feet above the canyon floors?), you are the only combatant smart enough to shoot the explosive yellow barrels that litter every building in every map, and the voice acting is perhaps the worst I’ve ever heard in a game. And then there’s the omnipresent crash-to-desktop bug that I could count upon to kick me out of the game at least once during every play session. Also, I was unable to check out Damnation‘s multiplayer modes because there was nobody playing them; according to the game’s server browser statistics, only two players had logged into the Gamespy matchmaking service in the first 16 days of the month.

For the most part, Damnation is a disaster, including bad AI behavior, sloppy programming and abominable voice acting. But despite all of its flaws, I found myself strangely drawn to the game. The graphics are occasionally impressive, the maps are expansive and creatively designed, and the developer even managed to throw in a few plot twists to keep things interesting. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of a guilty pleasure, but there’s just enough good in the game to make it worth the journey.

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