March 19, 2003

Destructive car combat brings gamers closer together in Bandits: Phoenix Rising

by Louis Bedigian

Weapons, vehicles and good friends looking to get rich quick collide in this exciting vehicular combat game from GRIN, Inc.  GRIN CEO Bo Andersson tells us what to expect from the finished product.

Ever since the release of the PSone, vehicular combat has been an extremely popular sub-genre.  A mixture of driving and third-person shooting, vehicular combat takes gamers into the frantic world of running and gunning.

Last year, PS2 owners got the chance to go online with Twisted Metal: Black Online, a stellar vehicular combat game with more action than you can shake a SweetTooth at.  Now PC gamers will get a chance to enjoy online vehicular combat with Bandits: Phoenix Rising.

Filled with cool vehicles and even cooler weapons, Bandits is all about destruction.  Whether you’re playing through the game’s extensive single-player campaign or engaging in a heated multiplayer battle, Bandits will entertain you with its intense, explosive action.

Packing more heat than an episode of The Sopranos, we hopped in our old clunker of a vehicle and drove to a less populated area.  Upon our arrival we met up with GRIN, Inc. CEO Bo Andersson, who gave us instructions on how to survive a game of destructive car combat.  It didn’t help, but we did manage to score an interview with Mr. Andersson, who started out by telling us that we should stick with vehicular combat games and leave real battling to the pros. 

Question: Tell us about the various missions in the game. Aside from robbing trains, what sort of things will the player be required to do in order to complete each mission?

Bo Andersson: There is a wide array of different goals that have to be achieved to complete the different levels in Bandits. Mainly, however, the objectives are all about the things that are most fun in the game blowing s**t up!  Other distinguished kinds of missions involve theft, getaway, car racing, escorting cargo, and ambushing enemy leaders – but that’s not all.

The levels are often made up by a set of objectives that have to be completed in order to succeed through the game, and all missions are tied together by the plot.

How are weapons acquired in the game? Must you collect them by defeating enemies, or are they obtained through some other means?

BA: As in real life, weaponry is either bought, bargained for, stolen or developed.  This is also the case in Bandits.

Give us some details about the multiplayer modes.

BA: Deathmatch and team deathmatch are the choices available, and there are some unique settings that can be made by the MP host to completely alter the gameplay of the battle.

For instance, the host can decide that only the sniper-weapon and the small (but fast) car is allowed, and also turn off the radar. This caters for a very intense tip-on-your-toes gameplay where everybody runs around in fast cars always looking over their shoulders (now that the radar screen can’t reveal any sneaky enemies) and try to keep the distance – since the sniper gun is very powerful from a distance but almost impossible to use when up close.

This is just one of the many gameplay types that the host can create with the numerous different options he/she is provided with - the combinations are countless.

Bandits will have gamers battling for hours with

its exciting online multiplayer modes.

Approximately how many players can engage in an online battle?

BA: If the computers and their network connections are powerful enough, you can be around 20 people in a MP (multiplayer) game. We have a dedicated server under way for some furious online Bandits-battles.

How do the controls work?  Is Bandits compatible with any peripherals?

BA: It’s pretty groundbreaking, the controls.  Bandits may look like a car racing game, but it definitely plays like a first-person-shooter.

Steering and shooting with the mouse, and accelerating, reversing, boosting, changing weapons etc with the keyboard is the way to go.

Don’t get fooled by the car and the 3rd person view.

Some people have first complained about the controls because they seem awkward – but as they’ve let go of their preconceived notions (they think it’s a racing game) and start thinking "first-person-shooter," they’ve all come back to us and admitted the controls are great.

What is the story within Bandits?

BA: The story revolves around the good friends Fennec and Rewdalf, and their attempts to hit the jackpot (that is, robbing the legendary Jericho City on their even more legendary gold stack) in the post-apocalyptic world of Bandits.

Fennec is the street-smart (or maybe desert-smart) gang leader of the infamous Wolfpack, while his sidekick Rewdalf is your average trigger-happy Scottish midget who likes to hunt small marsupials with a kitchen strainer all day, and then chill out by the fireplace on a cozy bearskin rug playing old Billy Ray covers on his guitar. Well he’s not all Scottish – he’s quarter-Spanish… so maybe he isn’t that much your average trigger-happy Scottish midget who likes to hunt small marsupials with a kitchen strainer all day, and then chill out by the fireplace on a cozy bearskin rug playing old Billy Ray covers on his guitar, but there you go.

The plot involves some humor.

The Wolfpack gang sounds a lot like my favorite restaurant, Wolfgang Puck! :)
Coincidence?

BA: No, not really. Actually Wolfgang Puck once wanted to expand and open a restaurant in the Outback (the haunt of the Wolfpack) but Fennec and Rewdalf didn’t like that their name resembled each other that much, so Rewdalf blew the joint with a bomb he’d [snuck] into a cargo of chickens headed for the restaurant.

"Their ravioli never was that good anyway," Rewdalf keeps recalling.

Really?  I haven’t tried it.  Too busy enjoying their pasta, sandwiches and macaroni and cheese!  But that’s beside the point…

You won’t find food in Bandits: Phoenix Rising –

just good, vehicle-destroying fun!

Is dialogue presented through voice-overs or text messages?

BA: Both. This is a game that both deaf and illiterate people can enjoy to the fullest.

However, people that are both deaf and illiterate should think twice.

From the looks of things, the battle arenas in this game are pretty massive.
Is there anything you can tell us about them?

BA: Yeah they’re massive.  Actually they’re massively massive.

Anyway, the open landscapes and distinguished maneuverability defined by the game being car-driven, caters for a gameplay quite different from that of your usual first-person-shooter.

It’s pretty hard to hide a car, whether you’re surrounded by buildings or not.

On the other hand, you move a lot faster.

…and you can carry heavier weapons, hehe.

The landscapes stretch from cactusized deserts to palmized beaches, spruceized snowy spaces and nice green areas – all provided with a lot of mountains and hills for everybody to drive up and down, and after-the-Bomb buildings (or what’s left of ‘em) to sneak around and hide amidst.

Big, beautiful landscapes like this ensure that you’ll have

a lot of places to chase and hide from your foes.

There has been some talk about the rather large amount of music provided in the game.  Can you tell us about the soundtrack?

BA: I thought you’d never ask.

The plot in Bandits involves four different gangs fighting for the gold of Jericho City gold. Subsequently, the soundtrack then features half an hour of music fitting for each of those four gangs, so you have everything from rock ‘n’ roll to techno – something for everyone.

Together with the music played during cut-sequences and menus, etc., there’s about two and a half hours of music (yeah read it again if you don’t believe it) so crank that volume up a few notches because you ain’t gonna grow tired of this sonic massage for a while!

Vehicular combat games have been very successful on game consoles, especially PlayStation 2.  Would you like to bring Bandits to PS2 or any other game console?

BA: Indeed they have and GRIN is at the moment looking for a publisher willing to bring the game over to either the Xbox or PS2.  I think it would do great due to the controls and the console minded action that Bandits packs.

Sounds good.  I’d love to see an online-enabled console version.  Are you listening, game publishers?

Thank you for your time, Mr. Andersson.

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