Iron Phoenix takes Fighting Games into the realm of Online Gaming; Up to 16 Players can Battle via Xbox Live

by Louis Bedigian

 

Huge worlds, unique fighting styles, lots of weapons and more!

 

 

Soul Calibur is great.  Mortal Kombat is fun again.  Capcom is still pumping out 2D fighting games that we can't live without.  This is all wonderful -- but where's the online action?  Mortal Kombat: Deception will be online, but only two players can compete simultaneously.  That was the best you could get in the early 90s, but this is the new millennium.  Where's the true multiplayer action that we crave?  Where are the fighting games that throw a dozen fighters into the ring at once, giving them nothing but a weapon to help them survive?

 

There's just one game that's doing that, and it's only available for one console.  This fall Sammy will release Iron Phoenix, a 16-player online fighting game.  No turn-based battles.  No point-and-click commands.  Just pure, unrestrained fighting game action.

 

To prepare for the game's release, Sammy held a Kung-Fu Clinic conference call to focus on the aspect we care about the most: the gameplay.

  

Aaron Habibipour, Producer

 

Tim Hess, Producer

 

Richard Iggo, Product Manager

 

Overview

 

Iron Phoenix is packed with surprising features.  Unlike most fighting games, this one is not about picking the best character and mastering his or her every move.  That might sound like a good idea in theory, but if Sammy had done that, we would have ended up with 14 Eddy Gordos running around the screen.  Nobody wants that!

 

 

Instead, Iron Phoenix puts weapons first and characters second.  There are 16 different characters, but aside from their statistical differences (height, speed, stamina, etc.), they do not dictate the course of the game.  The weapon that you choose the carry -- that's what will determine your fate.  Each weapon has a different set of moves (anywhere from 20 to 25), giving you the chance to unleash some serious damage and have a lot of fun while doing it.  It also ensures that you won't get bored with the game after ten minutes, a symptom that many fighting games are unable to overcome.

 

How do you acquire a weapon?  You start off with one (say, a dagger) but must then search the game world for another (a sword, a hammer, etc.).  Two weapons can be carried at the same time.  If you don't like one of your weapons, simply drop it and pick up another.  You won't want to waste too much time deciding which weapon is best to use, however.  The game moves fast, and while you're deciding which sword is most efficient, your enemies could be moving in for the kill.

 

Key Features

 

• True 3D Gameplay – no "eight-way run" to stand in your way

• Different fighting styles for each weapon

• Supernatural, over-the-top elemental attacks (specific to each weapon)

• Use level barriers to your advantage – climb on a wall and launch yourself off of it to unleash additional attacks

• Double-Jump move makes the gameplay more frenetic

• Power-ups and Projectiles hearkens back to the days when fighting games were all about fun, not realism

• Wide variety of level types – from big, wide-open battlefields to smaller, more intimate locations

 

Controller Configuration (may be subject to change)

 

• Right Trigger: Run

• A:  Jump

• B:  Change Weapons

• X:   Vertical Attack

• Y:  Heavy Attack

• Black:  Projectile Attacks

 

In addition to the information provided, GameZone Online got the chance to ask some questions about the game.  Answers were provided by Aaron Habibipour (Producer), Tim Hess (Producer), and Richard Iggo (Product Manager).

 

Tell us more about the fighting styles.

 

Sammy: Fighting styles are all dictated by weapon.  If you pick up a heavy weapon you're going to have slower (movement).  It's going to take a lot more thought to use the heavy weapons because you're going to be slower, you're going to have to time your attacks, you’re going to have to really stand back and see where the openings are in your opponent's combos and kind of sneak in and do a devastating attack.

 

Then you have a lot of (weapons) that are really small that allow you to do really fast-paced (moves).  Get in there, pummel them really quick, and jump back.

 

The game is not based around characters.  There's some small statistics with the characters that affect running speed, stamina, you know, that kind of thing.  But it's mostly your weapons that dictate all the moves and all the combos that you've got in the game.  So each weapon is going to give you a different strategy for attack.  And, if you couple that with what weapon you also keep as your secondary weapon -- if you start off the game with a really fast weapon (like a dagger), you may want to pick up a hammer or a spear if you want something that's going to cause a little bit more damage.  But it's going to be a little bit slower.

 

Can you throw the weapons?

 

Sammy: Some of the dual-wielding attacks that we have do throw the weapon, but it's not really like I can throw the weapon across the map or anything like that.  It's more like a let-it-out-of-your-hand kind of thing.

 

We do have projectiles in the form of darts.

 

Are any of the attack moves based on real life fighting moves?

 

Sammy: All the weapons are based on real-world Chinese weapons, so the moves -- there has been some creative freedom to make some of the moves fit better into the game -- (but) these are real-world fighting styles, motion-captured data from China.

 

We've taken liberties with making them cooler, but at its heart the swords that we're using, you can find real-world counterparts.

 

 

Can you give us more info on the game's combos?

 

Sammy: The unique things about the combo structure is that each weapon has 20-25 moves.  We're constantly balancing the game so moves come and go as we see fit.  You can link all of these moves within that weapon's move set together.  Say the [weapon] has 20 moves, and we're labeling them move #1 through move #20.  In any combo string you can link any moves you want together.  So you can start with 16, go to 14, go to 12, go to 13 -- any structure you see fit you can pull off.  It is very much allowing the user to use whatever move they want or use specific moves given the types of situations that they're in.

 

If you have a move that you really like to do, a specific [five-hit] combo that starts a juggle that you found really useful, at any given time you can add another move based on the situation and it'll still keep that [original] chain.

 

Tekken has 10-20 string combos that are pre-determined that will go off if you put in the timing right.  For Iron Phoenix you can take any move you want and make a 10-15 hit string.  If you've got the right timing, the right amount of stamina, or the right amount of Chi, you can pretty much link your moves indefinitely.

 

What is the VIP play mode all about?

 

Sammy: VIP is Very Important Person.  There's one person who is need of protecting, and the goal is to kill the VIP on the opposing team.  The VIP also has the power to resurrect dead players.  Once you're killed in a VIP match you're down until the VIP comes around and brings you back to life.

 

It's super-super fun to play.  The matches can go anywhere from 20 seconds to 10 minutes.  They're not timed, (the match ends) whenever the VIP dies.

 

Can you alter the appearance of any of the characters?

 

Sammy: No.  There's multiple outfits for each character but you can't customize the character in any way.

 

For some fighting games it'll take six months before I really begin to feel like a master.  Is that the kind of game Iron Phoenix is?

 

Sammy: Absolutely.  You can jump in, pick it up, and get the hang of it and understand the basic mechanics.  But mastering each weapon's moves, knowing when to use them, knowing when to run away, knowing when to climb up walls.  Each weapon has different attacks on the ground, but there's also different attacks when you launch them off walls.  There's more strategy than you can pick up in three weeks.

 

With that said the game is also fun to pick up and play with your friends.  Have a LAN party, have 'em bring their TVs and Xboxes, and have lots of fun jumping in and beating the crap out of each other.

 

But that one guy that plays the game for 16 hours a day can just massacre people.

 

 

Regarding the fighting styles, what has been the most difficult or most time-consuming aspect for the developers?

 

Sammy: Since in the game you can link any move to any other move, our biggest challenge has been animation, getting the animation to work with any other move.  That was probably our biggest challenge.

 

Each move has its own animation, so when that animation ends, usually you return to an idle state of the character.  So if you have all these animations that you can link together on-the-fly it has to look smooth.  It's really taken a lot of time to get it to where it is and we're constantly improving it.

 

Could you tell us about the motion-capture process?

 

Sammy: That's something we'd have to get from the developers.  These guys have been researching this stuff for years.  They have a huge database of actual motion-captured data.  They do a lot of it in-house. 

 

There are certain moves for certain combo strings we've used the same weapon but [used] different martial artists to link the moves together.  There's not just this one guy that we used to the animation for this one weapon, it's a multitude of people using weapons and stringing them together.

 

 

Thanks to everyone at Sammy for having a wonderful conference call.

 

GameZone Online will be bringing you more exciting details about Iron Phoenix in the coming weeks, so keep your browser pointed here for all the latest information.