CellFactor: Revolution Review

CellFactor: Revolution represents a brave new step in PC Gaming: Physics-centric game play. This game will have you glued to your chair for hours on end - best of all: it’s free to download.

Category: PC Game - First person shooter
Developer: Immersion Games, Artificial Studios, Timeline Interactive
Product: CellFactor: Revolution
Price: $0.00

As an avid PC gamer, I am always looking for games that satisfy my urge for exploration, devastation, and fixation. I am of the belief that 90% of the games out there are not really worth playing. Such games do not offer anything new to the gamer, nor do they provoke enough interest to warrant a test-run. In the summer of 1999, I acquired a game for my then brand-new Nintendo 64 console called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It became apparent to me after only a very short time of playing the game that I was going to like it. A mere two days later, I had the game beaten. I didn’t sleep. The game kept me so enthralled that I just played straight through against arguments from my mother that I should spend my time doing something more important. But for me, there was nothing more important. I wanted to see what was in the next village. I wanted to see if I could get the Biggoron’s sword by giving that big fat guy at the top of Death Mountain those tear drops. I wanted to win those races at the horse track, and catch all the Poe’s in bottles. The game was absolutely fantastic. The puzzles and environments that needed to be solved and navigated to complete the game never disappointed me. After finishing the game, it was clear that my initial impression was on target. This led to a sort of revelation; I realized that it is possible to tell whether or not you will enjoy playing a game within the first 20 minutes of playing it. If there is not something about the game that makes you want to keep playing, then the game probably isn’t worth your time.

This held true and was powerfully enforced the first time I fired up Half-Life 2 back in 2005. I bought the game as part of the Silver package on Steam, as I wanted to get a taste of Counter-Strike: Source. It became evident rather quickly that my old NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 video card was not going to cut it, so I researched and researched and eventually ended up with a X800XT All-in-Wonder card from ATI. I hated source. I hated the movement. I hated the recoil. I hated everything about it except for the graphics. With reluctance I fired up Half-Life 2, the long-awaited sequel of Valve’s original Half-Life. My impression of HL2 was one of astonishment. Here was a game that was fun to play, looked amazing, and had an awesome story. There was absolutely nothing about Half-Life 2 that I didn’t like. The interactive environments, the state-of-the-art special effects, and the revolutionary new physics technology that made up the game all worked together to provide me with a truly stellar gaming experience. Simply put, Half-Life 2, in my opinion, was the perfect game. Well, maybe not perfect, it could have lasted longer, but the game is certainly worthy of being called the “Best Game Ever Created”.

Out of everything I liked about Half-Life 2, the one thing that really stood out was the amount of interaction with the environment that the player had. HL2 marked the first time that the player could actually pick up objects, toss them wherever they wanted, stack them somewhere and jump on top of them, crash into stuff to break it, shoot stuff to make it fall down, etc. Not only did this ability exist, it was necessary in order to complete the game. HL2 was more than just a great game with a great story; it was a showcase of what could be done with a game and an example of game developers trying something new.
{mospagebreak heading=Introduction&title=Features, Characters}

When I was asked to write this review I was slightly apprehensive. I usually review computer hardware; a process that requires playing games and running performance benchmarks on them, but one that is almost entirely objective and has little concern for personal opinions. Writing a game review, on the other hand, is entirely subjective. A single game can, at the same time, yield a tremendous review from one writer while receiving an abysmal score from another. This is not the case with computer hardware, as the performance numbers achieved in testing are generally hard to refute and almost always agree with the numbers produced by other reviewers. However, I would like to think that those reviewing this game would be producing very similar verdicts in the end, as its audience is inherently limited by its computer requirements. You see, you need a very special piece of computer hardware to run this game with any sort of playability, and the people that have this hardware probably only have it because they understand its potential impact on the future of gaming.

I am, of course, talking about CellFactor: Revolution, the first game to fully utilize the power of AGEIA’s PhysX Physics Processing Unit.

Features, Characters, etc.
If CellFactor: Revolution (CFR) is a more computer intensive game than Half-Life 2 (and trust me, it is), then this is merely the result of it being built around a different foundation. The designers of Half-Life 2 were certainly looking to bring revolutionary game play, interaction, and visuals to their well established and critically applauded Half-Life story. The designers of CellFactor: Revolution, seem to have built their game for the sole purpose of demonstrating the impact of truly boundless physics and cutting-edge graphical effects on game play. There is a story line in CFR, but if anything, for now, it is just an attempt to build distinction between each of the three characters in the game.

There are probably readers out there that already doubt my ability to review computer games based on the fact that I am drawing comparisons between the famed Half-Life 2 and this game they have likely never heard of. In reality however, these two games are the only two that I know of that allow you to interact with your surroundings in such a way that objects in the game, besides those carried on your person, can be used as weapons and/or tools. To be fair though, the only other common feature of these games is that they are both first person shooters. Whereas Half-Life 2 is an epic action-adventure FPS, CellFactor: Revolution is a basically a multi-player death match-style FPS.

The single-player aspect of CellFactor: Revolution is a short-lived one. As mentioned before there are three different kinds of characters in the game: Black-ops, Guardians, and Bishops. The back story of the game, which is what allows there to be three different characters with varying levels of “psychic” power, is your typical “planet earth in the future after a series of cataclysmic events” mixed in with a bit of “all-powerful governing body (LIMBO) has created cybernetic warrior robot things to combat a human resistance (GUARD) and restore order”. The combat style in the game is based squarely around the “PSI” powers that are exemplified by the Bishop character, “a hyper charged genetically-altered warrior with the most advanced application of PSI powers possible.” A step down in the PSI powers classification system is the Black Op solider. This character is your typical advanced warrior with all these fancy high-tech weapons blended with a little bit of PSI abilities. The final class consists of the Guardian character, a cybernetic powerhouse that touts some tremendously powerful weaponry and the ability to move very fast. Each character has a series of five training exercises that you can complete in order to gain an understanding of each of their unique abilities.

Guardian

Black Op

Bishop

When it really comes down to it, all of these characters are fairly evenly matched in terms of capability and destructive power, but there can be little doubt that the creators of the game intended to showcase its primary feature with the Bishop character. Expecting this, it was the Bishop character that I selected to start with. The five training missions that Bishop is required to complete are arranged such that the special abilities of the character are built upon with progression. CellFactor: Revolution’s single player campaign mode does a very good job of educating the player about how to use and in what situations to use the various special abilities of whichever character is being used. As a seasoned FPS player, the aiming and movement in the game came naturally for me. There is, however, a learning curve with many of the special moves, as they are unlike any move you’ve used before in any other game.
{mospagebreak title=Characters (cont)}

After completing the Bishop campaign, I moved on to the Black Op series. I found these missions significantly less difficult than those of the previous character, largely because as a Black Op character, the player is capable of using guns, operating vehicles, and pulling and pushing objects with psi power. While the Black Op character is not the most powerful character in the game – it is certainly the best rounded. One interesting aspect to the game that is not found in many others is the ability of the characters to perform multiple tasks at once. In games like Counter-Strike, the player is confined to one attacking method at any given time – for instance, you cannot be firing a gun while throwing a grenade at the same time. In CellFactor, however, you can attack in two different ways simultaneously. This ability is perhaps best exhibited by the Black Op character, which can fire a fully automatic rifle while using psi power to hurl massive quantities of debris at opponents. This kind of firepower amounts to immensely spectacular frags. It was not uncommon for me to encounter so-called “triple-kills” – not three frags by the same bullet, but three frags by similar means over a (very) short period of time – during game play.

The final character in the game, and the last one I played with, is the Guardian. In essence, the Guardian character is a bazooka-yielding, fast-moving, extremely versatile fighting machine. The guardian character does not possess any psi powers, but compensates for that with several unique (and just as powerful) abilities. In terms of firepower, the base weapon for the guardian is a pair of handguns that are not unlike the glock in Counter-Strike. This weapon allows single shot, or “open fire”, capability, as well as the option to fire three shots at once. On the opposite end of the spectrum there is the dual rocket launcher weapon. This thing can have you firing rocket after rocket at your opponent, or a burst of up to six rockets at one time with a brief pause for charging in between. The potential for havoc in this mode is just as impressive as the “red-sea splitting” capabilities of the Bishop character. The Guardian character also has the ability to run really fast. I like to compare this ability to that of Mario getting a star – everything the Guardian touches while running is completely destroyed – including opponents. The feeling you get when you run over an enemy and the word “Roadkill” flashes on the screen is about the most satisfying thing you will encounter while playing this game. Doing this repeatedly only adds to the enjoyment. Aside from being able to shoot six rockets at once and running over opponents, the Guardian character can also jump really high into the air to gain a 360-degree view of the battlefield. This allows you to see your opponents as well as rain a few rockets down on their heads. Similar to the high jump is the long jump, where the Guardian can leap literally across the map to get the “jump” on the bad guys.

I purposely left out any mention of one of the weapons in the game that I consider to be the very best implementation of this particular type of weapon that I have seen in any game. The Black Op and Guardian characters in various levels of the single-player campaign can use the R2-Phlegethon Sniper Rifle. The weapon has two firing modes: Open fire – in which the gun functions just as a normal sniper rifle, and proximity stake – which fires a dart type thing anywhere on the map and then has a psi power effect of pulling objects towards it before blowing them up. The one-hit, one-kill ability of this gun makes it very attractive in multiplayer use (read: AWP), but also might make it the only weapon in the game that could be considered slightly over-powered. However, the thing that really sets this particular sniper rifle apart from those found in other games it the zooming feature. To zoom the sniper rifle you first have to hit “Z” and then you can vary the level of magnification by scrolling the mouse wheel. What makes this incredible, however, is that each level of magnification exhibits its own depth of field, incorporates increased motion-blur effects, and is accompanied by a satisfying zoom sound. I have included a short video of game play with this weapon, as it is something that is quite more difficult to describe in words than it is to show visually.

Click to Launch Sniper Video

Finally, as with most future-based games, the vehicles in CellFactor are very imaginative. These vehicles, not unlike those found in Half-Life 2, are influenced heavily by the material through which they navigate, are inherently impaired in terms of maneuverability, and are not so blatantly overpowered that opponents will become frustrated and leave the game.
{mospagebreak title=AI and Multiplayer}

Artificial Intelligence
Pretty much every first person shooter you can play nowadays comes with some sort form of computerized opposition. In Counter-Strike 1.6, the third party podbots you could play against were rather primitive attempts at AI, as they would basically just run around like chickens with their heads cut off (and wall hack… cheaters). In single player games like Half-Life 2, you have combine soldiers who throw and excessive amount of grenades and actually move and shoot as if they were trying to kill you (though they rarely do because you’re Gordon Freeman a.k.a God Scientist). Although AI in games is progressively getting much better, you usually find yourself up against outclassed and under-performing competition. Not so in CellFactor: Revolution.

CellFactor uses something called the Kynapse AI system from a company called Kynogon to power its “bots”. The quotations in the previous sentence are only there because it is somewhat unfair to call the AI controlled opposition in CellFactor: Revolution bots. Rather, they are more like full-fledged, highly capable enemies that do their best to kill you before you kill them. Like most advanced bots, the Kynapse bots in CellFactor do things like evade attacks, fire at you with somewhat poor accuracy, and seem to be cheating at times. However, what really separates the Kynapse bots from any other AI you will see in any game is that they are able to use ALL of the abilities of their character, and use them appropriately. I cannot tell you how many times I was crushed to death by a Bishop character seemingly out of nowhere and could do nothing about it. I ran into plenty of Guardian characters as a Black Op only to get completely trampled. I was sniped across the map plenty of times as well. For this reason, CellFactor revolution is one of the very few death match style games that can be played with any sort of significance without an Internet connection. Selecting 10 Kynapse bots of whatever variety you please on whichever level you prefer will result in a training session that, at the very worst, closely mimics the experience one would encounter if they were playing against 10 seasoned CellFactor-playing human beings.

Perhaps the only issue I see with the Kynapse bots is that they are so advanced that the AI calculations that need to be performed by the CPU result in some pretty significant slowdowns while playing the game. After speaking with the game developers, it is apparent that they would like to be able to offload these calculations to another core in order to speed things up a bit. I can only assume that efforts are being made to make this happen.

Multiplayer and Competitive Aspirations
As a writer for GotFrag, I find it difficult to play a new game without considering how readily adoptable it is for competitive play. This is an unfortunate trait (in the sense that it is a burden to have to consider a game in this way rather than simply enjoy it for what it is; a game) that, in the past couple of years, has taken a back seat to considering whether or not that particular game would be a good candidate for inclusion to GotFrag Hardware’s benchmarking suite. However, given the current state of affairs in competitive gaming – there seems to be the lack of a unified movement towards any one game in particular – it would make sense that every new first person shooter be looked over with a ‘fine-toothed comb’.

Game play video 1

Game play video 2

That said, CellFactor: Revolution possesses all of the basic necessities of a game that could be played competitively on a large scale. The game play and fighting modes are easily learned by anyone with previous first person shooter experience. For the most part, game play consists of your standard WASD movement controls and logically organized utility buttons for special abilities. CellFactor also has the online functionality that is an obvious must-have for a competitive game. Lastly, CellFactor: Revolution was clearly built around the multi-player experience, as little attention was devoted towards the story line in this version of the game. However, there are several glaring problems with CellFactor: Revolution that will prevent it from becoming a widely adopted competitive game – at least for now.

First and foremost are the hardware requirements for the game. Although nothing would make AGEIA, Immersion Games, Artificial Studios, and Timeline Interactive more happy than to see PhysX cards in every high-end gaming PC, the reality of the situation is that it will take more than just this one title to persuade serious gamers that a dedicated physics processing unit is a necessary addition to their computer. That said, there WILL be several killer titles launched in the next few months that will start to make the PhysX card a necessity as opposed to a luxury, and when this happens you will start to see the viability of physics-based games as competitive platforms increase dramatically. However, we are still a ways out from that happening, so for now, the hardware requirements of CellFactor: Revolution will probably keep this stunningly beautiful and feature-rich game from becoming widely adopted by the professional gaming community.

Game play video 3

Game play video 4

Secondly, the amount of weapons that are currently available in the game may present a problem, as players of many of the historically popular death match games have had much broader arsenals at their disposals. For instance, in Quake 4 there are nine weapons. In CellFactor, there are very few (actually there are none) weapons that can be used by all three characters in the game. While not necessarily a bad thing, a key feature to death match games is that all characters are created equal. The next part to this deficiency is that there are no “items” in CellFactor: Revolution. Whereas in a game like Quake 4 there are all types of items like armor shards, health packs, and ammunition strewn about on any given map, in CellFactor: Revolution there are no such items. While it is true that there are some special things that are hidden in the various maps such as psi power-ups, the ability of one character to stay alive and “control” a map is severely diminished because said player cannot use the time afforded between frags to gather health packs, armor, and ammunition.

Finally, as alluded to earlier, it would be tremendously difficult to have three unique characters with very different combat styles in a truly competitive gaming environment. While it is true that no single character in CellFactor: Revolution is more powerful than the next, the ability of certain characters to manipulate certain environments when other characters cannot creates an unfair playing field. In traditional death match games like Quake, Painkiller, and Warsow, every character is created equal and there are no special abilities that are unique to one character. This is not to take away from the death match capabilities of CellFactor: Revolution. There is no doubt in my mind that the game will be enormously fun to play with friends and the dynamic created by the three unique characters in any given map will be very interesting to observe no matter what your frame of thought. However, this is just another reason that CellFactor: Revolution is unlikely to be widely adopted by the professional gaming community until changes are made to the game that will better accommodate such an environment.
{mospagebreak title=Final Thoughts and Conclusions}

Final Thoughts and Conclusions
As mentioned before, CellFactor: Revolution appears at face value to be a champion of AGEIA’s PhysX technology; a shooter that is built around the use of physics. However, after playing the game I can tell you that it is so much more. Yes, CellFactor: Revolution is unlike any other game ever made, but it is clearly evident that the creators of the game are out to turn this into a franchise rather than just a one-hit wonder. While I referred to the story line earlier as being little more than a basis for which the creators could mold their three different characters, the plot is actually one that is open for development and has the potential to be adapted into a full-featured single player game. And, as it were, that is exactly what Immersion Games plans to do with CellFactor. I spoke with Adrian at AGEIA, who was part of the production team for CellFactor, and he told me that there is already work being done on such a version of CellFactor. After seeing what these characters can do and the potential of this game to be something bigger than any of its creators might have imagined, I am definitely looking forward to such an installment.

However, instead of talking about all the things that CellFactor: Revolution is, it is probably more constructive to talk about the things that it is not. As mentioned previously, CFR is not a prime candidate for adoption as a widely used competitive game for three reasons. First, the extra computer hardware required to play the game in full is not something that is possessed by nearly enough serious professional gamers. While the PhysX card from AGEIA will likely become commonplace in the next couple of years thanks to some huge titles that are currently in development, the hardware is not there quite yet. Second, the game does not seem to have a diverse enough arsenal from which each player can pick and choose. Add in to this the fact that the current state of multiplayer game play does not widely incorporate the use of power-ups and the like, and you have a deficiency from standard death match style games that is hard to ignore. Finally, the three characters in the game are different to a degree that would adversely affect the ability of the game to be viewed as one that is fair to all players. While these different characters and their abilities would undoubtedly create a dynamic that has never really been seen from any other game, it is this unique aspect that would prevent the game from becoming widely adopted by the professional community.

Even with these things being the case, CellFactor: Revolution does a lot of things to the gaming world and does them quite well. The use of physics affects game play in such a way that it will probably make other developers aware that in-game physics is here to stay.

In the end, I can say that I had a great time playing CellFactor: Revolution and I am sincerely looking forward to crushing a few of my friends when the game goes live. Regardless of the notion that CFR probably won’t become a fixture of the eSports community, it is nice to see a death match style game designed to be fun to play instead of sacrificing fundamental qualities in an effort to make the game more pro-friendly. In my mind, there really is no downside to CFR. The game is fun, engaging, and best of all it is free to play. The creators are more interested in seeing their pride and joy become widely distributed than compiling the revenue they could so easily attain by selling the game for a price. With all of this in mind, I strongly recommend downloading CellFactor: Revolution on May 8th – if nothing else it will keep you entertained and satisfy your primal urge to frag.