NEWS - Wednesday, June 6, 2001

Voodoo Interviews
Billy and the boys from Voodoo Extreme have posted up two interviews with Xbox developers Digital Extremes and Virgin Interactive about their upcoming titles based upon the Unreal Engine. First up VE talks with Digital Extremes lead designer Pancho "XceptOne" Eeckles about the much anticipated Unreal Championship which by the way is exclusive to the Xbox. Click here for the rest of the sweetness.
Voodoo Extreme -- FPS games are notoriously known for having less than stellar controls, due to the nature of the controllers being used. While you may not be able to cut this out completely, what are you doing to make the console controllers easier to use?XceptOne -- We are focusing really hard on this. The version that was shown at E3 did not receive all the attention yet that we want to apply to the controller. Something that is understandable, since we are only around 4 months into development of Unreal Championship. You can be sure that the final version of Unreal Championship will have a finely tweaked instrument of control ready just for you. Every aspect of the controller will be completely user configurable.
Next up VE cornered lead designer, Damien Hosen to talk about the new cross-platform Unreal engine based title called Maelstrom which is being developed for the PC, Xbox as well as PlayStation 2 later in 2002. With Maelstrom, Virgin is combining the first person shooter gameplay with an intense space combat element as well. Heres a gently applied nibble of that one and the link for the rest.
Voodoo Extreme - What kinds of weapons can we expect to check out in Maelstroms first person shooter mode?Damien Hosen - In Maelstrom we have taken a conscious decision to not have colourful laser-fire or pretty blast radiuses. As befits the pirates that populate the game, we will be using gritty, powerful weaponry that cuts baddies to pieces. In Maelstorm you will be able to shoot the arms off the robot baddies and use them as weapons. Robot heads can be spent spinning through the air and their arms can be deftly removed with skillful, focussed shooting. This is powerful weaponry at its most low down and dirty.
Source: http://www.voodooextreme.com/