Nearly three years on since the release of the fabulous Xenocider, Spanish indie development studio Retro Sumus have released more tantalising details about their follow-up Dreamcast and Mega Drive/Genesis offering, Sovietborgs. Retro Sumus have taken something of a diversion with Sovietborgs though - as you can probably tell from the screenshots dotted throughout this article - moving away from the polygonal splendour of Xara's 2021 Sin & Punishment homage, and instead channelled the likes of The Chaos Engine (and possibly early PlayStation shooter Loaded) with this latest project.
For the record, the images here are taken from a very early demo of the Mega Drive version of Sovietborgs (releases for both SEGA platforms were announced simultaneously), and the Dreamcast version promises visual and audio enhancements, more of which you can read about in the short interview below. But first, you may well be asking yourself: what the hell is a Sovietborg and why should I give a damn?!
According the official lore of Sovietborgs (um...Retro Sumus' Twitter account), the story goes a little something like this:
On November 9, 1989, 11:14 pm, the KGB's glorious electronic brain, Tovarishch-Prime, became self-aware, and immediately managed to take control of Arpanet, triggering the detonation of all capitalist thermo-nuclear devices inside their own silos.
25 years later, the West remains a nuclear wasteland. But like cockroaches, there are still pockets of resistance and free-thinking threatening our workers' paradise. In these forsaken locations, new mutant races emerged due to radiation and their sickening capitalist mind. Fortunately, the Soviet People have developed a new unit of the illustrious Red Army, the Sovietborgs.
Half man, half machine, all proletarian, they can go where no one else can, inmune to radiation, and liberate all new capitalist races from their pitiful existence. Join the Sovietborgs. Become a part of their prestigious present and future, travel the world pacifying all hotbeds of belligerence. Let the dream world of our venerable Tovarishch-Prime finally become a reality for all.
So yeah, something about capitalists and cyborgs. And guns. Lots of guns. We've played the limited demo of Sovietborgs and found it to be a rather enjoyable explore-and-shoot-stuff style romp, where you control the lead 'borg (designated by a little hat, naturally), while two AI controlled 'borgs follow you around and do your bidding. Any by 'bidding' I mean shoot stuff.
The demo is really only a single level, but it gives a good idea of what we can expect in the final game, with you controlling the squad as you move through ruined landscapes wiping out hordes of zombies which burst through randomly appearing portals with a taste for human brains; spider things that erupt from puddles of green ooze; and...er...mutant chickens which cluck forth from eggs that descend from the heavens. You need to destroy the delivery methods from which these unspeakable bastards all spring too, otherwise they'll just keep coming. This can be a bit problematic on a technical level as the demo does suffer a little with slow down when the hordes get a bit big, but we have no doubt this will be sorted in the final game and opens up the Dreamcast version for some absolutely enormous crowds of enemies streaming towards your squad. Nice.
