[IMG News]

Sakari Games and TransGaming have released Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood a cartoon-style third-person shooter. In the game players take on the role of a "last-standing hard-boiled Legionnaire on a mission to protect a village against an entire rebel army." The game features a soundtrack which responds to the players' actions, a variety of weapons, and a broad range of difficulty levels.

As the last survivor of a Foreign Legion strike team, you alone must protect a village against a local rebel group.

The villagers took refuge and fortified themselves inside the town hall and are waiting for the rescue helicopter to arrive.

It's your job to protect the villagers from the rebels' ambushes!

Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood Features:
• A dynamically evolving soundtrack that reacts to your actions!
• An complete arsenal of weapons, including personal air-raid support to slaughter attacking hordes at once!
• A broad range of difficulty levels with fun for both casual players and veteran players!

Requirements:

Minimum Requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or better
• CPU: 1.2 GHz or equivalent
• 512 MB RAM or more
• 200 MB hard-disk space or more
• Video card: Any 3D graphics card less than 5-years old
• Keyboard and mouse

Recommended Requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard (or better)
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 1 GB RAM or more
• 200 MB hard-disk space or more
• Video card: ATI X1600 or NVidia 9800 GT with 128 MB of video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
• Keyboard and mouse

Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood costs $9.99. Head over to the links below for more information.

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[DaveyJJ]

Unity strikes again. Very very good looking cartoon FPS. Lots of gore. Blowing things up! Only $10? Bought.

[the Battle Cat]

DaveyJJ, on July 1st 2009, 11:08 AM, said:

Unity strikes again. Very very good looking cartoon FPS. Lots of gore. Blowing things up! Only $10? Bought.

I need a demo, even if it's only 10 bucks. The preview vid didn't show hardly anything, are there other preview vids out there?

[Sargiel]

Anyone care to give us a mini-review

[DaveyJJ]

OK, I will!

You're a single soldier trying to hold off waves of attacking enemies who are trying to get into a central building where people are holed up in a desert-like environment. Simple FPS controls (WASD, jump, multiple weapons via mousewheel, zoom aiming, air drops) with pretty decent cartoony graphics. Basic "bootcamp" training level and then gameplay is fast and furious even on Easy difficulty where the waves of enemies come only 5 seconds apart.

Cool weapons (start out with a decent auto pistol) then can find mini chain gun, grenades, etc. I'll post some screen shots later.

[dokter_mac]

I'm a bit confused
Transgaming.... Is this Intel only???

Min. specs says 10.3.9, CPU: 1.2 GHz or equivalent (Is this PPC? I think it is but I can't read it.), Video card: Any 3D graphics card less than 5-years old, etc. Which is all long before the Intel switch so I assume it's Universal? In the recommended specs I read CPU 'Intel'... Min specs only 1.2 GHz or equivalent (what?). Again, we all assume this means also PPC support...

I'm not posting this reply because I wanna start a discussion! So please don't start about PPC is dead, move on, etc. We all read that before . Just some plain simple and clear information about this game specs.

Would be great to read this kind of information on the number 1 Mac Gaming Site .

Thanks.

[the Battle Cat]

dokter_mac, on July 1st 2009, 04:26 PM, said:

I think it is
We all read that before .
the number 1 Mac Gaming Site .

Holy cow doc, I think you're developing a twitch! Don't let those nancy Intel users get you down! REAL men game on a PowerPC.

[Eric5h5]

dokter_mac, on July 1st 2009, 07:26 PM, said:

I'm a bit confused
Transgaming.... Is this Intel only???

Transgaming doesn't have anything to do with Intel. Cider is Intel-only, but Transgaming and Cider are not the same thing. Transgaming has published PPC stuff before (Tron, etc.). If it's made with Unity, then it's pretty much automatically Universal. (Unless they are stupid enough to click the "Intel" button instead of the "Universal" button.)

--Eric

[DaveyJJ]

It says "Application (Universal)" in the Get Info window.

[jurrie]

the Battle Cat, on July 1st 2009, 08:38 PM, said:

I need a demo, even if it's only 10 bucks. The preview vid didn't show hardly anything, are there other preview vids out there?

It may not be demo, but I posted a review of my own with nine additional screen shots. Perhaps it will suffice: http://jurrie.net/20...s-of-blood-pt-2

And dokter_mac: according to the GameTree website, this is Intel only, but I'm not sure myself. I could ask one of the developers, since I know one of them. If I get an answer, I'll post it :-)

[Janichsan]

jurrie, on July 2nd 2009, 08:43 PM, said:

And dokter_mac: according to the GameTree website, this is Intel only, but I'm not sure myself.

I'm sure DaveyJJ is right: the game is an Universal Binary. GametreeOnline labels all games on their site with that "Intel required" sticker, but there are quite a few UBs among them (World of Goo, for instance, or Depths of Peril).

[jurrie]

Janichsan, on July 2nd 2009, 08:49 PM, said:

I'm sure DaveyJJ is right: the game is an Universal Binary. GametreeOnline labels all games on their site with that "Intel required" sticker, but there are quite a few UBs among them (World of Goo, for instance, or Depths of Peril).

You are correct! I just heard from the developer the game is universal indeed. GameTree is probably sponsored by intel ;-P

[the Battle Cat]

jurrie, on July 2nd 2009, 11:43 AM, said:

It may not be demo, but I posted a review of my own with nine additional screen shots. Perhaps it will suffice: http://jurrie.net/20...s-of-blood-pt-2

And dokter_mac: according to the GameTree website, this is Intel only, but I'm not sure myself. I could ask one of the developers, since I know one of them. If I get an answer, I'll post it :-)

Just right. Thanks! Now all I need is a game trailer that shows game play.

[rampancy]

A couple of thoughts after playing the demo for a bit:

First of all, it plays surprisingly well on my Mid-2007 MacBook (GMA 950, 3 GB RAM, 10.5.7). It looks like it should be PPC-compatible as the specs list that it needs 10.3.9 minimum, and the first retail Intel Macs shipped with 10.4.4. It's unbearably slow with the graphics set to "Medium" at full 1280 x 800, so you need to set it to "Fastest".

As a point of interest, according to the developers' web site, this was a Mac-first release. You don't see that everyday in the mainstream/indie gaming world.

I found that the controls are a little clunky. As a southpaw, WASD never worked well for me, but you can use the standard arrow keys for movement instead. I think there's a conflict with USB Overdrive in that the mouse wheel didn't change weapons, but I think I fixed it by making a profile for Foreign Legion within USB Overdrive with the mouse wheel settings unmodified.

As mentioned above, even on Easy the game gets brutal in a hurry - which is a surprise for me given that I thought this was more of a "casual" game. I'm not a caffeine-snorting TF2/CS maven who can snap off a dozen head shots in five seconds, so I just ended up running and gunning with the assault rifle. I'm the kind of guy who takes a sniper-like approach to shooter games, and as a result I didn't get very far, for soon the game will start throwing rocket launcher units at you that'll quickly suss you out of your position. It kind of disappointed me since the village has buildings which would make for interesting positions to snipe at oncoming suicide bombers or enemy riflemen; it didn't take long before I noticed that maybe the game has them so that the enemy soldiers could use them to snipe at me.

In general the gameplay reminds me a lot of Space Invaders/Galaga - it's you and wave after wave after wave of baddies, often coming in packs (of course the game does it in a 3D environment). I usually saw one or two soldiers coming at me with a suicide bomber close by, so taking them out by shooting the explosives on the bomber was quite easy and entertaining.

Often times they'll come at you and the town hall from all directions, which means that you have to run all over the place to make sure the bombers don't get through - it also means, for someone who sucks at games like me, that any semblance of strategy seems to be just tossed out the window in favor of "Move Fast, Seize the Initiative, Wield Superior Firepower, Dive Into the Melee, Anticipate Enemy Movements, Slaughter the Defenseless, Endure." (well, except the "Slaughter the Defenseless" part). You also have regenerating health (apparently the bane of current generation gaming, along with QTEs), which shows up as blood and damage on your character. Surprisingly, you can apparently soak up quite a fair bit of damage from your enemies (unless you get some rockets to the face).

All in all, the game's really slickly put together. The menu design is quite spartan, and the UI design gives you everything you need to know all at a glance without overwhelming you. However, being a UNITY game, you apparently can't custom configure controls in game; you need to do it from the startup config screen.

All in all, $9.99 isn't much to ask for a game, and it runs on GMA 950 equipped hardware, so what more could I want? Much like Plants vs. Zombies, it's a great way of blowing off a few minutes if you're feeling hard up with work, and need a little time to blow off some steam.

[Janichsan]

Via the MacGameStore, you get a demo, by the way. (The chicken sticking out the butt of the body at the well is hilarious.)

[the Battle Cat]

K, thanks. Got the demo in MacGamesArcade, which ironically was the first place I checked for a demo when this thread started.

[Pegasus]

Finally gave the demo a try. It's not bad, but for some reason the game won't recognize my mouse wheel - funnily enough it does recognize the trackpad scroll. Since there is no other way to switch weapons (i.e. keyboard keys) this puts a damper on things for me. Probably would have already bought it if I didn't have this issue.

[the Battle Cat]

I had too much trouble trying to get it to recognize the keys on my keyboard. After half a dozen tries I gave up on it and deleted it.

[rampancy]

Pegasus, on July 6th 2009, 08:27 PM, said:

Finally gave the demo a try. It's not bad, but for some reason the game won't recognize my mouse wheel - funnily enough it does recognize the trackpad scroll. Since there is no other way to switch weapons (i.e. keyboard keys) this puts a damper on things for me. Probably would have already bought it if I didn't have this issue.

I had that same issue too. Are you running USB Overdrive? I found that conflicted with the game's controls, so I disabled it for just Foreign Legion and it worked just fine.

[michalis]

rampancy, on July 7th 2009, 05:33 PM, said:

I had that same issue too. Are you running USB Overdrive? I found that conflicted with the game's controls, so I disabled it for just Foreign Legion and it worked just fine.

Same issue here, but not using USB Overdrive. Using a wireless logitech mouse though. Works perfect in all other applications.