Have you ever played this up and coming AAA indie FPS? Doubtful, but it did make an impression when it was first shown off by Zero Point Software. This is a FPS that involves space, aliens, great looking environments, and good voice acting. It currently has three demo versions out of, one of which is a shooting range, the other is a virtual display case that you can interact with and the third is a full obstacle course with a full story tied into it. The one I chose to try was the obstacle course, called Running Man. It has you go through the training of an Interstellar Marine, which is similar to the training of any soldier except in this they use a lot of robots, robots that get continually more difficult. They still have three more preview demo's planned to come out before the full game is released, but they are simply TBA with no information. One really cool feature about Interstellar Marines is that you can try everything for free, with no restriction, you just have to register, for free, on their website. It also all runs out of their website, similar to how Battlefield 3 does it, and keeps track of your progress. To see all the game modes, check out this page. It is all being developed in Unity, a well known game developing tool but one that has never been known to make high quality games like this.



Running Man is the newest "demo" to come out for the game and it was a little hard to stop playing. The shooting mechanics are solid, nothing special but certainly enjoyable for fans of FPS, and the story is well done. The story involves your trainer, whom you hear talking to you through some kind of earpiece or headset for most of the demo. You also hear some voice acting from some other characters, all of which together give you an idea of how Interstellar Marines are treated by their superiors. The demo takes you through a ten minute or so training grounds, one that you repeat a couple times. Each time you start the training grounds over it is harder, mostly just more robots to fight, but there are some new robots that they add into the mix. The training grounds take you through a bunch of different objective modes, from survival to control points, but it is pretty effective and difficult enough. You do have three weapons available to you, a silenced sub machine gun, a silenced scoped assault rifle and a full auto assault rifle. The design of everything is futuristic, but you can tell by this demo that it isn't up to the graphical standards of 2011 first person shooters, but for an indie game it is quite good. The Running Man demo was fun, but a bit repetitive and it ultimately just made me want to see how the real game will work.

The retail game aims to create a tactical first person experience that also has some high quality RPG elements, like a strong narrative story and character development. They want to make it a "realistic and unpredictable future", a future where first contact with aliens is inevitable and you will be at the forefront of it. They are focusing on creating the game for PC, but would like to branch it out to consoles if they are able to. The enviornments will be open ended and non linear, something that should be a huge challenge if they plan for the game to have a strong narrative. You will be able to play the game singleplayer or with up to three other players cooperatively. They have been working on this game for quite a long time, three or four years, and are being published by themselves through a method they are calling AAA Indie. I have a lot of hope for this game and I am always dying for great space games. It does not have a release date yet, but there may be a new demo out for it fairly soon since they seem to be release one a year and Running Man, the last one, was in 2010. Although, check out their newest tech demo linked below, it run's smoothly out of their website (without the need to register) and shows off some impressive lighting/environments. For more information head on over to the website and check it out. Thanks for reading.
Main Website: http://www.interstellarmarines.com/
Lighting Tech Demo: http://www.interstellarmarines.com/media-section/unity/

-Written by Sean Cargle