ShootMania Storm Blows eSport Wide Open

It’s fitting that the impenetrable clique of competitive gaming should be breached by a first-person shooter, a genre that has long formed one of the key pillars of eSport. All too often, new titles added to this elite pantheon grant dominion to those with a prescient understanding of the established order. Rarely has a game deemed complex enough to promote the required high-level play and sufficiently balanced to prove entertaining to watch been so welcoming to a host of potential new champions.

Thanks to ShootMania Storm’s customisation options you can become very good at it on your own terms, without the hard slog associated with having to play as cannon fodder for several hours. If you don’t like the game’s default maps or modes you can turn to the community’s offerings or simply create your own. So, while the rigors of Call of Duty’s multiplayer demand that you pay for your stripes with the blood of countless deaths, ShootMania offers a gentler, more considered and altogether more fun way of becoming a skilful player.

“When we started building Shootmania we had an eye on what we’d done with Trackmania Nations, which was also intended to be an eSport title from the ground up,” explains Edouard Beauchemin, Nadeo’s international product manager.

“

When we started building Shootmania we had an eye on what we’d done with Trackmania Nations, which was also intended to be an eSport title from the ground up.

“So, when we devised Shootmania Storm we also wanted that to be part of the mix and the very first thing that we worked really hard to achieve was to make sure that it’s appealing to watch. It has to be a great show: the game modes, the timing of the rounds, the spectator tools and providing many different stats in-game to allow shoutcasters to do their job.”

Of course, the fact that Shootmania is a FPS makes it instantly more decipherable than other common eSport genres, such as fighters and MOBAs. The majority of game players are familiar with the concepts, mechanics and language that form the basis of the most popular genre in video games. However, the biggest contributing factor that will allow new teams of eSport contenders to rise through the ranks of ShootMania is that it provides a gradual learning curve facilitated by an intelligent selection of game modes, which are, crucially, fun to play.

Shootmania Storm has already been signed up by IPL (IGN Pro League) thanks, in part, to its Elite mode. This part of the game is stable, balanced and eminently playable despite ShootMania as a whole being in the first of three planned beta phases.

Elite mode also attracted a lot of attention at Ubisoft’s recent digital day in Paris, drawing players and onlookers alike with its fast-pace and easy to fathom rule set. Beauchemin attributes this to the mode’s concentrated distillation of a key element of spectator sports: excitement.

“

The best moments in FPS eSports are when you’re near the end of a round and maybe there’s just one guy standing and everyone knows he’s going to have to pull off an amazing feat to win.

“The best moments in FPS eSports are when you’re near the end of a round and maybe there’s just one guy standing and everyone knows he’s going to have to pull off an amazing feat to win,” Beauchemin enthuses. “We’ve boiled that down to one single game mode where it comes down to the last minute of the round: there’s one guy with a powerful gun and three armour points versus three guys with one armour point each who are working as a team.

“It’s really exciting to play and to watch because you can focus on just one person and see his choices and super-moves, whereas with 5 Vs 5, for example, it can get really messy and hard for spectators to keep track of everything that’s going on.”

Elite still supports six players in total, as each player on both teams takes turns to be the “hero” and tries to annihilate the opposing team or score a point by capturing the single base. This offers two distinct ways of winning and means intelligent traversal of the environment can see the round won without a single shot being fired, though this is the exception rather than the norm.

Nadeo intends that ShootMania’s status as an eSport not be restricted to major international events. Unsurprisingly, ShootMania’s highly customisable nature is called upon again as players are given the tools to create and host their own tournaments, which they can then publicise through use of in-game currency.

“

With 5 Vs 5 it can get really messy and hard for spectators to keep track of everything that’s going on.

ShootMania’s adaptable nature means its official tag as an eSports title needn’t make it the exclusive domain of members of a digital Mount Olympus. Its persistent, intuitive controls and non-convoluted depth means it remains accessible, while offering the opportunity to its players to participate in competitive tournament play, even if they’ve never previously considered themselves eSports calibre.

“Ultimately, our games are powered by players,” Beauchemin concludes. “Some want to run competitions, some design levels and others simply take part by playing, all of which are essential to the community structure of our games.”

To apply for the ShootMania Storm beta program, visit the game’s website.

Stace Harman is a freelance contributor to IGN and is convinced that zombies will one day inherit the Earth. You can follow him on Twitter.

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Titanic: Limited 3D Edition Blu-ray Review

Despite a slew of solid genre titles to his name, and the general audience attraction to disaster pictures, James Cameron's Titanic was, on many levels, a gamble – almost as ambitious and daring as the ship on which the film is based upon.

At a staggering estimated cost of more than $200 million, Titanic could have easily been a box office stinker, winding up at the bottom of the box office ocean along with the underrated flop Waterworld. But luck, it seems, was on James Cameron's side, and Titanic became a worldwide international phenomenon, with its grating theme song, “My Heart Will Go On,” highlighting proms the world over (I went to that prom). My grandparents, who hadn't seen a movie in the theater since Jaws went to see Titanic in the theaters...twice. That's a cinematic draw of unseen proportions.

Titanic is an extraordinary film – a jaw-dropping feat of outstanding and Oscar-winning art direction, costume design and cinematography. The film captures the essence and decadence of the era, as well as the spirit and raw allure of the ship herself. Coupled with nearly seamless visual effects, James Cameron's Titanic feels like a wholly real creation.

The story itself, while a bit melodramatic and overly romantic – sometimes focusing way too much on the love story between Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslett) – is often quite powerful, blending real-life figures with classic fictional hero and villain archetypes.

While the first half of Titanic can drag a bit after the first few viewings, it's really in the film's second half where things get interesting. The film transforms from an almost too-sweet romance to a wildly intense and, of course, brutally tragic survival picture, as Cameron's Titanic is ripped and torn to sheds, its decadence and beauty sunk to the bottom of the merciless sea.

Titanic is an outstanding motion picture, an achievement of big-budget filmmaking that will continue to amaze for decades to come. While some might argue that the story has grown dated over the years, it's hard to deny the quality of the film's pitch-perfect action set pieces, raw emotion and the brilliance of the production itself. Titanic isn't just a great film, it's a magnificent historical record of one of the most unfortunate disasters in the annals of human history.

Titanic comes to Blu-ray courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution. There are two Blu-ray releases for the film – a four-disc Limited 3D Edition, featuring a Blu-ray 3D presentation (spread across two discs), a 2D Blu-ray, a Digital Copy and a bonus Blu-ray loaded with hours of extras. There's also a four-disc standard edition which includes a Blu-ray, two-disc DVD, bonus Blu-ray and Digital Copy. For this review, we'll be looking at the four-disc Limited 3D Edition.

Titanic is presented on Blu-ray 3D in 1080p/MVC (reframed from 2.39:1 to 1.78:1), spread across two BD3D discs. The presentation is nothing short of absolutely fantastic. Post-converted 3D titles are often a mixed bag, with mediocre effects and images that rarely pop. Part of the problem is simply the lack of foresight. The photography process for 2D cinema is quite a bit different than with native 3D productions, and more often than not the conversion process is either cheap or doesn't gel with the 2D cinematography. Thankfully, that's not the case with this release. Titanic looks and feels like it was shot in 3D, with staggering depth and an immersive visual appearance. Much of this is thanks to the film's intensely detailed architecture, which converts well to the 3D format. You'll honestly think Cameron shot this one in native 3D. In fact, it really feels like he did compose his shots with 3D in mind.

The 2D presentation is equally terrific. Presented in 2.39:1, encoded in 1080p/AVC, Titanic has held up quite well over the years, and this Blu-ray restores the film to its original cinematic luster, topping any previously released home video or HDTV broadcast by leaps and bounds. If I had one complaint, it's that I wish Paramount would have opted for a two-disc 2D release as well, offering the absolute minimal compression for both versions of the film. Still, this is an exquisite presentation that brings out the very best Blu-ray has to offer.

Audio for both versions of the film are mixed in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. For a short while, it seemed as though Paramount was fully embracing 7.1 lossless audio for most of their films, including catalog titles, but a few recent releases (including this and Indiana Jones) feature only 5.1 mixes. While the track itself is hardly anything to complain about, it's an odd choice to not embrace all that current technology has to offer, especially with the 3D version of the film. Immersion is key.

But don't fret, the 5.1 DTS-HD track is quite terrific, layered with clean, pristine dialogue, thunderous bass and aggressive surrounds that paint a vivid picture of the RMS Titanic. With no crackles or distortions of any kind, and plenty of atmosphere in every single scene, there's little fault to this track whatsoever.

In terms of extras, this release really outdoes itself. Fans who previously owned the three-disc special edition DVD can take solace in knowing that each and every goodie from that release has been ported over. This includes the three outstanding audio commentaries, one from James Cameron, one from the cast and crew, and one from Titanic historians. There's also nearly an hour of deleted scenes, presented in 1080p for the first time.

In addition to those goodies, the set comes stocked with more than 60 featurettes, parodies, galleries, animatics and more (presented in SD). While most of the featurettes are brief, the combined total of the bonus features here is close to 90 minutes. The set also includes trailers, teasers and a music video for “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion.

To sweeten the pot even further, the disc also includes two all-new documentaries that, when combined, run more than two-and-a-half hours (presented in HD). “Reflections on Titanic” is a tremendous hour-long account of the making of James Cameron's epic. For those who feel the featurettes are a bit too brief, this documentary should make up for that. There's also “Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron,” a 96-minute documentary that takes a more investigative approach to the Titanic legend. Pair it with Disney's Ghosts of the Abyss for a fascinating, in-depth look at the Titanic then-and-now.

Read our review of Ghosts of the Abyss on Blu-ray here.

Unfortunately, the only missing piece here is the long-rumored four-hour cut of Titanic. That said, Paramount does provide fans with the original hour of deleted footage, in 1080p no less. So, fan editors, it's up to you to crank out that definitive extended cut. Go!

Titanic is an epic piece of cinema, and it makes for an equally epic slice of Blu-ray history. With an outstanding 3D presentation, a wonderful 2D transfer, and hours upon hours of old and new bonus material, there's no reason to skip out on this release if you're a fan. Either version you choose, the Limited 3D Edition or the standard edition, you're going to get a demo-worthy special edition.

"Music to drown by. Now I know I'm in first class." Become a friend of R.L. Shaffer on Twitter, Facebook or MyIGN for quotes, rants, reviews, news and more!

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