A good bit of pleasure got here with the announcement of a brand new multiplayer game led by Master of Horror John Carpenter, a co-op shooter referred to as Toxic Commando. It has a really Carpenter-like premise. A large company tries to harness the ability of Earth’s core, hoping to management a near-unlimited supply of vitality they will then generate profits out of. Instead, they launch an entity referred to as The Sludge God, a being able to terraforming massive stretches of land and of making something it kills into reanimated monsters. Insert weapons, staff mechanics, and hordes of fleshy targets and also you’ve obtained an 80’s horror-inspired video game.
The origins of the Sludge God’s reign of terror and the commandos that take up the struggle towards it’s getting its personal prequel comic from Dark Horse, titled Toxic Commando: Rise of the Sludge God. It’ll be a three-part guide and it’s slated for launch on March 13, 2024. Michael Moreci takes on writing duties with Alberto J. Albuquerque on artwork and Nate Piekos on letters.
Rise of the Sludge God goals at constructing upon the world of the game, populating it with a way of lore that hopefully packs each bullet within the game with function. It’s what anybody would anticipate after seeing Carpenter’s identify hooked up to it. Promotion for the game has leaned arduous on how the horror icon was introduced in to form a legit horror world that harkens again to the action-splatter movies of the Nineteen Eighties.
The determination to go together with Moreci on script is an attention-grabbing one. The author of Roche Limit and Wasted Space has had ample expertise with licensed work, together with on franchises resembling Star Wars and Stranger Things. More importantly on this case, he has written video game tie-in comics as properly. His wonderful Dishonored Vol. 2: The Peeress and The Price, for example, builds upon the game Arkane Studios constructed with a deal with town of Dunwall and the forms of threats that will naturally emerge from it. Moreci confirmed a deep understanding of the game’s tradition and its characters, which ramps up the joy for the Toxic Commando prequel comic.
As a fast observe, tie-in comics can enrich a game world significantly when completed proper. In reality, it’s considerably of an underrated concept when you concentrate on it. Tie-in prose novels have stored whole franchises alive within the absence of recent motion pictures, TV collection, or video video games. Star Wars and Alien are simply two licenses to have enormously benefited from this. On the gaming aspect, Halo and Final Fantasy have gone deep sufficient into their universes to produce fan-favorite characters that go on to characteristic in motion pictures and collection. Dan Watters and Piotr Kowalski produced an incredible and enjoyable Wolfenstein comic again in 2017 (to coincide with the discharge of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus) that confirmed the license may very well be sustained past gaming consoles. Even Ram V had one, a Quake Champions comic that was launched in 2018. A extra intentional strategy to tie-in video game comics might go a great distance in constructing the lore and the myths of game worlds that want extra of it to join with followers.
Numerous these zombie horde co-op shooters that Toxic Commando appears to be taking quite a bit from characteristic some type of story, however they have an inclination to be paper skinny. They’re actually simply there to inform us why the participant is going through legions of easy-to-kill-but-increasingly-difficult-to-outlive monsters. Moreci and Albuquerque have an opportunity to set up one thing with extra substance in Rise of the Sludge God. Here’s hoping it additionally indicators the game’s intention to make investments extra time in story than is often the case with these kind of multiplayer experiences.
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