At E3 this week, Sony showed off their latest free-to-play release for PlayStation Home called — w-w-wait, come back!
Okay, I know PlayStation Home isn’t the first place you go when you’re looking for a new cover-based multiplayer shooter, but things change. Or, at least, Sony and developer VEEMEE are hoping to find a new audience with their post-apocalyptic, competitive shooter No Man’s Land.
NML is an ambitious stab at a Gears of War-style shooter. In fact, it’s the largest team that has ever worked on a Home game. While the framework of NML is familiar, it does some key things very differently. For one thing, you don’t freely move throughout the environment. As in 5th Cell’s Hybrid, you give navigation commands to your avatar. It’s a really awkward way to play a shooter. It feels like it’s different just for the sake of being different, but maybe it grows on you over time.
There are a couple other interesting things, like guns that jam on you and the ability to buy new loadouts, but nothing about NML really sells me on loading up Home (something I’ve never done before). But if you are already invested in Home, maybe No Man’s Land is the dreary, cover-based shooter you’ve been looking for.