ngmoco Eliminate Community day

ngmoco

Two weeks ago, ngmoco invited us to their community event to check out upcoming iPhone/iPod game, Eliminate. Before I give details about the event, here is some information on who ngmoco:) is.

ngmoco is a company based in San Francisco that specializes in bringing entertainment to the iPhone/iPod hardware. They don’t just sit back and make clones of simple games, what came across at the community date is that ngmoco is committed to raising the bar and innovating on the iPhone/iPod platform. ngmoco is not just about games, they are really into providing gamers with a full experience with the development of Plus+, a social network built for iPhone/iPod games that currently shows you awards and leaderboards for particular ngmoco titles.

ngmoco’s office is a wide open space which seems to add to the ability for everyone to work as a team. In the conference room, we sat down to get information and start our hands-on with Eliminate. [Just lost 30 minutes in the middle of this article to download and play Luxor and sign up for the Plus+ network. Already working on those achievements! ]

Eliminate is a first person shooter for the iPhone/iPod hardware. The game is a deathmatch style shooter that includes console/pc concepts such as matchmaking. Chris Plummer from ngmoco sat with us to explain how the game works, but before we get into that, here’s the official trailer:

Players upgrade their armor, weapons and skills by earning credits in the game. Eliminate does have a microtransaction element, using energy. Players are allotted a certain amount of energy to play when that runs out, players can wait a set amount of time for it to refill or use the option to purchase power cells to continue to play.

The menu system in the game is very detailed but very simple to navigate. The display shows the player, credits and energy. The various tabs display upgrade purchases for gear, weapons and skills.

By now you are probably asking…that sounds great, but how does a FPS play on the iPhone/iPod? The controls work really well. Players touch anywhere on the right to move the camera and left is how you move the player. To fire players tap once on the right screen or double tap to sustain fire. Eliminate auto reloads, so no worrying about that. The only difficulty I had was in spinning around, but other than that I moved around easily and took quite a few of the other community members down.

Matches are only three minutes long for quick turnover and matchmaking. I found myself completely engaged (as you can see in the video below) and focused on playing. At the end of the hand’s on, I wanted to walk out with Eliminate to continue to play, but the title is not out for release yet. We’ll let you know when it’s out. I’m looking forward to having GA matches when it does go live.

You can see how hard I was concentrating on playing in Godfree’s video (from Gamertag Radio):

After a few hours of playing the demo and Q&A, ngmoco brought over the Hummer Limo and took all of us for a ride through San Francisco. Our destination was a shooting range. Everyone was really hyped about shooting real guns except for me. To be honest, I was scared out of my mind. Not just about handling a gun myself, but trusting others when very few of us have ever handled a gun before. I walked in with headset on and protective goggles, only to basically run out once people started shooting. It was all too loud, too much for me to deal with at once. Later, I went back in to watch the rest of the group compete in a tournament. This time, I was able to get used to the sounds (guns are LOUD!) and hang out. At the end of the tournament, I shot my own target with a .22 calibur gun. My aim was really good earning me an 85 on my target. The gun itself was very comfortable to shoot and I ended up having a great time.

On the way back we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge (a first for this native Californian!) and took some awesome pictures.