Sand: The First Preview – IGN

Taking a daring word from extra crafting-heavy video games like Rust, or from or map-based mostly video games like Sea of Thieves, Sand has a slower tempo of occasions. Your Trampler may be fairly quick, relying on the way you outfit it, nevertheless it nonetheless strikes and turns like an important stomping ship. Recognizing enemies within the distance by their smoke plume is one factor, however your pilot has to do an excellent job maneuvering and it at all times helps to have a navigator plotting the course. That is to not point out your actual goal for hitting the floor: loot.

Shipwrecks and island cities litter the as soon as-moist floor of planet Sophie, any of which might have the discover that permits you to strike it wealthy. Or the ammo and energy cores that hold your ship going for an additional spherical of searches. Or the weapons and equipment that outfit your crew for a boarding motion towards one other ship that was extra profitable to find riches.

To get all that executed it’s important to take a extra methodical strategy, and the controls replicate that. You may carry little or no loot in your individual earlier than that you must discover a container to carry it in as an alternative, for instance. You at all times should purpose earlier than firing a weapon, which I discovered actually helped differentiate the scale and goal distinction between the pistol, revolver-rifle, and sniper rifle I discovered on the floor. (I discovered shotgun shells too…however no shotgun.)

Trampler battles are additionally slower-paced. It is a problem simply lining up targets because the gait of your mech throws off purpose and the rolling dunes current a continuing problem in simply getting an excellent line of sight. Different Tramplers take a whole lot of hits from a cannon to go down, requiring you to destroy their engine room for actual takedown—which relying on how good a shot you’re may take extra shells than you introduced with you or discovered on the floor. But it surely’s both that or board the enemy Trampler, kill the crew, and seize their helm to make it your individual.

With that a lot work and danger in a Trampler-on-Trampler brawl, that you must ensure it is value it—as a result of there’s an actual sting in spending ten or fifteen minutes chasing somebody down to appreciate they only did not have something value stealing. To not point out the circumstance I can foresee gamers dreading essentially the most: when a battle begins and the opposite salvage crews begin circling like vultures to select off whoever survives. That is a state of affairs I noticed greater than as soon as by way of my binoculars.

Not for my crew, although! We had an enormous Trampler to stomp round in, a ramshackle monster that the builders assured me was not one thing you’ll be able to construct with beginning sources. And construct it you do. A reasonably strong, in-depth system of Trampler design permits you to place sleeping compartments, the helm, storage amenities, the engines, decks, extra engines, preventing balconies, preventing emplacements, and weapons throughout this stuff. You may even do cool stuff like customise the place doorways and hatches are situated to make your ship a maze that enemies will wrestle to invade. All of that takes sources you’ve got gathered on the planet beneath and that you simply’re—a minimum of considerably—risking while you take down your new metal behemoth for an additional run.

Which is one thing I already know I am going to discover myself doing each time I subsequent get my palms on Sand.