Boiling Point: Road to Hell - First Impressions
Brian 'Dhruin' Turner, 2005-05-30

Brilliant. Buggy. Both of these descriptions would be an accurate reflection of Boiling Point: Road to Hell from the few hours we've spent with it so far. Deep Shadows has tackled an ambitious design that combines elements of first-person action, adventure and roleplaying to create a unique experience set in a fictitious country that looks a lot like contemporary Columbia, amidst the jungles, run-down villages and drug wars. And it comes close to succeeding.

Boiling Point casts the player as Saul Myers, a grizzled ex-Legionnaire who rushes to Realia to search for his daughter Lisa - a young journalist who has gone missing in this volatile locale. It's a simple storyline that underscores the simple but exciting premise: create a huge, detailed simulation with multiple factions, lots of NPCs, missions, vehicles, equipment…and let the player loose. The pre-release details describe a 25km x 25km continuous play world, while the back of our UK box claims 240 square miles - either way, Boiling Point offers a truly massive play area with absolutely no boundaries or loading screens.

After a cut scene to set the story, players find themselves standing in the town of Puerto Sombra, with a small amount of cash but little else. The setting is believable, with worn, sun-bleached buildings, a town square replete with a statue to a revolutionary hero, numerous citizens wandering the streets and small stall vendors - all surrounded by the ubiquitous, encroaching jungle. Every NPC can be spoken to with typical RPG dialogue trees, all fully-voiced, and you'll soon have details of the local bar, arms dealers, gas station, car dealer, hospital, police station and more.

Your first mission is to find the newspaper Lisa was working for and question the editor. It doesn't take long to realise you'll need more money to grease palms and buy equipment and after heading to the local bar, you'll encounter representatives of the game's factions: the government, the CIA, mafia, guerrillas, native Indians and bandits. Each of these factions has jobs on offer for an enterprising individual looking to earn a little cash. A sliding meter tracks the player's standing with each faction, which starts at neutral, but changes according to your actions. Naturally, completing missions for one faction can have consequences with the others. Players are free to travel and explore as they please, taking missions with those factions they have a positive standing with and potentially fighting with those they don't.

Beyond these basic elements, Deep Shadows has added a cornucopia of interactive items, skills and stats to add depth. There's the Deus Ex-like inventory grid, various player skills from strength to weapons abilities that improve with use, an array of weapons that can be upgraded, repaired and modified, food, alcohol and drugs. You'll carry a cell-phone, binoculars, flashlight and camera. Want to know the time? Check your wristwatch, of course. And then there are the vehicles.

Every vehicle in the game is drivable - cars, trucks, boats, planes - even helicopters, although I have yet to progress past a battered old orange heap at this stage. The driving model could be improved but as with everything else, Deep Shadows has added depth with car damage, tires that wear out and gas that needs refilling. Naturally, you can store things in the trunk and grab a few hours sleep while you're on the road.

Combat in Boiling Point plays out like a standard shooter, although the action isn't as polished as the best in the field. As we've already mentioned, there's a huge variety of weapons that can be used, not to mention some of the vehicles have offensive capabilities. Silent kills are also possible, although it's often difficult to pull off.

Boiling Point has an impressive interface that many "real" RPGs could learn from. A character sheet, inventory, map, mission log, conversation journal and known NPCs are all available from a tabbed screen. Areas of the revealed map can be zoomed, notes added and waypoints plotted. A mini-map can be toggled in the main HUD, with colour-coded arrows pointing to waypoints, marked locations and quest destinations. The mission log separates the search for Lisa from other jobs, with bullet-points for each phase of a quest. The main HUD is clean, with a compass, health and a couple of small status indicators.

In the half-dozen or so hours I have played so far, there have been some interesting missions, along with unexpected moments. For example, it's not unusual to encounter firefights on the roads. Driving back to town I encountered one particular battle with government troops and mafia exchanging fire from opposite sides of the road. This time the bus just ahead was caught in the hail of bullets and exploded in a ball of fire. As I swerved to avoid the wreckage, one of my tires blew out and I lost control, ploughing into the government troops - a faction I had been courting thus far. While some might rue the unexpected damage to their faction standing, others will find these "emergent" situations exhilarating.

As good as this all sounds, Boiling Point has plenty of rough edges. Clipping issues abound but it's the NPC path finding that stands out the most. While it generally works, you'll occasionally find vehicles have suddenly turned off the road and into a building - I watched two trucks that had both turned into a building alcove perform a strange dance as they drove backwards and forwards, stuck between the building and hitting each other when they tried to back out. Civilians that so much as touch your parked car will die an instant screaming death if the engine is running and sometimes they'll get stuck between the car and a nearby object such as a lamppost, leaving no option but to kill them as you pull out, damaging your civilian ranking.

The faction system also turns out to be a little simplistic. Since it's a linear scale, killing some members of a faction you have a very positive standing with will still leave you in their good books, which doesn't really make sense. Likewise, accidentally killing one NPC from a faction with a neutral standing will have them all out to kill you - at least until you can improve the standing.

The environments in Boiling Point look pretty good, with an authentic portrayal of the towns, dense foliage in the jungle with swaying trees and grasses and an impressive sky that varies with the time of day and weather. The NPCs are repetitive and aren't as good as the environments while many objects have very simple textures. All things considered, while it doesn't compete with the graphical heavyweights it's more than made up for by the impressive level-less streaming technology. The streaming does come at an additional cost - performance on a system with 1Gb RAM was quite acceptable but another system with 512Mb struggled to achieve a comfortable framerate. In the sound department, the voiceovers are adequate (if uninspired), while the limited themed music is quite enjoyable.

If the next post you make at your favourite forum might be a diatribe on the unpolished release state of modern PC games, Boiling Point may just be a perfect illustration of the point. On the other hand, if you are more likely to praise an ambitious, freeform but unpolished game that lets you jump into a vehicle and drive around a huge environment as you battle the corrupt government in support of the local insurgents (insert the combination that fits your view of the world), then Boiling Point is well worth a look.

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Deep Shadows