No Man’s Land is a new free-to-play PlayStation Home game that transports you to a post-apocalyptic America that has known only war for decades. Through this devastated wasteland, you must scavenge to survive while confronting tribes of heavily armed enemies focused on their own survival. Employing a cutting-edge cover point system and immersive gameplay, No Man’s Land is a first-of-its-kind on a console: a free-to-play multiplayer shooter.
We are proud to bring you this breakthrough Home experience. Comprised of industry veterans who have worked across a wide range of platforms and genres, VEEMEE saw a unique opportunity with PlayStation Home to evolve gaming by blending the immersive gameplay endemic to AAA games with the social and “freemium” aspects of casual games. This is something that is only possible on PlayStation, with its free online network and vibrant community. No Man’s Land is a game that brings something new – and a bit different – to the Home platform.
No Man’s Land is a multiplayer third-person tactical shooter, featuring a cover-based movement system and 4v4 team battles. Following the completion of a tutorial session, the player is given an introductory loadout that allows access to the Drydock and the game. Armor and weapon upgrades can be purchased from the Commerce Points in a variety of combinations, which we plan to evolve in time.
The Environment and the Cover System
The challenge for the game universe of No Man’s Land was to create a realistic environment that looked like it had been worn down by conflict for decades. The focus was on rendering a devastated world where obvious resources were depleted and what remained was hard to find and dangerous to claim.
The cover-to-cover movement system is a deliberate departure from the usual run-and-gun gameplay of many other third-person shooters. No Man’s Land promotes the idea that in order to survive, “cover is king.” The cover control system makes moving between cover natural and fluid. Players can queue additional cover moves or interrupt any move at any time to divert to another cover position. This results in players making frantic dashes between pieces of cover, often taking evasive action when under fire, so they can reach the relative safety of the next cover point. It means players have to think ahead: where they want to be, which direction they want to shoot from, and where their teammates are. This encourages players to work as a team to provide covering fire for each other as they advance and sprint between cover points.
Armor and Weapons
The developers decided to make use of the Home avatars so to increase the player’s connection with the in-game No Man’s Land survivor, which means that your Home avatar will strap on armor while its other physical features remain intact. Plus you can wear it out of the space into the game world too! We all love character customization so have been keen to offer as much flexibility here as possible.
Armor comes in several variants, increasing in weight and damage absorption properties. Heavier armor will slow survivor movement between cover, but it will be able to absorb more damage. You choose between speed of movement and the damage protection.
It is possible to mix and match all the armor pieces into whichever configuration you require. Light armor for hands and feet? Medium for legs and torso? Heavy for the head? You decide. The weight, speed and damage absorption properties for your character are then calculated appropriately.
Right from the start, the intention was to make No Man’s Land as flexible as possible: from the grenade variants, to the customizable armor loadouts, to the four-weapon carrying system. This means that players can buy any combination of weapons and armor to fit their playing style, while offering a variety of visual styles.
Game Modes
There are two modes of play: Scavengers and Team Deathmatch. Team Deathmatch is the time-tested ‘kill-every-enemy-that-moves’ game mode. In the Scavengers game mode teams must collect salvage packs from the depleted cityscape. These resources are all that are left of the old world. Each team must bring all the salvage to their ‘salvage dump’ before the other team does. This game mode is essentially capture the flag, but with multiple flags. Players earn points for placing salvage on their team’s salvage dump, for stealing enemy salvage, and for simply killing the enemy.
“…the old ones used to call this place the United States of America, we just call it…No Man’s Land…”
We hope you have a great time playing No Man’s Land! We look forward to hearing what you think so we can continue to evolve this unique, free, and first of its kind console game. Post your thoughts here in the comments section and head to the official PlayStation Home forums to continue the conversation.
Looks really cool! This is going to make me check out Home again. I have been neglecting it while I catch up on my back log of games. Any trophies in Home games?
Bring it on! NML is brand new starting today. There are no PlayStation trophies in Home, but there are always tons of rewards to pick up around every corner. The denizens of Home appreciate them usually more than a single bronze any day because they’re often wearable (swag!), displayable say in a personal space, or occasionally interactive.