Gore: Ultimate Soldier is a 2002 budget-priced First-Person Shooter developed by 4D Rulers and published by Dreamcatcher Interactive.
The game is a fast-paced shooter reminiscent of Quake III, with both multiplayer as well as a single player campaign that heavily uses multiplayer assets (the levels are repurposed multiplayer maps modified to be more linear, and the enemies have bot-like A.I., but it is a single player campaign and not just multiplayer with bots like Quake III or Unreal Tournament) The game was essentially a means for 4D Rulers to show off their AMP Engine, which they were hoping to license out to other FPS developers in a similar vein as the Quake III engine and the Unreal engine (though ultimately the only games to use the engine were 4D Rulers' own budget-priced Secret Service: Security Breach and Patriots: Nation Under Fire).
In 2008, the full game was released by 4D Rulers as a free digital download called Gore: Special Edition, with various programming improvements and tweaks. However, despite being a free download, the game still required a serial key from 4D Rulers. As 4D Rulers has been defunct for more than a decade, new serial keys are no longer being generated, though the game can still be played by using a pre-existing serial key.
Gore: Ultimate Soldier contains examples of:
- All Just a Dream: The ending reveals the entire game was just part of the virtual reality training simulation you started the game in.
- Armored But Frail: How the game's damage system works. Your armor can take a decent amount of damage, but once it's gone your health can melt quite quickly.
- Crate Expectations: Cardboard boxes can be smashed for ammo, armor, and health, which isn't immediately obvious since most pickups are just laying around out in the open.
- Dem Bones: In the later levels you'll fight hordes of chainsaw-wielding skeletons in addition to the regular enemy goons.
- Elite Mooks: Higher-tier versions of regular enemies have armor and better weapons.
- Escort Mission: One of the later levels has you escorting a technician armed with a pistol from the start of the level to the exit. He has more health than normal, but is also a complete Leeroy Jenkins, which can make the level really frustrating.
- Excuse Plot: Like many shooters of the time, the plot is essentially a barebones excuse for you to blast your way through hordes of enemies.
- Faking the Dead: Because enemies have a seperate stamina meter from their health meter, it's entirely possible for enemies to be knocked out rather than killed under certain circumstances, if they somehow end up losing all their stamina before they lose their health. This can lead to them getting up and shooting you in the back several seconds later because you thought they were dead.
- Final Boss: The final boss of the game is essentially a
Serial Numbers Filed Off version of the Doom Cyberdemon. - Fragile Speedster: The skeletons can't take much damage, but charge at you quite quickly while waving chainsaws around.
- Game-Breaking Bug: As with many older games, some elements of game logic are tied to frame rate. Specifically, frame rates above 200-300 will break jumping, making some areas unbeatable. This can be remedied by using vsync to limit framerate.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: You can carry your entire arsenal of Standard FPS Guns all at once, as was the style at the time.
- Kevlard: Bartenders are large, obese bikers who can soak quite a bit more damage than regular enemies.
- Order vs. Chaos: The game's two opposing factions are UMC, an authoritarian coalition of the world's remaining national governments, and MOB, a conglomerate of the world's criminal enterprises.
- Mini-Mecha: The toughest regular enemy, seen in the later levels, is a heavily armored bipedal mech with a skull for a face and dual miniguns for arms. There are also enemy exosuits with dual rocket launchers for arms.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Averted; enemies are coded similar to multiplayer bots and can even run out of ammo. This almost never happens to enemies as they carry plenty of spare ammo and will only shoot if they have direct line of sight on you, however your NPC allies don't seem to carry any spare mags and run out of ammo for their gun shockingly quickly.
- Number of the Beast: The Final Boss, a Serial Numbers Filed Off Cyber-Demon, has the equivalent of 6,666 hit points.
- Psycho Knife Nut: One of the lowest-tier enemies is a skinny goon in a wifebeater who throws knives at you. His battle cry is even a cackling "Ahhh, I'm a knife guy!!"
- Short-Range Shotgun: The game's shotguns both have an effective range of under 20 feet.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: The game has two shotguns, a pump-action shotgun that can also create a forward-facing energy shield, and a quad-barrel shotgun that can fire all 4 barrels at once as a secondary fire.
- Stamina Burn: All characters have a separate stamina meter apart from their health meter. Actions such as running and jumping doesn't use up stamina, but taking damage will reduce a small amount of stamina, and some attacks such as gas grenades drain high amounts of stamina. If a character's stamina drops below 0, they'll pass out for several seconds.
- Standard FPS Guns: You've got your fists, your pistol, a pump-action shotgun, a pulse rifle, a quad-barrel shotgun, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, etc. Some of the guns have unusual secondary fires, though; i.e. the pulse rifle's secondary fire shoots Knockout Gas grenades instead of explosives, and the pump-action shotgun can also generate a forward-facing energy shield.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: In single-player, some enemies use faction-specific multiplayer weapons such as dual uzis and throwing knives, which you can't use yourself.
- Updated Re Release: Gore was released as a free online download as Gore: Special Edition several years after the original retail CD-ROM release. Besides being free, the Special Edition has a number of coding tweaks. The most noticeable change is that a few of the levels end earlier than originally, as they end as soon as you accomplish the mission objective instead of requiring you to make your way back through the entire level to get back to your van.
