A rather pretentious title, for what really looks more like a Half-Life 2 MOD. Nevertheless, the recently announced third-person shooter Salvation (anti-rhymes with Damnation, but not to be confused with Dark Salvation) is being developed as a full-fledged PC and Xbox 360 game powered by Valve's Source engine, by some novice Ukranian studio Black Wing Foundation, "in cooperation with N-Game Studios" - cause it's so damn hard to make a generic shooter all by yourself these days.

The world of Salvation is described as a near-future cybernetic dystopia, inspired by the likes of "1984", "Brand New World" and "Us", with a dramatic story spanning seven episodes (17 missions), from Tokyo to London, which goes something like this.

"The world government, making use of genetic engineering managed to successfully imitate the Judgement Day and establish new stiff rules - a new 'Regime'. World war and death of genetic replicants of Christ and Antichrist drastically changed the mindset of people. Now they are creatures without the right of opinion, they are slaves of the 'Regime'. An army of Angels, genetically cloned humans, are watchful of keeping the order. Any dissidence threatens either death or exile to Hell - a cybernetic virtual reality system, causing a human to suffer unbearably."

And guess who's gonna burn down this "Paradise" and pull the plug on Hell... Gameplay wise, we're lured with somewhat hillarious features such as "combining best elements of stealth, action and arcade", "20 original bosses, each with its own strategy and story", "multifunctional original weapons of the future", "original but simple in use RPG system", and - ZOMG! - "shadows and more". Oh, and multiplayer for up to 32 infidels. By God, this sounds like one Hell of a shooter. Though I got a feeling it will be anything but.

Tags:  PC, Xbox 360, action, arcade, role-playing, shooter, stealth