Zed Two confirm Pillage for GameCube.

Well its finally been announced, Pillage is on its way and should be with us at the start of next year. It looks set to be the companies biggest game to date and its definately one to keep your eyes on come the new year.

Zed Two has announced it is working on a stunning story-based and dual-player role-playing epic, entitled Pillage. The game will be released across all leading console formats, with the developer currently negotiating with a number of leading publishers.

Pillage has been created by the respected Zed-Two team - now part of the Warthog set-up - and is set in an unspecified future, where man has reverted to a feudal state and has formed a number of combative castes determined to wipe each other out. This divisive pattern has left Earth ripe for conquering and it is now dominated by loathsome creatures that stalk the planet and have totally subjugated mankind. Into this war-torn world steps Low, a young warrior, determined to avenge the death of his family at the claws of the evil oppressors.

Thus, the basis of Pillage is helping Low and his sister Pepper to amass an army to strike back at the monstrous overlords - either single handedly, or by teaming up with friends via the game's incredibly effective dual-player option.

At its heart, Pillage is an engrossing combat title. The player and their accomplices are dropped within a series of combat zones, whereupon they must use whatever weapons that come to hand to wipe out the creatures that have long ruled them. However, rather than following the predictable gung-ho nature of past RTS or RPGs, Pillage offers the user a far more satisfying and adaptable style of play.

Missions can be played by going all-out and killing everything they see, but equal success can be attained via use of stealth and wits, while some levels are indeed tailored to using the key skills offered by the game's eclectic cast of heroes and freedom fighters. The importance of these factors to the gameplay is also multiplied when additional players join forces in multi-player mode, with would-be heroes combining their different tactics and game styles towards their same goal.

Set within a beautifully-realised 3D play area, Pillage offers a varied and entertaining basis. Boasting a scenario devised by TV scriptwriter Paul Rose, a team of nine individual characters - each with special attributes that prove essential as the game's individual missions unfold - and the most innovative 'all-against-all' multi-player team battles seen in a video game, Pillage is already being touted as a title to watch, with Edge magazine predicting it will become 'the party game of choice.'

Pillage is due for release Q1, 2004. A publisher will be announced shortly.