You Are Empty

You Are Empty
Developer(s)	Mandel ArtPlains Digital Spray Studios
Publisher(s)	1C Company
Director(s)	Pavel Muzok
Designer(s)	Denis Volchenko
Programmer(s)	Dmitry Sytnik Yuriy Dobronravin Andrii Frolov Victor Reutskiy Vyacheslav Korotayev
Engine	DS2 Engine
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	RUS: October 27, 2006 POL: April 13, 2007 NA: October 16, 2007
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player

You Are Empty is a first-person shooter video game by Ukrainian developers Mandel ArtPlains and Digital Spray Studios. It was published by 1C Company in 2006. Atari later released the game in English in 2007.

The game is set in an alternate-history Soviet Union. It begins with the protagonist waking up in a ruined hospital, and it soon becomes clear that the populace has been afflicted by mutation and madness. He then must battle to stay alive and unravel the mystery.

Gameplay

You Are Empty features basic first-person shooter gameplay. Players can acquire a variety of both melee weapons and firearms, mostly based on real-world weapons such as a Mauser C96 pistol or PPSh-41 sub-machine gun. The sole exception to realism is the large electric gun, the last weapon the player receives.

Synopsis

Setting

You Are Empty takes place in 1955 in an alternative Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. In an attempt to ensure the global victory of Communism, the government has constructed a massive psychic antenna to broadcast a reality-altering signal designed to transform the people of the Soviet Union into super-humans. However, the project goes wrong, and most of the population is either killed or becomes homicidal mutants.

Cutscenes tell the life story of the master scientist responsible for the disaster. As a child, he discovers his psychic powers which allow him to control other beings. Becoming a scientific protégé, he develops plans for the antenna to amplify his power and broadcast it across the world, initiating a "Great Transformation of humanity." The scientist also believes that he is a New Man, which is not directly stated but rather hinted because the scientist must master his limits.

Plot

The game's protagonist, a mid-ranking military officer, is left unconscious by a workplace accident. When they wake up in a hospital, they find the world in ruin and overrun with homicidal mutants. While investigating the events of the disaster and fighting to survive, they occasionally meet other survivors but also hostile units of the Soviet Army who attempt to bring the officer to their commander, who explains the calamity before committing suicide.

The information brings the protagonist to the antenna facility where they find the master scientist directly wired into the massive mechanism. He congratulates the officer for making it so far, proving to him that the Great Transformation was not entirely a failure as it created a perfect, self-sufficient human who is capable of fighting for themselves. The scientist, revealing that he is short on time, tells the officer that they have two choices: stay and rule over what remains of the world or use the antenna to rewind time to before the disaster happens and kill him before he can present the plan to the Soviet leadership. To save the world, the officer chooses to rewind time and shoots the scientist in the head, and is then beaten down by Stalin's bodyguards. With the calamity averted, the world eventually carries on in real-life continuity.

Development

You are Empty lacks any lighting or shader effects, and relies entirely on flat textures for the game's visuals. At E3 2006 the developers of You Are Empty gave GameSpot a private screening of the game. GameSpot expressed interest in the physics engine, saying that it might "have some unexpected consequences".

There is a graphic problem with the latest Nvidia drivers (resulting in a white checkerboard corruption in the game). Before a patch was released, the developer suggested the players install an older Nvidia driver that was included in the game to solve the problem.

Reception

The game received unfavorable reviews from critics. On the review aggregator GameRankings, the game had an average score of 40% based on 15 reviews. On Metacritic, the game had an average score of 34 out of 100, based on 14 reviews.

Brett Todd of GameSpot gave the game a rating of 1.5 out of 10, stating "It's hard to imagine how anybody could make the Stalin-era Soviet Union less appealing than it was in reality, but You Are Empty sure does the trick." Todd described the game as an "atrocity" and a "painful exercise in shooter stupidity." Todd opined the English translations from the original Russian are "awful", the game has a slow, boring pace, the monsters are "mostly ripped off from other games" (mentioning Doom, Painkiller, Serious Sam, Silent Hill, and Redneck Rampage), and the missions are "geared around hunts for keys and levers." Todd did say that "some of the music can be effectively creepy." Todd ended his review by saying, "the nihilistic name of the game is never explained. Now move on with your life and try to pretend that games like You Are Empty don't exist."

External links

• Official website
• Official website (Atari)
• You Are Empty at MobyGames