We first got to see the creepy first person shooter You Are Empty from developer Digital Spray and publisher 1C Company back at E3 in 2005. It's been a while since we have seen the game in action but at last night's 1C Company's press event we got a chance to go hands on with a new build of the game and we can report it's as weird and creepy as ever.

For those of you not familiar with the game (and we are guessing that would be most of you) You Are Empty takes place in an alternate 1950's version of the Soviet Union where the goverment decides to try to make an improved master race of humans. As one might expect, their program doesn't go as planned and instead of improved human they create murderous creatures. Your player character, who is completely human by the way, is set out to find out what went wrong and to combat the newly created mutants. Of course, your player character might experience some odd effects himself.

We got to play a brief demo of the game at the press event where we started unarmed but then moved forward to collect weapons such as pipe wrenchs, pistons, rifles and more. We set out to explore an abandoned building that was full of makeshift barracades (beds and other items gathered together). We soon found out why; we got to see mutant creatures from ninja like squads to large females with axes to straight-jacketed folks that could still head butt us to death. The creepiest creature we encountered in the demo was a nurse with a killer body and a melting face that threw "medicine" at us that took down our health levels.

Visually You Are Empty has some very depressing and dank looking level designs. Gameplay doesn't appear to stretch the first person shooter genre that much; you shoot at the creatures, you pick up medicine like health packs and pick up keys and throw switches to open up new sections of the level. The game's textures look a bit flat looking to us compared to the more recent FPS out on the market but there's no doubt that the enemies in the game are unique looking.

You Are Empty is due for release later this year and based on our brief play time with the build it's looking like it will try to go after the same kind of audience that embraced F.E.A.R. We will be keeping up with the development of the game in the months leading up to its release.

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