Gameloft talks Modern Combat 5: Blackout classes and unified progression system

Modern Combat 5 Blackout (classes 001)

As my colleague Cody informed you, French games maker Gameloft recently shed more light on its highly anticipated Modern Combat sequel, titled Modern Combat 5: Blackout.

Coming to mobile later this year, Modern Combat 5: Blackout takes place in such locations as Venice, Italy and Tokyo and involves the main character Phoenix securing a transport of weapons of mass destruction from a particularly well-armed terrorist group.

This is a nice excuse for action-packed combat sequences and a bunch of nicely rendered orange explosions. Before you jump straight for comments, there’s much more to this game than meets the eye. A new Gameloft blog post published Thursday offers new details on the game’s unified progression system and its four soldier classes…

As per Gameloft, the new unified progression system will ensure that your experience points, kills, the weapons you unlock and even the current state of your gameplay get saved across both single and multiplayer modes, basically merging the two modes in one cohesive gaming experience.

“This means that no matter what mode you are playing in, you will be able to work towards increasing your weapons score, mastering various weapons, and of course unlocking new ones,” the post explains.

As for classes, Modern Combat 5: Blackout will feature four soldier classes, each with class-specific skills:

• Assault: An aggressive fighter that is effective at medium range combat. Equips assault rifles and pistols.

• Heavy: Resilience is its main advantage. Equips shotguns and RPGs. The Heavy feels at home in close to medium range combat.

• Recon: Focuses on fast action and exposing enemies. Equips SMGs and pistols. The Recon is efficient in close range combat.

• Sniper: Focuses on sharpshooting with a stealth approach. Equips sniper rifles (obviously) and pistols. Efficient in long distance combat.

Each class receives skill point as you progress through the game. The skill points can be used to unlock additional skills specific to your class of choice. Each class is defined by the weapons it can equip and a few class-specific skills that offer bonuses to these weapon types, Gameloft explains.

And yes – these classes are playable across both single and multiplayer modes.

Here’s the game trailer from last year’s E3.

We still do not have an ETA on the game’s arrival but it shouldn’t be long now that Gameloft has started to spill the beans on the various features in Modern Combat 5: Blackout.

In the meantime, check out Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, currently priced at $6.99 for the massive 1.58GB universal iPhone and iPad download.

This is shaping up to be one hell of a first-person shooter game. The unified progression system has never been seen before in a game (at least not to my knowledge) and the four character classes with basic RPG elements to them is a nice bonus, wouldn’t you agree?

Will keep you posted when/if Gameloft releases more information.