Super Stardust HD developer Housemarque working on downloadable platformer with light-and-dark gameplay inspired by Ikaruga.
Finnish developer Housemarque established itself in the downloadable game market with 2007’s PlayStation twin-stick arcade shooter Super Stardust HD. The studio will return to that genre with the forthcoming PlayStation 3-exclusive Dead Nation, but it is also branching out into new territory, as evidenced by today’s announcement of Outland.
Set for release on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, Outland is being shown off for the first time at this weekend’s Penny Arcade Expo. Published by Ubisoft, the platformer will see players attempt to tilt the balance of light and dark in a world facing its own demise.
Ubisoft said the game is inspired by “epic adventures such as the Prince of Persia series,” but the publisher also name-checked Treasure’s vertically scrolling arcade shooter Ikaruga as a source of Outland’s core gameplay. In Ikaruga, players could swap the color of their ship between black and white at will; each color could absorb bullets of the same shade, allowing skilled players to weave their way through otherwise impenetrable barrages of enemy fire.
The game’s soundtrack will be composed by Ari Pulkkinen. While Pulkkinen has previously teamed with Housemarque on Super Stardust HD, he is perhaps better known for his work on last year’s cooperative action adventure Trine and the breakout iPhone hit Angry Birds.
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Sony nails down release date for Guerrilla Games’ Move-compatible 3D shooter.
At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony revealed that Killzone 3 would arrive sometime next February. Eager fans of the series won’t need to worry about the first-person shooter interfering with Valentine’s Day plans, as Sony today announced that Killzone 3 will launch on February 22.
As the name suggests, Killzone 3 will serve as a direct sequel to 2009’s critically lauded Killzone 2. In last year’s title, the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance took the fight to the Helghan homeworld, where they achieved a measure of success against the Nazi-esque civilization that invaded Earth in the 2004 original.
For the third entry in the series, Amsterdam-based Guerrilla Games will be fleshing out the Helghan homeworld with more enemy types, larger and more diverse environments, and jetpacks. With the futuristic personal conveyance, gamers gain the ability to thrust skyward for a limited period of time, affording them access to heretofore unreachable locations and opening up the possibility of aerial gunfights.
Killzone 3 will also support Sony’s PlayStation Move peripheral, as well as stereoscopic 3D displays. For more on the game, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.
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PAX 2010: Epic Mickey, Deus Ex creator kicks off fan-centric trade show by urging greater acceptance of the diversity inherent to the interactive medium.
Who was there: The 2010 Penny Arcade Expo keynote address was delivered by Junction Point founder and Epic Mickey creative director Warren Spector.
What he talked about: In previous years, the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington, has been christened by individuals that rank among the pantheon of gaming and geek culture, ranging from actor Wil Wheaton to gaming icons Ken Levine and Ron Gilbert. This year was no different, as the creators of the popular Penny Arcade Web comic landed Junction Point founder Warren Spector as the PAX 2010 keynote speaker.
Spector’s reputation in the gaming industry is well earned. Having started his game-design career working at Origin Systems in 1989 on such games as Wing Commander and Ultima VI, Spector went on to be the creative force behind such classics as the Deus Ex and Thief franchises. In 2005, he formed Junction Point, and by 2007, the company had been acquired by Disney Interactive to create Epic Mickey, which is due on the Wii later this year.
Spector began his keynote address recapping his personal history and how his formative years had very little to do with gaming. When he was a kid, he said, computers weren’t around–let alone home gaming systems–and his interests skewed toward superheroes, fantasy novels, comic books, and sci-fi movies.
“I can quote pretty much the entire HP Lovecraft collection,” he said. “I was really a nerdy little kid.”
As the years progressed, Spector’s interests remained much the same, as he latched on to the worlds of Batman and Bugs Bunny, as well as television shows like The Three Stooges and music from The Beatles. Spector noted that many of these forms of expression were derided by his elders, and the fact that they are now cultural emblems “goes to show you that you never know what’s going to have lasting value.”
And then came the advent of Pong, but Spector said that while he sunk many a quarter into the arcade machine, it wasn’t a particularly impactful moment in his life. What did impact him, though, was LucasArts’ Star Wars, which he saw in a theater in Chicago. Spector said that until that moment, the sci-fi genre that he knew and loved had been largely marginalized, as people believed that it couldn’t ever turn a buck. However, this movie validated science fiction with the mainstream, he said.
Around this time, Spector said that he also become engrossed in Dungeons & Dragons. His experience with D&D was different, he said, because his first taste came while he was an adult. Since he wasn’t a kid when he came to it, he never considered it geeky or weird, or had anyone tell him he was engaging with the devil by playing it. Instead, the game, as well as others like it, was merely the way he and his friends socialized.
“D&D at its best was about collaborative storytelling, and that set me on a course that I’m still on today,” he said.
That course took an abrupt turn toward gaming when he walked into a friend’s living room one day and saw people huddled around a television set, playing Star Raiders on the Atari 800. Though he still did not know he would become a game designer, he became infatuated with the thought of a gaming console in his living room.
He took his first steps toward his future career in 1983, when he joined Steve Jackson Games. From there, he moved to TSR. In 1989, he finally landed at Richard Garriott’s Origin Systems, and the rest is history.
As for why all this matters, Spector said that a new medium arises only about once a century and that those interested in gaming today are seeing it grow and flourish before their eyes. However, he believes that the medium is in peril, in part because of the xenophobia many gamers exhibited toward those who are just now becoming interested in gaming.
“We have a brotherhood, and for all of the confidence, when we go out in public, I’ve seen people get insecure,” he said. “It’s as if we yearn to be accepted by the mainstream, but when the mainstream takes interest, we start complaining. We get upset when developers try to reach a casual audience. Nongamers enjoying the things we have enjoyed for years, as if them discovering that diminishes us some.”
“I want to celebrate the ways that we are no longer special, no longer unique,” he continued. “We spent 20 years to convince the masses that we are cool, and to stop beating us up, and now we’ve won.”
Spector went on to say that “we have to get past this not wanting to let others in the club” and that gamers need to embrace the fact that the world is “catching up and catching on.” He said that the mainstream’s interest will only serve to validate and support games as a cultural entity, and not just a fad that will disappear. He also emphasized that all great forms of media went through an acclimation phase, where they were first vilified and then wholly embraced.
This attitude, he said, is a generational one, in which those of one generation refuse to accept the culture of the one that follows them. Spector said that when he was a kid, the marginalized culture was TV, comics, Elvis, and Bugs Bunny.
Spector emphasized also that gaming is in the cultural crosshairs right now, and those on the inside cannot afford to alienate outsiders with interest. He brought up the controversy surrounding California’s violent game law, the opening arguments for which will be heard by the Supreme Court on November 2. “This date could be the start of when we are the first entertainment medium ever to be denied First Amendment protection,” he said.
Therefore, it is important to increase the gamer army, he said, because when grandparents and little sisters and whoever else become interested, the medium as a whole is more difficult to marginalize. Further, it is these types of players who will continue pushing the medium forward, because more players will demand more types of play experiences beyond just saving the world from aliens or killing dragons with broadswords.
Spector then issued a challenge to those in attendance. For gamers, he said that it is important to demand more from their experience and to urge developers to give them something new and better. And in a bit of self-referential humor, he said that the core crowd should give developers the chance to change their place, making games about mice and not just about men in trench coats with dark glasses.
He then called on developers to “honor what makes games unique,” saying that the industry doesn’t need more rail shooters or games that “ape the conventions of 35-year-old paper RPGs.” Publishers, in turn, need to give developers room to be creative and take chances.
And to everyone, he said that the industry and those who follow it need to get over their collective inferiority complex. “We are different, younger, less mature, but as potent of a cultural force [as] anything else on this planet,” he said.
Quote: “Every activity that has survived has become an insider activity. All you have to do is wait for the previous generation to [said quietly] die.”– Warren Spector, on gaming’s ascension to mainstream acceptance.
Takeaway: Spector’s keynote address emphasized that gamers need to embrace the diversity inherent to the gaming medium, saying that the core crowd should not snub those with more casual interests. In turn, the entrance into the mainstream will solidify the medium’s place as a cultural staple, much like plays, novels, and comics before it.
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Just Add Water remake of original studio’s 2005 Xbox-exclusive swan song to feature Move support, high-definition graphics.
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath launched on the original Xbox in January of 2005, and while the game received plenty of critical praise, it garnered little attention from consumers. A planned PlayStation 2 port of the game never materialized, but Sony loyalists will finally get a chance to check out the last original Oddworld Inhabitants title. Just Add Water today announced it will launch a downloadable remake of the game for the PlayStation 3 next Easter.
The biggest change for the remake will be the addition of 720p high-definition graphics. The PS3 edition of Stranger’s Wrath will also incorporate PlayStation Move support, visual bells and whistles like normal mapping and self-shadowing, and “re-mastered dialogue.” The technical quality of the voice samples in the original game was a point of criticism in GameSpot’s original review for the title.
Strangers Wrath is the first Oddworld project from the UK-based developer, but it won’t be the last. In July, the studio announced that it would be working on multiple Oddworld projects for multiple platforms.
The Oddworld series was first launched in 1997 and is best known for its juvenile sense of humor, socially conscious themes, and platforming gameplay. Two games were released on the PlayStation, and in 2000, the studio signed a deal with Microsoft to publish titles exclusively for the Xbox. Oddworld produced the 3D platformer Munch’s Oddysee as a launch title, but the partnership with the console maker dissolved before Stranger’s Wrath was finished. Electronic Arts picked the game up in 2004 as part of its EA Partners program and launched it the next year, but Oddworld Inhabitants confirmed its withdrawal from game development soon thereafter.
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PAX Prime 2010: Gearbox president Randy Pitchford confirms that his studio has taken over the long, long, long-awaited shooter, which will be playable on the PAX Prime floor.
Yesterday as part of his prolific Twitter stream, 3D Realms president
George Broussard posted a cryptic picture of pigs flying. Today, the reason became clear. At PAX Prime in Seattle,
Gearbox president Randy Pitchford took the stage to announce that his studio has taken over Duke Nukem Forever, which had been in development at the now-all-but-defunct 3D Realms since 1997.
Speaking to a shocked and enthusiastic crowd, Pitchford said, “We can’t let the Duke die, right? The guys at 3D Realms who put their hearts and souls into this, so we wanted to make sure it hits all the platforms. It’s coming to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2011.”
Pitchford also told the
Wall Street Journal that Gearbox took over the game in late 2009, following the quasi-closure of 3D Realms and tit-for-tat lawsuits between 3D Realms and Duken Nukem Forever publisher Take-Two Interactive. (He also told the paper the game was coming out in 2010, but he said 2011 at PAX today.)
“Clearly the game hadn’t been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created,” Pitchford told the Journal. “The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It’s the game it was meant to be.”
Scott Miller, owner and CEO of 3D Realms, also reflected to the Journal why his studio failed to complete the game. “We were probably too much of a perfectionist about the game. When some other game had some great feature come out, we wanted to match it’We’d been distracted on other games like Prey. It was a combination of those things. We were trying to build a game that was too great.”
Duke Nukem Forever isn’t the first Duke Nukem game that Gearbox has worked on.
In June, court filings in the Take-Two Interactive lawsuit against Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms (incorporated as Apogee Software) revealed that another game featuring the first-person shooter icon was in the works at a “well-known game developer” as early as 2007. That mystery developer was, in fact, Gearbox.
The Duke Nukem-Gearbox connections don’t stop there. Before forming Gearbox, Pitchford worked at 3D Realms on an expansion for Duke Nukem 3D for the PC. (The game was rereleased in 2008 as an Xbox Live Arcade title.) “People like George Broussard and the 3D Realms team are the reason I got into gaming,” said Pitchford during today’s speech.
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GameStop and Best Buy customers will be the only players to get invisibility and tag modes this year; Wal-Mart preorders receive Oddjob-themed “Cheater” apparel.
Last month, Activision announced a Goldeneye 007 bundle with a gilded Classic Controller to promote its upcoming remake of the seminal Nintendo 64 first-person shooter. The publisher has picked up its promotional activities today, revealing a trio of retailer-exclusive enticements for players to pick the game up when it arrives November 16.
Gamers who pick up the title at GameStop or Best Buy can receive exclusive codes to unlock the game’s invisibility and tag split-screen multiplayer modes, respectively. The invisibility mode (available with preorder) gives players the ability to become invisible for a limited amount of time to sneak up on opponents, while the tag mode makes whoever is “it” unable to score any kills until he or she touches another player.
The modes are said to be exclusive until December 31, 2010, suggesting they will become available to other players after that date. Both the GameStop and Best Buy codes will need to be authenticated online through the Wii before the modes are unlocked, an Activision representative told GameSpot.
The third retailer-specific incentive is a T-shirt offer available to those who reserve the game from Wal-Mart’s Web site or purchase it from one of the chain’s brick-and-mortar locations at launch. The shirt features the distinctive silhouette of strongman Oddjob’s lethal bowler hat, along with the caption “Cheater.” Playing as Oddjob in the N64 GoldenEye was frequently frowned upon by players, as his shorter stature made for a harder target and gave him a distinct advantage in matches.
For more on Goldeneye, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.
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Iconic characters from Team Fortress 2, Sam and Max, Strong Bad, Penny Arcade go all-in for publisher’s latest PC card game.
In a recent interview, Valve Software’s Gabe Newell promised three big surprises for gamers in the next 12 months. One such surprise could have been revealed today, as Telltale Games announced a company crossover poker game costarring the Heavy character from Valve’s Team Fortress 2.
Set for release on the PC and Mac this fall, Poker Night at The Inventory brings The Heavy along with Max (Sam and Max), Tycho (Penny Arcade), and Strong Bad (Homestar Runner), for a card game that examines iconic gaming characters in a different context.
“We’ve had the idea for some time of exploring the idea of what video characters do when they’re not ‘on the clock’ in the games we play,” Telltale CEO Dan Connors said in announcing the game. “We pitched the idea to friends in the industry and it really resonated. We all had a great time imagining what these guys would banter about while slinging cards–from there, Poker Night at The Inventory was born.”
Touting the project as “The Citizen Kane of poker games,” Telltale said Poker Night at The Inventory will do more than just deal cards and take bets. The game will also include a dynamic dialogue system and fully voiced characters that taunt each other, have their own “tells,” and adapt to each game situation as it plays out.
Although Telltale is best known for its episodic adventure games, Poker Night at The Inventory is not the first hand of cards it has dealt. The first title developed by the company was 2005’s Telltale Texas Hold ‘Em, a card game that sought to combine poker acumen with Telltale’s distinctive sense of humor.
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Latest edition in retro compilation series includes 18 arcade ports, half-dozen updated versions of Gator Panic, Rally-X, Grobda, and more.
The Namco Museum line of games hasn’t added a new virtual wing in over a year, but a new installment in the long-running retro compilation series is on the horizon. Namco Bandai Games America today announced Namco Museum Megamix for the Wii, a collection of 18 straight ports of the company’s arcade efforts, with an extra six updated “Remix” versions pulled from its extensive catalog.
The Namco Museum series has been compiling and rereleasing the publisher’s arcade classics and obscure older games onto new systems since the days of the original PlayStation. Namco Museum Megamix will be the series’ second go-around on Nintendo’s console. In 2007, the publisher launched Namco Museum Remix on the system, a collection of nine arcade ports and five remixed games, all of which will also be included in Namco Museum Megamix.
Namco Museum Megamix games
(Asterisk indicates a title that was included on Namco Museum Remix)
Bosconian
*Cutie Q
*Dig Dug
Dig Dug II
Galaga
*Galaga Remix
*Galaxian
*Gaplus
*Gator Panic Remix
Grobda
Grobda Remix
King & Balloon
*Mappy
Motos
New Rally-X
*Pac & Pal
*Pac ‘N Roll Remix
Pac-Man
*Pac-Mania
*Pac-Motos
Rally-X
*Rally-X Remix
*Super Pac-Man
*Xevious
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High Voltage Software’s Wii-exclusive first-person shooter sequel delayed, Classic Controller support to be included.
Between Call of Duty: Black Ops, GoldenEye 007, and The Conduit 2, this coming holiday season was shaping up to be a busy one for Wii-owning first-person shooter fans. However, Sega is leaving it to one of Activision’s titles to claim the system’s FPS sales crown this holiday season, as High Voltage Software’s The Conduit 2 has been pushed to next year. Sega confirmed for GameSpot today that it “is looking into” a first-quarter 2011 release for the title.
The delay was originally reported by console-specific site Nintendojo, which also reported new control options for the sequel. Gamers who don’t enjoy motion controls in their first-person shooters will be able to use both the Classic Controller and Classic Controller Pro with The Conduit 2. High Voltage had previously confirmed support for the Wii MotionPlus peripheral as well.
The single-player mode of The Conduit 2 will pick up the original game’s alien invasion storyline, with Sega promising dynamic environments, player customization options, and giant boss enemies. As for multiplayer, Sega will introduce new co-op modes for online play, or offline with up to four players sharing a split-screen. The publisher is also promising “increased multiplayer security” for the game, in light of the cheating that undermined the online play of the original game.
For more on The Conduit 2, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.
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Inversion (X360)
The spiritual successor to TimeShift under the spotlight.
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