Category: Video Games

Thanks for Ruining Star Trek

Star Trek Online

Yes I am a Trekkie and as such I hate when companies/people screw with the franchise. No this post isn’t about the new J.J. Abram 2008 film, this is about a little developer called Perpetual Entertainment. Most likely you’ve never heard of this company before. They’re the developer behind the upcoming Star Trek MMORPG. Formed in 2004 Perpetual has received over $9 million in funding and has yet to release 1 game.

In the business world usually you need a product to stay a float and now in the age of casual games releasing cost-efficient video games that sell thousands of units is a possibility. But no Perpetual has tried to make the most epic games without having any skill set to back them up.

Apparently a company can survive for a long time with $9 million of funding. Massively Multiplayer Online games take a long time to develop. Even more time is needed if the company wants the game to be good.

It appears that Perpetual was purchased by an undisclosed company. This unknown company has said that they want to make Star Trek more casual gamer friendly. Does that mean it’ll be a cheap free to play MMO game like the crappy Pirates of the Caribbean Online?

Thankfully one real developer is making a new Trek game to be enjoyed this Holiday season! Thanks to Bethesda Softworks PS2 and Wii owners will be able to enjoy Star Trek: Conquest similar to last year’s Star Trek Legacy. However the price of Conquest will be $19.99 for the PS2 and $29.99 for the Wii version.

Bethesda’s definitely offering this game for bargain bin value. Whether you want to look at that as a good thing or a bad thing is up to you. Personally I see it as a crap hitting the fan.

It has always been difficult to find good Star Trek games and the problem doesn’t seem like it’ll go away anytime soon.

Deus Ex 3 announced, teaser revealed, pants wetted

Screenshot from Deus Ex 3’s teaser

I’ve always maintained that Deus Ex is the greatest game ever made by man, and with good reason. It was thought-provoking, immersive, intelligent and its unique game mechanics were plain perfect. While its sequel never lived up to its predecessor’s timeless glory, I still liked it for just being. I’m in need of underwear right now, because Eidos has just announced Deus Ex 3. That’s right, folks – Deus Ex is back with a vengeance!

Of course, Ion Storm saddeningly dissolved a long time ago, so this is Eidos’ Montreal studio’s first game, and that’s a blazing inauguration. Gamasutra reports the company’s structure, their goals and other details not concerning Deus Ex. What I found to be interesting was that Eidos mentions that the new studio will have tightly-knit, multi-discipline groups (at the most 80 people) working on a single project. Also, their development cycles will reportedly last 24 months, as opposed to the much lesser numbers of their competitors.

Eidos also released the teaser for Deus Ex 3, which you can find below. It’s as ambiguous as you’d expect from a teaser, and depicts a bio-augmented foetus, along with some mysterious words from a narrator. There are also a series of pictures that run damn fast. There’s a list of what they are at Wikipedia, if you’re that interested. (UPDATE: We have just learned that the guys at Shacknews have spent a good portion of their lives taking screenshots from the series of images. They have 20 images here right now, and I have no idea if those are all the images or not.)

While this is all excellent news, I have a strange fear in the back of my mind that this may get “consolized” as well, just like (*shudder*) Invisible War. Also, the fact that Montreal is facing a development cycle, no matter how long, hints at the same. Deus Ex, the beautiful game, in its unadulterated form is one that can only be reasonably played on the PC in its entirety. I hope that Montreal tries to recreate that, rather than tossing this legendary franchise into the unwashed masses of multi-console video games.

Critics hate the Hitman movie. A lot.

Hitman Movie is Rotten

Most gamers have been hailing the famed Hitman movie as being the last saving grace for video game movies. Fans rejoiced when it was confirmed that Hitman is heading straight for an R-rating. It appears that all that has been in vain.

Critics have gotten their miserly hands on the Hitman movie and are not impressed. We have no reason to distrust Rotten Tomatoes, so here’s their score: 13% . Yes folks, time for a loud ‘WTF?!’ That’s right, the critics don’t like it one bit. There are a few positie reviews, but most of it looks bad. We took a quick glance over the reviews, and here’s what they say:

  • It is mindlessly cold and brutally violent (which is good for most of us).
  • Plenty of nudity – yes, sir!
  • Horrible story, direction, screenwriting, action, everything. Then again, when was that ever important in movies?
  • Comparable to James Bond and Bourne movies – in the bad way.
  • I particularly like Stephen Whitty’s statement: “A lousy picture.”
  • The positive reviews appear to be sarcastic, and not entirely hope-inducing.
  • EXCEPT Pete Hammond from Maxim: “It delivers top-notch action, dazzling gunplay and lots of fireworks. What more could we ask for?” Got a point there, Pete.
  • Some statements are hilarious: Apparently the film thinks fans of the videogame will empathize with a guy who has zero practice dealing with women.
  • This is a script written with the sensibility of a geeky 12-year-old boy and then dumbed-down some. More than some.
  • A movie so bland it’s hard to believe it was inspired by anything more than a Wikipedia entry on ‘action thrillers.’

While this makes for some good laughs for us folks not interested in the Hitman games, you can expect a lot of fuming from the Hitman camp. But nyah, those are critics. We, the viewers do want mindless violence, secks, blood and guns.

You might think that’s not bad for a video game movie, but it actually is. Here are Rotten Tomatoes’ scores for some other video game movies:

DOA: Dead or Alive: 34%
Resident Evil: 33%
Resident Evil: Apocalypse: 21%
Resident Evil: Extinction: 22%
Mortal Kombat: 20%
Doom: 19%

Wow. Hitman is worse than Doom? Is that even possible?

[poll=9]

Splinter Cell: Conviction Delayed

splintercellconviction.jpg

It’s one of those good news, bad news kind of things. The good news is Splinter Cell: Conviction has been delayed yet again. The bad news is that it doesn’t seem that the title suggested by most, well, me to replace Conviction has been taken up by Ubi yet. So much for Splinter Cell: Hobo Edition. (A reference to the way Sam Fisher looks in the game trailer)

In all seriousness though. Considering the lack of press information on the new Splinter Cell game it may be for the best that the title has been delayed with a TBA release date. This is because if the game was any way near alpha we would get some new video after the trailer several months back. If its not near that by now there wouldn’t be any time for QA testing before its up to now release date.

It would be interesting to hear some opinions on if you will be at all interested in the game once it comes out and indeed the Splinter Cell franchise as a whole.

Crysis patch in two weeks, Performance to be improved (Yes!)

[Update] – Crytek has updated the status of their latest patch. 

 

Crysis

inCrysis, a Crysis fansite recently hosted an IRC interview with Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek and Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA. They’ve posted the transcript of the event at their site, which can be found here. While most of the stuff is technobabble, I did extract the following information from it:

  • Crytek is currently collecting feedback information and will have a patch ready in 7-14 standard, human days.
  • They are seeing improved performance with every driver and patch update, which is good thing. This also means that performance will be increased in upcoming patches and driver updates.

Some other things worth pointing out:

  • Crysis is designed as part of a trilogy, so the abrupt ending of the singleplayer was very deliberate. That’s right – why make a spectacular story for one game when you can stretch it to fit three and make more money at the same time?
  • Cevat says that if you want to get into the gaming industry, start making maps and mods and things. You’ll be noticed if you try hard enough. No guarantees here.
  • Roy’s response to whether GPUs should handle advanced physics:
    • Generally we believe that the GPU can stand by itself as a powerful processor more than capable of accelerating advanced physics for today’s and future games. The GPU lends itself well to scalable, violent or destructible physics. What we need is an industry standard API that developers and the community can get behind, that isn’t proprietary. Ideally the developer can then select the GPU or other processor as they see fit. We dont have one today, and this is something we are looking into.Specifically with regard to CryEngine 2 we are in discussions with the team about this but can’t add more right now.
  • You should use NVIDIA for playing Crysis.

Thanks, Crownest!

Check out the StuffWeLike.com review of Crysis.