Dead Space: Extraction executive producer Steve Papoutsis has been chatting to MTV Multiplayer about the forthcoming Wii shooter, and it seems that it’s not going to be a traditional on-rails blaster like Ghost Squad or the House of the Dead games, but something a little different.
So what exactly is EA calling it? “[It] is a Guided First Person Experience” explains Papoutsis. “The player will be presented with many choices as they play the game, ranging from which path they wish to explore to maneuvering in Zero-G.”
Choosing paths in a rail shooter is nothing new, but perhaps the Zero-G sections will allow a little more freedom of movement than is commonly found in the genre. Evidently, the game is going to be faithful to its 360/PS3 predecessor, with stasis and telekinesis powers making a return, while the story is canonical - detailing the events prior to the arrival of heroically dumb engineer Isaac Clarke on the mining vessel USG Ishimura.
Of course, if you’ve played Dead Space, you’ll know that all was not well aboard said ‘planet-cracker’, so don’t expect Extraction to have a happy, feelgood ending. Do expect it to feature co-operative play, though - Papoutsis confirmed a second player can jump in at any point and start dismembering Necromorphs.
The world’s first GFPE should be with us sometime this Autumn.
Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, the Wii-make of the critically-lauded 360 zombie actioner is released today in the US, yet bizarrely - at the time of writing, anyway - there’s not a single review up on aggregator site Metacritic. That’s never a good sign, and indeed, the suggestion that it might not be the world’s greatest port is borne out by the two magazine reviews which currently exist, but haven’t been added to Metacritic just yet.
UK magazines Official Nintendo Magazine and NGamer both carry reviews of Chop Till You Drop, the former awarding it a fairly average 68%, with the latter plumping for a measly 55%. Both suggest it’s an infuriating experience thanks to the addition of zombie parrots and poodles, but that the lack of enemies also disappoints - neither were problems in the 360 game whose mall was absolutely full of the undead. But as NGamer summarises, “a zombie-infested mall doesn’t make much sense without zombies to infest it. Poodles and parrots are among the most irritating substitutes imaginable.” Ouch.
In truth, Dead Rising never seemed like a good fit for Wii, and so this is hardly a surprise, although the addition of tiny flying and ground-based foes which are difficult to hit was a problem that simply didn’t need to exist. Perhaps EA had the right idea turning Dead Space: Extraction into an on-rails shooter, if an experienced developer like Capcom can struggle to port a third-person HD action game onto Wii.
Expect more reviews to roll in later this week, and expect them to follow suit. If you’ve still not been put off, Chop Till You Drop is released in Europe this Friday.
In a decision which has immediately split the internet clean in two, EA’s Wii take on hi-def horror-actioner Dead Space - titled Dead Space: Extraction will be a first-person shooter on rails, a la House of the Dead: Overkill.
The sensible people like me think this is a good choice - the Wii’s a great console for arcade-like experiences, and it means it’s not just a watered-down, graphically-inferior version of a 360/PS3 game. Hello, Dead Rising: Chop ‘Til You Drop. Various others claim it’s a disaster, that rail shooters are [expletive deleted] and that EA deserves to rot in hell and that the Wii is rubbish and LOL.
While in one way it’s a shame we’re not getting a third-person adventure, Extraction would never have stood the comparison, especially considering how reliant its predecessor was on state-of-the-art graphics and sound design. Judging by the video above, the on-rails approach has allowed EA to really push the Wii, and create something which looks both great and pretty bloody scary.
If Overkill is anything to go by, Wii is the natural home for the rail shooter, and assuming this new game mixes up the scares with some solid blasting and paces it right, then this could be one of the best third-party games of 2009. Fingers crossed.
(WARNING: the above video may not be suitable for under 18s)
House of the Dead: Overkill is almost with us, and ahead of its launch next month, Sega has released a story trailer showing some more action from the grindhouse-themed rail shooter. For my money, it’s looking great, although it’s clear not everyone thinks so.
While previews have offered up some very favourable first impressions, the game’s first review isn’t entirely happy - Swedish magazine Level awarding Overkill a paltry 3/10. And particularly in an issue where the awful Lord of the Rings: Conquest gets 6/10, that’s not good news. Of course, it may be that Level aren’t fans of the lightgun shooter in general, or perhaps the game is a little short (but then aren’t all games in this genre?)
Either way, I’m still looking forward to Overkill, although perhaps a little more cautiously than I was. It’s due out on Friday 13th February in Europe, and the slightly less spooky date of the 10th in North America.
After the disappointment yesterday of n-Space’s unpublished Winter, along comes another snowy survival horror to take its place. Developer Deep Silver is rather proud of its forthcoming Cursed Mountain and has released some screenshots and details of its Himalayan adventure.
You play as Eric Simmons, a mountaineer who climbs a sacred peak in an attempt to find out the truth behind the whereabouts of his missing brother. Deprived of oxygen and suffering from altitude sickness, he begins to see horrific visions of demons and other creatures - or are they visions? The conditions get rougher as Eric ascends, and he must figure out which of these enemies are real and which are merely a product of his own overactive imagination.
Deep Silver promises that the game will utilise the remote’s motion-sensing capabilities, while rumble and speaker noises will add to the atmosphere. Meanwhile, its proprietary game engine will render the full mountain - allowing players to see exactly how far they’ve climbed. Not one for vertigo sufferers, then.
No release date info has been provided, with the date set at a tentative ‘2009′, but the publisher has a decent pedigree, particularly with PC games, like the excellent STALKER: Clear Sky, so this could well be one to watch.
It’s but a couple of months until the DS’s first 18-rated title, and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is already looking the dog’s whatsits. And it’s not just rabidly Nintendo-centric sites leading the praise, but respected multiformat sources like Edge and Eurogamer.
The former’s latest issue carries a preview of the handheld adventure, suggesting that its minigames are well-integrated, and in fact “serve to engage you further with the action”. “This could be the best handheld version of GTA yet” concludes the industry bible.
Eurogamer is equally taken with the slimmed-down version of Liberty City - even claiming that the DS offers some more engaging tasks than its hi-def counterpart.
“[A] living, swearing, squishing openworld city, that quickly measures up to the catalogue of hit sequels to the early top-down Grand Theft Auto games the first Chinatown Wars screenshots initially recall. If anything it goes further, using the stylus, the microphone and those two screens to drag you closer to the nuts and bolts of Huang’s quest for vengeance, and the series’ trademark skewed perspective, than the camera elevation implies. It’s no wonder Rockstar Leeds is at twice the capacity required to turn out PSP titles Liberty City and Vice City Stories, and there seems little chance this will risk the lower review scores their conversion work occasionally prompted.”
With reportedly more lines of code than San Andreas, it’s certainly a complex game, and such is its attention to detail in most areas, there’s no room for voice acting during the story sequences. By all accounts, it’s GTA in miniature rather than a GTA-Lite, with everything that description implies.
Wow. I was looking forward to grindhouse lightgunner HOTD: Overkill plenty already, but now I’ve seen this forthcoming special edition, I’m even more hyped.
Eurogamer is reporting that the game is now due for a February 13th launch in Europe - somewhat earlier than expected - and then this special edition Bang Bang Box shows up on Amazon Canada.
Various internet reports suggest the Bang Bang Box has also been confirmed for release in Sweden, which would suggest that it will be landing in all PAL territories (apart from Germany) soon. Expect a press release from Sega imminently. In the meantime I’m going to get excited about dual-wielding these ace new Hand Cannons and kicking some serious zombie ass. (While chewing bubblegum, obviously.)
Oh, and that date? It’s a Friday. Friday the 13th. How wonderfully apt.
According to GI.biz, the BBFC is happy to see a bit of the old ultraviolence on Wii, as Platinum Games’ brutal monochromatic brawler MadWorld has been passed without cuts.
The game will come with a big old circular 18 sticker on the box, though. The Sega-published title was awarded that certificate for its “very strong, stylised, bloody violence”.
Details on the BBFC site suggest that the game’s cutscenes run to a total of forty-nine minutes, so while MadWorld will have some kind of story, it’s evidently not going to interrupt the bloodletting for too long.
MadWorld will be released this March in the US and PAL territories, and looks a bit tasty, though I’ve heard doubts expressed over its depth. Expect more news nearer to the release date, and I’ll bring you the official WiiWii.tv verdict as soon as I get my hands on a copy.
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