How Can You…
Author: Martyn Zachary
Deus Ex 3 Teaser Trailer
Though the Deus Ex 3 teaser trailer is old beans, for the sake of completeness in terms of our coverage, I’ve decided to upload the most relevant screen captures from the trailer to our blog.
Full screen capture gallery with 25 pictures and detailed captions after the jump!
Hellgate Closedown
Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander reports that Namco Bandai, the current co-publisher for Hellgate: London, has announced the game is going to be closed down on January 31, 2009.
Hellgate: London’s launch back in October 2007 was marred with several problems and even denials and gross exaggerations. Though the announcement does not come to us as a surprise, it’s very sad to see a game that was launched as late as October 31, 2007 being closed down so soon. Even Resident Evil: Outbreak stayed up for four years and RF Online for two (Earlier this month, Codemasters announced they had failed to renegotiate the US/EU publishing rights for one reason or another 1)http://www.rf-onlinegame.com/news.php?id=8020).
In an earlier Shacknews interview, Flagship’s Bill Roper said that
We’re working hard on how to end gracefully… I would do a lot of things really differently [in future efforts]. I think that maybe part of the silver lining in all this—and there isn’t a lot in a very dark cloud.
Summa summarum it would seem the story of Hellgate: London was nipped in the bud thanks to the concept of “release now, patch later”. Whether blame for the debacle lands on the developer or the publishers is hard to say, but it’s all rather sad, isn’t it?
References
Weather Forecast: Clear Sky?
As you’ve probably realized by now, I’ve grown very attached to following up on the Clear Sky aftermath, gorging myself on new information as it arrives. The company’s intriguing track record combined with early releases is very enthralling…
We’ve heard by now how Clear Sky’s North American release date slipped due to a botched print job, how the game was released in unfinished state, and how some players had patiently sat in front of Steam, counting down its unlock date counter only to discover the game was not playable even after the counter had run its course.
Against this backdrop, it feels like kicking a downed opponent to report that at the time of writing, the game’s multiplayer component is working neither on Steam nor in its ingame browser. This seems to be related, in turn, to the fact that GSC Game World‘s official company website has been down for the past two weeks. The common factor for both issues is, according to a reliable source, that the GSC systems admin is currently on vacation.
While it’s not too rare to have the development team go on vacation right after release – Nabeel reminded me of the BioShock launch – with Clear Sky, nevertheless, it resembles an oversight with the game’s non-Russian audience: Clear Sky was released early in Russia, but the UK launch date and the US release were delayed to the 15th of September. There is a chance the aforementioned issues could have been very well avoided if the staff had stayed on board up until the game was released worldwide.
Finally, the publisher, Deep Silver, cleverly redirects all Clear Sky support over to GSC’s forums, where we’ve all heard how the development team does not read the English forum. Does this mean what I think it means, that the English-speaking player base has no official tech support for the game? If so, what does that even mean, say, under the EU law?
Kaned & Lynched
Coming off a succesful string of Hitman games and a notch-better-than-its-reputation Hollywood adaptation, the announcement for an all-new IO Interactive IP seemed to make perfect sense; after all, it’s not difficult to imagine the whole of IO staff trying to think-tank up something (anything!!) different after having stared at virtually nothing but the back of Agent 47’s bald head for six years (from 2000 to 2006) straight…
Enter Kane & Lynch, perhaps the most controversial game release of 2007. The game’s launch was mired in a string of negative, integrity-shattering publicity: The Gerstmanngate, falsified review scores, and ultimately one middle-of-the-road game. Kane & Lynch seemed a little like a fish out of water in a post-Max Payne -world.
Then again, our collective gamer memory is very short indeed, and everything simmers down after a while. That is, until GamesRadar butts in with an attempt at handing down the microphone over to IO, in the form of a confessional interview with Game Director Jens Peter Kurup, who gets to express his feelings over the public reception of the game.