XBLA

The Road More Traveled: 5TH Cell’s Hybrid

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Cowabunga! Washington-based Scribblenauts devs 5TH Cell probably could not have done a more complete 180 degrees in licensing Valve’s Source engine for their latest game, Hybrid. The just-announced game is unfortunately going to be released on the wrong platform – that is, as an XBLA exclusive, at least for the time being:

5TH Cell is proud to announce Hybrid, a revolutionary new video game available in 2011 exclusively for Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA). Hybrid is a pioneering third person shooter set in a devastated post apocalyptic world, giving players a completely new gameplay experience never seen before in the genre. 1)http://www.5thcell.com/

Revolutionary, schmevolutionary, pioneering, schmioneering – so far, Hybrid files under “just another post-apocalyptic shooter.” As much flair for creativity as 5TH Cell have exhibited with their past track record, and as much as we love the Source engine, it is hard to compute exactly how 5TH Cell went from the “revolutionary” and “pioneering” Scribblenauts to this:

While some interesting mechanics seem to be in store for players, including wall-walking – the red Variant soldier walks upside down on the ceiling in the trailer above – the little dialogue in the trailer does not exactly get points for originality:

When I was little, my father used to say, “Son, god didn’t create money… man did. God didn’t create war… man did. God didn’t create hell… the Variants did.”

After all, the post-apocalyptic landscape has been utilized very often in video games as of late, as a visual metaphor of the basest kind, using the entirety of the external world to blatantly affect and reflect on the internal, resulting in the strength of the metaphor diminishing further with every use. This is also why players are beginning to tire of it – post-apocalypse it is no longer unique, it is ubiquitous, especially now that even the pioneers of the post-apoc genre are once again being remade for a new audience (Fallout).

Therefore, despite being an exciting announcement from a very well-esteemed team, thanks to its thematic constraints, it’s hard to be excited just yet. The same restraint applies to the project’s utilization of sci-fi (E.Y.E.), religious themes (Scivelation), warring factions (Nexuiz) and clashes between races (Half-Life, Halo etc). Throw in Afterfall for good measure. In a way, the simple fact that the teams are red versus blue for the NTH time just underlines all this.

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The Source of a Bloody Good Time

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

One of the most surprising video game announcements in recent memory – honest! – is Bloody Good Time, a new eight-player multiplayer game “regrouping ambitious teen actors ready to kill for fame” from Scottish The Ship developers Outerlight, who have suddenly made their return to the gaming headlines. Bloody Good Time, launching today on the 29th of October and available on XBLA and from Steam, has the ignoble distinction of only being the second Source title to be published by Ubisoft, the first being the classic Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

As perhaps evident from the trailer above, the game pits eight hopeful first-time auditioners against each other in an audition to the death on three different movie sets. The game’s cast of characters is a who’s who of movie caricatures, ranging from a surfer dude to a mall goth. Players will get their chance to off the rest of the competing aspirants in four different game modes: Hunt, Elimination, Revenge and Deathmatch.

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Jim, Yes Means No

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Almost exactly two years ago in 2008, on April the 22nd, the recovering Interplay had just sent out a press release announcing a new Earthworm Jim game to be developed in conjunction with an animated series and a feature film, with original author Douglas TenNapel working as a creative consultant on the game. 1)http://interplay.com/about/article.php?id=23

Conversely, earlier in the same month, Interplay had just “reinitiated its in-house game development studio, and [was] hiring game developers,” and vouched to “leverage its portfolio of gaming properties by creating sequels to some of its most successful games, including Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Descent, and MDK.” 2)http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=20

While we were all painfully aware of the financial and legal turmoil the company had just faced over the past few years, these exorbitant plans sounded good enough – at the very least up until the paragraph in the press release that also cited, in the same breath, the “Safe harbor statement under the private securities litigation reform act of 1995,” which so happens to state that “[t]he risks and uncertainties inherent in such statements may cause actual future events or results to differ materially and adversely from those described in the forward-looking statements.” 3)http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=20

Hence: Two years, no game, no series, no film.

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A Braid Backlash?

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Everyone’s talking Braid, huh? Incredible, incredible praise has been heaped upon the game, and even before its release, the game and its maker were often both heralded as the Indie Saviour (if you don’t mind the term): Two years before its release(!), Braid received the IGF 2006 “Innovation in Game Design” award.

Braid was a long time coming, and when it came, it was nothing short of veni, vidi and vici – Braid delivered. But even the best of games sometimes receive an ounce of backlash – remember the Gears of War commentary from Mike Capps or Alain Tascan? – It’s as though all memetic excellent games receive a hint of backlash sooner or later, just like all good memes turn sour with overexposure, and begs, in my mind, to be presented by applying Leigh Alexander’s (of Sexy Videogameland and Gamasutra) four-month bell curve: “fever-backlash-bottom-out”. The timeframe remains to be seen and discovered, of course…

If you’re interested in analysis on the design of the game, you could take a gander at a very thoughtfully analytic discussion over at The Brainy Gamer. But what about the merits of the game – outside the box? (more…)

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