Why Are So Many Games Coming Out This Fall? July 12, 2011
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Statistically there are two times of the year major games get released, and trust me I know this from plenty of experience. New games will either come out just before Christmas (usually the day after Thanksgiving is the cut off point) or March. Now I bet you can understand why games would come out in advance of the Christmas season, but why is March so popular? Because that’s the time set aside for the games that miss Christmas. As for the rest of the year, the release of major games can be quite sparse regardless of platform.
Recently, this has hurt even the biggest of publishers, and caused them to rethink the way they released games. In 2008, both the PS3 and Xbox 360 were preparing to release their major exclusives for the Christmas season, Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2. This was also the year which saw the release of the (then) widely popular Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 games. With all these games getting expensive Collector’s Edition releases, gamer wallets just dried up! When EA released games from new franchises that year at the same time these major sequels were coming out, sales were hurt badly. The poster child game for this could probably be Mirror’s Edge, which was a fun game which reviewed well and just didn’t get the sales EA was expecting due to the heavy competition that season. EA even said they learned their lesson and would endeavor to spread out their release schedules better, and for the past two years, things have been calm. But that is about to change.
I was kind of hoping that there was going to be an even spread of game releases this summer, but the delay of RAGE, which was going to be coming in August, put the end to that. Now from the looks of it, all of the major game releases for the rest of the year are going to be coming in September, October and November, with October looking like it will probably be the most expensive gaming month in the history of this industry with games like Batman: Arkham City, The Darkness II, and RAGE. November’s looking pretty full as well with releases like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Skyrim, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Who can afford all this?
Heck, two of Sony’s major platform exclusives, Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3, are launching in that same period, and Uncharted 3 has already announced a $100US Collector’s Edition. By launching them at around the same time, those games are going to be competing with each other! Why would Sony do that?
As Mr. Spock would say, “Logic dictates to have a continual release stream of major game releases of established properties.” To launch them all together at the same time, especially when you are an optional commodity in a time when money is tight all around, is insanity!
Xbox 360 Exclusive Trailers I Missed From E3 June 30, 2011
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Well, to continue with the series I got going on, here’s a smattering of some of the most noteworthy Xbox 360 exclusive games which released trailers during E3 which I was not able to upload or link while I was in Los Angeles.
Let’s get the big one out of the way first, this is Halo 4.
For a teaser, the fact that it’s pre-rendered doesn’t really bother me at all, and even though it was pre-rendered, you can tell just where they’re going with for this story. They’re continuing to tell the story of SPARTAN-117, the Master Chief, and just what happened to him and Cortana following the cliffhanger events of Halo 3.
The tidbits I’ve heard about this game so far is that this will be the start of a new Halo Trilogy (yes that means there’s going to be a Halo 5 and Halo 6). Also, there was a reference to just what was going on between Cortana and the Master Chief while he was in stasis if you watched the Halo Legends video. The segments that detailed the history of the Halo Universe were told from Cortana’s perspective while the Chief was frozen, and she was starting to show signs of rampancy, which is common among AIs which have gone past their seven year life span. Don’t know if they’re going to go deeper into that factor in the final game, but it is something to think about. It’s coming in Holiday 2012.
And since we’re in a Halo mood, how about this Halo Anniversary Edition trailer?
People have been mulling for a few months now that this game would be coming and that has all been confirmed with this E3 reveal. The game will have all the geometry and features of the original Halo game, retweaked with the technology that powered the Halo Reach engine. You will be able to swap back and forth between the original look of the game, as well as the newer updated look.
I’m just glad that they’re finally bringing this game in some form to a widescreen format, which is something I’ve been demanding from the Microsoft developers to do to the original game for some time now (if you remember my video about widescreen problems with older games on a modern HDTV, Halo 1 was a game I featured). The game will also have updated multiplayer maps, full Xbox Live support, as well as co-op through Xbox Live.
This is coming in November.
I know a lot of people were kind of hoping that I’d include a Gears of War 3 trailer in here, but I already posted that trailer up when it came out, and I also wrote an entire preview of the game while I was in Los Angeles, so no reason to retouch it, although if you are new to the site and did miss it, feel free to check those out.
Cross Platform Trailers I Missed From E3 June 28, 2011
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Now you guys know I traveled to E3 this year and got to see a lot of what was being shown over the course of the three day show. The problem was my ability to modify and control the site remotely was extremely limited, and I tried my best to update it as much as I could while there and while operating alone, but one thing I was not able to do was to post up the E3 trailers released during the show. I already took a look at the top games that will be Playstation 3 exclusives, now I wanted to show you some of my favorite trailers for games that will be cross platform.
First up, we have the E3 2011 trailer for Saints Row: The Third. The only previous trailer released for this game was comprised of one single nut shot, this is…a step up, stylistically.
Although it is entirely prerendered with no actual gameplay, the trailer serves more to set the stage for the look and feel of the game instead of show you how it’s going to play. Since this is only the second trailer released for the game, and the game isn’t going to be out until November, I’m going to let it slide this time.
The style looks fantastic. You can see some of the new Saints in the game, and some of the new gangs they’ll be quarrelling with in the game. You also see just what the Saints have become since the second game, wheras they had to build themselves up from nothing in the previous two games, this game looks like they’re on top of the world already and other gangs want a piece of that. Also, who is flying those jets at the end of the trailer is not explained. Could be Ultor, could be another gang, or could be government.
Next up, a game which I got to see demoed at E3 and had a pretty positive experience with. Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum.
You’ve heard it here, and I got to see it, I can confirm this game will have playable Catwoman levels, but more than that, she will be playable in the main story, wheras in the PS3 version of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Joker was playable, it was only in challenge modes. In the game, you will be able to swap out characters during gameplay, simply by finding a few kitties hanging out on a rooftop you’ll be able to select if you want to play as her while the in the campaign (and they show a switch happen in the trailer).
You can see here how she controls differently than Batman, with her own move setlist. She also has one unique gameplay mechanic Batman does not, which is the ability to climb across ceilings (I guess her kitty claws keep her up there), which is perfect for being stealthy.
Not pictured in the trailer but something I can gurantee is in the game is the inclusion of the Penguin. His voice actor sounded recognisable, but I don’t know for sure who it is. I also think Two-Face looks great, kind of a mixture of his depiction in The Dark Knight and the comics, and for a guy half disfigured he looks great.
I do plan to look at some Xbox 360 exclusive trailers soon. More multiplatform game trailers may be checked out as well.
Video Games Declared Free Speech by US Supreme Court June 27, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials, Game News.1 comment so far
I may be a gaming journalist, but I’m a gamer first, I’ve been a gamer all of my life, and as a gamer I have to say that today is the proudest day I’ve ever had as a gamer, and in the United States, gamers everywhere have a good reason to celebrate.
We, as gamers, have had to endure so much for the past twenty years. Angry ignorant parents, politicians who simply just want easy votes, and a media who was more than happy to endorse either of what those groups say as law.
For years, individual states, fed by these false prophets, have tried and tried to regulate what we love and restrict access to what everyone agrees is fantasy entertainment simply to make themselves look better to a public who would listen to them, even though these restrictions were clearly illegal since they were a clear violation of the highest laws of the land. Every time these states were sued by various organizations, and in many cases these organizations were endorsed by other organizations which had nothing to do with gaming at all, but were champions of free speech. Every state law was struck down, and it cost each state which passed these laws thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to cover legal expenses of fighting them.
But you couldn’t tell any of that to Yee of California or it’s Governor. They were going to take their illegal law as far as they possibly could, to the highest court of the land, which, while it must protect the Constitution of the United States, has the ability to interpret it however they want and vote by majority decision.
Before he died, George Carlin did an interview about when he championed free speech decades earlier, and while his act about the “Seven Dirty Words” was clearly protected by the first amendment and won on a lower level, the Supreme Court didn’t agree and banned the use of the curse words on radio and broadcast television. In the years since the decision has been made, the banned words have not been changed, and those policies are still in place. Thankfully it hasn’t been updated to censor the use of those words online, which is one of many reasons I’m happy to be working in this new media outlet.
The cases were laid out months earlier. Both sides were questioned heavily by the judges, and as I read the transcripts of the legal banter between the judges and the lawyers involved, I could get the sense that the judges actually knew what they were talking about. They asked clear cut questions like, “Would you censor Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” They also knew that their own staff played these games that these lawyers argued were bad (like Mortal Kombat) and I believe having known the people that played video games were just that, people, saw no connection between violent behavior and violent video games that the lawyers were arguing.
Well today, the decision was reached. The California law was struck down by the highest court. More than that, it sets a CLEAR legal precedent that laws like it are not acceptable in any other state that might have been interested in drafting it (or re-drafting it).
The best part about this is that this was NOT a partisan issue at all. Both parties from the left and the right had people who both agreed and disagreed with the law. One of the original proponents of tough government restrictions on video games was Senator Lieberman of CT (formerly D, now I) and one of the major opponents of this particular bill was conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, who argued that this was just another form of government restriction, and those were unacceptable to him in every way. The proponents of the bill in California included Leland Yee (D) and The Govenator (R).
So grab your games, gamers, and you enjoy them. Enjoy them. We’ve earned that right.
UPDATE: Apparently losing on every single level has not humbled Leland Yee and he has continued to express his disappointment about this decision to the media. Since he has been quoted in almost every media outlet already, I have decided not to reprint his quote here, and instead print my own counterquote that I encourage all media outlets who have been quoting Yee to please place right next to it, and I offer this for no charge at all.
The quote was spoken yesterday by my father. My father is not a gamer, nor has he played a video game since the original NES version of Tetris was released. When I told him about the court’s decision, he had these words for Yee.
I’m sure your parents worked very hard to get you all the freedom and opportunities that this country has provided you, and you have spent your entire career trying to take those rights and freedoms away from everyone else.
-Maniac’s Dad
Webmaster of Biggest Splatterhouse Site on Web Steps Down June 25, 2011
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The West Mansion has been considered by many to be the biggest Splatterhouse fan site on the web. It was created ten years ago today by it’s webmaster, Rob, originally on GeoCities (anyone else remember that?), and then moved to GameSpy hosting until it got shut down in ’09. Over ten years it provided tons of assets both official and unofficial about the game. Things like artwork, fanfiction, concept art, and it all culminated with news over the highly anticipated Splaterhouse remake which released last year.
Well…we know what happened then, I’ve talked about it in the past. After playing the new game myself I can assure everyone that the reviews of it were wrong, and while it was not perfect it was quite a fun experience. This horrible trend of game reviewers not knowing a good game if it bit them on the ass and overrating games that were nothing special is something I don’t hope will continue, but you just have to look at the recent media fallout of Duke Nukem Forever to see the tumblers for that lock continue to fall into place.
After today, The West Mansion will be in read-only mode until further notice. Rob has posted a retrospective about his experiences hosting the site, and I encourage everyone to read it. He has also written what he believes to be the definitive history of Splatterhouse’s (the recent one) development, which has been very educational.
It’s always sad when a major staple of the Internet closes down, or fades out. Even though everything on the internet can theoretically last forever, Rob has devoted ten years of his life to operating that site, which is a feat I cannot fathom! I’ve only been running gameXcess.net for about a year and a half. It’s one hell of an accomplishment, and I wish you well, Rob. Take care.
The Catch 22 of E3 June 21, 2011
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Let’s face it; E3 is a media event as much as it is a trade show. These game developers are there to show their games to the press, who in turn are expected to show it to the public. Now, a lot of developers have decided it was easier and cheaper to just directly show their games to the public, which is why E3 went off radar for two years, but it was decided that was a bad idea and it was brought back. Why though, with all the advances that have been made technologically over the past ten years, are the E3 exhibitors still operating within the same mindset?
If you want to see a game that’s being shown at E3 (not just a trailer, but a playable portion of the game) with the intention to write a preview of it others will read, there are usually two ways it will be displayed to you. Of course usually the developer or publisher will choose which option they want you to have for you, but the rules for either are pretty consistent based on what my experiences were this year. The first can be a hands-on demo at a demo kiosk. You can pick up a controller and get a chance to actually play the game. Other than a controls guide, no instructions are usually provided for the user except to have fun and don’t die. The other option is to wait in a line at a theater booth and see the game presented to you by the game development team while they talk you through what they’re playing and you can simply watch.
Here’s the downside of both of those options. Demo kiosks usually will allow you to video record the game that you’re playing. Unless E3 allowed you to have a professional cameraperson accompany you (which they didn’t for me this year) a lone journalist is going to have a really tough time video recording a live demo while playing the game! If you’d like some examples I had to deal with this year, I had to record the Resistance 3 single player demo from my lap, I had to play Dead Rising 2: Off the Record demo one handed while using the other to record, and it made recording the Rage demo impossible. I think Tim Buckley was the first to weigh in on this problem. However, while his article sattired the problem, I don’t think he got to the heart of why these videos are so bad.
So it would seem that recording from a theater demo would be the best option. You’re sitting down, the game is being played for you, and you’ll be able to hear developer commentary no problem while recording the game. Well, that’s a no go, because for some reason video recording is still NOT allowed during a theater demo. Don’t bother to ask they’ll usually tell you straight up before the demo starts. In fact Randy Pitchford informed the crowd during the Aliens: Colonial Marines demo that a Sega security guard was watching us with night vision and would do terrible, terrible things to us if he so much as thought we were pulling out a camera or recording device. Needless to say I was too scared to even put my phone into silent mode before the demo started. Even after the four hours of waiting I did to demo the PS Vita, I was told to shut my camera off immediately before even the Q&A started (where they didn’t even say anything that wasn’t already officially announced.)
I can understand that the people who hold these theater demos don’t want poor quality offscreen videos of the demo showing up on YouTube, but my camera shoots offscreen pretty darn well (I’ve used it for some demo and beta lets plays because decent capture equipment is beyond my expenses) and I’m sure that a lot of other modern cameras that are a lot more expensive than mine can as well. Plus, there’s only so many people that are allowed to be at E3, making the journalists almost the elected representatives of the public in general. Don’t you want what they bring back with them to be decent?
For god’s sakes, developers, let me pull my video camera out when you do a theater demo. I promise I’ll leave it to you to make your game look good.
What Happened to Captain S? May 24, 2011
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Back in 2007 a group of people got together in New York and, heavily influenced by the tv shows of their youth such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad, and Saved by the Bell, created a web series of their own to pay honor not only to those shows, but the games of their past, called The New Adventures of Captain S. It was done by a production company called PBC-Productions.
A teenager named Chad Bellmont buys a used Sega Genesis game from an unknown gypsy during a tag sale. When he plays the game for the first time, he’s imbued with the X-Code, the code that allows him to travel between our world and the world inside of video games. With the help of his friends, and of a mysterious floating head, he has to stop a former friend who has been seduced by an evil entity who plans to take control of all video games and eventually our reality.
The series was cheesy but it had a great heart to it. It was well written, fantastically acted, and the special effects were fitting of the series. It brought me back to an earlier part of my life, which were the tv shows I watched as a kid, which really was the only good thing about my own childhood.
I will gladly turn on any of these episodes when I’m feeling bad. If you must know, my favorite episodes are Episode 3, where Chad’s friend Becky discovers he’s a superhero and we learn Becky has a crush on him while Chad is blindly falling for the school babe Stacey Newfeld, and Episode 9, where Chad, Lunk and Stacey Newfeld have to survive a day of school, when all their classmates have been turned into zombies, and save Becky from the Game Genie. Finally, and as you know, I make it a tradition to watch Captain S’s team-up with The Angry Video Game Nerd every Christmas.
The first season wrapped up and a second season was promised, coming very soon. Sales of the DVD were going to fund a highly anticipated second season, which was promising to be bigger and better than the first. A webcomic was even running which was going to bridge the gap between season one and season two.
Then, in one of the darkest days of my life, May 31st, 2009, this video hit the internet.
Specifics weren’t gone into why they had come to this conclusion, and it left a lot of people floored, but they assured the public it was no hoax. I really don’t need to say anything further about the decline of the company since this announcement was posted, I already covered it a few months ago. The webcomic ceased production before it came to its conclusion. There was another series the company was working on, called Little Miss Gamer starring Lindsey “Z” Briggs, but new episodes of that series stopped being posted around March of 2010. It seemed like real life was indeed catching up to them. Being a fringe internet sensation was just not paying the bills and real life and real money was taking up their time, preventing all the principal team members from continuing with producing content.
I mentioned a few months ago that even though the company hadn’t posted a video since April of 2010, they had not yet posted any kind of announcement that the company was in fact shutting down, or if they had any interest in creating new content.
Well, it’s official, their goodbyes were posted on their official message boards this past week. It was marked in a lenthy podcast interview with the two principal guys behind PBC Productions, Chad Williams, (who was the creator of the series, the voice of the Game Genie, and the face of the giant floating head) and Brett Vanderbrook (who played Chad Bellmont, better known as Captain S).
After a long time coming, someone who really wanted to know what was going to happen with the series got the means to ask. Racketboy.com was auctioning off the chance to control an entire podcast and it was won by a guy who went by the name of Flake. Flake’s choice was to get podcast host Dave Heineman to interview PBC-Productions and ask them just what happened with that second season of Captain S and what was in store from the company.
After listening to this full interview with the two principal guys who operate PBC, I have concluded the fact that this second season was never produced is truly a travesty. Money was on the table, and the ideas for the second season were brilliant! It just seems that the timeline for release was just impossible. They do answer a lot of the questions about what was going to happen with the series, if old characters were going to return and what was going to happen to them, and what new characters were in store for us. At least three villains were on paper, including a guy with the last name of Jaguar, a video game programmer who went mad, and the huge surprise was going to be the resurrection of the Game Genie. There was even going to be a third group of characters who were not evil and yet not good which a character we thought was dead at the end of the first season was going to be a part of, who fittingly enough were going to be called “The Third Party” and they were led by the third defender of the X-Code, the Gypsy who sold the Genesis cartridge that turned Chad Bellmont into Captain S.
Alas, it seemed the schedule was just not right, and the money was not worthwhile for such a difficult production cycle. The band, as it seems, has broken up since then, although they seem to still be on good terms with each other, some of them are no longer living in the same city, which would make their participation difficult if not impossible.
Farewell Captain S. You will be missed. Anyone want to go out for one last shake?
Major Alan Wake News Announced, What Could it Be? May 10, 2011
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UPDATE: A member of the Alan Wake forums has reminded me that Remedy was in fact looking for a Kinect developer in their jobs page a few months ago following the release of Alan Wake. I thought I remembered that when writing this article, which is why I devoted a whole section to the possiblity they might do a Kinect game, but I couldn’t find the exact posting when I took the article to print. Now the possiblity of a Kinect game has a bit more credibility.
After a few days of speculation, Remedy has announced today that they are working on a new Alan Wake related project. However, this project is NOT Alan Wake 2 and it is not DLC for Alan Wake. What it is, is being saved for later.
My speculation. First. The time of reveal, “later” is not defined, however Remedy will be doing meetings at E3 this year, and it might coincide with that. Given this extremely vague statement is that there are only so many things that this new project could be. If it’s not Alan Wake 2 and it’s not DLC for the first game then what could it possibly be?
It could be a Alan Wake iPhone game. Remedy had just completed the iPhone version of Death Rally, and Barry Wheeler from Alan Wake did make an appearance in the game as another car driver. Remedy owns the Alan Wake rights, and can develop games for whichever platform they choose. If they wanted to tell a side story as some are speculating might take place between Alan Wake and the projected Alan Wake 2, the iPhone may be the best platform to tell it. Side stories of Mass Effect, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, and RAGE have all been released to the iPhone platform and been quite good, as well as been popular purchases. Remedy has posted up requests for mobile developers on their jobs page, and while it could’ve been because they plan to release more games for mobile phones, having mobile developers working there could give them options on expanding more of their properties to mobile platforms.
It could be an Alan Wake Kinect game. Other than the fact that Alan Wake was on the Xbox 360, the platform of the Kinect, Remedy was hiring producers for a Triple-A console title after the release of Alan Wake, and since Remedy has announced this is NOT Alan Wake 2, a Kinect side story might be something they might be interested. It was also noted on a few gaming sites that Remedy was hiring Kinect developers after the release of Alan Wake and the possiblity could exist that it could be for this project. The Kinect has a very impressive install base for such a new and expensive peripheral, but since its launch there has not been a large wave of regular Kinect game releases, making Kinect a prime market to tap into.
It could be the long requested PC version of Alan Wake with support for better graphics, controls retooled for the PC, and offering new features like the Xbox 360 DLC included. This has some credibilty given the fact that the announcement included phrases like “This will be a good jumping point for new Alan Wake players.” PC users have been demanding this game on the platform since it was announced it would release only on the Xbox 360, espessially given there were demos of the game on the PC done during it’s five years of development. Alan Wake would have required a pretty high end pc to run at optimal performance (A Multi-Core CPU and Shader Model 3.0 GPU with Windows Vista/7 would practically be required), which might have made Remedy rethink releasing it on the PC platform at launch, but over the last year those features are now pretty much standard in most PCs, and it could be the time to launch it. Plus, if you add in new levels or features to the PC version, it would give a good incentive to make a PC version the platform of choice.
The only other possiblity I can envision is that the next game could involve an open world Bright Falls, something along the lines of Alan Theft Auto or Grand Theft Barry. The original design document for Alan Wake called for an open world Bright Falls with dynamic day, night and weather effects, and based upon the toolsets I saw in the behind the scenes documentaries in the LCE version of the game, and the pictures posted in the Alan Wake: Illuminated book, or in various official screenshots released over the year (such as the image of Alan standing in the bookstore in daylight). Unfortunatly, we never really got to see day and night transitions happen in real time in the game, all transitions like that happened during cutscenes, and the player always had a set direction or showpiece during day scenes with very little opportunity for further exploration. There were going to be things included in the game had they gone the open world route like explorable buildings including a museum, and even a dirt track for racing and time trials. These would’ve been fun little diversions during the story. Although, what the storyline that would be about for a game that provided an open world Bright Falls (which would not be Alan Wake 2) would be anyone’s guess. I have seen open world expansion packs for games which just involved easter egg hunts (Like the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Expansion), but these were just small expansions released for a budget price and that was a long time ago.
I’ve also recieved speculation from a peer of mine that thought this new game might be a prequel and reminded me that Max Payne 2 was released just 18 months after the first Max Payne, which made sense. The Max-FX tools were already built and they just needed to be upgraded for Max Payne 2. Very comprehensive Alan Wake tools already are built and tons of unused Alan Wake assets did not make it into the final game, any of it could be used in this new Alan Wake game.
Regardless, this announcement is fantastic for Alan Wake fans who are hungry for more from this franchise. I have sent a press inquiry to Remedy about their E3 plans. If I hear any response I’ll be more than happy to inform all of you when the time is right.
The project, whatever it is, currently has a projected release date of Fall 2011.
Splatterhouse, Review Travesty of Decade? April 21, 2011
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At the end of last year, a remake of the cult classic game series Splatterhouse was released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It received scores ranging from below average to abysmal and these reviews generated a lot of negative press for the game.
For those of you unfamiliar or unaware of the history of the famous video game series Splatterhouse, let me forward you to some very insightful history courtesy of Derek Alexander, who calls himself The Happy Video Game Nerd.
He even did this cool little video about the differences between the classic arcade version and the Turbo Grafx 16 CD version of the game, the only home console port of the game released in the US.
Like most people, I was faintly aware of the game series from its history as an arcade game. After I inquired, some of my peers were also familiar with the sequels of the game released to the Sega Genesis.
I started catching tidbits about this game back when promotion was being done for it while it was in development. When it was released, I remembered watching Yatzee’s review of it (and his standards are higher than a kite for what is considered good) and that was pretty much all I saw of it at release. Because I was pretty broke after buying a dozen collector’s editions over that year, and I hadn’t heard much about Splatterhouse after it came out, I didn’t give it a second thought.
But then I started to see reviews of the game from people other than mainstream reviewers, and they were painting a much different picture of Splatterhouse than what the reviewers were. Here’s the HVGN’s take on the new game. My apologies for constantly referring to him in this article, but his videos were what brought this to my attention and I think he deserves a lot of credit, and his opinions about the game are shared by many players.
Then I read THIS article at the West Mansion (post dated 1/14/2011, sorry it doesn’t have a dedicated page yet), considered by many to be the biggest Splatterhouse fansite on the web. You guys may think I’m controversial whenever I post something, take a gander at what the webmaster of that site had to say. The short of it is, he was pretty sure the reviews were unfavorable because Namco decided to pull advertising for the game from sites just before release. He figured, without ad revenue to warm reviewer’s stomachs the review sites had no reason to be generous to the game and they universally destroyed it. So even though the game was fun to play, the review scores were abysmal, the bugs were exaggerated and hopes of sales of the game were destroyed.
But he had some evidence to back up his claims. According to actual people who played the game, the review scores (and comments) about Splatterhouse were completely unmerited at best or outright wrong at the worst.
Now there are games out there that I personally enjoy which are not by a lot of means perfect, but they’re still a ton of fun to play. The typical term for these kinds of games are usually unpolished gems that just need a little love. They’re games that despite the flaws that a little more development time could’ve fixed were still really enjoyable. A personal example I would consider fitting that description would be Troika’s 2004 swan song Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. That is a game that despite its performance issues, control bugs, memory leaks and cliffhanger endings, I happily play each and every summer because it’s still enjoyable to play, and fans have done everything they can to fix and modify the game to give it the polish that Troika never could.
Of course there is always the inverse of that, the game that is bad no matter how much polish it did or didn’t get. Alone in the Dark (2008), was that kind of game. It did receive abysmal scores across the board and I can tell you personally looking back on my playthroughs of the game, they were merited. The bugs and glitches HINDERED the game being fun, instead turning completing it into a chore (making the scene skip menu, something that I normally would never consider using, SERIOUSLY tempting to use through the whole game). The claim that it just needed some extra time for polish was quickly tossed as the one version of the game that got the extra six months of polish the game reviews thought the game needed (The PS3 version) was still an awful buggy mess, only it was now a little bit easier.
So these guys looked like they had fun playing the game, and the low scores from the reviewers was looking more like there was a fix in place. The major tell to this was that some of the glaring problems reviewers had with the game, particularly framerate issues, were not actually in the game.
In all, the webmaster of the West Mansion, the BIGGEST Splatterhouse website on the internet for the past 10 years, has announced he will retire in two months but there’s a mention that someone else will pick up the site after he leaves. Namco has shut down the American development house that made it, making seeing any further games highly unlikely.
It’s kind of reasons like this that have made me hesitant to start doing full reviews for games on this site (micro-reviews for odds and ends are different, but I still haven’t officially reviewed a full game on this site yet, although I have been considering it for some time). I believe that a game should be fun above all else, and I am able to overlook issues I’m having with the game if I’m enjoying the game regardless. The real tell for me is if I’m able to REPLAY the game repeatedly even with all these issues. I also will take price into account since no one has ever sent me a video game for free (and I don’t expect them to). I just haven’t been comfortable enough to do a full review (video or written), since some people who visit this site think I’m opinionated enough as it is. However, if someone wants to send me a new game with the hopes that I’d review it, I would be more than happy to oblige them.
I’m writing this all to tell you all in general, don’t put 100 percent faith in the review system. If you’ve waited years to play a game that has gotten bad reviews, don’t let that deter you from picking it up and forming your own opinion about it. Don’t let some paid intern who gets tons of free swag sitting behind a computer all day tell you how you should feel about a game you’ve never played.
So the question stands right now, is the game as bad as the reviewers say? Well, my copy is coming this weekend, and I’ll be able to see for myself.
The New Wave of Marketing Part 2 March 22, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials.add a comment
I started an article last week where I talked about all the pros and cons of traditional marketing trends that have started over the past five years all to get a player to buy your game as close to day one as possible, so you can sell your game as close to the release price as possible.
We discussed options like traditional media advertising, collector’s editions, and day one goodies for those who preorder. They all have their pros and cons, and I talked about all that in my previous article. Now I want to talk about some of the games that bucked the trends and were the most creative at promoting the release of their game to the gamers.
Now, a small disclaimer here. A lot of the games that I’m going to talk about did in fact do a lot of the traditional advertising paths I discussed in the previous article, but they complemented this advertising with something truly unique (or unique at the time).
Without further ado, I decided to start this series with the mother of all groundbreaking games.
Doom (PC) – id Software was about to release the biggest game for the DOS platform which was going to revolutionize gaming as we knew it. They had developed a first person shooter in a 3D environment, which would allow its user to use their modems or network cards to frag their friends. It was the first true deathmatch game. They needed to get the word out about this game and they weren’t going to do it through the traditional channels. They were going to follow the shareware model that had been pioneered for gaming by men like Scott Miller at Apogee.
They first released the shareware on a system controlled by David Detta, who let them use it. Within hours gamers swamped it to download the shareware, and Detta’s computer crashed. They also gave out free copies of the shareware to many game stores and told them to take the money from selling it and put it into marketing the full game’s release.
By the end of it, there were more copies of the Doom shareware on PCs than copies of Windows 95, and Microsoft had done a multi-million dollar traditional marketing push for that operating system. These were the first inklings of the power of digital distribution and the strength of the online community in promoting something.
In the end, the first Doom was a massive financial success for id Software, and cemented their reputation as the most groundbreaking game development company of the time.
Keep checking back here for later parts, each detailing the most creative promotional methods in game development history.
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