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The Kane and Lynch movie has had its Kane for quite a while in Bruce Willis, and now it’s found its Lynch. Screenwriter Kyle Ward tweeted last night that Jamie Foxx is in as the psychologically unbalanced mercenary James Lynch. He had to clarify that he wasn’t referencing the movie based on Uncharted that he’s also writing, after one user jokingly asked about “a black Nate Drake.” We previously reported that producer Adrian Askarieh was impressed by Bruce Willis’ enthusiasm for the script. “He called it one of the best action scripts he’s read,” said Askarieh, “and Bruce is an expert in terms of action scripts because he’s read everything over the last 20 years.” Now Foxx, who is relatively new to action movies as compared to Willis, will be playing alongside him.
While Kane appears like he won a Bruce Willis look-alike contest, Foxx’s resemblance to Lynch (above) isn’t quite so uncanny. Very early rumors had Billy Bob Thornton pegged for the role, but Foxx it is. We’ll keep you updated on the movie as we hear more about casting details and release information.
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Between the first Sonic the Hedgehog reboot, Golden Axe: Beast Rider and other less than stellar titles, Sega’s original IPs have taken a bit of a beating. No more though, the publisher said in a recent interview with Computer and Video Games.
“It’s important that our old IPs are respected, [and] we need to deliver a good product,” said Sega’s Mike Hayes. “And in some instances we have done that – look back at when we re-did Sega Rally. It scored well and was moderately successful commercially. But then with other great franchises like Golden Axe we didn’t produce a great game at all.”
He continued, “Going forward, if we’re going to look at any existing IP to bring out the locker, we have to make sure we get the quality to a level we now expect. I’m not saying which IP it would be – a Streets Of Rage, a Crazy Taxi, whatever. What we have to do now is build something that is 85 percent plus [rated]. We can’t just get away with PR.”
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At GDC last week, En Masse was showing off its first MMO localization effort, Tera. Those who attended the show floor might have had trouble spotting the booth from amongst the slew of other Asian-market game artwork displayed though; Tera’s art style is distinctly Korean — especially obvious if you’re familiar with the likes of Lineage II — with its long-limbed light and dark elves, and strange rock-like armor covering little-to-no body parts with protruding bits in all the most useless places. Personally, it’s an aesthetic that I begrudgingly find attractive (along with the majority of Asia apparently). But whether you love or hate the art direction, a quick glimpse at the monitors stops most people in their tracks. Fact is, Tera’s graphics look good for what I’ve come to expect from MMOs. This might be due to its use of the Unreal Engine; it just doesn’t look like what I’d peg as an MMO. If it weren’t for the telltale user interface, with its hit point and quick bars, I would have guessed it was some sort of fantasy action game for consoles.
Which, I suppose, wouldn’t be that far off the mark. Tera has controller support (at GDC, the booth had XB360 controllers hooked up, along with mouse and keyboard for you to feel the difference), and it’s probably the first MMO that I felt controlled easier with a gamepad than the good ol’M&K set up. The reason for this is the game’s combat system; rather than the usual standing-still-and-firing-off-hotkeys approach to battle, which relies primarily on a numbers game (damage versus hit points at a basic level), Tera employs an action-oriented system. Your mouse controls the camera, and the left and right mouse button fire off keybound spells or skills. Alternately, on the game pad, the camera controls via the right analog stick, with movement mapped to the left analog stick, and attacks on the face buttons.
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Posthumous Cult Gaming
How fans keep the memory of cult favorites alive.
By Bob Mackey
The modern mainstream gaming press is a fickle beast. Sure, some titles will often draw months (or years) of attention from hungry and enthusiastic journalists, but the week after release, it’s, “So long, and call us when you get a sequel.” And, aside from the odd retrospective, current trends in coverage dictate that games existing outside this small window of time deserve no attention until the point that they’re “classic” enough for the inevitable repackaging, rereleasing, remaking, or other pumping of money into a publisher’s coffers.
In a business environment where staying relevant equals more hits, and more hits equals an increased likelihood of staying afloat, it’s hard to blame our culture for constantly trying to seek out the next best thing — even if it means abandoning some games that hold the potential for nearly limitless analysis and discussion. After all, once a game slips past the purview of the mainstream press, interest doesn’t disappear entirely — it simply moves underground.
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At a discussion panel at the Game Career Guide seminar during the last day of GDC 2010, developers who worked on Flower, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and Portal discussed how they got their college student games noticed enough for publishers to give them jobs and put their games out commercially.
Portal
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Tournament of Legends, once known as Gladiator A.D., has changed a lot since we first saw the game at last year’s E3. What was once a gray, gritty, historically realistic one-on-one fighter has become something almost entirely fantastical. Turning aside from fidelity to history, Tournament instead embraces ancient mythology with a cast of characters that includes gorgons, Ray Harryhausen-esque skeletons, minotaurs, and the cat-headed Egyptian goddess Bast — and what looks like a Japanese Oni. They’ve each been given their own unique take, though; the game’s medusa, for instance, has a cobra’s hood. Stranger still is a character named Volcanus, a wizened little man who resembles nothing so much as a World of Warcraft gnome, motoring around in a steampunk wheelchair as he controls his fighter: a strange assemblage of brass gears and armor. Who, at one point, taunts an opponent with Hulk Hogan’s, “hand to the ear” pose. No, this game definitely isn’t taking itself seriously, and I think I like it this way.
Creative director Matt Corso explained some of the change in direction, particularly its graphics: “We took our licks with The Conduit,” he said, “we got some criticisms, and understand where those game from. We’re not getting those again.”
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For years, Nintendo fans have begged for a new Kid Icarus game only to see their wishes go unanswered (or mysteriously be told to be patient). Now according to Yoshio Sakamoto — one of the original Kid Icarus creators — the problem may be that fans just aren’t asking hard enough.
“I don’t know personally about any project underway regarding Kid Icarus,” Sakamoto said to Kotaku, “but if so many of those people are interested in it and really want to see it on the Wii they should really speak up.” Um…haven’t they kind of been doing that already?
But don’t fret, Kid Icarus fans — Sakamoto also said a new Kid Icarus game on the Wii is still a possibility, so long as they had the right idea. “If we can find some sort of way to bring it to the Wii, a way to make the game for the Wii that makes sense, we would happily do so,” he said. “But just keep in mind it may not be me making the game.”
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The Game Developers Conference is proving to be ripe with juicy rumors, and here’s another to add to the collection: IGN reports that, according to an anonymous “trusted source,” Insomniac Games has become a multi-platform developer, currently working both on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
For those unfamiliar, Insomniac has long been a Sony-exclusive developer, responsible for such games as the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance series — franchises that are synonymous with the PlayStation. Despite this close relationship with Sony, though, they’ve never actually been Sony-owned, and it looks like they’re now taking advantage of opportunities to develop for Microsoft’s console.
No details were given on just what they’re supposedly working on for the 360, but as IGN notes, it’s more than likely a brand new game and not an addition to the Ratchet or Resistance franchises. Insomniac president Ted Price gave IGN a standard “no comment on rumors or speculation” response to this rumor, so we’ll have to wait and see how accurate this is. Maybe an announcement at E3 in June?
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Sony finally showed off their PlayStation 3 motion controller (dubbed “Move”) and sub-controller at GDC this week, and let’s be charitable by saying it looks in a lot of ways pretty similar in concept to Nintendo’s Wii remote and nunchuck. Nintendo, predictably, is being less charitable with their words, as Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime had a stern assessment of their competition’s (including Microsoft’s) rush to motion controls.
“I think we would have been embarrassed to do what our competitors are currently doing,” Fils-Aime said to Kotaku, stressing that for Nintendo, it’s of vital importance to innovate rather than follow. “So, all I can tell you is that we will innovate. We will provide something new. Something that the consumer and the industry will look at and say, ‘Wow, I didn’t see that coming.’”
Fils-Aime also gave a few more juicy tidbits about what Nintendo has planned for the successor to the Wii, stressing that it won’t simply be a Wii with HD graphics. “For us high definition by itself is not the next frontier. For us we need to provide a whole new compelling experience in our next generation,” he said. Fils-Aime also made clear a new console won’t be made until Nintendo feels it needs to be.
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There had been a few Nintendo DS successor rumors leading up to GDC this week, and now even more (unconfirmed!) details have emerged from various anonymous sources from the conference. Raymond Padilla reports (via Shacknews) that from the information he gathered at GDC, the DS2 will have a built-in accelerometer, power similar to a GameCube, and may even be out by the end of the year.
According to Padilla’s info, the DS2 will, naturally, also have two screens. But they’ll be larger, higher resolution, and the gap between the two screens will be much smaller compared to the DS, so they could be used as one large screen.
Padilla also reports that the “dev kit is similar in power to the GameCube,” although it’s not clear if that means the graphics can be expected to be at the GameCube level as well (which, let’s be honest, would mean DS2 visuals would even be pretty close to Wii visuals, too). This also means that developers will reportedly find the system easy to developer for, as the “people familiar with the dev kit made it sound like there wasn’t much of a learning curve on the new system.”
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