Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- Some Games Dated This Week
- Halo Moves Into Anime
- Assassin's Creed II Gets Live Action Shorts
- Double Fine Countersues Activision over Brutal Legend
- Wii Sports Resort, BlazBlue Release This Week
Some Games Dated This Week
Last week was all about delays, this week it is all about games being dated. Scribblenauts and Marvel Ultimate Alliance on September 15, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on October 13 (same day as Brutal Legend), Borderlands on October 20 and Grand Theft Auto IV: Ballad of Gay Tony DLC on October 29 were all dated this week. Fall isn’t looking so bad anymore, although a lot of big names have moved to 2010.
Source: me
Halo Moves Into Anime
Yes, the series is moving into the anime arena as the 343 Industries section of Microsoft officially opens and Halo Legends is announced. They will oversee all things in the Halo universe including this new seven part anime series which should see the light of day in 2010. It is being created by a number of Japanese studios much like The Animatrix was for Warner Bros.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Assassin's Creed II Gets Live Action Shorts
Also announced at Comic-Con were 3 live action shorts for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed II game. I believe this was alluded to at E3 this year, but I honestly forget. Each episode will run about 10-15 minutes and will be a prologue to the final game. Chances are good these will be out before the game releases on November 17. The interesting thing here is that the writers and developers of the game will be producing the live action shorts, so no Hollywood team is being brought in or anything. Should be interesting to see.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Double Fine Countersues Activision over Brutal Legend
It was but a matter of time before Double Fine countersued Activision in its attempt to delay the release of Brutal Legend. You may remember that Activision sued for money they felt they should be repaid when Double Fine found another publishing partner in EA. Now Double Fine has countersued going so far as saying that Activision asked them to shoehorn the game into the Guitar Hero franchise and that they only want to release sequels to their lineup and not original games. Now the last point can be contended since they have allowed Raven to work on Singularity, an original IP. They inherited Prototype when the merger went through, so you really can’t use that game as an exception. This should be interesting to see as the case starts on July 30. I can only hope that this works out in the end and that Brutal Legend does indeed come out on Roctober 13.
Source: Colony of Gamers via Washington Post
Wii Sports Resort, BlazBlue Release This Week
Another relatively quiet release week as the big names are Wii Sports Resortand fighter BlazBlue. My big question is why didn’t Nintendo ship a copy of their game without the Wii MotionPlus add-on? I already have one for each of my controllers thanks to everyone needing to have it to play Tiger Woods 10 correctly. Why not have a $10 cheaper option with the game only? Oh well, should be a huge pickup for every Wii owner out there…more Wii Sports is never a bad thing, right?
Source: me
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Spider-man 2 (widely considered the best Spider-man game) was made obviously to advertise the movie. Ultimate Spider-man was to advertise their new comic reboot of the franchise. Spider-man 3? Again, the latest movie. But Web of Shadows? They made it just because. And I love Spider-man games. Ahh...but anyway; I still hate Activision.
My point exactly, after Spider-Man 2 they knew the open-world feel was a big hit. And while I LOVED Spider-Man 3 using True Crime's neighborhood crime rate as a way to judge Spidey's progress.
But other thing a few interesting qualities, controls weren't solid, story and characters just weren't good. Then Spidey: WoS came and had characters galore, but they were pushed into the good side or bad side.
Acting was terrible and never felt invested.
I think they were trying a good thing with an original Spider-Man story, but without a movie to handle the story part, they NEED actors with solid performances, and a developer that can provide the production that supports quality story.
I thought Web of Shadows was fun, though I found it a little awkward when Wolverine entered the picture and gave you that questionnaire before fighting him. Didn't like the forced "good or bad" side of the game.
Thinking about picking up Wii Sports Resort today with another controller since my family was interested in trying it out. From some reviews it sounds like its pretty fun.
I'm playing through Web of Shadows right now, got it for cheap. It is enjoyable in spurts and I am seeing disturbing similarities with it and Prototype, which is weird since Activision didn't pick up Prototype until the merger last year...I wonder if it was radically changed from what it was.
I also thought the Wolverine fight was a bit awkward. If someone with little to no modern Spider-Man comic book reading, those questions would be near impossible to answer.
I cheated, I paused and searched the net for the answers.
But yes, I think Prototype suffered from being a new IP and having so many directions it could potential go and then I'm sure Activision put their two cents in what i'm sure was an already hectic development.
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