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:
- Duke Nukem Forever Dated for May 3
- Crysis 2 Mutliplayer Demo Drops January 25 on 360 Only
- Have Sledgehammer and Raven Been Brought in to Help Infinity Ward on next Call of Duty?
- Bizarre Creations Most Likely Shuttering
- Dead Space 2 and Two Worlds II This Week
Duke Nukem Forever Dated for May 3
I realize this has already been a news post here on the site, but given how much I have talked about this game over the course of Beyond Co-Op, I see no reason I can’t talk about it here. Over at Colony of Gamers I totally agree with Michael in that they should have set the date as April 1 even if it is a Friday this year. It would have been the ultimate icing on this cake we’ve been waiting forever for.
I liked the video that came out for it as well, especially the ending where Duke says, “It better be good after 12 f***ing years”. One thing I didn’t like about the video is Duke’s voice. Now, it’s been a while since I’ve played the original game, but the voice sounds pretty weak in my opinion. Outside of that the game is looking good and it will be interesting to see how well it sells.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Crysis 2 Mutliplayer Demo Drops January 25 on 360 Only
Crysis 2 will join Bulletstorm this coming Tuesday, but on the 360 only in the former case. The demo will include one multiplayer map and two gametypes. I’m really looking forward to this game and seeing how Crytek does on consoles after the big deal was made that Crysis should never present itself on consoles and should stay PC only. Sorry people, the game wasn’t selling very well on PC, mostly because you had to have a pretty good machine to run them well. The new CryEngine is supposed to make the console versions relatively equal to the PC one without sacrificing graphics. Crysis 2 comes out on March 22 on 360, PS3 and PC.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Have Sledgehammer and Raven Been Brought in to Help Infinity Ward on next Call of Duty?
This rumor came out of the Los Angeles Times and the only reaction Activision had to it was that they look forward to unveiling the new Call of Duty game soon. Supposedly Sledgehammer Games and Raven have been brought in to help what is left of Infinity Ward to complete what is rumored to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for release this year. Sledgehammer would be helping with the single-player campaign while Raven would be helping with the multiplayer.
If this is true, then the Call of Duty side game that Sledgehammer was working on has been put on the back burner which is too bad. I had the opportunity to interview Glen Schofield early last year right around the time Infinity Ward was imploding. I know he and his team were excited working on whatever game they were making and given that the Sledgehammer team is made up of a lot of former Visceral Games people I have no doubt they had something good going.
Hopefully we will know soon what the next Call of Duty is and maybe soon we will also know what Respawn, where a lot of former IW workers went, is doing for EA.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Bizarre Creations Most Likely Shuttering
It is downright sad that Bizarre may end up shuttered. It seems no one wants to buy Bizarre as a whole and would rather wait to see it dissolved so they can pick up workers to put on their teams. I am very surprised that Microsoft didn’t pick them up. Yes, they have another racing team in Turn 10, but Bizarre was about more than racing games. They made the highly popular Geometry Wars games that are only out on the 360 and they had a good first attempt at the James Bond franchise with Blood Stone.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Dead Space 2 and Two Worlds II This Week
Going back to Sledgehammer from earlier, the team that Glen and his partner Michael Condrey built will be releasing their new game this week. Visceral’s Dead Space 2 comes out this week and fits right around the time that Mass Effect 2 came out last year. I know Glen supports the team he left and he hopes Dead Space 2 does well, but it is also a telltale sign of whether Visceral can indeed make a great game without the visionaries that started it all. They failed with Dante’s Inferno in my mind, but I have far higher hopes for Dead Space 2. I mean, how could you screw it up after the excellent first game? Well, there was Devil May Cry 2 though.
The other release is Two Worlds II. Even though I never played the first one I do get the sense from those that played it that it was an underrated game.
Source: me