Grave Gamer News & Views — fps

Timesplitters 4 Not Happening Until Met with Higher Demand

“I love Timesplitters, I’m a huge Timesplitters fan particularly of the multiplayer part. I love the idea, I love the brand, I love everything – but the publishers don’t.  That’s reality.  And I don’t want to spend our own money on the project in a retail business.”

- Cevat Yerli, founder and president of Crytek, speaking with VG24/7.

While public demand for a Timesplitters 4 is moderately high, Yerli doesn’t believe it’s past the threshold of putting the sequel into motion.  What does Crytek have to do with Timesplitters, a franchise headed by English developer Free Radical, you ask?

Well, after LucasArts fucked Free Radical three different ways to Sunday during the troubled production of the aborted Star Wars: Battlefront III, the very nearly bankrupt development house (operating on a skeleton crew just to keep the lights on) was taken under Crytek’s wing and rebranded Crytek UK.  Now, with Timesplitters being Crytek UK’s baby, and taking into account their parent company’s tendency to almost exclusively dish out first-person shooters, we’re closer than ever to seeing the once magnificent franchise resuscitated…

Except being out of the FPS scene for a whole console cycle sort of muddies your IP’s brand recognition.  Consequently, no publisher in town cares about the property.  Again, while demand hasn’t been enough to strong arm Crytek into fast-tracking a new installment, fans may take comfort in the fact that the company is at least thinking about the future of Timesplitters.

Fan feedback “did indeed trigger a deeper evaluation of what we do with Timesplitters,” says Yerli, “And I can only say this for now: we might have some surprises coming soon."  There hasn’t been an entry into the series since 2005.  For a lot of fans’ sakes, hopefully "soon” is soon enough.

Could There Ever Be a Gears of War FPS?

“I’m a big believer in ‘never say never.'  It’s all about what’s interesting in the industry at the time and where fans want us to take it.  We don’t want to say never but it’s not on the top of my mind either.  We look at what makes sense and move in that direction.”

-Rod Fergusson, executive producer at Epic Games, in an interview with OXM.

While next year’s Gears of War: Judgement, under the guiding hand of People Can Fly, certainly cuts its own swath with its focus on real time action and adaptive enemy AI over scripted thrills, the game doesn’t stray far from Epic’s third-person formula.  But if you want it and if you’re vocal about it, the collective fanbase could order up a very different kind of Gears experience.

We’re all well aware that there’s no shortage of first-person shooters on the market.  Here’s a hard number: if you take every FPS off store shelves, there’d be a total of twelve games to choose from and half empty pack of Tic-Tacs (Hey, hey!  Stay away from Google.  How dare you fact check my lies?), but I’m all for expansion in a franchise.  Risk breeds innovation; innovation in gaming often begets fun.  Switching perspectives in Gears isn’t too wildly off base, yet the change to game mechanics needed would probably agitate the ever loving shit out of series diehards grown accustomed to the cover hopping, blind-firing action of the original trilogy.

So, the question stands: anybody out there interested in seeing a first-person Gears of War?

Sledgehammer Games Tackling Call of Duty 2013

Prepare to be savagely unsurprised: Activision plans to release yet another annual increment of Call of Duty in 2013.  Unlike the Infinity Ward/Treyarch development house trade off that’s been routine practice the last four years or so, a recent job listing on Sledgehammer’s website points to the Modern Warfare 3 collaborators as the next in line to handle the franchise instead.

Their ad for a Senior FX Artist (which has since been filled) also requested the candidate have professional experience with the inner workings of “current generation hardware."  Murmurs suggest this may be the last Call of Duty to come out during this console cycle and Infinity Ward’s assignment on an unnamed next-gen shooter reinforces that rumor.

Why even waste the resources, Activision?  The manpower, the advertising, the plastic you print the games on – save all that shit.  The way I see it, you don’t need to make a new CoD every year.  Just make one game that, every November, renders my system completely useless until I feed it $59.99.  For Elite Subscribers, they can have the additional incentive of a small fire emitting from the disc tray that can only be put out with a credit card.  I get to shoot virtual people, my family’s out of danger, and Acti makes more money – everyone’s happy.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PC/PS3/360 - November 13th)

In a surefire bid to reinvigorate a quickly stagnating property, Activision and Treyarch are embracing something rather uncommon in the Call of Duty series: change.  The biggest retooling would be the developer’s use of choice-oriented tactical missions that are spread throughout the story campaign.  These Strike Force missions are more than interesting distractions, as their outcomes and your performance in them changes the overarching story, even down to who makes it through the war alive.  There’s several different branches to take during a Strike Force mission, finally promoting single-player replay.

Co-written by one of Hollywood’s favorite genre screenwriters, David S. Goyer, the narrative pushes forward with the events of the 2010 original, bringing back familiar faces Mason and Woods (Sam Worthington and James Burns reprising their roles respectively) in covert ops taking place in the ‘80’s, while the bulk of the campaign sees Mason’s offspring, David, fending off the escalating conflict between the U.S. and China in the year 2025 (where you will fight literal fuck tons of enemy robot drones).

Mum’s the word on multiplayer, although it has been mentioned that Treyarch is shaking the cobwebs out of the totem feature in order to liven up the joint.  It should be noted combat online will take place solely in the future, not the '80’s, so as to avoid time collapsing in on itself.

Oh, and by the by, they’re fleshing out zombies mode.  Running on the multiplayer engine and decked with dedicated matchmaking, Zombies returns with its own set of unspecified modes (yeah, plural), and more than we’ve ever experienced from what once started as an Easter Egg.

Place Your Bets, What’s Call of Duty’s Big Reveal Going To Be?

Rumors galore have been floating about in reference to 2012’s contractually obligated Call of Duty release.  Seeing as how Treyarch has been the series’ off-season developers every other year way back since the games were about real wars, everyone’s been bracing for a Black Ops 2 (which would have the potential of completing the World at War Trilogy that no one cared was a trilogy).

Well, folks, we’ve been through these motions before and it was only a matter of time before Activision would part the curtains for Call of Duty 2012 (let’s just go by years now – it’s easier).  On the series official website, the above teaser can be viewed pointing towards a big unveiling on May 1st during some kind of sports telecast on the Dynamite Channel.

While Black Ops 2 is the most likely successor, the moniker Call of Duty: Eclipse being tossed around the industry muddies odds, though it should be noted that CoD carries brand recognition all on its own enough for Treyarch to call even a direct sequel whatever the hell they want.

My two cents?  I want Activision to succumb to the delightful insanity (or correct dose of acid) it would take to bring Call of Duty: Space Warfare back to life.  I picture satellite strike killstreaks, headshots leaving enemies merciless to the vacuum, and motherfuckin’ laser guns.  Come on, Activision, don’t be afraid to aim for total righteousness this year.