By John Walker on April 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm.
Cracked.com have put together a list of 10 Highly Anticipated Video Games You’ll Never Get To Play. And it contains just enough PC games for a link from us. Bemoaning the lost of games like StarCraft Ghost, Star Trek Online, Darkfall, and inevitably Duke Nukem Forever.
Regarding Diablo 3 they mention:
The Diablo series is what happens when you let red-blooded, meat-eating Americans make a role-playing game. Gone are the androgynous heroes, talking raccoons and quests that revolve around retrieving used panties you find in Japanese RPGs, replaced instead with demon killing. Lots and lots demon killing.
There are a couple of issues. We’re fairly certain Max Payne 3 is in development, and as they mention themselves, others are simply suffering endless delays, rather than stated cancellation. But hey, we’re still not playing them. Go take a read.
21/04/2008 at 14:38 Kast says:
Max Payne 3 is in development? What, when did this happen!?
21/04/2008 at 14:42 Arnulf says:
Nice one. Last sentence of their Nova-fixated intro of Starcraft: Ghost (damn you, Blizz!):
That cracked me up, somehow.
21/04/2008 at 15:00 The Shed says:
Max Payne 3 defo aint in development. Remedy are focusing all of their attention on Alan Wake, they’re leaving any other projects until after A.Wake is done. 100% of their resources are in use, basically.
Man, I remember the ole hype for Starcraft: G. Looked fairly promising back in the day, and it certainly was ‘G’. I also didn’t realised that Star Trek online had slipped into the ether. I thought it was still in prduction.
Now the Shenmue dialogue- that cracked me up. Later we see the heartfelt reaction Ryu has to his ‘one true love’ moving to another country:
“Hey Ryu, I’m leaving to live in America with my family.”
“…Okay.”
*End of dialogue*
21/04/2008 at 15:01 Phil says:
Duke Nukem Forever as money laudering scam – it might just make sense.
21/04/2008 at 15:14 Chris R says:
Haha, that SC:G line that Arnulf posted and this line about Project HAMMER cracked me up:
“World leaders and the military are helpless before the scourge and mankind trembles in their wake, but our would-be robot overlords didn’t count on somebody finding their one fatal weakness: being whacked repeatedly with a really big hammer. “
21/04/2008 at 15:43 Cutman3030 says:
Ooooh Darkfall, how I pine for you.
21/04/2008 at 15:52 Pidesco says:
This reminded me of Stars! Supernova Genesis, sequel to Stars!.
The game was apparently finished, but they never were able to get a publisher.
Someone at RPS should do a retro piece on Stars!
21/04/2008 at 15:53 Ian says:
I’d never before seen that slightly terrifying image of Nova’s arse crack before.
I still want(ed) that game very badly though.
21/04/2008 at 16:02 Abe says:
@The Shed
Remedy isn’t working on Max Payne 3, but Rockstar definitely is. They’re not going to let the movie slip by without an accompanying game release.
21/04/2008 at 16:10 Acosta says:
The Shed: Who said Remedy was on it? Max Payne 3 is coming, you can bet on it.
About the feature: frankly, thinking we are not going to play Diablo 3 at some point is pretty naive for everyone who knows Blizzard. The IP is succesful, and as soon as they manage to have somenthing they can feel happy with it, we will have a new Diablo, for me there is no doubt about that.
21/04/2008 at 17:37 RobotLiberationArmy says:
“The Diablo series is what happens when you let red-blooded, meat-eating Americans make a role-playing game. Gone are the androgynous heroes, talking raccoons and quests that revolve around retrieving used panties you find in Japanese RPGs, replaced instead with demon killing. Lots and lots demon killing.”
For some reason, this makes me violently angry. Words like “Fallout” and “Planescape: Torment” might have something to do with it.
That said, I find Cracked.com rather funny. Then again, I find nearly everything funny (4chan, I’m looking at you).
21/04/2008 at 19:08 Zaren says:
Yeah, Diablo is what happens when you strap a pretty interface on to what is otherwise a simple statbuilder game.
clickclickclickWOOT LEVEL UPclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickcl..
21/04/2008 at 19:48 CrashT says:
Max Payne 3 was being made by Rockstar Vienna before they got closed down.
21/04/2008 at 19:51 Chris R says:
But Diablo 1 and 2 had some special magic that I haven’t been able to find in any other game so far.. and I can’t quite pinpoint what it is…
HG:L didn’t have it, Titans Quest and its expansion didn’t have it, Dungeon Siege 2 didn’t have it…
All those games were fun, but after I had gotten to the end I didn’t feel compelled to play through on harder difficulty levels looking for better drops.
I always come back to Diablo 2 and farm for a bit, hoping for a rune, or elite unique, or a jewel… ahhh… good times.
21/04/2008 at 20:03 The Shed says:
@ Abe unt Acosta: Well I was about to say ‘thanks for putting me right’, but CrashT just slipped in there and negated it. Checked the wiki, and theres no developer named for MP3, however Take 2 suggested there will be a sequel in 2009. Huh.
21/04/2008 at 20:06 Novack says:
ROFL. Holly crap! this guys are even more cynical than you guys here!
21/04/2008 at 20:09 Lucky says:
“talking raccoons”
Fallout 2 almost had them though.
21/04/2008 at 21:30 RichPowers says:
@Zaren: True, but after playing enough Diablo you’ll at least be able to do push-ups using only your index finger.
21/04/2008 at 22:18 Eric says:
Word is that Max Payne 3 is being developed by the Bully team at Rockstar Vancouver. I’ve heard that Bully was such a nightmare for the team that they tossed them Max Payne as a way of placating them. This is just a friend of a friend rumour, though.
21/04/2008 at 22:31 Vitalis says:
Anyone else feel Dungeon Keeper Three deserved a mention?
Speaking of DK, wheres our DK retro feature that was mentioned as a possibility?
21/04/2008 at 22:46 Grant Gould says:
The original Diablo was pretty much Rogue (well, more like Angband…) with isometric graphics instead of ASCII. Like many recent games, it kicked ass because it stole openly and unapologetically from its forbears.
22/04/2008 at 01:05 sinister agent says:
Am I the only person who wasn’t looking forward to Starcraft Ghost? The first time I heard about it my heart sank, not least because I’d been through this before with the X-COM series.
When the game rumours were flying, I had no internet access, so I didn’t realise just how embarassingly over-sexualised the main character was meant to be. That’s really subtle guys, well done.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude, but come on, she’s running around in nothing but a bloody thong. If I want to watch porn I’ll watch porn. Can we have at least one game that doesn’t just make it harder to argue “games aren’t just for horny teenaged nerds”, please?
Dirty Harry, though – now there’s a wasted opportunity.
22/04/2008 at 01:54 sigma83 says:
@sinister agent:
regarding ghost, I was worried primarily about how they were going to make the gameplay fun, but it was blizzard so I was willing to cut slack in their department. As for the highly sexualised main character, that’s only in the (high res) concept/teaser art. The in-game character itself never displayed anywhere near that level of thong-running. Lara Croft runs around in less.
22/04/2008 at 02:21 sinister agent says:
Fair enough.
I think that’s part of it, though – Lara croft runs around in less largely to compensate for lousy gameplay. I fear Ghost would have done the same, and the whole “I know! We’ll make a shooter out of it!” thing had me convinced it’d be a hack job.
Even so, it’s pretty tacky to turn everyone into an anatomically suspect porn star in the concept art.
I may well have been wrong about its being crap of course, had they got anywhere with it.
22/04/2008 at 03:30 RobotLiberationArmy says:
My initial reaction to Ghost was “console cash-in for big name” followed by general apathy. So, I suppose sinister agent was not the only one.
22/04/2008 at 07:55 devlocke says:
While you’re all talking about highly anticipated games we’ll never see… No One Lives Forever 3 would make my decade. Every time I do a reformat, I reinstall NOLF1 and play through it, then reinstall NOLF2 and play through it. And then sometimes I just play through one of them again because it’s been a while. Wizardry VII is the only game that I’ve ever come close to playing as much as I’ve played the NOLF games, and I only keep replaying THAT because I’ve never beaten it. It seems like I discover a new line of witty dialog in NOLF1 every time I go through it, even now, and I have to have beaten it at least a dozen times.
I guess the fact that it’s not as eagerly anticipated by other people is the reason it will never see the light of day, but for me personally, the NOLF games were as close to perfect as any game has ever come. Except maybe Wizardry VII (see above) but I think there’s room for both of them, and Wizardry got a final game I didn’t like very much, leaving me less anxious for a sequel, while NOLF2 was quite satisfying, if flawed, leaving me desperately hoping for more.
22/04/2008 at 08:33 Taximan says:
Outcast II anyone? No?
Just me then. Ah. Right.
22/04/2008 at 08:43 Bobsy says:
*dons an orange jumper*
You’re not alone, friend…. not… alone…
22/04/2008 at 08:48 Cigol says:
I thought they made Outcast II? Wasn’t it a console only release or something? A proper sequel (if indeed my quite-possibly-imaginary-one exists) would be most welcome of course. Bring back voxels :D
22/04/2008 at 08:57 Bobsy says:
There was a fan-sequel being made at one point, but I think it (inevitably) folded. It was being made in French, I seem to recall.
22/04/2008 at 08:59 Flint says:
Bobsy:
The fan sequel, Open Outcast, is still in development. Though considering the scale of it all, I kinda doubt it’ll ever finish. Anyway, the site for it is http://www.openoutcast.org/
And yeah, Outcast II would be about the greatest thing ever considering that the first one is my favourite game of all time.
22/04/2008 at 09:53 AbyssUK says:
Perhaps we will one day get to play these games..coming soon to a flea market /car boot sale near you!
http://blog.gism.net/2008/04/20/most-legendary-haul-at-the-flea-market/
from Slashdot.
Also Voxels are back
http://voxelstein3d.blogspot.com/2008/04/v-o-x-e-l-s-t-e-i-n-3-d.html
From Tig
22/04/2008 at 10:40 Arnulf says:
Nova again.
That suit and the 3rd person view from behind… well, need I say more?
I guess it would be like p.n.03.
(and no, I did not unlock the papillon suit.. the default ones were tight enough)
22/04/2008 at 13:33 Albides says:
Unfortunately I tend to brood over games that never were.
Old news, but I vaguely recall a third person party-based tactical roleplaying game I was looking forward to a long time ago made by some ex-Blizzard employees. It was called Third World and it sounded neat at the time.
Also, a sequel to Bioforge would be awesome. Surely I’m not the only one who remembers how great that game was? You beat a blue guy about the head with his own arm! What more proof do you need? An “extension” of the game was proposed, Wikipedia tells me, but ultimately abandoned.
And Warcraft Adventures… no, wait, scratch that one.
22/04/2008 at 13:46 Cigol says:
I remember reading a preview of a game that I think was called Good & Evil by Chris Taylor, an RTS of sorts set in space dealing with… cows? Or something. I honestly remember reading about this and seeing at least one screenshot with evidence of said cows. Never heard of it since and I’m convinced it was called Good & Evil, or something very similar.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
22/04/2008 at 14:07 Albides says:
Cigol,
Yes, I do. I might be completely wrong, but think it was more of an adventure/rpg featuring blue buffalo. Not as the principal characters. It was just a distinctive screenshot with herds of prominently displayed blue buffalo on an arid plain.
22/04/2008 at 15:10 Yhancik says:
@ Cigol & Albides : It wasn’t Chris Taylor, but Ron Gilbert, at Cavedog : http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=242
22/04/2008 at 15:26 Cigol says:
You can’t believe how much that has bugged me over the years, thanks for clearing it up! It’s interesting to see how time distorts a memory like that. Gilbert into Taylor, blue buffalo into cow :D …but space? Was it set in space? It looks like the wild west from here.
Still, chalk it up as another game we never got to play.
22/04/2008 at 22:05 The Shed says:
Definately feel devlocke’s pain over a new NOLF sequel. Such a seminal series…
23/04/2008 at 04:41 malkav11 says:
I was originally unexcited about Ghost, but then I played Manhunt and developed a love for the stealth genre that I never would have expected. Blizzard-level polished stealth in the wonderful Starcraft universe? So there.
Alas.
Personally, though, I’m a little more concerned with games that are actually done but we’re never going to get to play. Like Front Mission 5, released some time back in Japan, and yet it apparently isn’t ever going to get translated.
24/04/2008 at 06:48 Rocktart says:
I can’t work out if the gold seller spam is ironic or real.
12/07/2008 at 16:20 harbl says:
Ha! WRONG
02/12/2008 at 22:58 Deltus says:
DarkFall has been in beta for about a month now.
10/01/2009 at 02:31 Kua says:
Quite so. I really feel as though Darkfall should be receiving some attention in these parts. There’s quite a lot of potential there and it will be interesting to see what we’ll be saying about it in twelve months time.
Seems to me the internet has forgotten about it. Justifiably so, considering the constant dashing of hopes and what appears to be some pretty poor marketing.
25/02/2009 at 15:41 Redd says:
Darkfail is about to be pooped onto the tubes, and it’s already looking grossly mismanaged.
03/07/2009 at 14:03 Blast Hardcheese says:
Hahaha. What a terrific random old story. Half these games are making it to production, or have already. Darkfall was terrible, but that’s another story altogether.