By John Walker on November 24th, 2008 at 8:02 pm.
GRIN, they behind the forthcoming Bionic Commando remake, are also working on a tie-in game for the movie, Wanted in their Barcelona offices. I’ve not seen Wanted: Weapons of Fate getting much coverage, and people might be a little wary after the astonishingly dumb movie. (Of course I enjoyed it, but wow it was dumb). Movie tie-ins are rarely a reason to get excited. But the trailers below might be.
There’s surprisingly little information about it. Shown at E3 there was a flurry of interest, and since then there’s not even been an official website (until someone points out I’m wrong in the comments, at least). However, we get some glimpses of the bullet-bending action here.
Look’s a little dead-spacey in terms of the camera and shooting, not bad though.
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yawn, more MTV console trash. oh god it even has QTE’s, go away.
why is it that it takes 5+ bullests to drop a baddie, but only one curved bullet?
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It does in fact look pretty cool…
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The movie was arse, and QTE’s are the work of satan!
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Forthcoming Bionic Commando Remake? Is it not available in EU? Been out in the US for ages, and I think it’s pretty enjoyable. Has some great dialogue in it for sure.
Also the game just looks like another rubbish Gears rip-off. I’m gonna be sad if all third person shooters turn into that crap when Max Payne was so awesome.
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I think I saw Warren Spector getting killed in the first vid, and I’m not in favour of that.
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I thought both the comic and the film were irresistibly stupid, and that trailer looks like they’re keeping the tone consistent, at least. Also, the addition of Wesley’s fetish gear/costume from the comic makes me doubly excited to give this a spin.
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Looks like Gears of War with a dash of Stranglehold for good measure. I doubt I’ll ever play this game for fear of irrevocably damaging brain cells.
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This will be another terrible film based game. Don’t waste your time covering it.
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You’re all making Walker sad (maybe).
Do you want that? DO YOU?
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None of you have played the game.
None of you can claim it will be bad due to it being a (admittedly late) movie tie-in.
PROTIP: Generalizations are never, ever right
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But generalizations made about age, race and country of origin are basically the rules I live by! Whatever will I do!?
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Is Bionic Commando still “forthcoming” in the EU? That would explain so much, as I thought it was a WONDERFUL gem and I was shocked that RPS hadn’t covered it.
But GRIN could announce a Care Bears 2 tie-in game and I’d be excited after how much I enjoyed the Commando remake.
Care Bear Stare!
-Parker
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Durr… I speak of course of Bionic Commando: Rearmed, in the above.
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@ Wedge: Rearmed has been out for a while but this ‘un is still in development at Grin.
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The plane one makes it look good but the other one looks really awful.
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I don’t claim to know anything. I like the guy’s moody combat gear.
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@Leeks!
I would suggest euthanasia
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This isn’t just any game. This is a game based on a film with Angelina Jolie in it. Find me a single game based on a film that was anything better than just OK. If you can do that, find me one game based on a movie with Angelina Jolie in it that wasn’t TOTAL rubbish.
Protip: There are plenty of good, original ideas in the gaming world. Games based on movies aren’t made because the devs were inspired by the film’s amazing concepts, it is made because the film makers want to cash in on the game in every possible way. The game doesn’t have to be any good at all to sell plenty of copies, provided the movie is popular enough.
So no, this isn’t just a presumption, it’s an informed conjecture.
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The Chronicles of Riddick.
The two points you are linking are not related.
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You do realise that what you said is a generalisation as well, right? Or were you being sarcastic?
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I want Ocean to come back and make more excellent movie tie ins. The world needs more romantic comedies turned into platformers tbh.
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Lego * games. The thing. Goldeneye. STALKER was based thematically on a movie of the same title.
Its easier to name movie games that are good than game movies.
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Oh, and Jurassic Park for the Genesis.
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@Naurgul
Kudos on your deduction
Yes, I was being sarcastic. Hence the pompous, “PROTIP;”
@A-Scale
Obviously subdeii suggested Riddick, besides that theres been good movie games like: Enter the Matrix, Godfather, uh, well OK, there hasn’t been to many but it remains true that you display prejudice. Undue prejudice.
Also, you use far too many sentence fragments.
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Damn.
Almost forgot a great movie game: Stranglehold.
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TIE Fighter and X-Wing count?
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The Spectrum verison of Cobra was pretty cool.
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The X-Wing series was heavily based off of the original Star Wars trilogy, right up to including a Death Star run and other plot based missions.
Actually, the Super Star Wars games on the SNES were pretty well regarded as well.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a pretty awesome adventure game (and paved the way for the later original game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis).
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FinchDenton: if you believe Stranglehold was a good game, then I do believe we’ve found the reason for why you’re defending this.
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The doom bits in jp were a great change of context.
The indiana jones adventure games, some of them were great.
Pixar’s cars was actually fun (got it for my son but its pretty hardcore on the harder settings as you can and need to shift you center of gravity).
The aliens games, the avp ones on the pc. And the snes era ones with saving (and mercy killing) your fellow ship mates and the best 16 bit flame thrower evah.
The star wars game on the n64 is a 9 out of 10 in my eyes even though half of the games in it were utter crap. The good ones were bloody magical.
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Ooh, the Terminator 2 arcade game! I loved that one when I was a kid.
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@Pags
Stranglehold was a good game, not perfect but it tried some interesting cinematic effects and well the voice talent was obviously exceptional.
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The Riddick game is an exception, because Vin Diesel actually cares about games and wanted to make something worth playing. I somehow doubt this game will have that same blessing. The Matrix games and Godfather game got lackluster reviews. The other examples are either produced by the guys who do the Lego games or were made before 2000. Granted you provided good examples, but given the spate of horrid games made only to cash in on movie popularity in the past decade, I think we can reasonably presume that this game will be half assed and awful. Remember to come back here and comment about what a dummy I am when Wanted gets rave reviews. Just kidding, remember not to come back here when it’s horrible.
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A-Scale, you asked for examples, we provided them. Nobody here is saying that’s definitively GOING to be good or bad, the rest of us are willing to wait and see.
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Goldeneye anyone?
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I’ve seen a trend of shit movie based games in the recent past, and this looks like another one to chalk up to that trend. Disagree if you like, but I will almost certainly be correct. I would bet every dime I have on this game getting less than 70 on metacritic. I’d bet quite a lot on it getting less than a 60, actually.
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This looks like the next step past the Max Payne games. If you didn’t think those weren’t equally absurd, then Jesus.
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Yikes, lotta negativity here. Leave it up to you guys, and GoldenEye wouldn’t exist.
Oh, and to start up a proper shitstorm: I think GoldenEye is one of the best FPS games ever made. I’d argue that it influenced PC action FPS games more than any other title since Doom/Half Life. Wasn’t GoldenEye the start of seeing sniper rifles in every FPS made since?
Anyway!
I like the concept here. Nice touch using the costume from the comic by the way.
A critique though. The curve bullet system on display here looks very cumbersome. There should be a system that makes doing the curved dealie more intuitive than just using the directional keys to aim the shot; it seems very boring and uninteresting to me.
A better scheme would be making it so that you can fluidly curve shots on the fly, so that it can be done while moving about, better conveying the action movie feel. The game seems to be constrained by its cover system.
The set piece on the plane looks excellent.
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Does anyone like quick time events? Is there some secret society that raves about these and buys developers donuts? Every game I know with them executes poorly and to negative reaction from the public. Mercenaries 2 anyone?
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@ Man Raised By Puffins
Yeah I’m pretty sure the console Bionic Commando is in no way a “remake”, so my point stands. In fact the wiki page you link to says it’s a direct sequel right at the top.
Seriously though, am I the only one that thinks this stupid over the shoulder shaky cam stuff is bullshit? You control like a fucking tank in all the games that use that, and not coincidentally, they are all made primarily for consoles. They all require you to go behind cover or use some clunky aiming mechanism to actually shoot anything. I fear we’re never going to see a third person shooter that can actually make use of the mouse again.
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Also!
Just saw the video of the scene in the office. Same problem persists: the game is trying to be tactical with the use of cover, and I think thats a major mistake. There should be multiple enemies coming at you from multiple angles, hardly every letting up.
Instead of the use of cover, the game should blend in a way to dynamically move around whatever you are using as cover, so that you can make the whole thing more exciting. As it stands now it looks like a less visually busy Gears of War, with bullet curving. Which to me, is no good.
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The problem is that they are going for Gears of War, when they should be going for a next-gen Max Payne.
One of the things I love about MP is that you have yourself, your guns, and 10 guys coming at you, who are very, VERY capable of killing you. It was up to you to take the scene and your arsenal and improvise a way to beat the baddies. However you want to do that is up to you.
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@Dracko
How is this anything like Max Payne in terms of game mechanics?
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There aren’t enough kryptonite condoms, villains made out of shit and fourth wall-breaking rape in this one to get me interested. The story is just not sophisticated enough compared to the comic. I’m sorry.
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@Christian Othlom
Wow, did you really just call Wanted’s storyline sophisticated?
W..wow. Its it fun book, but come on man. Its a pretty dumb storyline.
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Y3K-Bug: I don’t think he was comparing to Max Payne, rather saying it’s a post-Payne action game, ie. the bullet-time. I disagree with him, of course, because it’s quite plainly just a GoW clone with bullet curving replacing the grenade curves and the bullet-time stuff being second generational (in that it’s most likely inspired by games that ripped bullet-time from Max Payne, rather than Max Payne itself), but everyone’s entitled to their own observations.
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Most, but not all, film tie-ins have been bad.
This one is worth covering because the bullet curving is an interesting (if silly) new mechanic, and because of the developer.
I think it looks pretty cool.
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Oh, and in case anyone was thinking “well what’s the difference between first generational and second generational, think of it like this: Tarantino movies are inspired by things like Spaghetti Westerns and exploitation flicks, whereas Tarantino-style movies are influenced by Tarantino rather than the source. So there’s a difference in the implementation.
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At long last! A game has finally emerged from the blessed loins of ‘Wanted: Thirteen-Year-Old Rape Fantasist Living In A Cave, To Ghostwrite For Talentless Scotsman’ (the ad didn’t work out, so he had to write it himself. But you can’t even tell the difference — nice one Mark!))
READ BETWEEN THE LINES.
I think it’s a good guiding principle, actually: no-one should give a fuck about metacritic! (Especially the little sophists pretending that metacritic can ‘objectively’ judge a game’s quality by averaging the scores of the ridiculously hype-gullible game review community, but they only show up for articles on released games, so that’s a whole other story.)
If a game does NOT have quick-time events and little respawning spiders that sap your health, then I WON’T BUY IT.
…It’s bizarre, isn’t it; I know a dev might really want to choreograph something and still want it to require player effort, but you’d think they might be a little put off by, oh, I don’t know, the way a QTE completely annuls any interest a choreographed sequence of events may hold, thereby rendering their effort redundant. I usually think that people who so much as mouth the words ‘immersion-breaking’ should be shot, but… playing what might otherwise be a fairly sophisticated game, and then suddenly having a minigame of Simon shoved in your face while the game slows down to carefully showcase all its graphical flaws in the worst light is a little… jarring. Simon? Seriously? Fuck off.
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@Pags
Got ya, thanks for the clarification.
@Christian Othlom
Sorry! Didn’t realize you were going for sarcasm there. My apologies.
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Godfather: The Game was really a surprisingly decent GTA clone. As was the Scarface game – try it, I think you’ll be surprised. Sure, Scarface fails in terms of storytelling and scripted missions, but the drug running and territory takeovers are quite compelling gameplay, and where most GTA-style games render cashflow trivial, it’s the whole game in Scarface – your money buys you legions of awesome things, from assassins and enforcer henchmen, to a driver to bring you any of your personal fleet of armored vehicles (with trunks in back that offer access to your personal armory) to investments in businesses that will grant greater payoffs, etc.
And while I’ve yet to play it, many critics seemed to think the King Kong (Peter Jackson version) videogame was pretty decent.
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I saw “Fate” thought “Manos” clicked the link and was disappointed.
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It seems kind of odd that they decided to make it a FPS. The LAST thing that movie was about was aiming at things.
It should be lock-on auto-targeting, and the twist would be using the lock-on to curve bullets and maximize damage. It’s not a shooter. It’s a hack and slash with bullets.
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Actually, let me clarify. That movie was all about aiming, but in the movie, it was nearly automatic.
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harry potter 1 – best. movie game. ever.
FLIPENDO!!
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This comments thread makes me ashamed to be a gamer.
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Woah. Woah. Has nobody played Toy Story 2 on the PS1?
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Ahahaha, wasn’t this the film that had the unparalleled plot device ‘the loom of fate’?! Where an old loom would produce cloth with imperfections, which translated via the medium of binary or some computer gubbins would give the name of a man that must die. So obviously, you do what the oversized weaving machine requests and kill the guy.
And when they didn’t obey it, the guy they should have killed, murdered one of their fathers or something! OH NOES, best do what the sewing machine demands!
I’m just relaying what I’ve heard because I never got to see it.
I’ve taken some flak for my fictional writing before, but now, whenever I’m criticised I think ‘Yeah, well at least I didn’t come up with the fucking LOOM OF FATE’.
The film might be a laugh, but as a narrative device this takes the biscuit and crams it up it’s own arse.
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Haven’t seem the film, but the “Loom” of fate type idea worked quite well in the ancient LucasFilm games adventure game called (surprisingly) “Loom”. Although there they never really went into much detail about it. IIRC there was supposed to be a sequel or two that would expand on the storyline, but those never came to fruition.
I think Loom was probably the first all “talkie” adventure game I ever played, back when CD-ROM drives were shiny and new.
Anyway, we now abandon this thread derailment and return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
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It looks interesting, we’ll see if does better than the average movie-tie-in-cash-in.
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awefull animations.. just awefull
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Awful spelling, just awful!
:P
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The Wanted comic was decent IMO, the movie looked so incredibly bad that I never saw it and never intend to. The game looks like it could be okay, though I’m not rushing anywhere cash in hand, I’ll follow its reviews once its out at least.
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games based off movies, 2 words. The, and Warriors.
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I liked the game! It’s great if you want to enter the world of the movie, and be able to curve bullets! That’s seriously the best thing ever. Don’t expect much from the game though, as its more than a way to escape the real world.
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