By Alec Meer on February 5th, 2010 at 1:18 pm.
Console monster-bothering shooter The Grinder has just been confirmed for PC, which means you too can (re)murder a metric death-ton of zombies, vampires and werewolves next Halloween. Key features are co-op play between four dudes with specific powers, and being able to mess up rather a lot of enemies at once. A little bit Left 4 Dead and a little bit Gauntlet, by the sound of it – and, judging by the trailer below, a bit of a Clive Barker vibe.
Not convinced it’s going to be tickling our brain-glands much, but a good co-op mode can do wonderful things for even the shallowest puddle.
It’s developed by one High Voltage (when we touch! when we kiss!) Software, but they’ve not locked down a publisher yet. Your guess is as good as mine as whether this is a bad sign or a canny bidding war. I’ll just leave this little note saying they were responsible for Leisure Suit Larry: Magnum Cum Laude here… More directly relevantly, they created the Hunter: The Reckoning series, which was utterly throwaway but good, cooperative fun in an Alien Breed-meets-Resi kind of way. By the sound of it, The Grinder’s very much influenced by those.
I’m struggling to get excited for this. It was previously a Wii exclusive and it doesn’t look like they’ve done much work towards prettying it up for the HD crowd. I think, between Left 4 Dead and Killing Floor, we’ve kind of got this game already.
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First it’s supposed to be Wii exclusive, then it’s announced for 360 and PS3 as well and now for PC, too. Hope they now put some real effort into this and manage to make this a quality title – for them. Their much hyped (on the Wii-side of things) “The Conduit” seems to be a rather underwhelming shooter that would’ve gone largely unnoticed, had it been on any other platform, despite their efforts.
Well, considering the Wii’s install base, it went largely unnoticed. Seems that making a game about shooting things and assuring that it is “hardcore” doesn’t work that well on the Wii. ;-)
Anyway, is it only me, or does anyone else notice that the very last notes of the trailer’s music seem to be a contorted variation of the Harry Potter theme?
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Ugh. You’re right, it looks a lot like Jericho. Whether it’s appalling enough to be funny for an hour or two, I’m not sure.
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The Conduit was a piece of shit. Utter garbage.
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@ Lewie: The shame of it was that every interview I saw with them they genuinely appeared to want to show people you don’t have to slack off because you’re making a Wii game. I thought the controls were just about as good as they’d claimed they would be and they did a not bad job with the look of the thing. The problem was they forgot to put an actual good game under it. Recycled rooms that weren’t very inspired the first time and enemies that were less than zero fun to fight.
I’d hoped for something to challenge Metroid Prime 3 as best Wii shooter but it turned out not worthy of licking Prime’s boots.
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It sounds grind-y…
/me hangs head in shame.
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Hey, more computer games.
Hooray computer games!
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It’s a shame that Clive Barker’s Jericho exists, really. Nobody seems to remember how good Clive Barker’s Undying was. I’d like to see some kind of retrospective feature on that game before it’s lost to the sands of time.
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I approve of the Electric 6 reference.
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Werewolves, zombies, and Vampires? I’m sold! I hate it that I seen this trailer now when the game doesn’t come out for two years. :(
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Huh, never expected to see this on the PC. I remember it was touted as the Wii’s next big shooter, since The Conduit turned out pretty badly.
I’m tentatively excited because the trailer looked pretty cool, but Halloween 2011 seems so far awayyyyy.
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Wasn’t this first shown as a ‘L4D for the Wii’ sort of thing?
It couldn’t do well on the Pc. Between both L4D games and the Killing Floor how can another undead co-op shooty get anough of a seperate identity to stand out?
(unless, of course, they go all out like that japanese company that makes them Earth Defense Force and Global Defence Force games)
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That would be a work of art.
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Halloween 2011? Why would you spend money releasing a trailer over a year and a half before the game comes out?
Not to mention the graphics look sloppy- like a case of hi-res and low-poly. The general look and feel seems okay- not great, but okay- but why would you release a trailer containing in-engine footage of something that looks borderline shovelware eighteen months out?
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Metric Deathton would be a good name for a band.
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