By Adam Smith on July 23rd, 2012 at 5:00 pm.

Imagine playing a game with a friend next to you on the couch perched on the arm of your office chair and saying to that friend: “You thought this was a movie, didn’t you, but it’s actually a fighting game with 150 different techniques distributed in 5 stages.” Of course, you’d only say that if you weren’t a person at all but were, instead, the press release for BRUCEfilm’s Stay Dead. “Forget about the old interactive movies from the 80′s” you’d go on to say, “Stay Dead is a fast action arcade game with total freedom of action, combined with a cinematographic direction.” Perhaps you’d add that it’s out now and then re-enact the utterly brilliant trailer. Watch.
Pay attention, there’s a quiz to follow.
1) Has the actor with a speaking part:
A) secured the script in his lap having never seen it before.
B) been shot in the leg.
C) messed his trousers mid-sentence.
2) Which developer’s logo does BRUCEfilm’s remind you of?
A) Lucasarts.
B) Lucasarts.
C) Lucasarts.
3) Does one of the enemies go FWAAARRRGGHHH?
A) Definitely.
B) It’s more of a DWAAAARRRGH.
C) FWAAAAAARGGHHHH!
4) Is there just one sound effect for punches?
A) I counted two.
B) I think it’s half a sound effect.
C) Yes. And a bonus one for being hit with a stick.
I only have the answer to question two. It’s B, Lucasarts.

I haven’t played it but it looks to be a sort of rhythm action beat ‘em up, with actual footage of people pretending to beat each other up as a reward for the correct inputs.

You can buy Stay Dead now or you can just watch the trailer again and chortle to yourself.



23/07/2012 at 17:08 Freud says:
Rise of the
RobotsWooden Actors.23/07/2012 at 17:11 TheWhippetLord says:
Finally a game that is composed entirely of FMV cinematic and QTEs. Truly the quest for perfect gameplay is at an end.
23/07/2012 at 17:11 SuperNashwanPower says:
I think I saw the words “EDGE” in there somewhere. And maybe SCROLLS. And Bumgardner.
Also i saw crappy martial arts, however the whole copyright thing is probably more interesting.
I think that man’s beard might be stolen, too.
23/07/2012 at 17:15 Pony Canyon says:
Behold, the Sega CD era of gaming makes it’s glorious comeback!
23/07/2012 at 18:22 PoulWrist says:
Yes!
23/07/2012 at 17:35 CrookedLittleVein says:
Skimming this, I saw “Bruce” multiple times and am now disappointed to find a noticeable lack of either Bruce Campbell, Bruce Willis and Bruce Wayne.
On an unrelated note, I have now realised how odd the name Bruce sounds when you repeat it several times.
23/07/2012 at 18:35 Arglebargle says:
How could you have missed Bruce Lee??
23/07/2012 at 22:08 dE says:
He flows like water. Pretty easy to miss him.
23/07/2012 at 17:36 kikito says:
It is definitively “TSHAAAAARRGGHH”.
My Mega-CD doesn’t work any more though.
23/07/2012 at 17:52 lordcooper says:
I can’t work out if the title is a description or a command.
23/07/2012 at 17:55 KingCathcart says:
0:13 – Is that Alec Meer? Whats wrong with his voice?
23/07/2012 at 18:06 Alec Meer says:
You have clearly never seen me in the (tiny) flesh.
23/07/2012 at 18:16 KingCathcart says:
Actually I have (thats my photo you knicked off twitter for this post)
I just thought maybe you’ve been working out since then.
And got yourself some lifts.
And a wooden american accent.
23/07/2012 at 18:05 thesundaybest says:
“AS PERFECT FOR THE EXPERIENCED PLAYER ACTION GAMES, AND FOR THOSE WHO HAS NEVER PLAYED ONE, REPRESENTS AN EXPERIENCE AS PLEASANT AND COMPLETE THAT YOU’LL BE LOOKING FORWARD TO PLAYING” 5/5 (ANALIZANDOMAC)
New Twitter idea – game review bot.
23/07/2012 at 18:23 The_Great_Skratsby says:
So David Cage’s action sequences meets Sega CD. Now this is just glorious.
23/07/2012 at 18:35 Ironclad says:
OF COURSE!!!!
23/07/2012 at 18:54 Gazoinks says:
“FIGHT WITH YOUR BARE HANDS OR WITH A STICK.” OH MAN. This game has way too many features for me.
23/07/2012 at 19:14 Hoaxfish says:
Bruce?
23/07/2012 at 19:25 Gazoinks says:
Bruce!
23/07/2012 at 22:16 Freud says:
So what is worst.
Movies based on fighting games.
Fighting games using movie sequences.
25/07/2012 at 12:15 belgand says:
I don’t know, Mortal Kombat was a pretty decent movie with a fun soundtrack where people came together to another dimension and kicked each other in the face. It was actually surprisingly faithful to the game and decided that it would work best if they just concentrated on making it have a lot of fun face-kicking and thus play to the strengths of a fighting game/film.
23/07/2012 at 22:26 mrwout says:
This has been done before, and way beter in my opinion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZA0tzKP9K54#t=256s
23/07/2012 at 22:41 Ohcomeonnow says:
Hold on, hold on. Is the price listed for the Ipad right? Or is it in Yuan or something :)
24/07/2012 at 01:03 tlarn says:
I was fine with the idea of the return of the interactive movies from the Sega CD generation, but I refuse to support a studio that uses Comic Sans on their game’s website.
EDIT: And by allowing the site’s permission on Noscript, the Comic Sans disappears and becomes a more sensible font.
How the hell did Comic Sans get there?
24/07/2012 at 07:50 LionsPhil says:
I think Firefox, the cheeky scamp, uses it as the default for one of the generic fallback font families, like “fantasy”. NoScript was probably also blocking the webfont until you whitelisted the site (not least because a lot of people pull them in by including JavaScript from Google).
24/07/2012 at 06:54 Eagle32 says:
Wow, that looks terrible.
24/07/2012 at 07:43 P7uen says:
How did they rope Liam Neeson into this?
24/07/2012 at 08:46 jkz says:
FWARGH?
24/07/2012 at 08:47 jkz says:
man those grafx is so lifelike :O
25/07/2012 at 12:27 mr.black says:
Graphix is not everything, they need to work on their animations..
24/07/2012 at 10:17 AngoraFish says:
Did I just read this on the front page of their website? Tell me I didn’t…
“for a small indipendet team is always hard to produce something fresh that could reach the market. But, no offence for all the other teams that pursuit their dreams with our same passion, I think that for us is even harder because we started building something really fresh, new and never-seen-before but that at first glinch seems to belong to a genre that’s universally mistreated.
“Truth is that Stay Dead has something in common with FMVs just as much as FIFA 95 has something in common with FIFA 13.
“This is why we would like to thanks, from the bottom of our hearts, all those reviewers that resisted the temptation of labeling Stay Dead as an ‘FMV from sega CD32 age’ just by watching the trailer, but that really judged it with attention and right after playing it, instead.
“If you’re among the many reviewers that love to give thier readers an opinion based on actual facts, and that hate those web sites that mistreat news with superficiality, just drop us an e-mail at press@stay-dead.com, be precise on what platform you prefer, whether it is PC, Mac od iPad, and we’ll be more than happy to give you a review copy of Stay Dead.
“Thank you very much for your professionalism and also for your time, the small ‘big’ experiments like ours can only survive with the help of people like you.
The Brucefilm staff.”
24/07/2012 at 10:47 Krimson says:
‘Actual in game graphic.’
Just the one?
24/07/2012 at 16:51 Iokanaan says:
at least I got one of my answers right.
furthermore, two things:
- isn’t the Speaking One Alan Wake actor Ilkka Villi?
- why is the guy in the car junkyard shouting ‘TIMMYYYY!!’?