Terminator details disappoint
Infogrames spends too much acquiring license to commission a decent game?
Infogrames US office has announced the first details of it newly signed Terminator game for PlayStation 2, the first from the license it acquired earlier this year.
Once the license had been secured, Infogrames took the license to developers Paradigm and the first details of the game have just been released.
The title in development has been described as a third person action game being created for PlayStation 2 initially and with other system versions to follow.
The game is set in Los Angeles in the year 2029 with the player taking on the mantle of one of several soldiers fighting the fleshed out Model 101 Series 800 Cyborg Terminators.
This really does seem like another case of the minimum effort put into a licensed game, something that has been endemic to the games industry for years. The Terminator easily has the potential to become a killer app of some magnitude, if it were put into the right hands. A third-person action title really is as unimaginative as you can get, the 21st century equivalent of the licenced-platformer. What is the point in securing such a novel and innovative license, only to then squeeze it into a generic game mold?
A third person action game could be made about anything. The fact that your over the shoulder action sees you fighting Terminators is immaterial. Blade is a perfect example of this.
It is a problem that exists in the games industry, and most of the fault lies with the bigger publishing houses. At present a publishing house secures what it believes will be lucrative license from a film some other area of entertainment on its own merits, as it exists in its present form. There is no game plan when these properties are initially purchased.
The publisher then gets a variety of developers to pitch ideas to it, and chooses what it sees as the best one. The problem lies in the fact that the publisher looks for different plus point than perhaps you or we would. Cost, development time, market-proven game structure are, without doubt, top of the publishers list of priorities, leaving Innovation and creativity languishing somewhere near the bottom.
Terminator, like Blade, 007 Racing and many more, could and should have been so much more.
Once the license had been secured, Infogrames took the license to developers Paradigm and the first details of the game have just been released.
The title in development has been described as a third person action game being created for PlayStation 2 initially and with other system versions to follow.
The game is set in Los Angeles in the year 2029 with the player taking on the mantle of one of several soldiers fighting the fleshed out Model 101 Series 800 Cyborg Terminators.
This really does seem like another case of the minimum effort put into a licensed game, something that has been endemic to the games industry for years. The Terminator easily has the potential to become a killer app of some magnitude, if it were put into the right hands. A third-person action title really is as unimaginative as you can get, the 21st century equivalent of the licenced-platformer. What is the point in securing such a novel and innovative license, only to then squeeze it into a generic game mold?
A third person action game could be made about anything. The fact that your over the shoulder action sees you fighting Terminators is immaterial. Blade is a perfect example of this.
It is a problem that exists in the games industry, and most of the fault lies with the bigger publishing houses. At present a publishing house secures what it believes will be lucrative license from a film some other area of entertainment on its own merits, as it exists in its present form. There is no game plan when these properties are initially purchased.
The publisher then gets a variety of developers to pitch ideas to it, and chooses what it sees as the best one. The problem lies in the fact that the publisher looks for different plus point than perhaps you or we would. Cost, development time, market-proven game structure are, without doubt, top of the publishers list of priorities, leaving Innovation and creativity languishing somewhere near the bottom.
Terminator, like Blade, 007 Racing and many more, could and should have been so much more.
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