THQ has had a rough quarter. They cancelled several high
profile planned titles and reported losses of almost 13%. In an industry where
that kind of loss gets whole studios shut down, that’s cause for concern. But
THQ look like they’re bringing their AAA game to this year’s E3. They’ve got a
handful of pretty interesting games lined up, and it looks like they’re trying
to get back in the game with some strong titles.
First of them is Darksiders II. The game that’s one part Zelda and one part apocalyptic
horsemen is back with a sequel. If you thought your first protagonist was
hardcore, you’ll be happy to know that this game’s star is the Horseman Death, brother of War.
Darksiders II promises a whole new range of maps, and they’ve confirmed to be
that it will be twice the size of the first one. Death will get to explore a
large number of dungeons, with some areas featuring as many dungeons as there
were in the entire first game.
Darksiders II will also allow players access to
city hubs, where they can interact with NPC’s and get side quests. And for your
trouble you can collect up to 12 different armor pieces that will enhance
Death’s Wrath powers. It’s looking like a much more ambitious sequel to a solid
action title. The game keeps getting delayed (see Darksiders II - new release date) to improve the content, so they’re
definitely working on making it a winner.
You may have heard that the latest Ninja Gaiden wasn’t that
well received. Well, the main reason for this is that the creative mind behind
the series, Tomonobu Itagaki, left Tecmo in 2008 and formed Valhalla Game
Studios. THQ has signed on to publish the studio’s first game, The Devil’s Third.
It is a third-person
shooter that will take place in a wide variety of locations and will possibly
feature a sci-fi plot. It’s not just a straight-up shooter though; Devil’s
Third will feature some pretty intense melee action, something Itakagi is
pretty skilled at crafting. It looks like it’s going to be a tough action title
that’ll provide plenty of challenge, if Itagaki’s previous work is any
indication.
Homefront 2 is a tough sell for me folks. The first Homefront
built up some great buzz with a well-crafted trailer that showed a dystopian world where Koreans could take on the world’s
largest superpower. It revealed that the story would be the work of notable gun
nut and commie hater John Milius. However, when the game hit it sported a fairly
short and uninvolving campaign, and fairly standard gameplay.
So why should we
be excited about an inexplicable sequel? Well, for starters, the sequel will be
using Crytek's CryEngine 3. From a gameplay standpoint, that’s great news because it
means we can expect the sort of massive environments the CryEngine can
generate, and the game-makers will have a fantastic tool to work with. Of
course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Unreal Engine that powered
the first game, but we can hope that the nice people at Kaos Studios have
learned from their mistakes in the first game and are ready to put out a more
memorable sequel.
We’ve already discussed this one folks, inSANE is a survival horror game from the mind of
none other than Guillermo del Toro. It promises a very deep and involving
experience and we’d verify that for you but details are guarded like the
artifacts in an Indiana Jones movie.
It’s a shame more people didn’t play Metro 2033. For those
of you that don’t know, Metro 2033 is a gritty survival horror shooter that
takes the player into dark spaces where they must fight aggressive and vicious
mutants while scavenging for supplies.
It was an involving title that reminded
players of hits like Fallout 3 and FEAR, and if you haven’t played it I’d
recommend checking it out. Metro: Last Light is the sequel to Metro 2033, and it looks
just as dark and visceral as the first. Hopefully the game will get a bit more
attention at this year’s E3. THQ have a good game on their hands here, they
just have to hope for some good marketing.
A South Park licensed game? Wow, how exciting, those usually turn out
so well. You can forgive people for being cynics about licensed games, but
South Park: The Game sets out to prove them wrong. It’s an RPG that features
everyone’s favorite little foulmouths in the town where everything just keeps
going terribly wrong.
The game looks like it’ll have plenty of the series’ dark
humor and it seems like it offers a strong RPG experience as well. And, in case
someone hasn’t linked you to the hilarious news piece yet, one of the classes
is going to be ‘Jew’. The game is the product of Fallout New Vegas studio
Obsidian Entertainment, and despite recent setbacks it appears to be on track.
If this makes it, it’ll be a hilarious and gratifying experience for lifelong
South Park fans.
Now one last thing: Do you know anyone who’s a Warhammer 40,000
fan? Do they ever talk about anything else? All kidding aside, Warhammer 40,000
has an extremely devoted fanbase and I believe Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online will be the linchpin
of THQ’s E3 appearance this year.
The title promises massive battlegrounds with
involving gun battles between player-formed squads. This will include mechanics
like cover fire or flanking formations. Additionally, the game will sport
controllable vehicles that support more than one pilot. All in all, looking
like a pretty grandiose experience.
The best part is that Vigil games intend to do away with many standard MMO
elements and instead make it a more traditional single-player and multi-player
experience that features online play. It’s a noble goal and I think they might
have a quality pseudo-MMO on their hands.
Verizian is a long-time videogame fan. He believes that as many people as possible should play videogames (although many already do but refuse to admit it). He enjoys sharing smaller, independent games that try interesting things.
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