Romero's New Gig 113
Eurogamer is reporting on John Romero's newest endeavor, a studio designing a Massive game. Slipgate Ironworks is currently hiring, to work on ... a game. From the article: "The site doesn't offer many clues to the game's nature (although it does reveal that it will include weapons. And animation. And light!), but we do know from Romero's public comments that it will be ready 'when it's done' and isn't down for a 2007 release as some reports have speculated." I'm sure it will be up to the standards of Mr. Romero's numerous other good works.
Re:Already losing interest. (Score:3, Interesting)
What about Half Life's gravity gun? What about Black's art style? What about Prey's... EVERYTHING?
Yeah, there are only so many ways you can shoot a guy in the crotch, but FPS is the (second?) best selling genre on PC so people aren't getting tired of the genre yet.
Then again, I never thought I'd find fairly good shooters boring, but somehow paying $5 each for Operation Snowblind and Pariah felt like I got overcharged $8.
"Do ray mi fa so long, sucker!!" (repeat 30x)
he's still making games? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Numerous other good works" (Score:4, Interesting)
What, like Doom, Quake, & Wolfenstein 3D? I don't understand why it's so amazingly popular to bash Romero. Sure, Daikatana wasn't great, but neither was Will Wright's SimHealth [wikipedia.org] -- and no one bashes Will.
It's not like Daikatana was this epic disaster. It was hyped, it had truly terrible advertising ("make you his bitch...," what were they thinking?), and sales were pretty pathetic, but it did make enough to cover the cost of production. So, technically, Daikatana has been more of a hit than, say, the XBox. It's time we all jumped off the "John-Romero-sucks" bandwagon.
mod parent up! (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, Romero was a good designer. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Already losing interest. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a real problem in almost any entertainment medium. People have been complaining about this in movies and music for decades. In those mediums, the answer is underground or indy films/music. Luckily, we have something of an easier fix in gaming.
This problem with gaming is almost exclusively present in single-player, or cooperative multiplayer games. If the game maker has to judge how strong/hard to make enemies/puzzles, he often ends up going witht he lowest commen denomenator.
The fix is multiplayer. I've been getting my butt kicked time and time again at BF2. Those guys are talented and smart and they'll find very creative ways to use their environment for an advantage. These are the games that I think would most bennefit from fully-destructible and other ways that you can leave a mark on your environment. The ability to track, better ability to hide, and the ability to destroy hiding spots, etc. could all make games much more interesting, but they depend on the basic premis that your enemy is at least as intelligent as you.
The one big problem with multiplayer is that there's not enough work being done to pit enemys of similar skill against each other. In sports they have various leagues that seperate different skill levels, but in multiplayer I'm often playing against morons on one game or gods on another. Both can be frustrating.
TW
Re:Massive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Daikatana was similarly huge in scope and he demonstrated he couldn't execute. Who's going to pay for that again? He has a little bit of the Doom cred left that he can cash in, but if this one flops I'm afraid he's done.