Welcome to this week's Gist List that looks at the pulse of the
gaming industry. Here's what's on tap this week:
Alice in
Wonderland 3D?
This month's
Computer Gaming World broke a great story on their news page, detailing former id Software
designer American McGee's plans for a twisted 3D version of Alice in Wonderland that he
will produce with Electronic Arts. The
article goes on to all but confirm he will use the Quake III engine for the project, and
you have to admit the idea of creating a dark version of this whimsical fairy tale
definitely could turn into something special. However,
what got me most excited about the game – which still hasn't been officially
announced – is the secret Electronic Arts website located
here. It's one of the best teaser sites
I've ever seen and I urge you to check it out…admittedly the site raises more
questions than answers. This definitely
looks like a game that will be on my radar map for some time to come.
So Many Stark Trek Games
In leafing through a
couple of recent game magazine, it occurred to me that there must be at least a half-dozen
Star Trek games in development. Interplay has
a slew of titles in development, as does Activision, not to mention developer Collective
Studios' relatively unknown Unreal engine based Deep Space 9 shooter. Although some of the games look impressive
(especially Activision and Raven's Quake III powered Star Trek: Elite Force), I'm worried
that the market is just going to be inundated with Star Trek titles come the end of the
year. In addition, we have to consider the
fact that there hasn't ever really been a good Star Trek game. Although I'm sure a few of these games will end up
hitting the mark, I get a sense that there are going to be far too many Star Trek games
coming out. With titles like Klingon
Honor Guard sullying the franchise name on the PC, you can't help but wonder what all
these other games are going to do to the Star Trek namesake. Here's to hoping!
and Olympic Games
Last
week Eidos announced that they had secured the Olympic license for the next six years. Immediately I had a mixed reaction to this news. First of all, I've always said that the Olympic
games are truly one of the best game themes. Anyone
remember the old Epyx titles Summer and Winter games?
Those were IBM PC Jr. titles from the 80s that were a heck of a lot of fun
to play. Sega's Decathelete for
the Saturn was also an incredible game in part because of its wide-variety of sporting
events coupled together. Therefore, if
Eidos really puts their thinking cap on and does the Olympic franchise justice, we could
be in for a treat. After all, the Olympics
offers a versatile lineup of sports that when coupled together can make for one great
game. However, I'm worried that the Olympic
license may have been purchased just for its market value, as there have been a number of
Olympic games from past years that didn't live up to expectations. (Some of those games
were from U.S. Gold, now part of Eidos). I
wish Eidos luck in producing solid Olympic games, but let's just hope they aren't buying a
name for the name's sake (anyone care to say Braveheart?).
Driver
It's
seldom that a PlayStation game captures my attention, especially when I have to compare
them to souped-up 3D accelerated titles on the PC. Regardless
of this fact, the PlayStation version of Driven from GT Interactive and Reflections caught
my eye. It's probably best described as Gran
Turismo meets the driving segments of the original Die Hard Trilogy, and truth be told, it
just boils down to a lot of fun racing action with car crashes, cop chases, and stunt
driving. Although I have to admit some
of the controls – especially the difficult spin maneuvers – take time to master,
in the end the game gets addictive, in part thanks to a variety of play modes from the
story-driven Underground to the less-structured training missions.
GT Interactive
Although
GT Interactive just released Driver (and shipped a million copies of it), things don't
look very good for a company that was once one of the top 5 software publishers. Flush with cash flow concerns, GT has all but had
to open themselves up to acquisition talks (latest rumor: Hasbro will buy them). Although GT never really had a particularly
strong lineup of software, they hit a few goldmines, namely the Duke Nukem franchise. Still, their sporadic success was not enough to
make up for a number of poor acquisition decisions such as the purchase of Twisted Metal
developer SingleTrac. (They floundered with
two highly forgettable pseudo-racing games last year and currently have no other titles
announced). However, at the end of the
day GT is a testament to the fact that even the largest publishers need solid internal
development teams and can't rely on external developers to make the company prosper. It will indeed be very interesting to see what
happens to GT over the coming months.
PC Accelerator
Hats off to PC Accelerator, Imagine Media quirky game magazine
that has slowly but surely shown massive growth in readership over the past year. Although I have to admit to feeling that the
magazine sometimes goes over the top in their mixing of celebrities with games –
there are just a few too many bikini-clad models on display with no relevance to the
industry – you have to admit their sense
of humor is second-to-none. While all
the other PC magazines take a very professional tone, PC Accelerator has their own spin on
the gaming industry. Take, for example,
their hilarious E3 wrap-up story in the August 1999 issue, which is probably one of the
most to-the-point accounts of what E3 is really like for a large segment of attendees. If
anything, the magazine has a flair others don't.
Your Ideas?
Do you have a suggestion about something that should be added to next week's list?
E-mail gistlist@gameslice.com
and we'll consider your suggestion.
Thanks for reading!
Geoff
Keighley
Editor-in-Chief
GameSlice
