What's New?
Painkiller and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles go head to head. Battle of the reanimated dead!
Oh for crying out loud. What's wrong with April 16th? What is so unspeakably repulsive about this particular Friday that makes it such an unattractive proposition for the launch of a new game? It's not as if the tens, if not hundreds, of games currently down for April 30th and thereafter couldn't have come out this week, and just look at the quality of the competition! Any two-bit garden-shed publishing firm could claim a decent chart position on a week like this! All it needs a bit of creative marketing and packaging decent enough to tempt impulsive gamers out from behind their wallets, as they traipse disappointedly through GAME this lunchtime in search of something to buy.
Why is it that, instead of just releasing product when it's ready, this particular industry has to set aside specific dates upon which it erupts back into life, like a publicity-hungry volcano eager to make the leap from searing toes on the back pages of Geology Review to burning townsfolk on the front of every newspaper in the world? It never works like that. The best we see is the odd spurt of flame and maybe a man in a heatproof suit with a melted glove. Rubbish.
Yes, but What's New!?
Speaking of searing flesh, this week's most exciting prospect (actually, better make that 'only exciting prospect') is Painkiller, from brilliantly named developer People Can Fly. The reviews have been favourable so far, and from what we've seen it's a game that takes the Serious Sam-style approach of throwing up genuinely entertaining arcade-style FPS action in palatable doses, whilst still managing to look great with decent physics implementation. Yes, it's set in purgatory, which is a bit daft, but Doom was set on the doorsteps of hell and it still worked.
It's welcome around here, and we'll be keen to see if it lives up to the premise when we get round to reviewing it. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the other hand, which is also out today (on PS2 and Xbox; Cube is now down for the 30th and PC for the 23rd), is definitely not welcome. While far from perfect, the critics argue that Painkiller reworks a tried and trusted action game concept, relying on big guns, big bosses, shoe-horning, regular health top-ups and an overt but enjoyable formula to keep the pace - positively revelling in its own artificiality - and comes off all the better for it. If that's the case, it's a shame nobody at Konami had as much respect for our gaming past - TMNT, for its part, digs up the corpse of the typical early 90s scrolling beat-'em-up and paints it green, then pastes an irritating intro movie onto the front of it and shoves it in a DVD case, with nary a thought for trivial issues like 'fun' or 'variation'. (But you can unlock character art!)
We've already touched on Konami's audacity (well, nerve) in licensing a TV show that re-badges an ancient and fondly remembered concept to make money, and then making a game about it that re-badges an ancient and fondly remembered concept to make money, but it's worth looking at Painkiller and remembering that not every nostalgia trip has to be as painful as TMNT. (Of course, we now fully expect to get our hands on a copy of Painkiller and discover we dislike it beyond the original scope of the word 'hate', but it's a risk we're willing to take if it'll help illustrate the problems with TMNT...)
Moving on...
'Borrowing' from something slightly closer to home, Take-Two's The Haunted Mansion is reportedly out this Friday on PC (having already appeared on PS2, Xbox and Cube), and, yes, it's a game in which you have to wander around a mansion (which is haunted), cutting evil spirits down and trying to undo some crackpot's nefarious scheme. It's based on the Eddie Murphy film of the same name, but it's nothing to do with the actual film. It's not exactly a gripping narrative regardless, and in our experience the combat system grows to become rather more than a mere chore, but some of the puzzles are so ingenious that they actually make you smile. Which is, we imagine, rather more than either Dinotopia (Xbox) or The Muppets: Party Cruise (PS2) are likely to do, and something worthy of note in this age of tired concepts and moribund TV tie-ins. If you can find it cheap on any format, you might be surprised at how much you enjoy it. We were.
Unfortunately however, eking unexpected entertainment out of recent releases is about all you can expect to do this weekend, and your best bet is probably to stick with what you have and save your pennies for next Friday, when Serious Sam: Next Encounter and TOCA Race Driver 2 should be bidding for our affections. We'd put "among others", but we don't have a shred of conviction that anything else out next week will be worthy of comparison to those two. Hey ho. At least you've still got us to entertain you!
- PAL Releases
- Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey (Xbox)
- Muppets: Party Cruise (PS2)
- Painkiller (PC)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (PS2, Xbox)
- The Haunted Mansion (PC)
- Key US Releases
- Nothing that qualifies...