"Just because High Voltage Software's horror shoot 'em up The Grinder is making the leap to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, transitioning from first-person perspective to top-down shooter, doesn't mean the original Wii version is dead. Far from it.
According to High Voltage's CEO Eric Nofsinger, the Wii version is still a going concern, it just may stick to its Left 4 Dead-like roots when played on a Wii Remote. Nofsinger tells IGN that the developer has "invested more than year into the Wii" version and "we wouldn't want to see that work 'thrown away,'"
The most recent version of The Grinder we played at GDC was of the high-definition top-down variety, akin to the developer's Hunter: The Reckoning games."Kotaku...
To this I ask WHAT? So your going to take your hot property and split it? A game that was probably not going to do anything in the first place is now going to have the wonderful world of PR confusion to be added to the list of it's back of the box features. Most of the folks interested in this game were interested in the original concept that was on the Wii not the get, "get 2, yes 2 games for the price of one." Concept that High Voltage has managed to push through the preverbal door. Having seen the new version of the XBOX 360 and PS3 version running on Youtube, I have to say I'm not at all interested or impressed. The main problem seems to be that it LOOKS like an old game and plays like an old game. It seems like something that would be on XBOX LIVE ARCADE or PSN. Not a full boxed product. However, the original Wii Concept seems to have the potential.
In other not so much news, it seems that the longer I play through Final Fantasy XIII the more of a grind it becomes. I honestly am beginning to be reminded greatly of World of Warcraft as I fight my way through the 3rd or 4th version of the same monster. I really hate it when a developer creates a REALLY long game and can't support it with content. If I have to keep fighting the same 4 enemies with just different colored skins I think I shall scream. If you cannot make interesting monsters to populate your 40 hour game, perhaps you should reconsider the length of said game.
Certainly fighting through areas where there would be similar enemies is one thing. But when your fighting the same enemies over and over just because they just SO HAPPEN to be where you are, it's a little much. I am fully capable of dealing with this sort of thing in an Massively Multiplayer Online game; but I play games like Final Fantasy XIII for a finely crafted story and interesting enemies. Not the same rinse and repeat for hours on end.
Of course, there are very few if any really long games that do this properly. Which is part of the reason why the 40 hour game is all but dead except in the case of Fallout or Borderlands where the idea of the game is really to perform a mission and survive the environment by leveling up rather than simply going through a linear story. Which is, of course, exactly what Final Fantasy XIII is. The amount of linearity in the game is practically the same as that of Uncharted 2. Except that the game doesn't have that kind of pacing or even action. It's more like a half step toward Final Fantasy 12 and a half step back to 7. Neither one really working very well. The idea of allowing A.I. to control all but one character is fine in theory. But in practice there were times when the A.I. just stood there or when they didn't execute the desired actions. Especially in the areas of the Saboteur and the Synergist where actions are required in a particular way. When an enemy has a weakness to being slowed, then you have to cast slow, every time. Not just 4 out 6 times. The Paradigm system is all right; but it doesn't have the finesse that the battle system in 12 had when you had unlocked all the actions and just simply making everything turned based is even better. Here you can make whatever mistakes or victories on your own. The idea that this doesn't work is proved by Dragon Age Origins. Where you can have incredibly detailed and difficult battles.
This is not a review, I'm just saying that at 20 hours, which is pretty much where the game is "supposed" to get good; it isn't very good. If this is the apex of the game, it is truly disappointing. The tutorial system is terrible and it begs for the player to purchase a strategy guide just to understand how the game is SUPPOSED to work. Given the severe linearity of the game's structure it seems like the characters could be telling a MORE compelling story. Certainly this false sense of urgency mixed with the sense that you have no idea where your going or why; is a little ridiculous. Also the very idea that each battle is scored simply by how much damage you do per second is absolutely the silliest thing I've ever seen in a RPG. So I intend on finishing the game for review, but it is with little happiness that I must allow FFXIII to remain in my que of games to finish sooner rather than later. Because at this point, I'd just a soon; not.
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