Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies provided zombie slaughter faire and DOA even brought some eye candy and action to the table. Hitman, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill took decent stabs at the genre. In the CG realm Final Fantasy: Advent Children and Resident Evil: Degeneration really brought the quality control up a notch. In this day and age there a some video game stories that haven’t been adapted and if done right, could be epic in cinematic and box office proportions.
With Tekken, Metal Gear, Tron 2 and Prince of Persia coming to a theater near you, it’s no surprise that video game movies are going to stick around. These stories have the potential to be great and Hollywood is fast learning comics and video games are material worth taking seriously. But if they knock those out of the park, what next? Since this is a PS3 site let’s keep the list to a least titles that have appeared on a Sony system. And we’ll stick to original IPs, games not based on movies naturally, and envision what kind of imagery might be truly epic on screen.
5. NINJA GAIDEN
There aren’t many high budget films about ninja that come to mind. When you consider how many high production films actually use wirework and martial arts it becomes an even more surprising fact. Take Ryu Hayabusa here and follow his mystical journey accompanied by adversaries’ heads popping off in an ultra violent manner, I think you may have a winner on your hands. Highly stylized cinematography may even allow a buxom Rachel with her impossibly huge and impossibly heavy hammer (yes, hammer) swinging around popping enemies into the air. Just imagine everything in the Matrix except it’s like a ninja fantasy world.
4. DEVIL MAY CRY
DMC is a perfect candidate for a screen adaptation because you have a cooler than ice hero private eye that has a hotter than hell partner in crime, Trish. Capcom, known for their outrageous character designs have brought us Dante: a flaming sword, twin pistol-wielding demon hunter that can morph into a demon himself. Tell me that that’s not a righteous special effects extravaganza waiting to happen.
3. FALLOUT
Do this post-apocalyptic story that’s part Half-Life and part Resident Evil. Go through this ruined landscape facing hordes of mutants and give the camera plenty of slow-mo opportunities to watch the armaments fly into their torsos and have them explode into a wondrous gelatinous blood bomb. A definite R rating. Let’s steer clear from Dwayne Johnson’s Doom, and think more Clive Owen’s Children of Men in terms of depth …except with mutants.
2. SOUL CALIBUR (direct-to-video cg animation)
Even though we have a live action Tekken feature coming up, I think a cg film would accommodate the Soul series best as possible. It doesn’t take too much imagination to get the visual feel of it since most Soul Calibur games have had gorgeous CG in their games already. Just take that quality animation and make it a full length feature about Siegfried’s quest for the Soul Edge and how it turns him into Nightmare and have him face the robust cast of characters the series has garnered throughout the years. Here are some stills of the outrageous Ivy that could be easily implemented.
1. GOD OF WAR
There was heavy internet buzz awhile back that Brett Ratner was going to try to ruin a God of War film. Thank every god in the pantheon that that was aborted or was simply a cruel joke taken way too far. A movie starring Kratos needs to be a slaughterfest somewhere in between 300 and Clash of the Titans. Stylized blood effects and mythological beasts with the scale of Lord of the Rings. Testosterone heavy with harems and goddesses wearing far too little just as the game does to appeal to anyone with heavy affinity to male juvenile subject matter.
A rare occasion that a cartoon character becomes so popular that they become canon in the actual comics. But loved far and wide for her maniacal tendencies, Harley Quinn was introduced in Batman the Animated Series 15 or so odd years ago. Her performance has paid off because she continues her candy lane of murder and mayhem in Batman books today. And now, she appears in Batman: Arkham Asylum with a bit of a Dark Knight makeover. Guess lil ol’ Harl has been doing a bit of shopping.
As the world’s preeminent detective, Batman has a lousy track record when it comes to video games. But I’ve been on board with this ever since I’d heard Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil’s voices in the original teaser.
Press releases are generally boring, full of fluff and not worth the time to read. Luckily, we have quirky corporate presidents that can make them worthwhile. In Emmanuel Olivier’s press release he accuses Sony of charging exorbinant royalty fees and censoring Microïds’ games for NA release.
I expect we’ll see a rebuttal from Sony in the near future.
Paris, April 17, 2009 - Following the countless messages and questions from fans which followed our announcement on April 1st regarding the launch of Syberia 3, Emmanuel Olivier, President of Microïds, gives more details on that announcement.
“Syberia 3 is not an April Fool’s joke. The game is highly expected by the community of fans of adventure games and fans of Kate Walker and it will be launched, it is one of our most strategic projects at Microïds and we have been anticipating it for a long time.
It will be released on PC for sure, however, on PS3, this could actually turn into an April Fool’s joke because SONY is the only decision-maker on this point, as strange as it may seem to some people.
Benoît Sokal, the author of Syberia and Syberia 2, has mentioned several times in the press that he would only participate in a sequel to his masterpiece if he had enough financial means to design and develop an exceptional title. Today Microïds is ready to invest in this ambitious production. But everyone knows that to amortize the development costs of a major video game with that level of quality, it is essential to develop it for multiple platforms, PC and consoles.
However Sony Computer Entertainment has already censured Microïds in 2003 by denying that Syberia was released on PS2 in the United States though it had previously been released in Europe on that console. The same refusal happened for a dozen other Microïds titles for the U.S.
Beyond this censorship of the authors and their producers who believe in their creations and who take the financial risks when building up productions for the console without knowing whether they will be approved or denied by SONY in the last minute, the exorbitant royalties demanded by SONY to manufacture the games on its consoles seriously hamper the financing ability of independent producers. Microïds has paid more than 15 million Euros of royalties to SONY for its entire catalog, which represents 55% of the Microïds turnover for this platform. April Fools? Well no! It is unfortunately the “rule of the game” imposed by SONY.
The revenue shortfalls due to the PS2 games we were not able to sell in the United States, a highly significant territory, coupled with the excessive royalties paid to SONY for the European territories, have so far prevented Microïds from having the ability to reinvest in an ambitious sequel to the Syberia series.
So today we launch an SOS to all fans of the Syberia series: let us rally to support the independent creation and convince Sony to change its rules. Send all your messages of support to: supporToSyberia3PS3@microids.com
SYBERIA 3 on PS3, an April Fool’s? It’s up to SONY!”
I have to confess that I had no prior knowledge of Solomon Grundy before having a view of these screens. I might not know who he was, but I can’t wait to take him down in DC Universe Online. It’s shaping up to be a beautiful game. It’s going to be a PC, PS3 release which is quite an odd combo. Considering the stranglehold Microsoft has on ‘Windows Live’.
For the past few months, gamers have been wildly anticipating the release of FFVII: Advent Children Complete on Blu-Ray. Sure the movie was good, but most are waiting to get their hands on the Final Fantasy XIII demo. That’s what I’m excited for anyway.
For those actually anticipating the release of the blu-ray movie, you should be glad to know that the boxart has been announced (or leaked) and is shown below…
But not in the way you’re thinkin’, bub. But maybe so. I can appreciate AM2’s use of the double entendre, but its title definitely leans towards the wetwork connotation. I say this because of the righteous amounts of violence and bloodletting its lead character, Rubi, displays.
The Tomb Traider games have been trying to recreate Lara Croft’s image to recover her waning appeal. AM2 may have beaten them to the punch because Rubi seems to have all the action Tomb Raider wishes it could have as well as Lara’s sex appeal without becoming a caricature of herself. She’s 007 cool and Ninja Gaiden deadly with a little Prince of Persia style.
But to say that WET is 100% derivative would be unfair. Its visuals seem to be very unique in itself. With grunge and dust-scratched film filters alongside high contrast killing blows, it looks to be a visual feast. While easy to compare it to Max Payne, the game takes the best of all worlds much like the heroine herself. Combine acrobatics with hyper-stylized gun and swordplay and you may just have a product greater than the titles it’s influenced by. For instance, Rubi can trigger her slow-mo, wallrun while pegging unfortunates, walljump then penetrate the neck of an even more unfortunate with her sword. But don’t just take my word for it, check out the gameplay video below and her website here.
WET is looking at a TBA release date somewhere in 2009.
For someone who’s not really into downloadable content, I’ve talked quite a bit about DLC the past couple of days. On the heels of the RE5 DLC, comes the announcement of Killzone 2’s first DLC package. Not surprising, it will be a couple of new multiplayer maps.
The DLC pack is called Steel & Titanium. The two maps are called Wasteland Bullet, and Vekta Cruiser. The first map sounds quite intriguing as it will take place on a couple of fast moving trains. It provides some interesting environment interaction. The Vekta Cruiser sounds like a fan induced inclusion which is never a bad thing. Click the link below for more details.
We now live in this crazy world of ‘micro-transactions’, where money spent doesn’t seem like so much. Keep a track record of how much you spend, and you’ll be surprised how fast it can add up. It’s becoming the preffered model for MMORPGs. You can play for free but if you want the +1000 virgin slaying bastard sword, it’s going to cost you $15. It’s easy to get suckered into buying things we don’t need. How about the always classic: Armor for your horse that’s useless, but costs you $1.99 (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion). Hey, it’s just two bucks though…right?
Atleast the horse armor can say something that the recent Resident Evil 5 DLC can’t. It’s actual content that is ‘downloaded’, and not unlocked. Oh, Capcom is the mighty value dollar worth that much? That you would risk losing trust from your fanbase.
Ok, I should probably elaborate on the situation a bit.
A few days ago, Capcom released the first DLC for Resident Evil 5. It included two competitive multiplayer modes aptly named, Slayer’s Rule and Survivor’s Rule. The prior being a challenge to see which character can kill the most Majinis (zombie like folk), and the latter pitting you against each other. These two modes set you back $3.99, which isn’t too bad right?
It wouldn’t be bad if the content wasn’t already on your disk. That’s right, when you pay that extra $3.99 you’re actually just downloading a small piece of code to complete the VS. mode code. So, that you can play it. *Sigh*
Capcom has responded to the criticisms of their decision, stating that the VS. mode was an element added in towards the end of developent. Meaning, that it wasn’t originally part of the game. Yet, they worked on it enough to put most of the code on the disk. It seems like someone in the company would have been smart enough to suggest just leaving the entire code off the disk. Foresight is something to look for in employees.
There’s a ton of gamers out there boycotting the pseudo-DLC, and raising pitchforks against Capcom. I’m not going to go that far, and I say if you want the content then just get it. It’s only $3.99 right……doh!
Power Man, (Luke Cage) and and Iron Fist (Danny Rand) were a 70’s super-hero duo, The Heroes for Hire. While a bit hokey for today’s standards, Cage and Iron Fist have been updated for modern comics and they’re the real deal. Nick Cage actually chose his stage name from Power Man for a little funfact. The current Iron Fist comic run is heavily entrenched in Far East mythology and magic-based power paced like a wushu martial arts movie with a Western superhero twist.
Kotaku’s posted a video showing some in-game action of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. While not the original developers of M:UA, Vicarious Visions have been responsible for porting the the original to the DS and PSP. And no stranger to comic book action, they’ve had their fingerprints on Ultimate Spider-Man, X-Men :Legends 2 and Batman Begins for the portable systems.
Looks like they’re in the big leagues now and have a tough act follow because the original Ultimate Alliance had some out of the park fun-factor. If this video is any indication, it appears they might actually have that covered.
