Retro|Spective 204: Cancelled Games - Sonic Xtreme

[Neon Ignition]

Game 30 - Starcraft: Ghost
Bringing the popular franchise to consoles in a shift from the series RTS roots to third person action title, the game was immediately anticipated from its initial reveal but suffered repeated delays until a whopping 12 years later it was finally confirmed as cancelled. A prequel tie-in novel would end up being the only released content related to the game which would have made use of stealth mechanics whilst a multiplayer would have been based around team class based gameplay. Thanks to its protracted development, a significant amount of the game was made and a few years ago videos leaked showcasing sections followed by a leak of a playable version of the game.







Looking back do you think it ever had a Ghost of a chance of being great?

[Asura]

Game 30 - Starcraft: Ghost

I've got to assume it simply wasn't good.

I know that internally, Blizzard used to have an interesting culture; a phrase which used to come up was "We've never made a bad game". Admittedly, this is something you could debate, because they did make a few poor DC Comics licensed console games - but I suspect few people know those were even made by Blizzard, and it's fair to say that generally their catalogue is of a high quality.

Consequently they were very protective of that reptuation, and I've got to assume that Ghost would've tarnished it.

[Neon Ignition]

I remember the game looking initially interesting to a degree but my interest never really peaked. I think it was largely because Starcraft has never really meant much outside of the core games and Splinter Cell was nailing the stealth angle so aggressively in the early days that it was something that was already covered.

[Yakumo]

I didn't know that was a thing but that's hilarious.[/COLOR]

Yep, it sure was a thing. To piss off the proper gamer they gave various options for configuration but not one was standard. They all had some stupid waggle crap added.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 31 - Sadness
Announced early on in the Wii's public life, Sadness was a game developed by Nibris that was to be a survival horror playing out in black and white however over time its fame grew as it never made a public showing. Eventually the developer had to cancel all of its projects and staff were eventually moved on to what would become Bloober. Intended to be less combat focused and instead to focus on psychological horror with motion controls used to mimic torch holding etc, Sadness was met with just that by some when it became clear it wouldn't see release.





Was the games cancellation met by you with Sadness?

[Neon Ignition]

Game 32 - Abducted
Developed by Contraband for the Xbox, this horror game hit the wall when due to funding it was sold to another studio and then vanished. In the mid-2010's it reappeared as an indiegogo project and a mobile project but never came together as envisioned.




Was this ever on your watch list?

[Neon Ignition]

Game 33 - Dirty Harry
Developed by The Collective, this game would have acted as a sequel to the 1971 Clint Eastwood film with the actor himself returning to the character. The game would have seen Harry traversing San Francisco in search of the villain Scorpio. When The Collective hit money issues and were merged with Shiny to create Double Helix, the game was shelved.






Had the game seen released do you feel like it would have left you feeling lucky?
Well? Do ya' punk?

[Asura]

Game 33 - Dirty Harry

They say a picture paints a thousand words and honestly this image is doing so much heavy lifting for this one.

[QualityChimp]

Dirty Harry could have been an amazing game, but I also think it would dismiss some of the core of the film.

For a start, his famous line about feelin' lucky, is about how he's unsure about if he's fired six shots or five.
That screenshot suggests he's going to have an infinite supply of bullets!

Also, the scene of torture in that video. He's not a vigilante, blasting everyone who crosses his path, he's a detective, normally assigned every "dirty" job. He's still a cop, but he normally just pushes the rules to bending, rather than breaking them, IMHO.
In Magnum Force, some vigilante cops try to recruit him but he refuses.

[Neon Ignition]

There seemed to be a run of these kinds of things in the PS2/3 era. The fact that a Godfather games exists is nuts, along with Scarface, Starsky and Hutch etc

Still waiting for the walk along beat em up where you only battle one enemy for an hour licensed off The Quiet Man

[Neon Ignition]

Game 34 - Star Wars 1313
To a degree this would have been Star Wars Uncharted with a young adult Boba Fett working through Level 1313 relying on his jet pack and blasters to floor enemies in a darker tale set within the Star Wars universe. The project quickly ignited interest in fans but as Disney loomed its money symbolled white gloved hand over Lucasfilm the project was quickly shelved thanks to the mouse house's disinterest in gaming at that point.





Did EA later make up the loss with its Jedi game?

[Asura]

Honestly, it looked cool purely visually, but I thought it was no great loss. We already had plenty of games on the way which were basically "walk down a pretty corridor doing a bit of climbing, jumping and cover shooting". We didn't need any more of that.

[QualityChimp]

Starsky and Hutch etc

Starsky and Hutch was ace!

It's the closest thing to a home conversion of Lucky & Wild!

[wakka]

Yeah it really was. I used to play that with my nephew, taking turns to do the driving and the shooting. The game actually wasn't that great but that was such a fun way of playing multiplayer.

I didn't get to play the real Lucky and Wild until relatively recently, a few years ago (there is a cab in a barcade near me!).

->Open Spoiler<-

To be honest the original Lucky and Wild isn't THAT great either...

[Neon Ignition]

Game 35 - Scalebound
Coming from Platinum Games and Microsoft, the game was to be an action RPG and is one of the cancellations some quarters still won't shut up about even though six years have passed since the axe fell on it. The game saw you play as a character called Drew who used a dragon that orders could be passed to during combat though, despite the footage released, the game was said to steer away from action typical of Platinum's games and instead focus on the RPG elements. Platinum had started plans for the game in 2006 but interest grew higher in working on Bayonetta, it then resumed but a lack of interest in its pitch demo's led to work switching to Wonderful 101 instead, eventually Platinum's repeated attempts to make a compelling concept led to MS climbing aboard but after four years of development the game fell through after Microsoft and Platinum failed to make a game they felt stood up strongly enough.







Was this one of Microsoft's biggest software mistakes?