So I says to myself, I says, "Self. You haven't heard any news about that RtCW2 game since the trailers back in like January, and by the way wouldn't it be interesting to find out what Carmack talked about in his keynote at Quakecon this year?"
I says, "Yeh. Let's go see what google has to say about it."
Well, it turns out that one of the key announcements at Quakecon was the release of Wolfenstein. They'd dropped the "Return to Castle" and "2" part. I took a look at some of the trailers, and.. it looks like a prettier version of the same game I already beat, but with a couple more weapons and the Veil gimmick thrown in. Not terribly compelling.
So I go out and look around at some of the community sites of clans I knew were just aching for this release, and the situation sounds pretty grim. Less than 3 weeks after a launch I didn't hear about, the game has less than 50 players online. Apparently there was (still is?) a massive memory leak that kills the multiplayer version after 4 maps, and the single player version is buggy. This is the most underwhelming case I've seen a company make for a $50 product ever. Even the demo looks like it'd be a waste of time.
Which is really surprising to me, since id pulled off such visionary stuff with RtCW.
Another big announcement from Quakecon was a game called Rage using their next gen engine. Again, looks beautiful, but I swear I've already played the game before in Fallout 3. I hate to admit it, but it looks like one of the icons of the industry isn't doing the needful any more. There's something wrong when Infinity Ward and their heat-seeking dog missiles offer up a more compelling game play experience than a Quake/Wolf title. :(
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