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Missing at E3 2006 May 26, 2006 John JCal Callaham |
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Summary: JCal runs down the games that were missing at E3 2006. Whether it be the conspicuous, like Bully, or the mysterious like the unannounced id project, or even the predictable - like Duke Nukem Forever, he's got it in his list.
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Upcoming Steam-Source Engine games
The Half-Life and Half-Life 2 creators at Valve started something interesting with both their Source engine and their Steam content delivery service. It gave third party developers both an impressive graphics engine and a way to bypass the normal publishing route via the Internet. While SiN Episodes was shown at E3 the week it was released via Steam, several other announced Source-Steam titles were not shown, including the biggest one of all.
Half-Life 2: Episode 1: Valve’s first foray into the episodic game genre is due out via Steam on June 1,just a week away from now. However, Valve elected not to show the first chapter anywhere at E3, presumably for Valve to continue to work on the game at their offices before its debut. There’s no doubt that this first chapter will not only be hugely popular but a way to gauge how people feel about short episodic games.
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Unnamed Turtle Rock Studios Game: The development team has work with Valve primarily on their Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source multiplayer games, developing AI for bots, creating new levels and other new content for these hugely popular games. However, Turtle Rock and Valve recently announced that Turtle Rock would be working on their own original game for the Source engine and delivered via Steam for release sometime this year. What could it be? It was a no show at E3 so we will have to wait a little while longer to find out.
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They Hunger: Lost Souls: In January, Black Widow Games announced plans to release a Source engine based horror action game that was based on the well known Half-Life 1 single player total conversion mods. There has been little to no info on the game since the announcement and it was also a no show at E3. Hopefully we will get some news about the zombie filled game very soon.
Untitled Junction Point Studios Game: Famed game designer Warren Spector formed Junction Point Studios in late 2004 after leaving Ion Storm where games like Thief III and the Deus Ex titles were created. Spector has remained silent on what Junction Point is working on but we do know via job postings on the company’s web site that it is a Source engine based game that will use Valve’s Steam service. Again, it was a no show at E3 so we still have to guess about what Spector and his new team are creating.
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Duke Nukem Forever: Oh, Duke; where for art thou? We have been waiting for the better part of a decade for 3D Realms to release this long awaited first person shooter follow up to Duke Nukem 3D. The last public showing of anything Duke Nukem Forever rated was way back in 2001 when 3D Realms showed a trailer for the Unreal engine based title. Since then there has been no public screenshots, trailers or public demos of the game. A couple of magazine have seen the game in action recently and reported briefly on what was shown but that’s pretty much it. 3D Realms is working with Human Head Studios to finish off their next game Prey so a showing at E3 2006 seemed liked a long shot and indeed it was. Hopefully we will get something from the 3D Realms team about Duke’s latest adventure before too long.
Fallout 3: Speaking of Elder Scrolls IV, the folks at Bethesda Softworks had a posted about this long awaited post apocalypse RPG at their E3 2006 exhibit..and nothing else. Bethsoft first announced a deal with Interplay to license the Fallout property to make the third game in the series (as a side note, can you believe Interplay is still technically an operating company even though they have released no games for the past several years?). However there has been little to no info on the game since the initial announcement. With its E3 no show, we have to assume that we will have to wait a while longer before more info is revealed.
Star Trek Online: While Bethesda Softworks was showing off two space based Star Trek action games at its booth at E3 2006, yet another previously announced Star Trek game didn’t make it to the show floor. Star Trek Online is the MMORPG based on the long running TV-movie sci-fi series from developer Perpetual Entertainment. Announced well over a year ago, the game has yet to be shown in playable form. Hopefully next year we will get a chance to see if the final frontier is truly something to look forward to playing in a massively multiplayer setting.
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STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl Here’s a game that’s rivaling Duke Nukem Forever for its length of development. The sci-fi apocalypse shooter game has been underway for several years now and was last shown at E3 2004. The developers at GSC Gameworld sent out a note saying that STALKER would be shown behind closed doors at E3 2006 but we were told by its publisher THQ that the game was not being shown after all. So what happened? We are not quite sure yet but we have our fingers crossed that we will soon get more info about the long awaited game.
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Killzone PS3: Oh boy. Here is a stickler for you. Without a doubt the most impressive looking trailer at Sony’s initial PS3 press conference at E3 last year was for Killzone, a PS3 version of Guerilla Games’s PS2 sci-fi shooter. The detail. The effects. The explosion….the fact that it was just a pre-rendered CGI clip. So with a year in development we should have seen a real gameplay clip from the game at E3 2006, right? Nope. Not only was there nothing shown of Killzone PS3 at the expo this year but Sony representatives refused to even talk about the game to us or anyone else. That’s not a good sign. Will the game finally appear at E3 2007. Your guess is as good as ours.
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Society: Stardock announced and showed an early build of their upcoming massively multiplayer RTS game at E3 2005. The game, which is planned to be completely free to download and play, hasn’t been heard of much since then but that’s understandable since Stardock was busy completing and releasing their space strategy game Galactic Civilizations II. Still we were hoping for a new look at Society at E3 this year but it was not to be. Will this free RTS game be revealed more fully in the future. We hope so as Stardock has an excellent track record.
Marvel and DC Comics MMORPGs: On the one side you have Microsoft who announced plans several months ago to develop a MMORPG based on the Marvel comic book universe (Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men). On the other side you have Sony Online who announced several months ago a plan to release an MMORPG based on the DC comic book universe (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman). We were hoping for some kind of glimpse into either or both games both nether showed up at E3 2006 this time. Will the big Marvel vs DC battle be waged next year at the expo? Get your Secret Infinite war cap ready to go just in case.
Castle Wolfenstein: Microsoft announced this upcoming latest game in the long running WWII shooter series at their X05 event last October. The Raven-Nerve-id Software title will once again be published by Activision and while a few art pieces from X05 surfaced we were hoping for more info and maybe some real screenshots at E3 2006. Not this time, however. But we are still hoping to shoot some zombie Nazis before too long.
Snow: Here’s an interesting situation. At E3 2005, 2K Games showed a playable demo of Snow, a strategy game with a comic book look about you controlling the drug trade. The game, developed by Frog City, looked promising and was due out in early 2006 but since E3 2005 there has been no info on the game’s progress at all. Repeated attempts by FiringSquad during and after E3 2006 to find out the status of both the game and Frog City (the developer’s web site is down) were given a “no comment’ by 2K Games PR reps. We have a sinking suspicion that this game isn’t going to make E3 2007.
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All Points Bulletin: Real Time Worlds was happy to show an early version of their open world action game Crackdown at E3 2006 but what about their other announced game, the PC MMORPF All Points Bulletin? Officially announced in early 2005, a gameplay trailer was shown to certain press outlets at E3 2005 which showed off the GTA like massively multiplayer game. However, the game’s publisher Webzen elected not to show the game at their E3 2006 booth. We hope that is not a sign of development trouble for the game which certainly sounds different than the normal games in the genre.
Possession: UK based Blitz Games announced this zombie themed action game over a year ago for next gen consoles where the main trick was that instead of fighting zombies you actually create them and try to take over the city. We were hoping for more info about the game at E3 2006 but alas the zombies were not eating virtual flesh that week. We hope to get more hands, feet and brains info on Possession before too long.
Unannounced Digital Illusions Games: While the folks behind the hit Battlefield series were showing off Battlefield 2142 at E3 2006, most people don’t know that the developer also has two upcoming games in the works for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms that are due out in 2007. They were not show at E3 this year and pretty much the only thing that has been revealed publically is that one is a shooter title and one is an action game (perhaps DICE’s first original title since the Battlefield franchise began). It seems likely that both games will be shown at E3 2007.
Unnannounced id Software Game: We really didn’t think this game would be shown at E3 2006 but we are throwing this into the mix to remind you that id is in fact working on an all new game (no Wolfenstein, Doom or Quake follow up) that will of course use as its basis the upcoming engine developed by its master programmer John Carmack. That’s pretty much all we know at this stage but by E3 2007 we may get some more info on the title.
As you can see there is quite a few upcoming games that were DOA at E3. While for some their non-appearance may not be an indication of a problem in development there are certainly some issues with many games on our list. Of course we will keep you informed when we get more info on the status of all these games on our site in the coming months.