Well not much in Company of Heroes 2 news since the SEGA acquisition. They have changed the Steam page to in fact state Sega is now the publisher.
Interestingly enough they also removed the beta offer which originally came with pre-ordering the game. SEGA of course infamously hates beta testing their games, so it’s entirely possible that it just won’t happen.
Amazon sent out a letter to all of their pre-orders announcing a March 31st launch date. This launch date has been neither confirmed nor denied. It is suspect however that March 31st was going to be the original launch date before THQ went bankrupt.
The beta was originally intended to be at the end of January and take us into March 25th in which the game would launch. However as people at Relic were getting laid off left and right and the future of the company was in serious peril they opted not to have a beta test.
The game of course has not been cancelled and SEGA fully intends to push forward with this title.
SEGA in acquiring Relic needs time to re-organize the staff and import their SEGA franchise to the dwindling studio.
Guessing when this game will be out will be difficult.
Generally speaking sales dip in June and July when it is hot out and less people are interested in video games. However by August games sales picks up. I wouldn’t suspect a Company of Heroes 2 release until at least mid-August.
After the THQ auction occurred it seemed odd that there were a number of titles that simply did not sell. Some of them, like Destroy All Humans, seemed obvious because of how nothing has really been developed for that game.
So in this article I’ll explore reasons why the Warhammer 40K license was not acquired by anyone ranging from least likely to most likely.
#1: Poor Sales of Space Marine
What killed THQ was the poor sales of three games: Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon, and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine.
Homefront was acquired by Crytek because…. they were making Homefront 2 already.
Red Faction and Warhammer 40K however were not acquired.
It would seem that a likely reason might be how little they make at market.
Crytek purchased Homefront at a $500,000… quite a cheap purchase. They were commissioned to build Homefront 2 six months ago. It is believed that a large portion of the game was already completed. If some other studio was to pick up this game presumably they’d be able to steal Crytek’s work and just re-brand the game. To me this purchase seemed like an interest in making a game.
But for Red Faction and Warhammer 40K it seems clear, low sales.
Warhammer 40K Space Marine was supposed to be an RPG that set the stage for Warhammer 40K Online. It was supposed to tell the story that would act as a guiding vision for the MMORPG.
In the end the MMORPG was cut and turned into a Co-Op RPG.
But Space Marine didn’t do so hot. It did so poorly that four months after launch they added in all sorts of “overpowered” weapons to the multiplayer and began trying to sell the game on multiplayer.
It was a disaster… and it’s not even because it was a bad game. The campaign was fairly long and the multiplayer was kind of fun. It just so happened that people were sick of on-rails shooters and were ready for something new.
Had Space Marine been a commercial success like Saints Row and Company of Heroes… someone might have bought it.
#2: No Relic Attached
All of the studios and all of the licenses were sold separately.
There was a specific interest in having certain properties be bought with certain studios. Relic for example was purchased by SEGA with Company of Heroes. Volition Games was purchased with Saints Row.
It makes sense that whoever wanted Warhammer 40K also might have wanted to purchased Relic.
However with SEGA taking Relic and only wanting to publish Company of Heroes 2… who would want Warhammer 40K?
It is believable that there is a developer out there who could do the license justice.
Generally when you receive an unfinished game from a studio the end result is not all that… fetching.
No better an example can be found with Team Bondi and Rockstar Games. Team Bondi was working on a new adventure detective game that would show off some new groundbreaking technology. But Team Bondi went bankrupt before they could finish the game. Rockstar Games finished the game and added in some DLC.
If you play the game through without the DLC it feels like something is missing. If you play the game with the DLC it feels like these particular missions have a very different feel from the remainder of the game.
This is exactly what would happen to Warhammer 40K’s Co-Op RPG. It could be picked up by Gearbox (creators of Borderlands) very easily. But then the game would just transform into Borderlands in space…. but Borderlands is in space….. you know what I mean!
The point is that without the studio that was working on it… working on it… it would almost seem pointless to acquire the IP. Any studio that picks it up would almost have to scrap the entire game and start over.
#3: Warhammer 40K Belongs to Games Workshop
At the end of the day Warhammer 40K’s sale was not a unique intellectual property like Company of Heroes or Saints Row… it was a license.
It was a license with Games Workshop.
Who knows how terrible this license would be for a developer/publisher.
The folks at Games Workshop knew that their product was valuable and have worked exclusively through THQ since Warhammer 40K’s first RTS game.
The games up until Space Marine did pretty well on sales. And Game’s Workshop knows this. Last year THQ signed a new agreement for the license which was originally set to expire this year.
It’s likely that Game’s Workshop seeing THQ in a desperate time wanted a better share of the profits.
Because of this it is likely that the Warhammer 40K license is highly unprofitable and just did not look all that inticing to investors and game developers.
Honestly it just doesn’t sound like a good deal. Who wants to develop a game in which all gameplay elements and plot devices have to be approved by a tabletop game maker? Then after all that you release the game and you owe them a tonne of cash?
It just doesn’t make sense as a business model.
In the end my best estimate is that all of the highly profitable almost complete games were purchased and there were just so many reasons not to want to get Warhammer 40K.
As of January 23, 2013 THQ… one of the oldest and largest publishers of video games…. is no more.
As part of a court decision it was made possible for THQ to individually sell off its assets and game licenses.
Comedy Central on behalf of South Park have filed for a return of the property of South Park the Stick of Truth. This property was up for sale and something in their contract prevented that.
However, every single license from THQ were sold and anything that wasn’t sold, is now a free license.
First up SEGA. SEGA purchased Relic Studios, makers of all those Warhammer 40K games. SEGA has experience with tactical RTS games from their giant Total War series.
This is considered to be the biggest of the deals, specifically because Company of Heroes 2 was furthest along and is expected to have a recent release.
The next big purchase was from Ubisoft who spent $5M on the THQ Montreal studio and South Park The Stick of Truth. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the people are that studio will keep their jobs. It’s entirely possible Ubisoft (based out of Montreal) just may want a larger space and access to THQ’s computers.
Koch Media, who make really small games like Dead Island, got a pretty good deal themselves. Koch Media purchased Volition Studios who make Saints Row: The Third which was one of the few existing franchises from THQ that was making money. They also purchased the Metro franchise which had a game near ready for release.
Crytek bought the rights to Homefront. This isn’t exactly a shocking development seeing as Crytek was already working on Homefront 2.
Take Two purchased rights to a game called “Evolve” which Turtle Rock Studios was working on. Whether Turtle Rock will continue to develop it is hard to say.
Not picked up was Vigil Games who created Darksiders and Darksiders 2, both fairly successful games. On top of that all employees were laid off today.
Red Faction was also not picked up. This is not surprising since it was a failing franchise. No doubt once the Chapter 11 finishes it will go for under $100,000.
de Blob and Destroy All Humans were also not picked up but haven’t really had any development on them… so they’ll probably go cheap each.
Shockingly Warhammer 40K was not picked up. I say shockingly because they had a half finished MMORPG which they were converting into a co-op RPG. They also have the massive RTS franchise that was extremely successful.
So sad day for the thousands of THQ employees laid off today.
I intended to do all of the Red Faction’s in a series since they often get bundled together.
However I continued to find constant bug hurdles in Red Faction 2 to the point where I believe it is unplayable in it’s current format.
So I move on to Red Faction Guerrila to finish off the series.
Guerrila was made several years after during a time when a revolution was happening in hardware. As an end result there is a world of difference between Red Faction 2 and Red Faction Guerrila.
The Brief: The Red Faction
On Mars, The Ultuor Corporation rules. Earth is all but mined out and vast resources have been spent on establishing a Mars mining base.
Condition on this Mars base were rough as people continued to dig deeper and deeper. Under the planet were alien artifacts and as they dug deeper and deeper to magma digging routes slowly cut off.
The planet continued to over-mine and slowly run out of resources until many miners began to see these problems getting worse and worse.
As many revolted they formed an organization called ‘Red Faction.” Red Faction’s goal was to kick the UC off of Mars and create a home for themselves.
The path finding system in this game is simple and easy to follow… literally
With the revolts happening more and more people were encouraged to move to Mars to mine. They were promised luxuries and wages that the corporation had no intentions of paying.
The Red Faction were able to destroy the Ultuor Corporation’s position on Mars. Remnants of the Ultuor Corporation hid deep in the caves of Mars trying to hide all of their alien research that they were doing. They called themselves “The Marauders.”
With the Red Faction successfully defeating the Ultuor Corporation the Earth Defense Force (EDF) came to bring stability to Mars. They shut down the Red Faction and took control of all the sectors.
The Red Faction tried their old strategy of recruiting miners to rise up against them.
Synopsis
After a brief introduction you are introduced to the main character, Mason. Mason is a miner with an explosive’s license. His brother brings him to a scrap yard and shows him how to collect scrap which is more valuable than the ore on this planet.
After collecting ore your brother is killed by the EDF (Earth Defense Federation) and you are co-opted into Red Faction. From here the story line ends.
You are introduced to a grid map of seven zones that are under EDF control. You are told that you must liberate all seven sectors in order to finally push the EDF out.
You push the EDF out in a number of ways.
The most common way is to destroy their buildings. Building destroying is one of the more exciting parts of this game. The demolition physics are spot on with reality. Buildings have hit points and if you trigger explosives in the proper orders and at the right locations you will do more damage and make it fall down faster than you might have just randomly hitting it with your hammer.
The second way is to do missions in which you have to hit key objectives. These involve stealing vehicles, defending locations, and rescuing hostages.
Hammering down buildings is fun
A third way is to do raids with Red Faction personnel. These are simply having Red Faction personnel in a vehicle and attacking a location to secure it.
The game’s difficulty is decided in two ways. The first is a difficulty slider which indicates how much damage bullets do to you, Easy, Medium, and Hard.
The second difficulty is in whether or not you choose to do optional objectives. Optional objectives give you guerrillas to support you in your missions which without them, seem very impossible.
Random events will pop up in which you can completely optionally stop convoys and couriers to gain “morale” in the sector.
Morale causes people to rise up and aid you in your cause. Morale can be decreased by people who rise up against you dying, bonus if you kill them. Also every time you die you lose 10 morale. To compare you lose 1 morale for a guerrila dying.
The game is designed around co-op. However if you do not have a friend to play with you can just have your turrets auto fire on random targets.
I should mention the Destruction mode in the game. You can go into a mode in which you just destroy buildings and get a score based on how much you can destroy efficiently.
Strengths
Beautiful World
Best Physics Engine Out There
Casual Format
When you enter the game you find a world that is beautiful. Mars is a very red and brown planet and in previous games they showed this by being very… brown. In this world you see a multitude of colors and shaders in the sky and on the ground. If you like work from CryTek you will enjoy this work as well.
Red Faction was known as the game that introduced destroyable objects and environments that can be destroyed. Red Faction: Guerrila brings this to the max with clearly the best physics engine in any game possible. There is no wall you will run into in which your vehicle will just flop oddly. Everything about this game is precise and in tact. The Havok Physics has been heavily modified to suit THQ’s purposes.
Things just fall apart in perfect scientific manner
The game is designed in a casual format with short 5-10 minute adventures. Every single objective you do will take no more than 5 minutes. Having said that the game is about 8 hours worth of play time (excluding multiplayer). So to put this in perspective you are looking at between 50-100 adventures. This works very well for most players as a hardcore will just clear through objective to objective while a more casual player can cut themselves off easily.
Weaknesses
Tech Demo?
No Plot
No Grand Scale
When playing this although it was fun to play and very entertaining… it just felt like a tech demo. There was just a lot missing in the game and it just felt like everything was designed around showing off this phenomenal game engine. A lot of the weaknesses really revolve around this.
This building got in the way of my truck, so I took out the building
The identify of this tech demo is the total lack of a plot. You get a couple of cut scenes that sort of set up the conflict and then you are just thrown into this sandbox world in which you can do whatever you want. Most see GTA4 as being the most sandboxy game out there. However, even GTA4 has more story than this game. After conquering four zones I thought SOMETHING would happen but apparently nothing came of it.
I think the main problem with this is that there is no grand scale villains to this game. Most games have a central figure that you are after. In this one your brother is gunned down randomly by absolutely no one in particular and you’re randomly drafted into the Red Faction. It just didn’t feel all that great. I would think joining a revolution would have to feel epic at some point… this did not.
Concluding Thoughts
I think this game is a clear winner for fun and addictive gameplay. It’s a clear loser for anyone looking for a story or complicated RPG elements. As far as it goes Armageddon does a better job in both of those regards.
I think when this game came out it simply did not get the attention that it deserved and in a world where THQ games are going for cheap this game might get the credit it deserves as a real game changer.
This game was made 12 years ago and as a rule I’m happy a game that was made over 10 years ago even works on today’s operating system.
There are a few rules when looking at a game that is this freaking old.
The Brief: Reviewing a Retro Game
There are a few rules when looking at a game that is over a decade old. Any game over a decade old is often referred to as a “Retro Game.”
The first of these rules is that you are not allowed to criticize the graphical style of the game.
The reason why games are not made with this graphical style anymore is because better stuff is available. We could believe if this game was made today it would be much better looking… which of course its many sequels were.
People who tell you that Goldeneye’s graphical style is dated are really missing the whole point.
Just because you’re a civilian does not save you
A second thing is we cannot fault the game for missing features that simply did not exist at the time. However we are allowed to note that these features are not there but not use that against the overall scoring.
If we are going to criticize a lack of a feature a reader ought to demand a reference to a game earlier than this one that has it. It has to be remembered that a game made in 2001 has to fit on an N64 Cartridge or a PS2 CD.
As a final rule game length cannot be a key factor in the purchase. Pre-Half Life 2 all games were under an hour in length and games really never got a strong story basis until then. Today we expect 20-30 hours per game. Red Faction was 5 hours long and is fine for when it was released.
Synopsis
So given these retro rules established there is not too much to talk about the game.
This game pre-dates the world in which you could only carry two weapons… so yes you can carry all of them.
Each weapon has a secondary feature to it. The sniper rifle is the only one that can be manual zoom aimed. The pistol gets a silencer (even though there are no stealth mechanics), and most other weapons are choosing between single fire and rapid fire modes.
There are four types of weapons, melee weapons (including the flame thrower), short arms (including sniper rifle), heavy (including assault rifle), and explosive which includes C4 and rocket launcher.
Rocket launchers and C4 are very key in this game because Red Faction is the first game ever made to have destructible elements. Not only could you break stuff but breaking stuff is often required to move forward in the game.
The secondary function of the sniper rifle is zooming
All of the good guys are dressed in red and if you save one they’ll join you as an ally and show you where to go.
The blue guys are bad guys and will shoot you on sight.
Each section of the level opens as you enter it. The game would be considered to be non-linear for the time for the number of rooms and paths you can choose to complete the game. There are many elements however that are non-linear.
There are no tips or map tips. Everything has to be figured out on your own… and there’s a lot to figure out on your own.
There is an odd part of the game where a voice confirms your direction but does not lead you where to go. So you have to keep guessing where you have to go until you get it. This adds a little more play time for your first playthrough.
Strengths
No Hand Holding
Refreshing Guns
It’s actually refreshing to play a game that doesn’t hold your hand every step of the way. This is a game that is designed for you to look around a room and try and figure out what you’re supposed to do. For a lot of people this will be a weakness but to me the way it is designed is good. The rooms are small and it’s about what paths you take in a small atmosphere. If this was a world as big as Skyrim of course I’d hate it.
Saved red suited men become allies
After about a decade of only being allowed to have two guns it is quite refreshing to get a full cache of weapons to choose for the appropriate situation. The weapons are designed situationally and no there isn’t real gun balance there will be appropriate times for choosing a shotgun over an assault rifle.
Weaknesses
Non-Linear Elements
BROWN
Old Bugs
There are two features that just do not go well together. The first of these is saving the game, the second is non-linear elements.
If you save at one point and you don’t have enough explosives you simply cannot continue. This happened to me twice. This means without knowing about the need for an explosive… you might use them all up and not have an opportunity to collect more.
I waited here for an hour hoping something would happen…
The game unfortunately puts you into this awkward situation in which you’re completely stuck by shutting down previous open world elements of the game with fixed doors.
Did I mention this world is BROWN!?!? I know that this game is undergroud but dear god is this game so very brown. It might be a problem with the design choice but no there is nothing in this game but BROWN BROWN BROWN. Even the underwater elements are pretty brown.
I should also note the game still has all of the old bugs the original game had… it just never got patched ever. The most infamous of these bugs is when you Alt+Tab you cannot get back into the game without first closing off the game and restarting the game. It sure as hell makes it hard to cheat and look up a gamefaq.
Concluding Thoughts
The problems with the game are not based on how old it is but some design choices. It took me 10 hours to finish a 5 hour game simply because I kept getting stuck without explosives at points that required explosives but gave no access to it.
I’d probably never play it again and would not recommend it as a purchase. Maybe if THQ breaks up Red Faction will be offered as a freeware license.
Climbing messes with your head sometimes
But in light of that it is important to note that Red Alert is a groundbreaking game. It did give us destructible and manipulate objects long before the existence of Half Life 2.
Playing Red Faction is similar to playing Mario Brothers 2. It isn’t going to be a very fun experience compared to modern games and you’d only play it for the nostalgia.
To close out this review I should mention that back in 2001 I downloaded a demo for Red Faction in which I got to play the very first zone of it. After playing one zone of it I was unimpressed by the offerings of the game and decided not to purchase it.
Why Didn’t Warhammer 40K Sell?
Posted in Blog Entry, Commentary with tags thq, warhammer 40k on January 26, 2013 by troublmakerAfter the THQ auction occurred it seemed odd that there were a number of titles that simply did not sell. Some of them, like Destroy All Humans, seemed obvious because of how nothing has really been developed for that game.
So in this article I’ll explore reasons why the Warhammer 40K license was not acquired by anyone ranging from least likely to most likely.
#1: Poor Sales of Space Marine
What killed THQ was the poor sales of three games: Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon, and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine.
Homefront was acquired by Crytek because…. they were making Homefront 2 already.
Red Faction and Warhammer 40K however were not acquired.
It would seem that a likely reason might be how little they make at market.
Crytek purchased Homefront at a $500,000… quite a cheap purchase. They were commissioned to build Homefront 2 six months ago. It is believed that a large portion of the game was already completed. If some other studio was to pick up this game presumably they’d be able to steal Crytek’s work and just re-brand the game. To me this purchase seemed like an interest in making a game.
But for Red Faction and Warhammer 40K it seems clear, low sales.
Warhammer 40K Space Marine was supposed to be an RPG that set the stage for Warhammer 40K Online. It was supposed to tell the story that would act as a guiding vision for the MMORPG.
In the end the MMORPG was cut and turned into a Co-Op RPG.
But Space Marine didn’t do so hot. It did so poorly that four months after launch they added in all sorts of “overpowered” weapons to the multiplayer and began trying to sell the game on multiplayer.
It was a disaster… and it’s not even because it was a bad game. The campaign was fairly long and the multiplayer was kind of fun. It just so happened that people were sick of on-rails shooters and were ready for something new.
Had Space Marine been a commercial success like Saints Row and Company of Heroes… someone might have bought it.
#2: No Relic Attached
All of the studios and all of the licenses were sold separately.
There was a specific interest in having certain properties be bought with certain studios. Relic for example was purchased by SEGA with Company of Heroes. Volition Games was purchased with Saints Row.
It makes sense that whoever wanted Warhammer 40K also might have wanted to purchased Relic.
However with SEGA taking Relic and only wanting to publish Company of Heroes 2… who would want Warhammer 40K?
It is believable that there is a developer out there who could do the license justice.
Generally when you receive an unfinished game from a studio the end result is not all that… fetching.
No better an example can be found with Team Bondi and Rockstar Games. Team Bondi was working on a new adventure detective game that would show off some new groundbreaking technology. But Team Bondi went bankrupt before they could finish the game. Rockstar Games finished the game and added in some DLC.
If you play the game through without the DLC it feels like something is missing. If you play the game with the DLC it feels like these particular missions have a very different feel from the remainder of the game.
This is exactly what would happen to Warhammer 40K’s Co-Op RPG. It could be picked up by Gearbox (creators of Borderlands) very easily. But then the game would just transform into Borderlands in space…. but Borderlands is in space….. you know what I mean!
The point is that without the studio that was working on it… working on it… it would almost seem pointless to acquire the IP. Any studio that picks it up would almost have to scrap the entire game and start over.
#3: Warhammer 40K Belongs to Games Workshop
At the end of the day Warhammer 40K’s sale was not a unique intellectual property like Company of Heroes or Saints Row… it was a license.
It was a license with Games Workshop.
Who knows how terrible this license would be for a developer/publisher.
The folks at Games Workshop knew that their product was valuable and have worked exclusively through THQ since Warhammer 40K’s first RTS game.
The games up until Space Marine did pretty well on sales. And Game’s Workshop knows this. Last year THQ signed a new agreement for the license which was originally set to expire this year.
It’s likely that Game’s Workshop seeing THQ in a desperate time wanted a better share of the profits.
Because of this it is likely that the Warhammer 40K license is highly unprofitable and just did not look all that inticing to investors and game developers.
Honestly it just doesn’t sound like a good deal. Who wants to develop a game in which all gameplay elements and plot devices have to be approved by a tabletop game maker? Then after all that you release the game and you owe them a tonne of cash?
It just doesn’t make sense as a business model.
In the end my best estimate is that all of the highly profitable almost complete games were purchased and there were just so many reasons not to want to get Warhammer 40K.
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