Metro 2033, a first-person shooter/survival horror hybrid based on -- get this -- the similarly titled novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, was released in North America yesterday. If Jim's preview from last month didn't get you hyped, 4A Games is giving it another shot with a celebratory launch trailer which, if nothing else, shows off the game's lighting.
I haven't been following Metro 2033 particularly closely, but I hope it's a good game. I mean, obviously I don't go out of my way to hope for bad games, but I'd like to see 4A succeed where so many other European developers have failed. Besides Ubisoft and, every once in a blue moon, Rare, European devs never seem to have the capital or the manpower to blow their Western counterparts away. I don't know how it plays, but Metro 2033 might have enough atmosphere to pull it off.
And, hey!, it's got giant monsters in it. Can't go wrong with those.
In other Metro 2033 news, the PC version comes with Steamworks in tow, but it won't be coming to the PlayStation 3 because software development ain't cheap.
Joseph Leray is a founding Destructoid editor and has better hair than you. He speaks French and needs to send us his updated bio in English, preferably.
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Contest:
4:00 AM on 03.17.2010
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Last time I checked, Europe was in the west.
Performance is insanely poor though, on a GTX 275 and Quad CPU I have to have it on normal and still get dips to 30fps in firefights.
You have no clue what you're talking about. Your opinion seems to boil down to 'Hmm, MW2 wasn't made in Europe, therefore European studios don't make big games.'
Massive fail!
Do you not like GTAIV, Fable II, BF:BC2, Eve Online or Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising?
Because European devs such Rockstar, Lionhead, DICE, CCP Games and Codemasters are European developers and proof that European devs can fucking own against anything on the market.
Europe isn't just the Rare and Ubisoft show. You should know better Joseph.
The San Fierro bridge in GTA: San Andreas is based on the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland.
Avalanche Studios (based in Sweden. Thank them for Just Cause 2)
Bizarre Creations (based in England. Thank them for Project Gotham Racing and The Club)
Team 17 (based in England. Thank them for the Worms and Alien Breed series)
Realtime Worlds (based in England. Thank them for Crackdown and Crackdown 2)
Rant over, but perhaps you should consider where your games are actually made before you decide the relevance of an entire continent of talent.
They were made by Dutch developers. Killzone 1 and 2 by Guerilla Games in Amsterdam, and Overlord 1 and 2 by Triumph Studios in Delft. Those places are in the Netherlands, which is part of the WEST.
Yeesh, Joseph.
It's also on the PC you know...
Either way, lame.
And even if the article meant Russia and wrote Europe by brain cramp, STALKER was an amazing success and from Russia.
Perhaps he meant Call of Duty level success, as someone mentioned, which would be sad.
"Perhaps he meant Call of Duty level success, as someone mentioned, which would be sad."
It doesn't even work under that scrutiny, because to say European developed games aren't massively commercially successful is to say that games such as the GTA and Battlefield series aren't massively commercially successful, which they are.
He also definitely meant the whole of Europe, as he referred to Ubisoft (French) and Rare (British) as the only European developers worthy of note.
They're based in the Ukraine, which is very much European.
Also remember your Geography, little ones, what divides Asia from Europe are the Ural Mountains and Russia exists on both sides of them (though the majority of it resides in Asia of course). So much of Russia's cultural 'dilemmas' have been whether or not they consider themselves 'western' or Asiatic.
I SAID COME IN DON'T STAND THERE
This trailer, though... I didn't think I could be more hyped for a game, and yet here I am, insanely hyped. Man, it makes me really sad that I can't afford it. I only had enough to buy DA: Awakening. This trailer's making me regret it.
This game seems to "get it," in that shooters are at their best when you're feeling hopeless, and there's no better way to make a player feel hopeless than to stick them in a wasteland with giant monsters.
We have Rockstar, the English have quite a few devs as do the Europeans. See Captain Bus' comments plus I think he forgot the Stalker devs too.
/Sterling
Ever heard of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, etc?
To be fair though the STALKER game trilogy isn't based on Roadside Picnic. It's instead inspired by the film Stalker which was inspired by the book Roadside Picnic.
So it's sort of a story teller version of the children's game 'Telephone'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE
But lest not forget that all these games are made inside four walls with powerful computers that a largely international cast of programmers sit infront of, so unless we're talking about indie developers, it's pretty much just a case of a massively popular game can be made anywhere. It's just most likely to be made in Japan.
But, yes, I should've made my distinctions clearer. I guess my "typical American ignorance" comes from my French parents, Kris.
Eidos hasn't been relevant since Thief, and the only thing Crtytek does well is make graphics engines.
But, that's beside the point -- Eastern European devs (which I admit I didn't make clear enough) never have as much capital as their Western (Western Europe and America) competitors.
The success of Europe as a games development hub both commercially and critically is indisputable.
In my rant I wa a whiny bitch but nonetheless I provided you with a list of over a dozen European developers with commercial and critical success that can hold their own against the best in the industry. You're quite right to say that whether or not you like the games I mentioned is entirely beside the point.
In your article you dismissed the whole of Europe as a continent capable of producing only two successful developers. I don't think it was a matter of unclear deliniation; I think you simply made a mistake and did European games development a disservice. (har-har I quoted a Jim article)
It doesn't concern me if you're American or French or Ukranian. I'm not making it personal. I'm just calling it how I see it.
Of course, I heard it's unpolished and glitchy, but after putting up with pre-patch STALKER, I feel like I can handle anything.
Unfortunately, I'm talking Halo/Gears/Final Fantasy/Modern Warfare numbers -- they simply don't have the marketing power.
I didn't mean to imply that the games aren't good in their own way -- and I bet Metro 2033 will be as well -- but only (ugh) "core" buyers know that they even exist. Overlord was a good game, and it sold well enough to fund a sequel, but it only sold to people like me and you. I'd bet Codies' budget is a fraction of, say, Epic's.
It's really not even a question of Euro vs. America, or Eastern Euro vs. Western -- it's about big and small. And most European developers tend to be smaller. It takes a special kind of gamer to play Meckensleep games, or Arkedo games, or even games like Metro 2033. It's going to fly under the global radar -- the radar that extends way beyond dudes who read and write for gaming blogs :) -- and that's one of the unfortunate realities of the industry.
I wasn't trying to make comment on game quality, but on viability in a market that's becoming increasingly dominated by American and Japanese publishers. Midway Newcastle couldn't cut it, Eidos got bought out by Square, etc.
Friends again?
I'll admit that the big American and Japanese publishing houses have been the chief funders and publishers of European development houses of late, and budget-wise your Sony/Nintendo/Squeenix/Microsoft/EA/Activisions of the world can punch heavier then the plucky Codies, Team 17s and Cryteks of this world, so on that point we can both agree.
So you maintain that there are only two levels? A Modern Warfare 2 level of the market (yay! Americans!), and a Metro 2033 level of the market? (boo! Eastern Europeans!)
Let me clue you in on a little secret: most people don't know about Halo or Gears or Modern Warfare 2 either. For everyone else out there, its all the same: Modern Warfare 2, Heavy Rain, Final Fantasy, Overlord, Batman: Arkham Asylum.
It's ALL "core" Joseph. You know what's not? Farmville.