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Star Wars: Battlefront III Refuses to Die, Heads Home

Come on, everyone. No complaining. We’re going down the rumor road. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, but by gum, it’s going to happen. Reading up on rumors, hearsay, and general tittering about the net is like going to the dentist. You have to do it regularly, whether you like it or not, and you will most likely end up bleeding out the mouth afterward.

So what’s the latest hubbub, bubs? Star Wars: Battlefront III, the last project running at Free Radical before the studio collapsed and had to start sleeping on Crytek’s couch, has found itself a new home.

Posted Mar 05 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, star wars, ea, free radical, lucasarts, rumor, the dark knight, aliens vs predator, pandemic, mercenaries 2, crytek, saboteur, star wars battlefront 3, star wars battlefront iii, rebellion

Free Radical is Safe, but Haze is Still Bad

The good news (in fact, the best news I’ve heard in weeks): Free Radical is still around.

The bad news: I had been spending the week playing Haze as a sort of tribute to commemorate what I assumed was going to be the studio’s last day of existence (it was supposed to be today). Now I feel like I’ve worn a black veil to a birthday party.

Don’t get me wrong: I love TimeSplitters and when people keep their jobs, so I’m very thankful that Crytek swooped in at the zero hour to save what was left of the company. At the same time, I can’t un-play Haze. So let’s look at it anyway and discuss the role it played in how Free Radical got to this point.

Posted Feb 04 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments

Filed under: timesplitters, haze, free radical, joe keiser

Videogames: Star Wars' Last Hope

Around the time 61 Frames Per Second launched, George Lucas’ media empire started amassing its evil forces for a hype onslaught the likes of which hadn’t been seen since 2005. No free thinking nerd would escape its wrath across the summer of 2008. Everywhere you looked online, on television, or in print, there it was, assaulting your eyes with Harrison Ford’s dilapidated visage to hock Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or choking your brain with the impossible geometry of The Clone Wars’ computer animated caricatures. It was a harrowing time for all.

The third-leg of the Lucas media tripod of destruction was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a brand coating a veritable canyon of products, from books to Pez dispensers. Of course, the Force Unleashed flagship was a videogame. It was literally everywhere. Of the many things written and said about Force Unleashed during this period, the most intriguing and lamentable came from Nerve’s own Peter Smith. After reading one of the countless articles on the multiple physics engines running Force Unleashed, Pete said, “This game is so cool looking that I actually wish it wasn’t Star Wars.” He was saying that Star Wars was so sullied, so diluted by oversaturation and truly, inescapably terrible movies, that the mere presence of the universe could tarnish otherwise good entertainment. Star Wars, as a foundation for story, as anything, sucked. It was no longer cool. And I was terrified to find myself agreeing with the man.

Of course I came to my senses, shortly thereafter. No matter what, Star Wars will always, in some small way, be cool. Simplistic morality plays, idiotically fleshed out science fiction universes, and over-fetishized metallic swimwear may all be lame as hell. But humming swords made of light will always be awesome. And it’s mostly videogames that have kept Star Wars cool in recent years.

Posted Jan 15 2009, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, star wars, indiana jones, factor 5, free radical, bioware, george lucas, rogue squadron, knights of the old republic, kingdom of the crystal skull, clone wars, battlefront, Harrison ford, battlefront 3

The High Cost of Gaming: Free Radical, Creators of GoldenEye, Close Doors

Making videogames doesn’t just require ingenuity, artistic talent across a swath of disciplines, taste, and creative vision. It also requires obscene amounts of money. Even 2008’s indie poster child, Braid, took an investment of $180,000 to actually finish and distribute via Xbox Live Arcade. Making games reliant on cutting edge technology (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and high-end PC titles) costs tens of millions of dollars and we’re starting to see the high cost of development start to take its toll on independent developers and big publishers alike. Just look at Cole’s round-up of the videogame-industry-death-toll to gain insight on just what high development cost coupled with a flagging economy can do.

The latest casualty is particularly sad, however. Free Radical, the studio responsible for the excellent TimeSplitters trilogy, the underappreciated Second Sight, and the critical-commercial fiasco Haze, have reportedly locked their doors. The staff, according to multiple UK press outlets, has been barred from entering their offices without explanation.

This news is tragic. Free Radical was founded by David Doak (pictured), Steve Ellis, and a number of other former Rare staffers responsible for GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. But Free Radical’s greatest contribution to videogame design was paying its staff overtime.

Posted Dec 18 2008, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, perfect dark, goldeneye, timesplitters, haze, free radical, second sight, david doak, steve ellis

The Strange Case of Hype

When is a game review more interesting than its subject? When there’s hype.

Free Radical, the first-person shooter developer responsible for the original Perfect Dark, the Timesplitters franchise, and GoldenEye 007, are releasing their latest, Haze, this week and it has seen a flurry of coverage in the gaming press and blogosphere. Not because of the game’s release after nearly a year of delays but because it’s getting slammed in western press outlets. Haze isn’t the first marquee Playstation 3 title to see this sort of attention. Factor 5’s much maligned Lair saw the same tar and feathering when it released last August. Lair was a legitimately broken game suffering from an ill-advised decision to implement a purely motion-control interface. Its lambasting by the media became a story in itself because of Factor 5 Julian Eggebrecht’s bombastic response to the criticism. Haze received fairly positive preview coverage in the press late last year when the game was originally supposed to release, preview coverage looking at what was touted to be a close to finished product in need of final polishing. But in the intervening months, as the game has been repeatedly delayed, an air of negativity has surrounded it in news coverage. Is the reason that Haze is getting poor reviews a news story because it’s confirming everyone’s expectations? Is it any different than the downpour of perfect review scores for Grand Theft Auto 4 became a news worthy story?

The real question: does hype, positive or negative, create news where there may not be any?

Posted May 21 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments

Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, perfect dark, goldeneye, factor 5, timesplitters, haze, hype, free radical

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.