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Rock Band and Guitar Hero creator's next game is Chroma, a free-to-play rhythm-based shooter (yes, really)
Harmonix is charting new territory yet again. The studio that birthed both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and the only third-party game-development house that created a successful Kinect franchise (Dance Central), announced a new game today: Chroma. Unlike the studio's last several games, Chroma is headed exclusively to the PC (via Steam) as a free-to-play title. Also unlike Harmonix's last several games, Chroma is wildly experimental, blending first-person shooting with pulsing electronic beats and garish visuals. The music game studio is even working with an outside team, Hidden Path Entertainment: the same folks behind critically acclaimed shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. If you're still wondering what type of game Chroma is at this point, that's understandable: There's no such thing as a music-based first-person shooter. That is not a thing that exists (well, unless you wanna count Midway's terribly amazing Revolution X). So let's break it down: In Chroma, you play one of five classes (standard FPS fare, from basic assault to heavy "tank"), with weapons and abilities varying based on the class you choose. In the two game modes we played at DICE 2014, we were on a team with other writers battling for control of various points within a level or battling for control of a cart being pushed one way or another (think: Team Fortress 2). Pretty normal shooter stuff so far, right? The musical wrinkle comes into play whenever you shoot or jump. Fire a sniper rifle shot on the downbeat and connect? That's a one-hit kill. Jump on the downbeat? You'll go a little higher. Better yet, jump on a downbeat on a jump pad and chain your button presses to the beat to continuously jump from pad to pad (this all makes more sense in Chroma's stylized future-world setting, promise). You can fire most guns whenever you want, and jump at any time, but timing actions to the beat makes a world of difference. That is Chroma's bizarre, fascinating premise.
Necessary violence: The creators of The Last of Us defend its reliance on combat
PlayStation 3 exclusive The Last of Us was the most successful game of 2013. That's not just sales (it sold extremely well, to the tune of 3.4 million in its first three weeks), but also critical reception (an average Metacritic score of 95/100 and it swept game of the year awards across the game industry in 2013). Last week, The Last of Us earned development studio Naughty Dog a whopping 10 wins at the annual DICE awards show in Las Vegas -- considered the Oscars of gaming. With Naughty Dog's past creating hit franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter and Uncharted, The Last of Us leads Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley aren't strangers to success (these guys led development of Uncharted 2, another extremely successful game). Their latest work is a tremendous departure.
Abandoning Olympus: Mega Man's creator on going indie
Keiji Inafune's been making games for nearly 30 years. He's the man behind one of gaming's most iconic characters (Mega Man) and several huge franchises (Dead Rising, Onimusha). After 23 years working at Capcom, one of Japan's largest game publishers, he suddenly quit back in 2010. "Settling down means death for a creator. As long as you are a creator, you cannot settle down," he announced on his blog. Just six months after being appointed Capcom's Global Head of Production (overseeing the company's entire gaming catalog, from Resident Evil to Street Fighter), he quit. With that, he set off on his own and created two new companies: Comcept and Intercept. When we talked with Inafune last week at DICE 2014, he spoke of his plans for Comcept in detail. "I was a publisher for 20 years, so you'd be right in thinking I brought some ideas from there into Comcept," he said. That means, first and foremost, retaining ownership of IP. That's a major component of going with Kickstarter for the latest Comcept game, a Mega Man-esque action game titled Mighty No. 9. The project sailed past its target goal of $900K and took in $3.8 million. Without a publisher, of course.
