We profile Ninja Theory, Rare, Frontier, People Can Fly, Splash Damage
The ninth annual Develop Industry Excellence Awards is just around the corner, with more than 90 studios competing for top honours at the July 20th event in Brighton.
In the run up to the big night, Develop is running a series of profiles of all the nominees in each category.
We start here with the finalists for New IP. To be eligible, a studio will need to be based in Europe and have built a new intellectual property since July 2010.
The final choices, chosen by Develop’s editorial team, are found below. The ultimate winner will be decided by a 100-person-strong judging panel of industry pros, and announced at the awards show on July 20th.
To watch the event live, email Kathryn.humprey@intentmedia.co.uk to book your seat.
A beautiful, broken-down future America was the setting for Ninja Theory’s exceptionally well crafted post-apocalyptic adventure Enslaved. Co-written by in-vogue scribe Alex Garland and featuring Andy ‘Gollum’ Serkis, the game is a brilliant sci-fi reinterpretation of the classical Chinese story Journey to the West.
The way in which the Microsoft motion sensing kit was so warmly welcomed by the international community was aided in no small part by Rare’s excellent Kinect Sports, a rare example of an exceptionally well designed and enjoyable game that falls within the difficult remit of being ‘fun for the whole family’.
The sheer cuteness of the boggle-eyed creatures populating Frontier’s wonderful Kinectimals is worthy of an award in itself, but the skill evident in crafting such a complete and engaging experience for the game’s audience lifted that cuteness and brought it easily onto the 2011 awards finalists list.
That FPS titles are dime-a-dozen in the modern industry should only reinforce the impressiveness of Bulletstorm’s appearance here tonight. People Can Fly has injected the genre with such loveable toilet humour and confident design ethics that the process of shooting waves of vile baddies is not only fun, but cool again.
Splash Damage’s ‘mingleplayer’ FPS Brink is an inventive and exciting presence this year. Attempting to mould the single, multi and online shooter experiences into one seamless sci-fi team-based shooter, it has shaken up the notion of what a triple-A title can be, and has rightly caught the attention of the entire industry.
This is an odd list to be honest, but also a saddening one. "Original IP" and 2 of the games are gimmicky Motion sensor games.
I loved Bulletstorm for it's sheer mental break-neck speed gameplay and good base mechanics that worked through-out. There wasn't much in the way of penalties for fouling up Skillshots, but it was fun to get them all. Multiplayer is good fun as well.
Brink, I had a huge expectation for Brink and I personally believe that it delivered, but it had been over-marketted and over-hyped. It really is a marmite game, you'll either love it or hate it. The teamplay is solid, the maps are nice (though SD badly need to release more), the weapons are well balanced, the SMART system works fantastically well I think and I genuinely enjoy the aesthetic they went with.
It's not perfect and they should have done a broader BETA to get alot of the smaller bugs ironed out before release, but thankfully they've sorted that out.
People Can Fly made an awesome game with Painkiller and stepped up again with Bulletstorm and I cannot wait for Bulletstorm 2. The restricted movement tough (no jump), while it didn't break the game, it was a bit clunky. Still awesome and still worth a purchase.
Brink did its utmost to deliver and match the hype that was generated. I love the game and i think SD had the cahones to actully try something a little different. My vote would go to them.
