March 4th, 2010 @ Sway Bar, London
UK studios converge to battle over who's the cleverest - have you booked your place yet?
Thursday April 22nd, 2009 @ The Brewery, London
The countdown to the MCV Awards 2010 has begun – with date, venue and categories announced.
July 14th, 2010 @ The Hilton Metropole, Brighton
The Develop Industry Excellence Awards is the only event which rewards the work done by Europe’s leading games development companies.
Project Gotham dev Bizarre explains what its next title Blur can take, and leave, from Nintendo’s iconic kart series
After nearly a decade of developing the Project Gotham Racing series for Microsoft, Liverpool based developer Bizarre Creations is turning to something it has always dreamed of; an adult Mario Kart.
“The PR people don't really let me say this but Blur is like an adult Mario Kart,” said Blur executive producer Ben Ward, speaking to Develop in an interview published today.
“It's want you want from the next-generation of karting games.”
Blur is quite a departure from what Bizarre creations is known for. Authentic tracks are replaced by busier, alternate reality race courses based on cities across the world.
As part of wider plans to level the playing field, Bizarre will scatter a variety of weapons around the game’s race tracks, striking a resemblance to Nintendo’s longstanding kart racer.
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“There’s a lot of stuff that people growing up with Mario Kart wish those game had done,” said Ward, who added that Blur has been given a Fall 2009 release window by publishers Activision.
“We wanted to take things that are good about Mario Kart but mix that with what we’re good at: more realistic handling, have power-ups based on skills that you use,” he added.
While the team want to capture the spirit of Mario Kart’s scrappy racing, they stated that nuisances found Nintendo’s lucrative racer – such as excessive rubber-banding and unbalanced weapons – would not be replicated.
“That is something that Martyn [Chudley – Bizarre Creative Director] is very keen on; there's not like a big Blue Shell, or a Golden Mushroom or a Bullet Bill,” said Ward.
The first part of our interview with Bizarre can be found here.
It looks like these guys are underestimating Nintendo a little bit here.
From the interview:
"Mario Kart does certain things very well, but it's not as deep as it could be"
Er, I think you will find that the weapons system in mariokart worked because it WAS a deep as anything. Think of all the things you could de with a green shell or a lighning bolt! Not just attack by protect yourself as well, or massively annoy people when they fly off a ramp. :)
I think the blur team will be smart in following this example, and not just sticking on weapons. That will be the difference between something like Twisted Metal and something that's actually good.
Everyone underestimates Nintendo's work nowadays, but I get what they want to say when they state "unbalanced weapons". They refer to the ones that reverse a last place to a third or possibly first place at the last bend, like the Bullet Bill.
I see their point in trying to avoid abuse of this kind of weapons, wether they will succeed in doing it and achieve balance it's not trivial though.
