The Grinder No Longer a FPS

[Guild McCommunist]

You may recall last year we ran a little preview of a game called The Grinder, a first-person shooter made for Wii by High Voltage Software, the team that brought The Conduit to life on the Nintendo console. This game was to be a first-person shooter follow-up to The Conduit that featured four player co-op gameplay in a horror setting, similar to Valve's Left 4 Dead series.

You may also recall our story we ran just a few short weeks ago that revealed that High Voltage Software was making The Grinder as a multi-console game, versions for the Wii and Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, for release in late 2011.

There's another chapter to this tale, and it's unfolded at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Behind closed doors, High Voltage Software revealed to us the first playable of The Grinder on the Xbox 360. And it was not a first-person shooter. At all.

Instead, it's a top-down shooter in similar vein to Robotron or Gauntlet, with all four players sharing the same screen and controlling their characters with dual-analog control: left stick for movement, right stick for shooting.

Shot of the Xbox 360 version. Check out more by clicking it.


The theme of the game is still the same: a wild west setting with towns overrun with vampires, imps, werewolves and other crazy killers. The idea is to blast your way through the environments with the variety of weapons at your disposal, all the while picking up health, ammunition and other items that'll increase your weapons' power.

The game looked sharp on the Xbox 360 console but it definitely has a ways to go – a year and a half is a good amount of time to get all the bells and whistles into a game and tweak the controls and optimize the framerate.

The reason for the change: while The Grinder would have been one of very few first person shooters on the Wii, it'd be among several on the higher def consoles and the team decided to not enter that genre glut with a "me too" product.

No final decision has been made about the Wii version, however – it could end up the first-person design that it was always originally intended to be, or it could end up a version of the game that's being created for the 360 and PlayStation 3.

Screenshots of the new design are forthcoming. Stay tuned.

Source

I'm here to announce I've lost all hope for HVS and this game. At first I was like "cool, a L4D clone for the Wii". Satisfied. Then it went multiplatform and I was like "Okay, this is getting stupid." Then it was slated for release LATE NEXT YEAR and I was like "Okay, this is stupid". Then there's this, and now I'm like "Alright, HVS is a shit dev". Well, the Wii version may still be a FPS, but I'm not gonna wait for a game that's coming out late next year when it should've come out this year. Well, it may be a decent Smash TV type game, who knows...

 

[Maikel Steneker]

I hope the Wii version will remain an FPS. It looked much cooler that way. I have to agree with Guild, why do they screw up this bad? Just announce an Wii exclusive FPS, release it in 2010 and everyone's happy!

 

[Hadrian]

Thing is they also have shitloads of these sort of shooter games too on PSN/Live too so their reason is stupid.

I can't see those versions getting a retail release.

Also the reason for the 2011 release is that they've reverted back to making shit licensed games rather than "ok at best" original titles.

 

[Windaga]

I'm quite disappointed :/. I agree with some of their statements - yeah, FPS is pretty much a default on the PS3 and the 360, but definitely not on the Wii. I really hope the Wii version of the game remains a FPS. If not, I definitely can not see this game being more than a 15 USD arcade release - like FPS, this genre (on the 360 and PS3) has been "done to death."

That being said, the actual game doesn't look too impressive, either. There are FAR too many colors for this type of setting - especially when compared to the original trailers we saw for the (once) exclusive Wii version.

 

[Snappo]

I hate overview shooter games. They fucked up.

 

[haflore]

Please stay an FPS on Wii!!
Please stay an FPS on Wii!!
Please stay an FPS on Wii!!
Please stay an FPS on Wii!!

If not I'll probably..Send angry letters?

 

[Jaems]

The last good game developed by HVS was Lego Racers.
For the N64.

...
OH WELL. I can't say I was expecting much from this anyway.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I hate overview shooter games. They fucked up.

Well, I don't mind overhead shooters if they're done well, but this just isn't promising.

Anyway, what happened to that last overhead shooter they were developing, Animales de la Muerte? It's probably vaporware by now. It was moved from a WiiWare release to a commercial release, which odds are they couldn't do and we haven't had any updates on it.

$10 says this eventually becomes vaporware. They keep putting way too many changes in it and already moved it to a ridiculously late release date.

 

[triassic911]

Looks cool imo.

 

[Anakir]

www.grinder-game.com Official site:

"The Grinder" is a fast-paced action First Person Shooter (FPS) set in America's Southwest. The game is built around an intense cooperative play experience unlike any other game on the Nintendo Wii.

Players battle hordes of Vampires, mobs of Zombies, packs of Werewolves, unstoppable Slashers and ethereal Horrors, in an incredibly stylized world using a highly dynamic control scheme only possible on the Wii.

I guess they're gonna rephrase it someday.

 

[gokujr1000]

Well looks like I'm not getting it on the PS3 any time soon. But the Wii still has hope!

 

[shakirmoledina]

fps games better work on the wii than any other games
this category isnt tht bad either but as u can see, fps would have been better
maybe they didnt have too much to put in the game or what they wanted to put was not possible for the wii

 

[Bladexdsl]

after seeing how hvs butchered the conduit i've lost any hope of this company actually making a good game.