Free Radical closes shop [update]

I thought Battlefront was made by Pandemic

The first two were, FRD was supposedly doing part III.

Here's to hoping Battlefront 3 makes it out alive. One of the few shooters my wife will happily play with me (she's a star wars geek)

j.howlett,

You'll be pleasantly surprised with Dark Sector. The story's not great and the voice acting can be quite bad at times with a terrible boss at the end, but the gameplay and visuals are solid; the Evolution Engine it uses looks similar to Unreal 3, but it has 0 texture pop-in. I've invested about 300 hours into that title, just because I cackle with glee every time I score a decapitation or a bisection (I love splitting someone in half at the waist so the top half falls over a rail).

Dark Sector is supposed to be a solid title. I think it got burned in reviews because the multiplayer was a bit broken, and there was little replayability.

If you can Hell's Highway for $10 at Amazon is a good deal. The game is worth between $10-$30. Again, its solid but the multiplayer is pretty much dead, and the game has little replayability.

Also, I've heard that Legendary is a decent game if you can get it cheap.

There's that aspect, and there's the aspect they utterly failed to deliver the two things they were hyping the most (the story and the visuals). Visually, the game looks awful; it runs at an EDTV resolution, but with nothing to really show for it. The fire effects were probably the worst, though. You were essentially playing something that would've looked just okay had it been released on the Xbox 4 years ago.

Crappy visuals, however, can be offset by offering a fantastic story. That didn't happen. While the concept of a private military oppressing people with drugged up soldiers isn't new in any way, you can flesh it out into something as good as Bioshock if you play your cards right. That didn't happen. We were promised Platoon and got Commando instead. You don't promise a serious, grim title only to deliver something where your teammates spend the first 1/3 of the game shouting, "Boosh!" or "This sure beats pumping gas!" They're mantle soldiers...not Xtacles. I see no rape wig or Barnaby Jones. Killface isn't the CEO of the Mantle Corporation.

The gameplay mechanics themselves were fairly mediocre. If they had put the same time and resources into Haze as they had with their previous games, they wouldn't be sinking like a much smaller version of the Titanic.

You can't shut down RARE, they're backed by Microsoft...how else could they put out Grabbed by the Ghoulies and still be around?

Anyway, I'm going to pick up Haze post Christmas and tryout the Co-op... maybe if I as well as everyone else had done that earlier Free Radical would still be around...sigh.

You know what, ujn hunter?

Fuck you.

Coming from a true banjo kazooie fan.

Glad I could be of assistance in ruffling your feathers Mr. kazooie fan. Unfortunately I cannot help you and your bad taste in games.

eh??
stupid fricking comment system!
That was replying to the person asking about devs in the midlands

You can't apologise then blame someone for statistics you made up.

Here's a novel idea. Why don't you blame Free Radical's failure for the resulting closure? They promised a visually stunning, smart, gritty shooter that would make you take a serious look at the growth of privatized military companies. What they delivered was something that looked like a 2004-ish XBOX game with the intelligence of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando. A GI-Joe PSA from the 1980's had more eloquence in delivering their messages than what Free Radical attempted in Haze. The gameplay was broken, and the few gimmicks like taking nectar or using it as a weapon against Mantel soldiers became boring within minutes.

Free Radical's closure has nothing to do with the PS3 user base. It does, however, have everything to do with over-promising while substantially under-delivering. If it had been multiplatform, it would've sold just as poorly on the Xbox 360 and it wouldn't have sold at all on the PC (because it has much, much better shooters).

Because the development costs are relatively high for a game this generation, smaller developers are finding that releasing just one terrible game, despite having a history of releasing nothing but critically acclaimed titles, is enough to sink them. While it's sad to see Free Radical go, they bet the farm on a mediocre game and they're now having to deal with the ramifications of it.

I paid $10 for it out of curiosity (and because I own all their other games) and I feel ripped off. Nobody's lying, it's terrible.

Because one of them is making good games and owned by one of the largest corporations in the world?

...maybe.

Oh, get off your goddamn high horse you finger pointing simpleton. The game sold poorly because it wasn't good, and the only group of people responsible for that is Free Radical. It must have never occurred to you that a critically acclaimed company, with no major releases for 3 years, can die if they bet the farm on a terrible game that had equally terrible sales. If it had, you wouldn't be dumb enough to point your finger where it doesn't belong.

Let me break it down for you, in simple terms, why Haze was a financial failure. Free Radical promised a smart shooter that would change how you look at the use of privatized military companies, drug use, and media control in the real world; it was often quoted as "making Halo 3 look like it was meant for kids". They didn't deliver on their promise. The game's message was delivered with the kind of finesse that would make a GI Joe PSA look like a piece of Shakespearian high art and the plot would've been perfectly at home on a USA made-for-TV movie staring Tom Berenger. You feel no empathy towards the character you play as since you spend most of the game wanting to blow your own brains out before your enemies can.

The gameplay was not good. The gimmick of Nectar (either usage as a stimulant or a weapon) wears out fast. The AI for Mantle Corporation soldiers and Promise Hand is absolutely stupid to the point of being an embarrassment to even last gen games. The weapons were mediocre at best, controls are clunky, you were stuck in the driver's seat in any of the game's vehicles, and the level design was often weak.

Now we come to the visuals. Running at an EDTV resolution is fine if you're pushing the system to the absolute max of what it can do. Haze doesn't do that in any way since it looks like a late 2004 release for the original XBOX. Character models are only okay, environmental textures are horribly low res (even by PS2 standards), rag dolls are awful, fire effects look as if they were pulled right out of the PS1/N64 generation, and the only good particle effects come in the form of fireflies. To top it off, there's screen tearing and texture pop in.

If this game had been a multiplatform release, it would've sold just as badly on the Xbox 360 and it wouldn't have sold ANYTHING on the PC; I doubt people would've even bothered pirating it. The constant delays did absolutely nothing for the end product. Free Radical released a bad game and now they're paying the price of putting all of their eggs in just one basket. Suck it up, quit being a b*tch about it, and quit pointing your fingers at PS3 users.

Jesus H. Christ, how many times do I have to repeat myself before my message actually sinks into that thick goddamn head of yours? Haze sold poorly because it was a bad game, not because Sony or the PS3 userbase secretly wanted to destroy Free Radical.

Haze was well advertised and had a fair amount of hype behind it, until the game was actually released. Negative reviews came flooding in, and those who were unfortunate enough to buy the game echoed similar sentiments. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire in dry bush, you cock knocking dumbass.

The PS3 was the only platform that Haze actually would've sold well on. The PS3 had no major releases during the spring and the only game Haze had to compete with was the PS3 port of COD4. The Xbox 360, in contrast, was still dominated by Halo 3 and COD4; even if you removed those two shooters, games like Gears of War were still quite well and the system had a much larger library of quality titles to choose from than the PS3 did.

If Haze had been released on the PC, it wouldn't have even registered since there's no shortage of fantastic shooters on the platform. Bad games sell poorly. It doesn't matter how much money's thrown behind them or who developed them, they sell like condoms in an abstinence seminar. You're just too stupid to realize this.

Radical failed because they invested everything they had in developing a shitty game without having any major releases for 3 years to line their coffers; the last Timesplitters came out in 2005 and I can guarantee you they quit making money off of the game in early 2006. It was all or nothing and they learned the hard way that you sometimes loose when you gamble everything.

If you're going to bitch so much about Free Radical's closure, where the hell were you when Haze was released? Did you buy a PS3 and a copy of Haze? No? Then shut your mouth, sit there, and pretend like you're capable of actually expressing a single cognitive thought. I've spoken to African Grey Parrots who weren't just smarter than you, but had much better grammar.

Let me ask you an honest question. Why would I pay pay $60 for a Metal Gear Solid game when an extended version inevitably comes out a year or two later? It's the same reason I held off on purchasing any of the Alien movies and Blade Runner. Konami will still get my money, despite the problems I have with their game (while it's great, hearing "nanomachines" 50,000 times in a 5 minute span pisses me off to no end when Metal Gear Irving is also referred to as Gekko). Synonyms and invented slang don't detract from a story.

"You are primarily a PC gamer!" Your point? I've got all last and current gen consoles. I have: 15 Xbox 360 games, 10 PS3 games, 8 Wii games, 8 Xbox games, 14 PS2 games, and 20+ Gamecube games. I've probably put more of my money into console gaming than you have, so you're not exactly one to talk about "non-support" are you?

I've also play good, mediocre, and bad shooters. Haze is bad but what makes it terrible is the pedigree of its developer. You keep rambling on and on about how being a PS3 exclusive killed Haze. What you're too fucking dumb to realize is that terrible games have equally terrible sales. I'll say it again, just in case you didn't catch it the first time: it doesn't matter how much money someone throws behind it, what platform its exclusive to, or who developed it, a bad game doesn't sell well.

Haze was constantly delayed, and for what? It looked like an okay 2004-ish Xbox game, had terrible AI, horrible voice acting, bad gameplay, and a substantially less than mediocre plot despite having an initially promising concept. The ONLY thing that game did somewhat well was sound. It had no hope of doing well on the Xbox 360 or the PC. If Haze had just been mediocre, it would've sold well on the PS3 because the system has only a handful of shooters. But, again, Haze wasn't mediocre; it was just down right shitty.

I don't care if it's from Free Radical, Konami, Crytek, Bungie, Epic, or Infinity Ward, why would I pay $60 of my hard earned money for a terrible game? Not buying it should send a clear message to the developer that they didn't try hard enough. This is the real world, dipshit. Life isn't fair and sometimes you don't get a second chance to redeem yourself. Free Radical's just learned that unfortunate less. It's not my fault or problem they're closing up shop because they made nothing for 3 years and then bet the farm on a game they knew would've sold like a boxed piece of fecal material.

I still stand by my comment: I have met African Grey Parrots smarter than you. They have the capacity to learn, you don't.