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American McGee reveals Grimm
Author: Joe Martin Editor: Richard SwinburnePublished: 17th May 2007
American Mcgee's Alice was an excellent third person adventure with a similar theme to the upcoming Grimm
American Mcgee has also become famous for his dark, twisted takes on classical stories and transforming them into computer games such as Alice, a hugely creative re-telling of the Alice in Wonderland stories by Lewis Carroll. The new game, which is to be developed at Spicy Horse Studios (Ed - local delicacy?), will be no different.
Titled Grimm, the game will be a macabre version of the Brothers Grimm fairy stories and will be designed by himself and R.J. Berg, who also worked on Alice.
Grimm won't be seeing a retail release any time soon though and is planned to be a massive 24 episode epic that will be available exclusively via the subscription-based GameTap service where players can download games from.
With 24 episodes in the planning stages, it's easily the most ambitious episodic title we've seen, especially when other episodic games like Half-Life Episode 2 have suffered repeated delays, or been outright cancelled like the short-lived Sin Episodes. The game won't be a complex first person shooter though, but a series of action/adventure games which presumably cover one fairy tale per episode.
Of course, episodic games aren't always doomed to fail and the recent Sam and Max titles which have been produced by Telltale Games have been met with critical acclaim and support in return for keeping to regular release dates. The Sam and Max games have also been released via GameTap, so the licensing of Grimm may mean that GameTap sees a future in the episodic format despite the failures of other companies
So, can episodic gaming work or is it all doomed to suffer delay after delay? Are episodic games any better, or do you prefer a solid, larger game arriving after years of wait? Don't look at us for the answer, (Ed - that'll be arriving as episodic content in a few days? Joke!) so dive into the forums!
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With episodic content though, regardless of the qualtity of the produce, delays will unavoiadably damage the popularity of the games, so it's a risk attempting game development in this manner.
For something like Sam n Max, it was probably a good idea, but whoever thought a technology pushing game like Half-Life 2, which already suffered delays before the main game shipped, would be right for episodes is an idiot, they were bound to suffer delays and must have realised they couldn't deliver.
I bet Valve were just terrified of HL2 becoming 'last year's game', they wanted to keep it in the public limelight, regardless of the risks involved. I'd much rather they'd finished where HL2 finished, then released all three episodes as HL3 in a couple of years time, filling the gap in the middle with stuff like Portal and Team Fortress 2.
Re: the news though, excellent stuff, the design in Alice was flawless. True the gameplay was a little run of the mill, but the art and the style more than made up for it. What ever happened to the animated movie of Alice, with Sarah Michelle Gellar as the lead vocal?
You are a fountain of knowledge Mr. Jonsophong.