19 incredible games you'll never play

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The games industry doesn’t handle economic mess. A well-oiled PR machine, the industry is designed solely to pat itself on the back. Big sales! Big games! Big us! But what happens when things go wrong? A canceled game is a monument to failure - the result of poor creative judgment or upper management mishaps. What do you do when there’s a stinking corpse in your house and blood on your hands? You bury it under the patio. Until, that is, a disgruntled employee or enthusiastic hacker digs up the body. Read on for more…




GoldenEye


N64 classic GoldenEye on a current-gen console. It was real. The powers that be might deny it, but we’ve seen it with our very own eyes. Imagine Rare’s Bondtacular in glorious HD. Reworked textures and character models stink of new, but it moves like the game you know and love. Scientists can be painted red with blood. And yes, a DD44 Dostovei to the balls still results in a comically slow crumple. And if your eyes don’t fancy rose-tinted spectacles? A click of a button switches the world back to classic GoldenEye, warts and all.

Factor in four-player online play (split-screen, naturally) and online time trial leaderboards (for skimming those precious milliseconds off Facility) and you have the greatest downloadable game never to see the light of day. Why not? Boot the game up and a message appears: “Do you expect me to remove this Nintendo logo screen?” “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.” Therein lies the rub: Nintendo. Rare sweetened Nintendo of America with a promise to port the game to Wii and release their Nintendo back catalogue on Wii’s Virtual Console. But when the suits in Japan refused to work with Microsoft, Activison (holders of the Bond licence) got spooked and put the kibosh on Rare’s plans.

Perfect Dark HD goes some way to easing the pain, but Joanna Dark can’t replace digi-Brosnan in our hearts. GoldenEye sits, finished, in Rare’s vault. For their eyes only. You know who to blame.




Indiana Jones and The Staff of Kings


Here’s a rarity on our list – the kind of historical artifact Jones would go nuts for. Announced in 2005, Staff of Kings appeared briefly to dazzle with its incredi-fighting: fisticuffs livened up with Euphoria physics. As LucasArts’ internal development shifted to The Force Unleashed, Indy’s resources were yanked out like Mola Ram going to work on a sacrificial maiden. Here’s where the story should end, with a few details and a couple of screens of Indy swinging his fists atop a San Franciscan tram. But thanks to continued work on the Wii port we can sort of see how it would have played out.

Wii’s Staff of Kings is not a great game, but it’s a great Indy experience. Take the opening San Francisco segment. A quick bar brawl develops into a rooftop shootout before sprinting through an explosive fireworks factory setpiece, descending to a subterranean pirate ship for some tomb raiding and emerging for a tram car chase. Packed into 15 minutes of play, the pace is breathless and truly worthy of Spielberg’s throwaway fun. But it never plays as more than a blueprint for a shinier PS3/360 game. Combat is clunky, lacking that Euphoria fluidity, and visual rough edges detract.

Nowhere are Indy’s ambitious PS3/360 roots more apparent than in the grand finale – a motorbike chase THROUGH the Red Sea. As Indy pursues a maniacal Nazi, parting the Red Sea with a mystical trinket, the Wii groans with the effort and we groan with the missed opportunity.




TimeSplitters 4


What was it Obi-Wan said? “If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” With LucasArts putting a Vader-style death grip on Battlefront III (see the third page), the FRD boys could get back to what they knew best: TimeSplitters. Beloved on last gen – Free Radical’s work with GoldenEye and Perfect Dark shone through in the splitscreen deathmatches – a shiny next-gen version would have brought their mix of murdering, modes and monkeys kicking and screaming to the online world.

And where previous iterations had poked fun at movie cliche, this new instalment had gaming in its sights. Teaser art plopped the TimeSplitters monkey in the Gears of War logo, dressed him up as Master Chief and kitted him out as a Big Daddy. Anyone who’s played TimeSplitters 2’s parody of GoldenEye’s dam level will know Free Radical’s awesome spoofing ability – a whole game of the stuff proved an enticing prospect. Hell, after their over-hyped mess Haze, we could all do with a laugh.

Unfortunately, Haze had left a haze of its own upon Free Radical – not unlike that emitting from a recently laid dog-log. LucasArts’ sudden withdrawal left them looking for a publisher. The Haze debacle left publishers wary. With no one taking the bait, Free Radical went into administration in December 2008. There is time yet for a comeback. Now part of Crytek, could TimeSplitters 4 live again in CryEngine?




Titan Project


Pity poor Ensemble. After ten blissful years happily developing Age of Empires they hedged their bets on Halo and their own empire crumbled. As the developers behind Halo Wars, this wasn’t their first stab at riding the Bungie money machine. Project Titan, started in June 2005 and cancelled in June 2007, was a Halo MMO. Never announced by Microsoft, we only know about its existence due to ex-Ensemble chaps spilling their guts upon the studio’s closure last year.
Prototype screens reveal a rather straight forward World of Warcraft clone. Bungie’s penchant for garish bright colours only feeds the vibe - squint and the screens could have been snapped in Azeroth. Bizarrely, it doesn’t feel particularly Halo-y. Master Chief makes a stunted appearance – as if someone had slipped Kenny Baker some Mjolnir Armour – but where are the neon alien weapons and Warthogs? Worse, some characters perform mind-melting magic; if Halo was to be infected with fantasy, we’re almost glad it didn’t see the light of day.
By the info-leaker’s admission, the game never got beyond a pre-production stage. Everything seen here was developed by a team of eight – one of Ensemble’s many mini teams brainstorming prototypes (another went on to become Halo Wars). We’re quite happy to see Bungie churning out their potent mix of online FPS, but doesn’t the epic scale of the Halo mythology demand a genre more capable of showing it? Titan’s not the MMO we wanted, but we still don’t want it any less for all that.

Tiberium



Camper than a weekly Glee night, Command & Conquer has always threatened to morph into more than an RTS. It certainly has the drama and cast to pull off a more character-driven piece. 2002’s FPS Renegade tried and failed, leaving EA to take another stab in 2008 with Tiberium. The appeal is clear: all that ludicrous C&C action viewed from ground level. Why watch Peter Stomare horribly overact when you could fight by his gurning side? And imagine lining up your sights on Tim Curry. Just imagine.

With Medal of Honor vets EA Los Angeles at the helm, Tiberium had a fine shooter pedigree. Aiming for a strategic FPS, the resultant game was closer in flavour to last year’s Brutal Legend. Battles revolved around seizing nodes to enable new units to enter play. Wade through an entire alphabet’s worth of acronymic nonsense (our unlikely named hero Ricardo Vega is the FBC of GDI’s RAID) and the mix of gunishment and thinking should have resulted in the dumb sci-fi antidote to Brothers in Arms.

Should have. In September 2008, EA axed the game, using it to send a warning to every other team at EA. “The quality bar has been raised,” read an internal memo. “Now we need to step up our focus on great design and execution.”




Batman: Dark Knight


Such is the quality of Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum that it’s almost hard to remember how beaten and bruised ol’ Bats was before. In 2007, EA had already made like Bane and broken the Batman licence’s back with the shocking Batman Begins. Ever the valiant hero, he pulled himself to his feet to answer the signal projected by Pandemic Brisbane. Having established themselves with Destroy all Humans, the studio partnered with EA to work on an unspecified Batman title.

The following months – as described by disgruntled ex-employees – were ugly. Two-Face ugly. Only without the nice half. Not only was EA’s Batman licence soon due to expire, but EA cut further dev time by tying it to The Dark Knight, due out even sooner. Batman thrives on weighing up the situation. Pandemic weren’t able to swoop up to a Gargoyle – they were forced to plunge into a massive open world Gotham (a genre they weren’t experienced in) using the Saboteur engine (not designed for sprawling cities).

Remember Falcone’s wise words to Wayne in Batman Begins: you always fear what you don’t understand. The team didn’t understand the game they were making. And yes, it makes for a horror story. As Christopher Nolan sat making the final tweaks to The Dark Knight, Pandemic’s Gotham glitched, crashed and burned. The game was canned, and the studio soon followed. Fear the knight.




The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf


The Witcher, a PC-only RPG, had a lot going for it. An interesting combat system, a vast fantasy world, an approach to moral decisions that rivals Mass Effect’s. But more than that, it had ornately hand-painted sweater-puppies. Yes, our voluptuously haired hero was a dab hand with the steel blade, but he was a dabber hand with the fleshy one. And being, as it was, a classy Eastern European developed venture, every lady bedded rewarded you with a picture of herself in the nude. Often performing some kind of ludicrous erotic act, such as ladling milk down herself. Needless to say, PC gamers were willing to forgive some of its shortcomings.

Happy was the day that original devs, CD Projekt RED STUDIO, announced a PS3/360 port on the way courtesy of French developers Widescreen Games. A game that had blossomed on PC thanks to patches and tweaking would arrive on consoles in its perfected state. Even better perhaps, thanks to a new combat system and a reworking of enemy AI, boss battles and character development. Having played through the PC version – hunting down the lady cards like a sexier version of the US Army’s most-wanted Iraqi deck – we couldn’t wait to get reacquainted.

Unfortunately, CD Projekt couldn’t wait to get reacquainted either – after Widescreen failed to meet development deadlines they cut funding. The two companies parted and Rise of the White Wolf has been put on indefinite hold. For the time being you’ll have to get your painted perv-o-thrills the old fashioned way. However, if you can wait until Q1 of 2011, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will be coming to PC, PS3, and 360. Hooray!




Necessary Force


If you want something done right, do it yourself. The philosophy permeates every bit of Necessary Force. On one hand you have the game’s hero: a cop out to clean up the mean streets by braining one hoodlum at a time with fists the size of bowling balls. On the other hand there are developers Midway Newcastle. Faced with the total collapse of Midway in mid-2009, they decided to make Necessary Force, PR it and woo themselves a new buyer. Their twitter feed charts early optimism before collapsing suddenly in July. With just 240 followers it seems an undignified end for an intriguing project.

Putting Wheelman behind them (and, while they were at it, in a giant furnace), Necessary Force is another sandbox, only tougher and purged of Vin Diesel. The brooding crime-ridden streets have more in common with RoboCop, a vibe only strengthened by the ultra-violent brand of beatings meted out by our hero. Yes, you can choose to investigate crimes and bring criminals to justice through good old-fashioned detective work. But who wants to pencil push when you could be giving perps face-meets-wall treats? The devs even cite The Shield as a major influence. Always a good start (unless you’re the craptacular PS2 Shield game).

Most interesting is how the city responds to your actions. Less crime equals cleaner streets. Tough love equals angry bosses. Gentle policing equals over-confident crooks. Alas, no Newcastle Midway equals no chance to test it out. The IP is ready and waiting; here’s hoping it’s out for good behaviour soon.




Division 9


Anything Valve can do, Irrational can do better? The Bioshock boys believe so, recently revealing Division 9 – a Left 4 Dead-ish game that never made it to completion. Zombie infested city? Check. Cooperative play? Oh yes. Early footage even reveals a similar mix of nimble hoards and shambling fatsos. It’s almost as if Valve went rifling through Irrational’s bins, like some kind of hungry code fox. They didn’t of course: Division 9’s best ideas are absent from L4D.

Pitched as a jokey sequel to stern-faced police strategy SWAT 4 – they called it Zombie SWAT internally – Division 9’s action was more strategically led. Irrational’s band of zombo slayers were in for the long haul, holed up in a shopping mall, venturing out to better their chances of survival. Fight to a power generator and you could light up the streets, improving the odds elsewhere. Risk lives to save doctors and engineers and their work could save countless others.

Or at least that’s what Ken Levine says. He’s not unknown to spout hot air – remember the fully functioning ecosystem he promised for Bioshock? Alas, Division 9 failed to secure a publisher. “Zombies games won’t sell,” they said. Er...

Duke Nukem Forever


If ever a company defined ‘troubled development’ it was 3D Realms. Duke Nukem Forever was announced in 1997 and, back then, looked freaking incredible. Then one year and one engine shift later, it looked freaking incredible. Then three years and another engine shift later, it looked freaking incredible. Duke, God bless him, liked chasing tail. 3D Realms, God bless them, liked chasing game engines. Always one step behind the next big thing, they would radically rework DNF, only to find themselves one step behind again.

Duke Nukem Forever’s history is the history of 3D engines. Quake II, Unreal, Doom 3: each spawned hits; Duke was never among them. 3D Realms became the kid with ever more desperate reasons for not doing his homework. The engine’s not good enough. The level design’s wrong. The dog ate our code. Those involved would later tell horror stories about the game being rewritten on whims. One day the producer demanded snow levels. Why? He’d just seen a demo of The Thing.

In May 2009 enough was enough. Twelve years with no results saw the development team laid off and hit with a breach of contract by publisher Take Two. And it needn’t have ended this way. Prey, another 3D Realms special, began work in 1995 before arriving in 2006. The king is dead. Long live the king.




Aliens: The Crucible


An Aliens RPG. Anyone who’s emptied a heat clip’s worth of ammo into one of Mass Effect 2’s Collectors will know it makes sense. Obsidian’s Sega-published effort wasn’t to be a dry Dungeons & Dragons affair but a thoroughly modern action-RPG. Leaked footage revealed darkened corridors lit up by gun muzzle-flashes as the oily killers emerged from the goddamn walls. Elsewhere we saw marines tap desperately on keypads to activate security measures. Shooty-shooty or thinky-thinky: Obsidian have always championed freedom of approach.

Above: Plus, there was this
In the eternal battle between action and brains, action always wins out – Sega cancelled the game in June 2009. Like the shady Weyland-Yutani, Sega never really expanded on the reasons why. But then... securing the licence in December 2006, Sega announced both Crucible and Gearbox’s FPS Colonial Marines. Factor in the acquisition of Aliens vs Predator and that’s a whole lotta Aliens to be promoting. That reminds us: what the hell happened to Colonial Marines?

While the squad-based shooter hasn’t registered on our motion trackers for some time, Gearbox’s one-man promotional army Randy Pitchford has confirmed the game is still on the way. It’s just incubating at the moment, waiting to burst from Randy in a fountain of gore and screaming. Crucible is not so lucky. In space no one can hear you get shit-canned.




Final Fantasy Fortress


With most of the gaming world donning their stomping boots to go to work on FFXIII, we look to the great unreleased FF. Fortress, in development at Grin, was to spin off from FFXII, continuing the tale of Ashe – XIII’s one time resistance fighter. Leaked design documents reveal a straightforward action-RPG, not without a hint of Oblivion in the sweeping open world vistas. The game was to revolve, in part, around the invasion of the titular fortress. Think the battle for Helms Deep multiplied by chocobo.

Looking at the design documents, however, it’s hard to say which side you’d be on. Would you storm the gates or protect them? When it describes ‘planting bombs’ and ‘catapult rush,’ are these actions you’d perform or have to stop? Either way, the fortress looks to fall at the end, concluding with an emergency escape across an ice field.

But Grin went bankrupt in August 2009. Rumour is, Square-Enix withheld payment, leading to an “unbearable cashflow situation.” Yes, Grin’s shaky track record doesn’t inspire confidence – Terminator Salvation and Bionic Commando being evidence – but they thought they were on to something, referencing an “unreleased masterpiece that we weren’t allowed to finish”. That’d wipe the Grin off anyone’s face.




Cipher Complex


John Cipher. With a name like that he had no choice but to become a secret agent, did he? Employed by the US government to recover a downed recon satellite, John was ready to embark on some Metal Gear-esque espionage. Edge of Reality (responsible for, er, Over the Hedge and the rubbish Incredible Hulk game on last-gen consoles) were at the helm, dredging up PR-infused promises seemingly taken from the edge of reality. Said president Binu Phillip of Cipher Complex: “The concept and mechanics have been incubating in our minds for years. We can finally make our dream project a reality...”

What could these well-incubated thoughts be? Stabbing, apparently (which, incidentally, would make a great name for a Love, Actually sequel). Nearly every piece of concept art shows Mr. Cipher going at it with a blade the size of a small child. Knees, backs, necks and faces: he stabs ‘em all. He’s a one man ganking machine. The one time we do see him with a gun – a hulking great minigun number straight out of Predator – he uses it to hang off a zipline to flee a helicopter. The pro-knife agenda would bring a tear to Dick Marcinko’s eye. A tear he’d instantly stab, of course.

For reasons unknown, Edge of Reality never got to make their dream project a reality. Only a little bit remains: a half-rendered cinematic intro. A bizarre mix of characters and faceless mannequins, it looks like Metal Gear as directed by David Lynch. Check it out now.




Star Wars Battlefront III


The magic of Star Wars, to fans at least, was the operatic scope of the action. As intergalactic armadas clashed in the vast expanse of space, Lucas would take us down to planet surfaces or into the bellies of death ships, where individuals fought for the fate of the galaxy. Battlefront, one of last-gen’s more impressive online offerings, had all the right parts, but never in conjunction. Ground battles were fought and space battles were fought, but never at the same time. These were disjointed space arenas, divided and conquered.

Imagine a Battlefront free of loading screens. With the PS3/360’s brain, ships could be hijacked on ground level, flown into space and docked into star cruisers where the fight would continue. Tired of popping caps in ewoks? Why not take a breather in the Death Star trenches? This was Free Radical’s vision for Battlefront III: complete freedom of movement in battles worthy of the source material. And, with the blessing of King George, engines were primed and ready to go.

Battlefront 3’s story ends on a down note to rival Empire Strikes Back (alas, without Free Radical’s gobby Rob Yescombe frozen in carbonite). Project delays and communication difficulties led to LucasArts pulling the plug. A real shame. Leaked art reveals a zombified Obi-Wan, a surprisingly kooky direction for Lucas’ space-babble. And if there’s one thing Free Radical understand, its multiplayer. They were behind GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and TimeSplitters after all.




The bucket list


Other games that got lost on the way to the shops…
Frame City Killer
Free-roaming city. Now roaming free.
Huxley
Long-lost MMO. Nothing to do with the pig. Looks to be still coming to PC, but the 360 version is on indefinite hold.
Splinter Cell Conviction
The original Splinter Cell Conviction. Look for government agent with a hint of hobo.
Harker
The Collective promised that we’d actually feel the stake going through Dracula’s heart.
The Outsider
Let’s hope reports of David Braben’s unmade masterpiece’s demise have been exaggerated.