Beta + Cancelled Playstation 3 (PS3) Video Games - Page 48 of 70

Heist (HEI$T) is a cancelled action game that was in development by inXile Entertainment and would have been published by Codemasters for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The game was to be set in San Francisco, California, circa 1969, where the players would have been able to control a group of criminals as they perform various thefts. In January 2010 Codemasters announced that the game had been officially cancelled, as we can read on CVG:

“After a much extended development period, Heist has been terminated as a project and removed from our release schedule,” a Codemasters spokesperson told CVG.
“Codemasters is focusing its future portfolio on high quality titles that will, in the majority, be developed and produced by our internal studios.”

Some more info on Heist’s gameplay can be found in the original press release:

In addition to knocking off banks, each with their own set security precautions, throughout the city, players will be highly motivated to pull off further jobs. These include raiding bars, restaurants, strip clubs, armoured cars, and more in order to acquire the bigger and better tools needed to penetrate the increasingly more difficult banks.

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Landlock for the contribution!

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Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Saint Row 2 [X360/PS3/PC – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

26-01-2010

6 Comments

Saints Row 2 is a sandbox / action game game developed by Volition Inc and published by THQ for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008. James Tsai, SR2’s Lead Designer, in and interview with IGN revealed that some content had to be removed from the game before it was published:

JT: In the early stages of development we had some really crass stuff in the game, the kind of things that put you in that weird place where you’re laughing and squirming uncomfortably with guilt at the same time. One prototype had you driving a truck full of smuggled underage foreign prostitutes across the city while rival pimps rammed into you, knocking the girls out and cutting into your human trafficking profits. Another had you using a high pressure fire hose to wash homeless people off the street and into the gutter. Not exactly Nobel Prize material.
There was a lot of stuff we had in that didn’t register very high on the human decency scale, so we dialed some things back. For instance we changed the gender of the first character you encounter, since beating a female doctor to death with an IV stand wasn’t the impression we wanted to leave with the very first player action in the game. Instead, we have you beat a male doctor to death with an IV stand, to ease you into the killing.

From the early screens we can also notice various beta differences:

You can not customize characters in youe crib in the final
There was a different looking crib
Hideout has a different appearance
A pic shows a cutscene that was removed

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Leaked, Nintendo, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Wii

Explodemon [PS3/Wii/PC – Prototype]

monokoma

13-01-2010

No Comments

Explodemon! is an upcoming 2.5D side scrolling platform game in development by Curve Studios for PlayStation Network, Microsoft Windows and WiiWare. The project is described as “what Treasure would create if they mixed Yoshi’s Island with Half-Life 2”, and is inspired by elements from games as diverse as Street Fighter II, Halo, Super Metroid and Bangai-O.

In the personal blog of Jonathan Biddle, Design Director at Curve Studios, we can read an interesting series of articles about the development of Explodemon!, with images and videos from its early prototypes. From his blog Jonatahn also released the December 2005 Explodemon proto, that you can download from here. Huge props!

There were always new games concepts bouncing around at Blue, and Jamie had a few, one of which was Exploding Robot 12. Jamie’s concept went something along the lines of humanity’s last hope – a robot that couldn’t stop himself exploding – being sent out to destroy the alien menace that was threatening all of mankind. From what I remember, it wasn’t so much a platform game, as an action puzzler, where you had to navigate sections that you didn’t want to destroy, as well as blow up the enemy spacecraft and whatnot. I always liked the idea, and my recent explosion-based thoughts lead me to wonder if it would translate well to a platform game. I mentioned it to Jamie and he was up for me carrying the idea on. The early builds even had the codename ‘R12’.

For more info on the Explodemondevelopment, check One Bit Beyond!

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For comparison, here’s the trailer from the final game:

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Darkwatch 2 [Cancelled – Xbox 360 / PS3]

monokoma

18-12-2009

4 Comments

Darkwatch 2 is the cancelled sequel of the 2005 FPS that was developed by High Moon Studios and published for the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Few months after the release of the first game, High Moon started to work on Darkwatch 2, following the same gameplay and scenario of the original title but now with the graphic power of the PS3 and Xbox 360. The project was shown at the GDC 2006 with a beta build as the studio was trying to pitch the game to a new publisher, but it seems that they did not have any luck and Darkwatch 2 was never finished.

Thanks a lot to Dave Wilkins for his artworks!

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Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Crude Awakening [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma

17-12-2009

No Comments

Crude Awakening (aka The Crib) is a cancelled action / driving game that was in development by Pseudo Interactive in 2007 / 2008, planned to be released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The project was meant to be a “next gen” Carmageddon with a different graphic approach: the idea behind it was to make it stylized, like Team Fortress 2, with a crazy cast of characters and a weird city to explore.

As in the original Carmageddon, the player had to race a vehicle against a number of other competitors with a certain amount of time to complete each mission. More time may be gained by collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors’ cars or by running over pedestrians.

The Crude Awakening concept was quite funny (in a gruesome way), there would be different objectives and sometimes the objective was to hit only one type of pedestrian and avoid others. Crude awakening was basically Carmagedon HD including some reworks of old characters.

The game was going to be published and funded by SCI / Eidos (the original Carmageddon publisher, now known as Square Enix Europe), but later they changed their mind and canned the development. As Crude Awakening was a major project for Pseudo Interactive, its cancellation became one of the causes for the studio’s economic problems and the following closure. In april 2008, Pseudo was officially shut down and all their WIP projects vanished with them.

As we can read in an old article at Gamespot:

However, whatever plans SCi had were subject to change once investors called for a change in upper management. Longtime CEO Jane Cavanagh resigned shortly thereafter, and the following month the new regime announced some drastic changes, including layoffs of 200 workers and the cancellation of more than a dozen games.

Only some artworks, concepts and few screens remain from Crude Awakening, preserved in the gallery below.

Thanks a lot to Roberto Robert, David Wu, Kay Huang, Heidi Klinck, Albert Alejandro, Bronwen Grimes and all the former Pseudo Interactive artists that helped us to preserve info and media from their lost project!

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