Xbox 360

The Adventures of Tintin [Beta – Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii]

The Adventures of Tintin is an Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii game based off of the 2011 movie of the same name, which itself is based off of the classic book series by Herge. It’s mixed genera game that features side scrolling and 3D sections where you can control the young reporter Tintin, his faithful dog Snowy, or the drunken, but trusty sailor Captain Haddock.

First unveiled during Microsoft’s 2011 E3 conference, the game looked similar to it’s final version. There were still a couple beta differences, namely Tintin wielding a gun during the motorcycle section in the trailer as opposed to the final’s slingshot. This change was most likely done to keep the game’s E-10 rating.

Post by EmmBee

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Mass Effect Team Assault (FPS) [Cancelled – Xbox 360]

Mass Effect Team Assault is a cancelled multiplayer FPS set in the Mass Effect universe, that was in development in 2010 by BioWare’s Montreal studio. The project was meant to be a downloadable game to be released on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, with a gameplay that would have been similar to a mix between Unreal Tournament and Battlefield 1943. After 4 months of prototype development, the idea was canned and somehow evolved into a possible coop mode for Mass Effect 3 and later into the third-person multiplayer mode available with the released game. Info and videos from Mass Effect Team Assault were shared from “The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3” iPad app.

Thanks to Juan for the contribution!

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The Crossing [X360 PC – Cancelled]

The Crossing is a cancelled FPS that was in development by Arkane Studios, planned to fuse singleplayer and multiplayer by allowing human players to take the place of enemies in the single player campaign. The game was officially put “on hold” in May 2009 after the company ran into “an unexpected financial challenge” and decided to focus on smaller projects. [Info from Wikipedia]

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Turok (2008) [Unused Stuff – Xbox 360 PS3 PC]

Turok 2008 is a FPS for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with very stunning and exciting cutscenes. The player takes part in the military operation which occurs on a planet populated with dinosaurs. While it’s a first person shooter, Turok features a lot of third person moments, creating original and unique gameplay experience. It uses Unreal Engine 3. It was developed by Propaganda Games.

PC version of the game’s folders TurokGame\Baked and TurokGame\Live contain beta / unused maps. It’s possible to get the maps to load in game by copying these folders to TurokGame\Content\Maps folder. After that it’s required to remove the .u files from the Baked folder, otherwise the game will not launch.

The beta / unused maps can be loaded from the game console with the open command. Most of them contain only few brushes or a black room, or crash the game. But there are exceptions: developers’ test maps and prototypes of the game content.

L02_06 map contains early version of the jungle. There’s some of the game’s early content.

Lv02_htest and Lv02_c seem to be terrain testmaps.

First three maps shown in the second video are testmaps from TurokGame\Content\TurokDLC1 folder, other two are from Baked. The last one, LV_15_WB, contains very early prototypes of the game content.

RaptorTest map is an early prototype of the jungle.

Third video shows bunch of testmaps from Live folder. One of them contains unused tyrannosaur.

It’s possible to view Turok’s packages with the viewer which you can get here.
Thanks to this program, we can see beta / unused models from the game.

It is also worth mentionning that Nathan Cheever, who was Assistant Lead Level Designer until January 2007 on the game, wrote on his personal website that Turok 2008 had some cut contents during its development:

(…) As you can guess, Turok went through the typical growing pains a new company, team, and title goes through. It was originally a longer, more diverse action game. When I arrived, it was titled Turok: Rebirth. The subtitle was eventually dropped to mark it as a true relaunch of the franchise.

Other changes included reducing most of the vehicle levels, as well as an ongoing companion. Lil was a young survivor Turok had to protect throughout the story, much in the same way Ripley protected Newt in Aliens. Companion AI and gameplay diversity were the reasons she was removed from the final game. You can still dig through the game assets and find her model, however.

The project was a valiant effort for a new, robust FPS experience with a long-standing franchise. The young team, company, and scope of the game was too much at the time to find the right mix to make Turok a high-ranking game. Licensing the Unreal Engine 3 at the time had its own share of woes as well. Disney needed the game released and the team had to make things work within the allotted time.

Post by EmoLevelDesigner

Updated by Daniel Nicaise

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True Crime: Hong Kong (Sleeping Dogs) [Beta – Xbox 360 PS3]

True Crime: Hong Kong is a sandbox action game that was in development by United Front Games and was to be published by Activision. It was going to be the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series, but in February 2011, Activision announced that the game had ceased production along with their Guitar Hero franchise. The game was declared cancelled for being “just not good enough” to compete in the open world genre. Activision didn’t expect it to generate enough profit and stopped development. “True Crime: Hong Kong was playable from start to finish and ‘virtually complete’ in terms of content before Activision canned it,” the developer behind the game told CVG. [Info from Wikipedia] In February 2012, it was announced that True Crime: Hong Kong will go trough some changes and it will be released by Square Enix as a different game, named “Sleeping Dogs”.

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