Playstation 3 (PS3)

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

Saints Row: Money Shot [Cancelled – Xbox 360/PS3]

U64 Staff & Contributors
23-03-2013
9 Comments

Saints Row: Money Shot was an action/adventure game scheduled to be released on the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network sometime in late 2011. It was never officially announced by THQ or Volition, but it was leaked to the web in August 2011. From the existing screenshots and video, we can see that it was going to be some kind of on-rails game where you have to control a bullet in slow-motion through various obstacles before finally hitting your target. Here’s its official description from the leaked XBLA entry.

You are Cypher, a deadly assassin in the world of Saints Row, and you hunt the most elusive targets with the most sophisticated weaponry that Ultor has to offer. How sophisticated? You have the ability to control the path of your bullet to such a degree that you can weave through the hallway of an apartment complex, steer through the legs of a hooker, and even snake your way through a moving train! Avoid striking solid objects and unintended bystanders and make sure you hit your mark!

Within a week of its leaking, Kotaku discovered that the Australian Classification Board had rated Saints Row: Money Shot already, hinting that it was possibly close to release at this point.

In an interview with Worthplaying.com, former THQ boss Danny Bilson stated that Saints Row: Money Shot was still not shelved and that it would possibly be released on the PSN instead as a free game.

On the XBLA, the game would have cost 800 Microsoft Points, and it appears that playing through it would earn you unlockable items for Saints Row: The Third. These items would later be released as a DLC pack called the “Money Shot Pack,” which contained the gun and suit seen in the game as well as a new hover bike, but the “Money Shot” game itself was never included and was officially considered cancelled by this point. Here is some leaked footage of the game from a Czech gaming site.

Article by Tony Lokester

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

Saw [Beta / Unused Stuff – Xbox 360, PS3, PC]

U64 Staff & Contributors
23-02-2013
No Comments

Saw: The Video Game is a third person survival horror with action elements. It was developed by Zombie Studios and published by Konami. The Gamespot’s video from Konami Gamers Night 2009 is quite interesting. It shows early beta version of first level, where everything is work-in-progress. It is most noticeable that the bathroom and its lighting were different, there was a placeholder character on the place of detective Tapp and the place outside the bathroom looked completely different from the final version of the game.

Information about early beta version of the game was available from the blogspot blog “Dani’s Portfolio” (http://dani-artportfolio.blogspot.com) until it was deleted. The blog post was made in December 2008. This information includes screenshots from very early version of the game. The profile of the post author is still online: http://www.blogger.com/profile/06315382898248523721 . Thankfully, I made a copy of that post before it was deleted, and if you’re interested, you can download it here.

Now, on to the unused content. The PC version of the game comes with level editor included, and unused content can be found by browsing the game’s packages with it. I made two small maps to demonstrate some of it.

Before the release of the game, it was rumored that the character Dr. Gordon will be in it, but he wasn’t found there: the developers cancelled this idea. But they left the character, his 3D model, and some dialogues related to him in the game as an unused content. In the DreadCentral.com interview John Williamson from Zombie, Inc said:

Dr. Gordon is at the top of our lists to explore. He was actually in an early version of the first SAW game, but Lionsgate had plans for him of their own…

Source: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/39676/saw-ii-flesh-blood-interview-john-williamson-producerdesigner-zombie-inc

Saw game also features ability to make the player play as any character other than Detective Tapp, unused animations, items and characters. Some unused content was used in the Saw 2 game, for example, character Carla.

The Truth Mod uses ability to play as another character, unused music and dialogues. The mod’s teaser video begins with Melissa’s unused dialogue, few seconds later you can hear a couple of unused phrases voiced by Tobin Bell.

Among the pictures included in this article, you can see an image of GUI which says “(PLAYERNAME/GAMERTAG) wishes to join your current game…” (CookedPC\Packages\UI\UI_HUD_Scenes_SAW.upk\JoinRequest). Apparently it was left from 2-player coop mode which was originally planned. The video file SawGame\Movies\trap_fail.bik shows Tapp and Amanda both at the end of the Chapter 2 – Jennings, while in the actual game Amanda gets captured at the beginning of it, so this video looks like another leftover from coop mode.

If you want to see more unused content, launch the game with “editor” command-line parameter and browse the resources with Generic Browser.

Article by EmoLevelDesigner

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

Bioshock Infinite [Beta – Xbox 360 / PS3 / PC]

monokoma
18-01-2013
9 Comments

BioShock Infinite is a first person adventure game and the third entry in the BioShock series. Previously known as “Project Icarus”, it is being developed by Irrational Games for a February 2013 worldwide release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. In August of 2012, several high-level developers from Irrational that had been working on Infinite announced their departure from the company; these included art director Nate Wells, who began working with Naughty Dog, and director of product development Tim Gerritsen. At the same time, Irrational announced the addition of Rod Fergusson from Epic Games as their product director while Scott Sinclair, art director from the original Bioshock, replaced Wells.

There are some features that were removed or not implemented from BioShock Infinite beta version. For example Ken Levine revealed in an interview with Gamasutra that the plot’s conflict would have been originally about tech geeks against luddites, those who resist the proliferation of technology. Some more rumors about the problems with the development of the game tell that various multiplayer modes were tested in a prototype form, but later removed. Even if Levine told Kotaku that multiplayer wasn’t guaranteed to be in the game, but in May of 2012, job listings at Irrational hinted that the studio was in fact working on a multiplayer component. Also, the 2011 E3 demo, seems to have been much different from what we’ll be able to play in the final game. For more beta differences and unused characters / items / models from BioShock Infinite will have to wait for when the game will be finally published.. in the meantime, here are some early screens and videos!

Chris Henzler noticed some more beta differences:

  • HUD is different from final game
  • various voice actors changed from final version of booker and Elizabeth
  • story has changed alot
  • atmosphere of the game has changed
  • some of the vigors seem different in the final game
  • the twins seem absent in the beta versions of the game

There are also some unused content that you can check at the Bioshock Wikia! If you played the final game and see more differences, please leave a message below! :D

Thanks to Inspector for the contribution!

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Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

Simian [PS3 – Cancelled Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors
06-01-2013
No Comments

In 2004, Sony Cambridge started to work on a prototype called Simian for PlayStation 3. Using the PlayStation Eye camera, players would interact with a number of small alien monkey creatures and play through an adventure game set on an alien jungle planet. The team at Sony Cambridge created a demo in which the player could communicate with one of the simians by gesture recognition and a limited verbal communication palette. However, the project was cancelled early in pre-production, with the former art director at Sony Cambridge speculating that this was due to the fact that the game was too ambitious for the actual technology capabilities. As he said, the central concept was scaled down and the tech morphed into Sony London Studio’s EyePet game, which would eventually feature a similar simian-like creature.

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

AionGuard [X360 PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma
17-12-2012
No Comments

AionGuard is a cancelled action / strategy game that was in development from 2008 to 2010 by Avalanche Studios and it would have been published by EIDOS for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. In AionGuard players would have followed an army of elite soldiers, tasked with capturing fixed areas of land which are occupied by numerous mythical and magical creatures.

Originally the gameplay was supposed to take place during the World War I era, however, the theme did not fit the publishers’ line up and was changed to that of a science fiction setting, and subsequently to a fantasy setting when the science fiction theme conflicted with another game in Eidos‘ portfolio. In february 2010, Avalanche Studios announced that the game was officially cancelled, as we can read at Scrowl. The team was then able to move their time and resources to finish Just Cause 2.

Avalanche Studios later bought the rights to AionGuard back from Eidos and they hope to work on it again in the future.

Some more info on the game can be found at Edge Magazine website:

“We’ve had it with this standardisation of fantasy – it’s not exciting any more, it’s deteriorated into trivial re-hashings of the same old things.” But ‘fantasy’ doesn’t tell the whole story of AionGuard. This world is a melting-pot of science-fiction, steampunk, technology, fascism, mystery and games from the excellent Panzer Dragoon Orta to the failed experiment of Lair. If this is fantasy, it’s a gloriously broad strata. […]

“Let’s say you fly in over a new region – the commander of the army might contact you and give you a number of recon missions,” offers Nedfors. “That’s what the military is interested in in a new area. Then it’s all about exploration for the player. You can travel with different attitudes – flying in on a big beast will probably see you getting attacked, but you can be a bit quieter about it.” What if you’ve already seen that area on your travels without being contacted? “You’ve still done that piece of the game, so you get all the benefits from it,” says Nedfors. […]

The scale of the game changes seamlessly – the same size of figure on the screen is now looking over a world that stretches endlessly, populated by an advancing army of 4,000 tiny soldiers. These 4,000 warriors are running on a 360 debug unit, not a PC, thanks to AI scaling. The larger groups of enemies have a group AI that becomes individual once you begin interacting with it.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribute!

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