Lately I’ve been working on both Surreal’s current game as well as concepts for future games, and this issue has come up a few times. As you may have guessed from previous articles, the concept of “more for the sake of more” is not something I subscribe to. Game development is always about the allocation of resources and determining where those resources are best made use of. So when it comes to adding details, sometimes there are tough conversations to have about the scope of a game, along with its sibling, the scale of a game.

Think of the large, open-world of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In this world, the player can travel around 10 miles end-to-end (representing a geographical space around 100 simulated miles long) You can drive along mountain roads, and enter cities and visit a few selected buildings. The game is primarily about getting in a vehicle and driving. When you deal with people at all, it is generally with a group or crowd. Enemies can be dispatched in 1-2 shots and can be destroyed several at a time. Aside from story moments, most of the player’s interaction level is in terms of streets, with objectives that take the player to “that building”. Sure, there are moments inside of buildings such as shootouts, but if we had to give an arbitrary scale to the game, we could say that there is perhaps 20 meters between items of interest in GTA.
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We’d like to congratulate the team at Midway Chicago for completing Stranglehold for the Xbox 360! It’s been spotted on store shelves around here, so obviously that’s the official sign! We’ve been playing a lot of it as it approached completion, and it’s a really fun game. They really executed well… It isn’t just about mass destruction, but about using the world around you and gaining the high ground and playing with style. The game rewards you for being the coolest you can be.

We should also call out the incredible work of the Surreal FX team that appears in the game. Every column, chair, and statue all have all been translated into a visual symphony. Perhaps the game isn’t just about mass destruction, but in Stranglehold, even fruit can be capable of dazzling moments. Check it out!

Also, if you dig the visuals of Stranglehold, or if you liked the creepy vibe of The Suffering, you should check out the new Art of Midway book now available! This is concept art on overdrive, including some incredible work from our own Garrett Smith and Ben Olson. These guys create entire worlds with the sweep of their pens (or mice). This is only a sampling of what we see everyday… Thanks also to the Midway art directors for putting this together. Fantastic stuff.

I picked up a PS3 the other day and still have yet to purchase a retail game for it…  Aside from staring at the crossbar and wishing I had a Blu-Ray movie to watch, I’ve spent much of my PS3 time playing demos.  After whipping through miniature slices of Motorstorm, The Darkness and even my coveted Heavenly Sword, I was still a bit bored. 

Just for kicks, and because I was running out of diversions, I threw Ridge Racer 7 into my download basket.  God, I mut have been desperate…  That game hadn’t changed in like a million years.  I used to love RR, having played the hell out of the very first one on the Playstation, holed up in the basement offices during the early days of Raven Software.  However, other interests took my attention, so I hadn’t really played one seriously since R4, the last of the PS1 incarnations.

However, the moment I fired up RR7 and hit the accelerator, it was like coming home.

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