Slaughtered Planet
Slaughtered Planet is an open-world WRPG developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. Rare's first RPG (though Kameo: The Dreamer had elements of an RPG), the gameplay is a mix of OTL titles such as Borderlands and Mass Effect, with the Rareware flair and an M-rated, mature storyline. The game focuses on a planet known as Camus Black, a planet ruled by a rich aristocracy, with a heavily stratified social class system. The planet is populated mostly by immigrants, who are lured to the planet with the promise of fortune and jobs, but many of them are later enslaved to do hard labor for the upper class. The system is deeply corrupt, and the corruption isn't just political: it's also ethereal, with an eldritch-like force of pure evil seeping into every corner of the planet, possessing many people and also spawning monsters that threaten to swallow up everything. Into this world slips the game's primary protagonist, a man named Vaon. Vaon is also an immigrant to Camus Black, having come there five years ago. Vaon worked his way up through the system, ingratiating himself to the right people, and now stands on the cusp of entering the upper class, one of the few immigrants to the planet who have a chance to do so. However, just before he is to be elevated to the aristocracy, he catches wind of a rebellion, and now must decide what side he's on, while the dark forces that have been slowly gathering strength prepare for their attack, threatening the lives of not only everyone on the planet, but everyone in the galaxy. Though Vaon's name and backstory and gender are predetermined by the game, everything else about him, including his appearance and stats, are customization by the player in the game's creation screen. Slaughtered Planet has a fairly simple system for determining player stats, with Strength, Defense, Skill, Intelligence, and Luck serving as the five main stats the player is able to allocate at the start of the game. All of these stats can be leveled up as the player progresses through the game. Players are able to collect a lot of different items in Slaughtered Planet, including multiple forms of currency and all sorts of materials for building weapons and items. Practically everything collected in the game has some kind of a purpose, and equipment customization is more important than stat leveling in helping to determine the player's overall strength. Weapons take all kinds of different forms, from the mundane to the ludicrous, and can also be leveled up and improved via augmentation or via paying someone to upgrade it (again with different types of currency). Exploration is quite open-ended in the game, the player isn't confined to any specific area (except for some short segments), and it's quite possible to traverse almost the entire in-game map (which is huge, larger than the typical Fallout map and comparable to a game like Skyrim, perhaps even a bit bigger) even early on. There are multiple large cities and even more smaller towns scattered amongst a planet that also has its fair share of ruins and natural formations to explore. Combat and basic gameplay mixes FPS and third-person adventure style, with the player able to freely switch back and forth between first person and third person views at any time. It's possible to play the game as an FPS or as an action-RPG like experience, or as a third person shooter in the style of the OTL Covenant games. It's possible to find different vehicles, including a motorcycle, a car, a minijet, and a hovercraft among others. There's a wide variety of combat styles, with Rare putting a huge amount of work into the game's combat in order to make it fun and rewarding. Rare brought a little something from every previous game it's worked on, with FPS combat playing out much like the Velvet Dark games and third person combat taking a lot of elements from The Dreamers, with some Dick-esque humor and even some Conker-esque platforming and collecting. In fact, this game has more collectibles than almost any other WRPG ever made, with multiple units of currency and scrap material everywhere. It's possible to find random stuff just scattered about the wasteland like music notes in Banjo-Kazooie. The game is truly an amalgam of Rareware's past and present, with David Wise and Robin Beanland teaming up to provide the musical score. The game features full voice acting from a cast of Los Angeles professionals, including a few minor celebrities. Colin Cunningham voices Vaon, while Gerald McRaney voices one of the game's primary antagonists, Director General Denton. Laura Bailey voices Sylea, an aristocratic woman who can end up being a powerful friend to Vaon or a powerful foe (but is most commonly a friendly character). Adam Croasdell voices Matt, a young rebel freedom fighter, while Italia Ricci voices Ren, another young freedom fighter with dangerous tendencies. Frank Welker voices another of the game's primary antagonists, the eldritch force/being known as Slaughter, a god of evil slowly corrupting the planet.
The game begins with Vaon on his motorcycle just outside a medium-sized town. It quickly establishes who he is, who his current friends are, and also the economic situation on the planet, with migrants toiling away in service of a feudal-type lord in charge of the town, who Vaon is doing odd jobs for. These jobs are the player's opening set of missions that introduce the game and its mechanics, which include gathering some materials, taking down some weak enemies, and spying on/snuffing out a possible uprising. Once these quick missions are completed, Vaon takes on another mission that causes him to be attacked by Ren, who tries to kill him but who is then attacked by a large monster that Vaon has to take out. Vaon follows Ren, and there he gets his first look at the group of rebels hoping to upend the order on Camus Black. Vaon isn't yet given the chance to join the rebels, however, as he must first take a storyline mission to Camus Prime, the capital of the planet, where the world's true corruption becomes known. It's also possible around this time for Vaon to fight his first Slaughtered Ones, monsters created from the dark energy corrupting and permeating the planet. If the player chooses a path where Vaon directly serves Denton, the player will start to see this corruption firsthand in Denton and his immediate followers (same for Sylea, who is mysteriously free of this corruption and who will ultimately cross paths with Vaon shortly after he starts working with either Denton or the rebels). Vaon's encounter with Sylea is a fateful one, because Sylea is the character who forces Vaon to become antagonized to Denton no mater what path the player chooses. Sylea can sense the corruption overwhelming the planet, and whether or not the rebelllion succeeds, something has to change or the planet and its people will be destroyed,, while Slaughter spreads like a virus. Slaughter and the planet's corruption go hand in hand, and one of the main questions of the game is whether or not Slaughter was birthed from the planet's political corruption or whether Slaughter caused it (and the game never conclusively answers that question). Whether the player chooses to side with Sylea and the rebellion from within, or with Matt/Ren and the rebellion from outside, there are two main groups of antagonists that Vaon will begin crossing paths with by the end of the game: Denton and his army, and the Slaughtered Ones (both mindless monsters given birth by the corruption and possessed/corrupted humans). It's also possible for the player to straddle the line between the rebellion and the aristocrats, serving in a sort of mercenary role (this path does not antagonize Sylea, but it does antagonize Ren, making her a dangerous enemy since she's basically a terrorist and will eventually become corrupted herself). As the player progresses through the main quest, the corruption infecting the planet becomes deeper and deeper, until entire cities begin to fall and many, many people (on both the aristocratic and rebellion side) become corrupted. While the player's choices affect Vaon's friends and to some extent who lives or dies (though no matter what path the player takes through the game, Sylea lives, even if she is fought directly later on, and a few other characters are functionally immortal as well), the game's final set of missions will lead to confrontations with Denton's army (and a corrupted Denton), and finally with Slaughter itself in a battle to save the soul of the planet. Slaughter is destroyed, and the immediate threat to the planet is over. However, despite Slaughter and Denton being dead and despite some success for the rebels, the planet's old older still largely remains: the aristocracy remains in place no matter what, with millions of people still serving as slaves. While conditions have improved for them (leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not Slaughter caused the problems or was given life by them), they're still toiling away. Vaon himself can end up in a variety of places by the end of the game: off-planet (disgusted with the entire planet and its aristocracy), as a mercenary fighting for no one, as a rebel still fighting to free the underclass of Camus Black, as an aristocrat at Sylea's bedside, or as a combination of some of these fates (he can end up a mercenary, doing jobs for the rebels but still bedding Sylea for example). No matter what happens, a small fragment of Slaughter remains, and Sylea is in possession of it, leading to a potential sequel...
Slaughtered Planet is released worldwide on July 16, 2011 as a Sapphire exclusive. As a massively hyped game from a highly popular developer, the game is one of the biggest launches of the year, selling well over a million copies in its first week. Reviews for the game are excellent, but reviewers do have some minor issues. Among the biggest issues is that there's too many things to collect, particularly currency, with some reviewers frustrated that they can't always find what they need to buy that cool weapon they want or to augment a particularly nice set of gear. The game suffers from "Banjo-Kazooie Syndrome" in that there's just too much stuff to find, tucked away in places too difficult to reach. The game is also criticized for not being quite as open-ended with its storyline as other games in its genre, railroading the player into certain quests and alliances and punishing them for going off the beaten path. That said, the graphics, music, voice acting, and particularly the gameplay are all highly praised, and reviews average in the low 9s. It's not quite the favorite for 2011's Game of the Year, but as of July 2011 it's one of the contenders, not only showing off what the Sapphire can truly do when pushed, but also seeing the beginning of a new era for Rare, of young talent taking charge at the company to produce games that people never thought they could pull off.
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Velvet Dark HD Trilogy
Just two weeks after the release of Slaughtered Planet, Rare releases a compilation of the first three Velvet Dark games (Velvet Dark, Synthesis, and Conspiracy) in full 1080p HD for the Nintendo Sapphire. Not much has been changed gameplay-wise, but the graphics have been given a full revamp to modern FPS standards (though Velvet Dark and Velvet Dark: Synthesis still look somewhat dated), and a few quality-of-life improvements have been made to the controls and some small gameplay aspects. The multiplayer mode has been left in for all three games, allowing full local multiplayer, though no online multiplayer is included. The games' original voice acting has been left intact, with the audio touched up slightly from the original recordings, and an "Archive" mode has also been added, allowing the player to peruse graphical files, music, voice clips, and cutscenes at their leisure. The collection is sold at retail for the full $59.99, which does antagonize some fans (especially since the original Velvet Dark and Velvet Dark: Synthesis have been available on Nintendo's Flashback stores for $9.99 a piece), but for fans who haven't played any of the games before, this is truly the definitive collection. The trilogy would eventually sell over two million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular of the numerous HD remasters that would come to the Sapphire during its lifespan.
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Rare's E3 Presence Provides Glimpse At Nintendo's Next-Gen Roadmap
While Nintendo and its software developers were mum about the company's plans for the eventual successor to the Sapphire, we were able to get a brief look at Rare's development plans via a few interviews and video clips shared by the developer at E3. No mention of the next generation system came up, but Rare did confirm that it was working on a number of upcoming projects, all of which are expected to be released on Nintendo's next system. Leading up to the release of Slaughtered Planet and the Velvet Dark HD compilation, a few more bits of information have leaked out, and we're going to summarize them all here.
We're expected to get a new game in the Velvet Dark series, and all indications are that it's going to come out sooner rather than later. The game is expected to focus solely on Joanna Dark rather than her sister Velvet, and rather than contending with AI conspiracies, the game is expected to take Joanna back to her roots as an agent, perhaps in the employ of the government. The few sketches we've seen of this new Joanna show her as slightly more playful and energetic, so maybe the game will have a more lighthearted tone than the gritty, melancholy Dark Humanity. The new Joanna-focused game could be a late Sapphire release, but we're expecting it to hit Nintendo's upcoming system, perhaps even as a launch title.
Rare is also working on a new kid-friendly game, and it's not Conker, but Rare did mention it was tied in with one of their earlier franchises, so we're expecting a new Dreamers game. This one's early in development, so it's almost certainly headed for the Sapphire successor, and we could see it in 2014 or 2015.
Rare's confirmed to be working on Killer Instinct 5, but has also mentioned that they won't be releasing another Killer Instinct game for the Sapphire. It's headed to the Sapphire successor, and could come out in 2013 or 2014.
There are two more projects that Rare has mentioned as being in the "conception" stages, with one being "contingent" on the success of a recent game. We think they're talking about Slaughtered Planet, so we can assume a sequel is probably on the way, but maybe a few years out. The next project looks to be an original IP and is probably the most mysterious of all of Rare's confirmed upcoming projects. Rare is working with an entirely new team, so this could be the first proper new IP from that new team of young developers. Expect it no sooner than 2015.
Rare was an early recipient of one of the development kits for Nintendo's Sapphire successor, and we know these kits have been out in the wild for at least a year, leaving Rare plenty of time to draw up a next generation roadmap. The company will play a huge part in Nintendo's future, and it seems we've already got a bumper crop of great games from the studio to look forward to on whatever the Sapphire successor will be. Nintendo recently allocated a significant amount of studio space to Rare, giving the company plenty more workers so that it can work on multiple projects at once. Nintendo is heavily invested in its favorite second party studio, and we can't wait to see what they crank out next.
-from an August 1, 2011 article on Games Over Matter
Slaughtered Planet is an open-world WRPG developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. Rare's first RPG (though Kameo: The Dreamer had elements of an RPG), the gameplay is a mix of OTL titles such as Borderlands and Mass Effect, with the Rareware flair and an M-rated, mature storyline. The game focuses on a planet known as Camus Black, a planet ruled by a rich aristocracy, with a heavily stratified social class system. The planet is populated mostly by immigrants, who are lured to the planet with the promise of fortune and jobs, but many of them are later enslaved to do hard labor for the upper class. The system is deeply corrupt, and the corruption isn't just political: it's also ethereal, with an eldritch-like force of pure evil seeping into every corner of the planet, possessing many people and also spawning monsters that threaten to swallow up everything. Into this world slips the game's primary protagonist, a man named Vaon. Vaon is also an immigrant to Camus Black, having come there five years ago. Vaon worked his way up through the system, ingratiating himself to the right people, and now stands on the cusp of entering the upper class, one of the few immigrants to the planet who have a chance to do so. However, just before he is to be elevated to the aristocracy, he catches wind of a rebellion, and now must decide what side he's on, while the dark forces that have been slowly gathering strength prepare for their attack, threatening the lives of not only everyone on the planet, but everyone in the galaxy. Though Vaon's name and backstory and gender are predetermined by the game, everything else about him, including his appearance and stats, are customization by the player in the game's creation screen. Slaughtered Planet has a fairly simple system for determining player stats, with Strength, Defense, Skill, Intelligence, and Luck serving as the five main stats the player is able to allocate at the start of the game. All of these stats can be leveled up as the player progresses through the game. Players are able to collect a lot of different items in Slaughtered Planet, including multiple forms of currency and all sorts of materials for building weapons and items. Practically everything collected in the game has some kind of a purpose, and equipment customization is more important than stat leveling in helping to determine the player's overall strength. Weapons take all kinds of different forms, from the mundane to the ludicrous, and can also be leveled up and improved via augmentation or via paying someone to upgrade it (again with different types of currency). Exploration is quite open-ended in the game, the player isn't confined to any specific area (except for some short segments), and it's quite possible to traverse almost the entire in-game map (which is huge, larger than the typical Fallout map and comparable to a game like Skyrim, perhaps even a bit bigger) even early on. There are multiple large cities and even more smaller towns scattered amongst a planet that also has its fair share of ruins and natural formations to explore. Combat and basic gameplay mixes FPS and third-person adventure style, with the player able to freely switch back and forth between first person and third person views at any time. It's possible to play the game as an FPS or as an action-RPG like experience, or as a third person shooter in the style of the OTL Covenant games. It's possible to find different vehicles, including a motorcycle, a car, a minijet, and a hovercraft among others. There's a wide variety of combat styles, with Rare putting a huge amount of work into the game's combat in order to make it fun and rewarding. Rare brought a little something from every previous game it's worked on, with FPS combat playing out much like the Velvet Dark games and third person combat taking a lot of elements from The Dreamers, with some Dick-esque humor and even some Conker-esque platforming and collecting. In fact, this game has more collectibles than almost any other WRPG ever made, with multiple units of currency and scrap material everywhere. It's possible to find random stuff just scattered about the wasteland like music notes in Banjo-Kazooie. The game is truly an amalgam of Rareware's past and present, with David Wise and Robin Beanland teaming up to provide the musical score. The game features full voice acting from a cast of Los Angeles professionals, including a few minor celebrities. Colin Cunningham voices Vaon, while Gerald McRaney voices one of the game's primary antagonists, Director General Denton. Laura Bailey voices Sylea, an aristocratic woman who can end up being a powerful friend to Vaon or a powerful foe (but is most commonly a friendly character). Adam Croasdell voices Matt, a young rebel freedom fighter, while Italia Ricci voices Ren, another young freedom fighter with dangerous tendencies. Frank Welker voices another of the game's primary antagonists, the eldritch force/being known as Slaughter, a god of evil slowly corrupting the planet.
The game begins with Vaon on his motorcycle just outside a medium-sized town. It quickly establishes who he is, who his current friends are, and also the economic situation on the planet, with migrants toiling away in service of a feudal-type lord in charge of the town, who Vaon is doing odd jobs for. These jobs are the player's opening set of missions that introduce the game and its mechanics, which include gathering some materials, taking down some weak enemies, and spying on/snuffing out a possible uprising. Once these quick missions are completed, Vaon takes on another mission that causes him to be attacked by Ren, who tries to kill him but who is then attacked by a large monster that Vaon has to take out. Vaon follows Ren, and there he gets his first look at the group of rebels hoping to upend the order on Camus Black. Vaon isn't yet given the chance to join the rebels, however, as he must first take a storyline mission to Camus Prime, the capital of the planet, where the world's true corruption becomes known. It's also possible around this time for Vaon to fight his first Slaughtered Ones, monsters created from the dark energy corrupting and permeating the planet. If the player chooses a path where Vaon directly serves Denton, the player will start to see this corruption firsthand in Denton and his immediate followers (same for Sylea, who is mysteriously free of this corruption and who will ultimately cross paths with Vaon shortly after he starts working with either Denton or the rebels). Vaon's encounter with Sylea is a fateful one, because Sylea is the character who forces Vaon to become antagonized to Denton no mater what path the player chooses. Sylea can sense the corruption overwhelming the planet, and whether or not the rebelllion succeeds, something has to change or the planet and its people will be destroyed,, while Slaughter spreads like a virus. Slaughter and the planet's corruption go hand in hand, and one of the main questions of the game is whether or not Slaughter was birthed from the planet's political corruption or whether Slaughter caused it (and the game never conclusively answers that question). Whether the player chooses to side with Sylea and the rebellion from within, or with Matt/Ren and the rebellion from outside, there are two main groups of antagonists that Vaon will begin crossing paths with by the end of the game: Denton and his army, and the Slaughtered Ones (both mindless monsters given birth by the corruption and possessed/corrupted humans). It's also possible for the player to straddle the line between the rebellion and the aristocrats, serving in a sort of mercenary role (this path does not antagonize Sylea, but it does antagonize Ren, making her a dangerous enemy since she's basically a terrorist and will eventually become corrupted herself). As the player progresses through the main quest, the corruption infecting the planet becomes deeper and deeper, until entire cities begin to fall and many, many people (on both the aristocratic and rebellion side) become corrupted. While the player's choices affect Vaon's friends and to some extent who lives or dies (though no matter what path the player takes through the game, Sylea lives, even if she is fought directly later on, and a few other characters are functionally immortal as well), the game's final set of missions will lead to confrontations with Denton's army (and a corrupted Denton), and finally with Slaughter itself in a battle to save the soul of the planet. Slaughter is destroyed, and the immediate threat to the planet is over. However, despite Slaughter and Denton being dead and despite some success for the rebels, the planet's old older still largely remains: the aristocracy remains in place no matter what, with millions of people still serving as slaves. While conditions have improved for them (leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not Slaughter caused the problems or was given life by them), they're still toiling away. Vaon himself can end up in a variety of places by the end of the game: off-planet (disgusted with the entire planet and its aristocracy), as a mercenary fighting for no one, as a rebel still fighting to free the underclass of Camus Black, as an aristocrat at Sylea's bedside, or as a combination of some of these fates (he can end up a mercenary, doing jobs for the rebels but still bedding Sylea for example). No matter what happens, a small fragment of Slaughter remains, and Sylea is in possession of it, leading to a potential sequel...
Slaughtered Planet is released worldwide on July 16, 2011 as a Sapphire exclusive. As a massively hyped game from a highly popular developer, the game is one of the biggest launches of the year, selling well over a million copies in its first week. Reviews for the game are excellent, but reviewers do have some minor issues. Among the biggest issues is that there's too many things to collect, particularly currency, with some reviewers frustrated that they can't always find what they need to buy that cool weapon they want or to augment a particularly nice set of gear. The game suffers from "Banjo-Kazooie Syndrome" in that there's just too much stuff to find, tucked away in places too difficult to reach. The game is also criticized for not being quite as open-ended with its storyline as other games in its genre, railroading the player into certain quests and alliances and punishing them for going off the beaten path. That said, the graphics, music, voice acting, and particularly the gameplay are all highly praised, and reviews average in the low 9s. It's not quite the favorite for 2011's Game of the Year, but as of July 2011 it's one of the contenders, not only showing off what the Sapphire can truly do when pushed, but also seeing the beginning of a new era for Rare, of young talent taking charge at the company to produce games that people never thought they could pull off.
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Velvet Dark HD Trilogy
Just two weeks after the release of Slaughtered Planet, Rare releases a compilation of the first three Velvet Dark games (Velvet Dark, Synthesis, and Conspiracy) in full 1080p HD for the Nintendo Sapphire. Not much has been changed gameplay-wise, but the graphics have been given a full revamp to modern FPS standards (though Velvet Dark and Velvet Dark: Synthesis still look somewhat dated), and a few quality-of-life improvements have been made to the controls and some small gameplay aspects. The multiplayer mode has been left in for all three games, allowing full local multiplayer, though no online multiplayer is included. The games' original voice acting has been left intact, with the audio touched up slightly from the original recordings, and an "Archive" mode has also been added, allowing the player to peruse graphical files, music, voice clips, and cutscenes at their leisure. The collection is sold at retail for the full $59.99, which does antagonize some fans (especially since the original Velvet Dark and Velvet Dark: Synthesis have been available on Nintendo's Flashback stores for $9.99 a piece), but for fans who haven't played any of the games before, this is truly the definitive collection. The trilogy would eventually sell over two million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular of the numerous HD remasters that would come to the Sapphire during its lifespan.
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Rare's E3 Presence Provides Glimpse At Nintendo's Next-Gen Roadmap
While Nintendo and its software developers were mum about the company's plans for the eventual successor to the Sapphire, we were able to get a brief look at Rare's development plans via a few interviews and video clips shared by the developer at E3. No mention of the next generation system came up, but Rare did confirm that it was working on a number of upcoming projects, all of which are expected to be released on Nintendo's next system. Leading up to the release of Slaughtered Planet and the Velvet Dark HD compilation, a few more bits of information have leaked out, and we're going to summarize them all here.
We're expected to get a new game in the Velvet Dark series, and all indications are that it's going to come out sooner rather than later. The game is expected to focus solely on Joanna Dark rather than her sister Velvet, and rather than contending with AI conspiracies, the game is expected to take Joanna back to her roots as an agent, perhaps in the employ of the government. The few sketches we've seen of this new Joanna show her as slightly more playful and energetic, so maybe the game will have a more lighthearted tone than the gritty, melancholy Dark Humanity. The new Joanna-focused game could be a late Sapphire release, but we're expecting it to hit Nintendo's upcoming system, perhaps even as a launch title.
Rare is also working on a new kid-friendly game, and it's not Conker, but Rare did mention it was tied in with one of their earlier franchises, so we're expecting a new Dreamers game. This one's early in development, so it's almost certainly headed for the Sapphire successor, and we could see it in 2014 or 2015.
Rare's confirmed to be working on Killer Instinct 5, but has also mentioned that they won't be releasing another Killer Instinct game for the Sapphire. It's headed to the Sapphire successor, and could come out in 2013 or 2014.
There are two more projects that Rare has mentioned as being in the "conception" stages, with one being "contingent" on the success of a recent game. We think they're talking about Slaughtered Planet, so we can assume a sequel is probably on the way, but maybe a few years out. The next project looks to be an original IP and is probably the most mysterious of all of Rare's confirmed upcoming projects. Rare is working with an entirely new team, so this could be the first proper new IP from that new team of young developers. Expect it no sooner than 2015.
Rare was an early recipient of one of the development kits for Nintendo's Sapphire successor, and we know these kits have been out in the wild for at least a year, leaving Rare plenty of time to draw up a next generation roadmap. The company will play a huge part in Nintendo's future, and it seems we've already got a bumper crop of great games from the studio to look forward to on whatever the Sapphire successor will be. Nintendo recently allocated a significant amount of studio space to Rare, giving the company plenty more workers so that it can work on multiple projects at once. Nintendo is heavily invested in its favorite second party studio, and we can't wait to see what they crank out next.
-from an August 1, 2011 article on Games Over Matter