true-crime posts

When word got out earlier this week that Activision Blizzard had decided to cancel its planned release of True Crime Hong Kong, many wondered what would become of United Front Games, the Vancouver-based developer who was making the open world crime action game for the PC and other platforms.

While there is no official word if the developer had layoffs as a result of the cancellation, United Front Games' web site has posted up a statement about Activision Blizzard's decision:

We are sorry we did not get a chance to complete this project with Activision, but we understand why. We are both committed to doing quality games and nothing less. Maybe we will have a chance to work together in the future, but in the meantime we are setting our creative sights on a different horizon. You can keep up with the latest developments at UFG here on our site.

True Crime Hong Kong, the planned revival of Activision's open world crime action series, has been canceled by the publisher. The news of the cancellation hit a few hours ago on other gaming web sites and was confirmed by Activision Blizzard in their quarterly financial press release issued just a few minutes ago.

True Crime Hong Kong was first announced in December 2009 by the publisher as a revival of the series that it had started in the early 2000s. Developer United Front Studios was the team behind the new True Crime Hong Kong but the game itself had never been demoed to the press and Activision had only released a teaser trailer and some screenshots before today's announcement. There's no word yet on how much this will affect the developer in terms of layoffs.

Activision also announced that it would shut down its console-based Guitar Hero business as well. In its press release, the publisher states, "These decisions are based on the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world's best interactive entertainment experiences."

Update: During Activision Blizzard's quarterly conference call with investors, execs stated that they felt that True Crime Hong Hong would just not be good enough to compete against other open world action games.

On Sunday we began our multi-part feature on Big Download's most anticipated PC games due (at least at the moment) for release in 2011 with the first person shooter genre. Today we continue our series with all of the action games we are excited to get our hands on the next year that don't have the first person perspective as its main viewpoint.

This next 12 months will see quite a few pure action games on the horizon including a reboot of one of the biggest game series of all time, a return appearance by a certain Dark Knight detective and a game where all of the action is happening inside your comatose mind. Really. Here's our action game list for 2011, in order of the games' expected release.

The revival of Activision's True Crime open world crime action game series has been pushed back out of 2010. In a press release announcing Activision Blizzard's financial results the publisher revealed that True Crime: Hong Kong will not make its planned fall 2010 release date. Instead the game will be coming out sometime in 2011.

The publisher said the decision to delay the game was "in order to give the development team more time to deliver the high-quality entertainment experience they envision for the game." That development team is United Front Games who previously made the PS3 exclusive game ModNation Racers.

There hasn't been a lot of news about the relaunch of Activision's True Crime franchise since the open world action game was first announced last December. That changed today with the launch of the game's official web site which features the first in-game screenshots from the title developed by United Front Games.

Along with the new web site comes word that the game, where your character goes deep undercover in Hong Kong's triad crime scene, will have a number of well known actors handling the voices for the game's characters. The voice cast will include people like Tom Wilkinson, James Hong, James Liao, Byron Mann, Dustin Nguyen, George Cheung and Sammo Hung. True Crime is slated for release this fall.

Today we are exactly one week away before the doors of the Los Angeles Convention Center opens its doors and the E3 2010 exhibit hall opens to its estimated 40,000 + attendees. This week we are giving you a brief look at what games we are most anxious to see and perhaps get our hands-on at the annual trade event.

On Monday we covered the massive amount of first person shooters that are planned to be at the show. But there are a number of more conventional action games that we want to check out too. After the jump you can look at our list for yourself. One action game we were expecting to show up on this list, Max Payne 3, won't be on display at E3 as publisher Rockstar Games has decided to bypass the show this year.

Activision Blizzard typically waits until the second half of the calendar year to release the majority of its game titles and it looks like 2010 will be no exception. During their quarterly financial conference call company execs said that a number of its franchises will be returning for new installments.

Without going into any specific game or developer details, execs said the second half of the year will see new entries in, among others, the Call of Duty, James Bond, Spider-Man and True Crime franchises. All of these are expected to have a PC port (indeed the revived True Crime game is already confirmed for the PC). The next Call of Duty game is generally expected to be developed by Treyarch and will be set in an historical war time period (although it might not be World War II this time).

Some might remember the original True Crime games as an over-the-top action game where players take the role of a rogue agent, determined to infiltrate organized crime rings using mostly brute force. Well, it's been a few years, and the series is getting a bit of a reboot, sending players to the streets of Hong Kong to infiltrate the Triads. As the saying goes, the more things change...

Download HD True Crime Announcement Trailer (62 MB)

One of the games that was revealed last Saturday at the Spike TV Video Game Awards was True Crime, a new revival of Activsion's open world crime action game series. We didn't report on the announcement at the time because it wasn't clear if the game would be coming to the PC. Today Activision confirmed via a press release that the title would indeed have a PC port alongside the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.

As we said True Crime is a revival of the series that began in 2003 with the release of True Crime: Streets of LA and continued in 2005 with True Crime: New York City. Both games were developed by Activision's in-house developer Luxoflux. However, the new True Crime game (which apparently has no subtitle this time) is being developed by Vancouver-based United Front Games. This time the setting is Hong Kong where an undercover cop must enter the Triad crime underworld and rise through its ranks in an effort to bring them down from within. The game, which will feature martial arts combat and free running alongside gun fights and vehicle chases. is currently scheduled for a fall 2010 release.