I sure felt like an ass earlier this year.

It happens – me feeling like an ass – more often than you might suspect, and I would like. This time it had to do with some poor predicting on my part.

Last fall I wrote that a number of big games being developed in Vancouver were an indication that the hard times suffered by the industry were coming to an end.

Fast-forward to January, when Propaganda Games is closed. Then True Crime: Hong Kong, in development at United Front Games, was cancelled by Activision, forcing UFG to lay off dozens.

So what’s really going on? In this week’s edition of the Straight, I try to figure it all out.

Last September, the Georgia Straight reported that some of the year’s biggest and best video games were being made by Vancouver studios. It was evidence, we suggested, that the local industry, which had been in decline partly due to the economic slowdown, was rebounding. It’s clear now, however, the industry is still hurting.

Also this week, details about Square Enix’s planned Canadian development studio. Apparently Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver are all in the running to be the studio’s home.

Japanese video-game publisher Square Enix is planning to open a new development studio in Canada in 2012. The studio would employ at least 100 staff in the development of games for the new consoles expected in the coming years from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.

Capcom has announced that Vancouver video-game developer Slant Six Games is working on Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which is being made for the PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360.

In a Monday (March 28) news release, Capcom said the new game would be released this winter, but Slant Six director of development Dan McBride told me that it would likely hit shelves before the end of the year.

This is good news for a Vancouver industry that has been staggered by recent title cancellations and studio closures.

At an IGDA Vancouver event on Monday night, McBride explained that Capcom, looking to make a Resident Evil game that had greater appeal to North American audiences, came to Slant Six while looking for a North American studio to work with.

Slant Six, which has developed three SOCOM tactical shooter games for Sony, is creating a completely new Resident Evil game on the company’s own Big Brain engine, he said. While previous Resident Evil games have been third-person survival horror games, Operation Raccoon City is a modern, third-person, team-based shooter.

McBride said the story intersects with the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 and lets players portray either a member of Umbrella Security Services or a U.S. special ops soldier. In that way, he said, they will be engaged in a cover up or a fact-finding mission.

The zombie and bio-organic weapons that are key to the Resident Evil stories are an indiscriminate third party, McBride explained, and can become a tactical element for players that can find ways to turn them against opponents.

Operation Raccoon City’s story mode can be played alone or in four-player co-op. McBride said that other multiplayer experiences will be revealed at E3 in L.A. this June.

Capcom, based in Osaka, Japan, has been very bullish on Vancouver lately. Last fall, the company acquired Burnaby’s Blue Castle Games , just as the studio’s Dead Rising 2 was about to be released.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

Crysis 2
(Electronic Arts; PC, PS3, Xbox 360; rated mature)

Not all first-person shooter games are created equal, and Crysis 2 is on a different plane than many FPS releases. Even some hard-core gamers will find that it is just too much. But there are many out there who feel that the level of skill required to play this game is what separates the real FPS gamer from the posers.

So if you’re going to play Crysis 2, and enjoy it, you can count yourself among the elite.

Set in 2023, three years after the first game, you play as a marine known as Alcatraz who ends up wearing a special nanosuit designed for soldiers. It’s armoured, it has a stealth mode, and it gives players access to other physical upgrades. It also has a built-in AI that provides instructions, and a visor that you can use to assess a situation and decide on tactics before engaging the enemy. You can then choose to either run-and-gun or sneak, or adopt a different style entirely, depending on your play preferences.

A viral outbreak has New York under quarantine. Making matters worse, a battle between an alien race and a private military force rages in the streets. The story, written by English sci-fi author Richard Morgan, is serviceable, but is here to serve the battle sequences.

I played Crysis 2 on the Xbox 360 in the days just after release and found it to be extremely buggy. My character was unable to jump or grab ledges, and when I tried to hide behind barricades, he’d be sticking through them. A restart seemed to fix the problem, but it serves to illustrate the point that Crysis 2 was made for Windows first, and consoles second.

This comes as no surprise, as Crytek, the studio behind the game, made headlines with the first Crysis game by creating it to run on high-end computer systems only.

Crysis 2 is an accomplished game in many respects. But it was created for those who consider themselves among the elite of first-person-shooter gamers. Us mortals who want to play will need to steel ourselves to the challenge and be prepared for a little embarrassment.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

Torchlight
(Runic; Mac, PC, Xbox 360; rated teen)

Torchlight may be limited in scope and repetitive in design, but of all the games that have been released in the past month, it’s the one I keep wanting to play.

It’s a dungeon crawler with minor RPG elements, and I’m a sucker for them right back to the days of Diablo and Baldur’s Gate. In Torchlight, you play a fighter, a thief, or a magic user, prowling the levels beneath the mining town of Torchlight, fighting all manner of creatures both living and undead and collecting treasure. There’s a phrase for this that is oft-repeated by fans of the genre: kill things, take their stuff.

And despite the aforementioned repetitiveness, fans of the genre will be quite happy with what Torchlight gives them: hours and hours of hacking and slashing, or firing arrows, or casting spells.

There are so many variations in weapons, armour, and accoutrements that it becomes difficult to manage it all, and I found myself longing for the kind of auto-equip function that Hothead brought to DeathSpank, another fun and enjoyable action adventure.

But in Torchlight you get a pet to fight alongside you and you can send your pet back to town to sell unwanted gear, a brilliant addition to the game that means you can clear your pack and earn a bit of gold without having to stop exploring and return to the surface.

If you like playing games like Torchlight, this is a definite pick-up. And don’t worry what character to choose because you’ll want to play the game again anyway.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

Killzone 3
(Sony; PS3; rated mature)

Killzone 3 is a graphically impressive game that will satisfy most fans of first-person shooters, but fails to distinguish itself from so many others.

Taking place on Helghan, a planet prone to dangerous lighting storms, you are a soldier in the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance, Sgt. Tomas Sevchenko. After the events of Killzone 2, in which you were part of an assault against the Helghast, you and a number of ISA troops end up stranded on the hostile planet and hunted by the enemy.

You’ll do more than just fight on foot. At times you man the turret on tanks, take out snipers with a scoped rifle, and even control a massive battle-bot. Despite that variety, though, the levels end up feeling a bit generic, with opposing soldiers popping up at predictable intervals.

The game supports 3-D if you have an enabled television, and it was created to work with the PlayStation Move motion-sensing controller, but I found the traditional controller much better. Your character’s aim is determined by where you point the glowing orb, which means always pointing it at the screen, even when you’re just walking around. When I tried an assault rifle-like accessory to hold the Move controllers it was even worse because I had to point the gun at the screen the entire time. Even super soldier arms can’t do that for very long.

Leaving that aside, Killzone 3 is a fast and fluid shooter that is nicely balanced, even if it does feel a bit bland.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight