Based on the upcoming sequel to the hit action ensemble film starring every action hero still able to pick up a weapon, Ubisoft’s The Expendables 2 is missing a real opportunity to assemble the greatest team of game developers that ever coded.
Sylvester Stallone. Jason Statham. Jet Li. Dolph Lundgren. These are names that deserve a crack team of gaming legends banding together to dole out hot development justice. Instead they get a downloadable game coming within a few months to Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network and PC.
The Expendables 2 video game is set in the fictional world inhabited by the big names in run-and-gun cinema. The team is on a mission to rescue a famous billionaire (not Lord British) from kidnappers when, and I am quoting the official announcement here, “all hell breaks loose and the explosive mix of testosterone and kerosene detonates in a massive fireball that never lets up”.
Come on, that’s got Bleszinski and Romero written all over it. Meier could work in a strategic element, Wright could bring the non-player characters to life, and Carmark could code everything while taking a nap, not that the man ever naps. Pull in Levine to twist things up a bit, and then finish the whole thing off with a Miyamoto adventure about growing flowers on the graves of your enemies.
Instead, we have four player online and offline co-op and challenge-fuelled leaderboards. I suppose that’s good enough, but the game I’ll be playing in my head is guaranteed to be at least 100 times better.
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