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Pre-E3 2009: The Grinder Revealed
Vampires, werewolves, zombies -- grind them to hell in High Voltage Software's stunning new cooperative online FPS.

Yesterday IGN exclusively unveiled High Voltage Software's new Wii title, Gladiator A.D., a very promising 3D fighter that pushes Nintendo's hardware where graphics are concerned. Today, though, we've got a special treat that we think fans of the Left 4 Dead series are simply going to love. It's called The Grinder and it's a blood-drenched first-person shooter designed to accommodate four-player online cooperative action. This title looks absolutely phenomenal, as you're going to see below. Rather than spoil any more details, we've let the developer do the talking. Below, HVS CEO and founder Kerry Ganofsky, chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger and lead art director Matt Corso tell all about The Grinder. We think you're going to want to move this extraordinary Wii-exclusive to the tops of your must-have lists.

4 player online co-op, MotionPlus support, WiiSpeak likely

So far the co-op mode has been working out great, with zero lag while displaying tons of enemies on the screen at once. We’ve wanted this feature in our games for a long time and we’re really proud to be bringing this feature to The Grinder. Oh and there’s also split screen coop mode currently running in the demo, which is also pretty awesome for those who may not have access to play together using a Wi-Fi connection.

Full article/interview here.

--/--

Check out the other just revealed game, Gladiator A.D., here.

 

[snickothemule]

holy jeebus if they can maintain that many enemies on screen in the grinder at once without any slowdown, that would be fantastic.

 

[[email protected]]

Indeed, snicko. And it looks like they can:

IGN: We can tell in screenshots that you're pushing a lot of on-screen characters. Tell us about this advancement to the Quantum 3 engine. How many characters can you push at once?

Eric: Right now we're pushing many highly detailed characters at once; better looking than almost anything else you'll see on the Wii right now.

Kerry: We call the technology our Imposter and Instancing system. We are able to take a single enemy and replicate him over and over again. Along with the replication, we can also scale, color, and otherwise modify each instance. This allows us to get an unprecedented number of unique enemies on screen at once at a fraction of the cost to do it otherwise. During our in-house testing, we have been able to see up-to 65 enemies on screen at once. These were initial tests… [Smiles]

Matt: Quantum 3 has once again been upgraded to pull off some majorly cool visual effects. It seems like we should be able to pull off even more on-screen enemies at some point. We never put a limit on our creativity. If it seems like it's worthwhile to have a cool feature in our games, we always find a way to make it work in the engine. It's pretty incredible to see so many monsters rushing after you in The Grinder. Each one is moving independently and doing its own thing. But all of them are trying to kill you.

IGN: Does the framerate take a major hit?

Matt: No, not really. We're right up around the framerate that we are currently at with The Conduit. I expect that it's even going to improve at some point, now that we've learned new ways to optimize our visuals.

Eric: The key is to let the gameplay determine how many characters you want and then start looking for tricks that will let you have the gameplay, the visuals, and the performance that you're looking for. Luckily we've discovered some very methods that allow us to have lots of characters on screen without sacrificing quality.

Kerry: If there is one thing that I can say about HVS it is that we are never satisfied and we will continue to push the hardware to get every last frame that we can.

=)

 

[snickothemule]

Epic. I'm even more impressed that they are taking the good design route with numbers of enemies rather than just throw everything that the system can handle at you at once. Most definitely one to look out for, and the game looks outstanding which is just staggering. Most importantly the game sounds like some good old school fun.

 

[[email protected]]

Also, monster-specific weapons would be awesome. Like you can take out a werewolf with a rifle full of silver bullets, but if you then try to use the same weapon on a vampire, it might slow him down for a second, but you won't be able to kill him, or...

For instance, you need to have silver bullets on hand in order to kill a werewolf, so if you see one, you better switch your bullets over fast. Plus a lot of iron and silver melee weapons, and some cool weapons made for kiling large groups, like something that fires off a huge burst of intense light to kill a group of vampires.

The "bad" news is that they plan to release the game only in holiday 2010.... but we will have other games to play until then. =)

Let's hunt some werewolves together next year, snicko.

 

[snickothemule]

Hells yeah! I just gotta get a Wii first. And a proper working internet connection.

 

[[email protected]]

I thought you already had one (don't you review Wii games?). =/
Well, you have one and a half years to get it.

 

[DinJerr]

65 enemies on screen... who are all identical twins/quintiplets/whacamacallits? Colour me not-so-impressed. Dead Rising/L4D this ain't.

 

[Noja87]

Looks a lot like Killing Floor

 

[Clusterbomb]

Both games looked meh.

 

[[email protected]]

Ok, that's your opinion and I respect it... but watch the trailer first and then tell me if you still think it looks meh...

HQ: IGN Video: The Grinder Nintendo Wii Trailer - The Grinder World Debut Trailer

Remember it has just been announced and this game isn't coming out until next holiday season (2010 Q3/Q4)... unfortunately. =/

 

[-StrikE-]

The grinder looks cool, but gladiator is bleah for me...

 

[bobrocks95]

Wii MotionPlus support makes it win, without that, not so much. Online sounds nice too.

 

[EmuFan23]

"When we were children, our parents told us there was no such thing as monsters."
What is he gonna say, they lied, or something?
"They lied"
Yup.
I swear, that is exactly what i thought when he said that line.

 

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E3 Walkthrough.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Intense.

 

[Noja87]

That actually looks pretty good. I like it =)

 

[Cheesus]

E3 Walkthrough.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Intense.

That genuinely looks like a blast to play

I can't say that for the majority of Wii games, but this one just looks a cut above the rest. Impressive.

 

[bobrocks95]

Thanks for the suggestion, I wish it had worked.

*removed*

quote him to see that he's a spambot lol.