High Voltage’sThe Grinderis weird. On theXbox 360, PS3 and PC, it will be a top-down action game inspired byHunter: The Reckoning. On Wii, it will remain the concept it originally started life as — a co-op FPS inspired byLeft 4 Dead. Contrary to popular belief, the Wii version was not axed, and basically the IP will live as two different types of game.
“The expansion ofGrinderto 360 and PS3 and its subsequent change in gameplay and perspective has been somewhat misinterpreted as a universal change across all platforms,” explains the studio. “We still genuinely love the Wii and would ideally like to see a publishing partner pick up both a FPS Wii version and a third-person action version specific to the 360 and PS3.
“We have invested more than year into the Wii; the game is extremely fun, and frankly, we wouldn’t want to see that work thrown away, but when we decided to add the 360 and PS3 platforms it didn’t seem to make much sense to jump on the rainbow chasing treadmill of trying to do the same game for such dissimilar consoles and end up short changing one or the other.”
So yeah, weird. My only concern really is how thin High Voltage is spreading itself. It’s not the world’s biggest studio, but it’s gotTournament of Legends,The Conduit 2and now two versions ofThe Grinderto work on. I hope these games are all getting the time and money they deserve.
