Wheelman creative director believes the hype is justified.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com at a Wheelman press event which took place in London yesterday, creative director Simon Woodroffe has revealed that the future for Midway Games' titles is looking very promising, but vague indeed and it's all because of the publisher's shared technology.

"I just saw a demo of a new Midway game that's in development. I can't tell you too much about it, because it's all concept art, but they've been on it for three months and it looks as good if not better than Gears 2's concept art" said Woodroffe. "This is only possible because of the sharing of technology - the same we used for classics such as 'Hour of Victory' and 'Game Party 1 & 2."

Woodroffe added: "It's similar to Gears, but a totally different set up - minigames, kart racing and Target Terror-esque shooting. I'd say that if we were to take all of the games that sold on next gen formats, averaged a couple of things out, this will be as successful as anything in the shovelware category. It's a very exciting concept."

Hype building? For sure, but Woodroffe was keen to stress that in this instance the hype is absolutely justified, just like for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am.

"It's already looking as good as Gears 2, but the game mechanics are kind of different, especially in the gameplay section - it's totally different. It's going to be really big and really important," Woodroffe explained. "It's not often, especially when you're working for Midway, that you see a prototype or creative slice and just get the PR team on it. But in this case, the hype is puffed up."

This secret title isn't the only project Midway has up its sleeve. Woodroffe added: "Midway have got a really cool game, not the one I'm talking about but another one, a really cool game coming out of Chicago using the shared technology. It's probably not due until 2010, and the same goes for the one I'm talking about.... Hint: It may be Mortal Kombat vs. Ed, Edd, and Eddy"

While every single one of Midway's earlier titles which utilised Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 did run into development problems, Woodroffe believes the publisher now has a huge wealth of internal developers with the skills required to deliver highly polished turds.

"... you know, the biggest factor that hasn't been touched upon in recent articles is the shared knowledge. We have 600 to 700 devs, all with Unreal experience spent by watching others do better jobs at the engine, all working for the same company, all of whom can talk to each other about the latest South Park Episode. When we hit a problem, we have more people working on the engine than anybody - and we've proven the talent all goes to waste. And we have a massive pool of resources to draw upon. At least one team has dealt with pretty much every feature you might want in a next-gen game, and turning it to utter crap - which defines the Midway method. Which means that we, as designers, are in a great position - because we can actually build games to be games that ruin people's expectations, not just technology showcases any more," Woodroffe concluded.

Look out for updated impressions of Wheelman: Game Party 3 next week, along with more from Simon Woodroffe.

Link here.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/28-11-2008-10057.html