Marine Heavy Gunner Fn’a! January 21, 2010

So… I worked on this six years ago.

If I see one now & then in a bargin bin I usually pay the $5 for it & pass it off on one of my friends as a reminder to myself about the boat times…

I have a real love/hate relationship with the games industry. I haven’t worked on anything famous, but I have worked on low budget up to 14 million dollar titles.

THE SAGA OF HEAVY GUNNER.

After telling us we were going to be able to pitch our ideas and do our own title (I wanted to do a game about auto-gyros with chain guns nee: appleseed) after we had already done a ‘market driven’ title for WalMart, the publisher comes back and says make us a $20 budget Call of Duty with bigger guns…in six months. Marine Sharpshooter is a big hit, we are going to do it again with bigger guns…in VIETNAM ! (in six months)!

I understand more now, but at the time I was pretty pissed, but living the dream, so hey!

We DID do it with six people in six months (really 4 of actual development, month lead in, month Q/A & bug fixing on the end). It was translated in Eight languages and released internationally. I challenge any dev team to beat that time. We basically lived through a year (including the previous title) of back to back continuous crunch time and I left the industry for a year after that. That and no one there wanted to make my SPEEDBOAT combat game, which I was ALL about.

Everyone on the team has gone on to very successful careers in the game industry, some even working on the Bioshock franchise and so on. I like to do hobby games now collected here: headshrinker !

What most people don’t know, is I wrote as a B-movie style romp through Vietnam.

It is blatantly racist against all creeds of mankind, over the top, seldom makes sense, is basically a shooting gallery with humans & uses every cliche in the book.

Maybe I’m wrong in the head. I guess objectively Vietnam isn’t funny.

None of the reviewers picked up that it was a parody either. C’mon people, you are writers, and heard some of that dialog & you took it serious?

“Half of these jokers were doing the backstroke six feet under and had no idea, trying out for the swim team of the soon to be dead”

I know cuz I wrote it. Aaaaaaaaand voiced the main character ‘Grant’. Aaaaaaaaand if you open the box, that first marine from the left is wearing my face. Ew!

Originally, I wrote a completely insane (killing puppies / eating babies) script on purpose, they pulled all that & I got to keep what I wanted.

At the time it came out I’m pretty sure it was the swearing-est game ever made.

The real kicker is at the end of the game, after committing all the atrocities, the bad guy makes a deal with the CIA and gets off scott free. Everything you did was for nothing. I wrote a pointless ending to make people feel helpless and futile.

LULZ.

I was really surprised no one ever asked me or commented on that on the team, or in any review or any of that. I suspect, not so secretly that no one ever finished it. hahahah.

TECHNICAL NOTES

If you found a legal $5 or less copy ->

The game itself won’t install under VISTA (even with compatibility mode) as we had to put shitty starforce DRM in it, which only caused install problems and it was hacked on the internet four hours after it’s release anyway..

If you found the torrent->

The game still won’t install under VISTA (even with compatibility mode) as the crack only ever displays the demo screen.

CHEAT CODES

Press TILDE to enter command console

> GOD = No damage

> ALLAMMO = gets all ammo & guns

> slomo # = runs game at that speed. ‘slomo 20’ is INSANE, slomo 3 is fun to play, then switch back to slomo 1 for cinematics.

> crappymode = all guns are now my voice (kudos to my compatriot in crime)

> open Intro.hg

> open L1.hg

> open L1b.hg

> open L2.hg

> open L3.hg

> open L4.hg

> open L5.hg

> open L6.hg

> open L6b.hg

> open L7.hg

> open L8.hg

> open L9.hg

> open L10.hg

> open L10b.hg

> open L11.hg

REVIEWS here.

I learned a lot about game reviews that day. Your six person, six month, $200,000. budget game is reviewed THE SAME as a three year, three hundred person studio game that had a budget of ten million dollars. nice.

Selected quotes

“”The voice acting is of the so-bad-it’s-good variety. Whoever did the voice work is a master of dialects, but is evidently incapable of maintaining the same dialect for two lines in a row. Some characters switch from being Southern to British to Indian within the span of a few sentences. Coupled with the terrible dialogue and the nonstop swearing, you may start to look forward to every speaking part. Especially noteworthy is the vicious taunting you’ll receive from the Vietcong, who repeatedly scream things like “F* you Uncle Sam,” “F you Yankee pig,” and the truly unforgettable, “F** you American blue jean!”” – GameSpot

All true. Unfortunately they forgot “Go Fuck your mamma Cowboy!!!“.

“On the audio front, MHG: Vietnam does a pretty good job of bringing the action close to home. Every gunshot, explosion, and Vietcong death sounds great with every step toward the infiltration of their territory. In fact, even though the voice acting is a bit on the cheesy side (especially the seemingly-forced cursing), it is better than most games on the market. The only problem is that the characters don’t move their mouths, which takes a lot away from the cinematic storyline.”

Game Vortex

On the no mouth movement thing, we weren’t green-lighted for the $400 plug in to animate the mouths. sigh.

“I would recommend not using a Canadian to voice a guy from Jersey. Watch out for that guy on the ootcropping!”

That one kills me, because he WAS an American voice actor, that could ONLY DO ONE VOICE, the Jersey voice.

Drove me insane in the studio, but I wasn’t allowed to fire him because he was somebody’s friend.

“While the sound is only slightly below average, the voice acting is hysterically dreadful. While the main character, Grant, sounds like Max Payne reincarnated circa late 1960’s, all of the game’s voiceovers were undoubtedly performed by friends of the developers. Couple this with the fact that they often spout out dialogue completely inapplicable to the action taking place on screen, and you’ve got yourself a fine mess. The only saving grace is the tolerable music that often manages to accurately reflect the current scenario and some appropriately throaty sound effects for the heavier caliber weapons.”

Voiceovers WERE the developers + one guy that works at LucasArts now. And yes I look like Max Payne from the 60’s.

Another interesting note, we DID have ragdoll physics. But what happened was when you killed a Vietcong their body would shrink down to the size of a child and seizure on the ground flailing and screaming. Needless to say we were NOT allowed to keep that in the game. After a firefight it looked like you had wiped out an entire orphanage . BUT I THOUGHT WE WERE MAKING A REAL GRITTY GAME LIKE HOW IT REALLY WAS !

“From the get go MHG seemed to have a decent storyline that had me getting ready for a good game. Unfortunately the storyline is about the best thing about the game, and it’s not all that wonderful.”

“the most realistic part of the game is the language. It carries a mature rating for a reason. So if offensive language bothers you, stay clear of this one. This is just like a war movie with an R rating.”

Well anyway that’s all that.

YOUTUBE LINKS

All Cinematics:

http://www.youtube.com/

Crappy Mode:

http://www.youtube.com/