Ehker

@tphickma said:

After getting the game yesterday im only on the third chapter but still throughly impressed with the mechanics, story, and graphics. At this point my only complaint is time between checkpoints. On hard difficulty ive found it to be surprisingly easy to die, and having to start ten to fifteen minutes back presents itself as more of an annoyance then a challenge or incentive. All things considered im still only about four hours or so into the game so im sure the story will overtake my complaint. So far, excellent game from rockstar, most impressed ive been with the studio since GTA:SA.

Oh man, wait until you get to the docks which are coming up soon for you. This one area of walking between boats goes on a very long time and has very little cover. I'm on hard also, and had to restart my journey on the docks from the beginning many times. On the positive side I've gotten much farther and luckily haven't had any moments like that one since.

Dat dam...

Obviously this is being released only to entice investors to step in and save them. Last minute and desperate moves being made. :(

@PXAbstraction said:

@Ehker said:

@PXAbstraction said:

As of just moments ago, Curt Schilling has been removed from the 38 Studios web site. Oh boy.

Yup, I noticed and posted that earlier. Management disappearing from the website, along with the CEO and COO are now gone.

Ahh sorry, didn't see your post. So the CEO and COO are gone too? Wow.

Jennifer MacLean, and Bill Thomas. They had a couple lame excuses for the CEO Jennifer going missing from work, first no clear answer followed by a maternity leave excuse.

This is the google cache of the original management page. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cJf36YkK9vIJ:38studios.com/people/management+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

@PXAbstraction said:

As of just moments ago, Curt Schilling has been removed from the 38 Studios web site. Oh boy.

Yup, I noticed and posted that earlier. Management disappearing from the website, along with the CEO and COO are now gone.

@coribald said:

@Ehker said:

@Alex Hey, new news, guess who got removed from the 38 Studios website?

http://38studios.com/staff/jennifer-maclean

Oh dear.

Apparently not just the "maternity leave" CEO was taken off the website. Curt himself:

http://38studios.com/staff/curt-schilling

Both gone from the staff pages: http://38studios.com/people/visionaries

@Alex Hey, new news, guess who got removed from the 38 Studios website?

http://38studios.com/staff/jennifer-maclean

OK, WTF is going on? 38 Studios hand-delivered a check that didn't have sufficient funds.

Separately, Governor Chafee's office said 38 Studios hand-delivered a check for the overdue $1.125 million payment to the EDC that set off this week's crisis. However, shortly thereafter Rick Wester, its chief financial officer, called the agency and said there were insufficient funds to cover it. The EDC then returned the check.

When Alex Navarro doesn't have a single sarcastic tone or joke in a news story, you know it's serious.

@gamekata said:

While doing some light trawling for other related news tidbits on this story, but not expecting to find much other than what's already been covered, I just came across this:

38 Studios CEO on indefinite leave

PROVIDENCE – 38 Studios LLC CEO Jennifer MacLean has taken an indefinite leave of absence from the video game design firm, company officials confirmed Wednesday.

Chief Operating Officer Bill Thomas said in a brief phone conversation that he did not know when MacLean would return and declined to discuss the reasons behind her time away from the company other than that it was her choice.

“I’m not sure when she will be back,” Thomas said. “It’s her decision, and I cannot discuss it.”

[...]

MacLean was hired to run 38 Studios after serving at Comcast as vice president and general manager responsible for games. She has also worked at AOL and Microprose Software.

EDC officials confirmed that MacLean was not present at the lengthy meetings with the company Wednesday morning.

MacLean’s Twitter account still describes her as the CEO of 38 Studios and her tweets, the latest coming May 13, make no mention of her leave of absence.

Don't know what else explains such a vague explanation at a time like this besides rats jumping ship.

Hate to be a downer but this is a really average game to me. I'm only on chapter 4, but so far the game mechanics feel like such a generic shooter that I'm bored with it already. Maybe I've played way too many shooters this generation but it's like I've already gone through this gameplay over and over. Here's the asian restaurant, here's the parking garage, here's the part where you fly around in a helicopter shooting, here's the part where you snipe at baddies.... fuuuck, I'm so bored with the same scenarios being hashed out over and over in shooters.

The only area where this could have stood out is the cool matrix slow motion from the previous games, but that got totally gimped, to where it runs out way too quickly and even if it lasted longer I would hardly even WANT to lunge in the air shooting because when I do I'm just exposed. I'm also playing on hard so it's not like I can take many shots, so maybe on lower difficulties you can have a little more fun with matrix lunges, but the feeling of your super power is clearly not to the level of the past games... bah. :(