Vivendi snubs Metal Arms sequel

By Tom Bramwell Published 31 March, 2004

The French say 'non' to Swingin' Ape.

A planned Metal Arms sequel has been rejected by Vivendi-Universal, despite the critical praise lavished on the Ratchet & Clank-esque original, released to little commercial success during the Christmas maelstrom late last year.

Swingin' Ape�s art director Scott Goffman reportedly said: "Unfortunately it's true, VU Games is not interested in a Metal Arms sequel at this time. We have a ton of ideas for Metal Arms 2, including new character, weapon, and environment designs, so we're hopeful that we'll be able to come back to the Metal Arms universe sometime in the future.

"Meanwhile, we're working on several potential projects; I can't give any details at this time, but they'll definitely have the same level of action and quality that people loved in Metal Arms. Well, the few people that bought it, anyways."

While the all action gadget oriented shooter wasn't perhaps the most original title ever made, it had some great technology behind it, and may well have fared better had Vivendi perhaps realised that releasing new brands at the same time as 300 other games isn't the smartest move. As it is, the developer suffers once again, and we'd be surprised if we ever see this charming little brand ever again.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kami #1 8 years ago

    A lot of titles in that period were criminally overlooked.


    This doesn't surprise me. Though it is a shame...

  • Spanky #2 8 years ago

    Bum!

    Nice of the art director to give me his personal thanks.

  • Blerk #3 8 years ago

    Is this the one that was on an OPSM2 demo disc a few months back? I thought it was terrible!

  • groovychainsaw #4 8 years ago

    Its good, really, like a mini halo - you know, for kids

  • Spanky #5 8 years ago

    Its harder than Halo! Looks nicer too!

    /coat

  • Sid-Nice #6 8 years ago

    I agree with Spanky/ better and harder than Halo.

  • jellyhead #7 8 years ago

    picked it up for £15 and at that price it isn't bad at all, a bit generic but worth a look.

  • Blerk #8 8 years ago

    Did I play a different game?

  • sam_spade #9 8 years ago

    Yeah, didn't get the buzz at all with this one. I thought it was a clumsily made third person shooter, with a slight comedy element.

  • krudster #10 8 years ago

    Absolutely catagorically nothing whatsoever like Halo!

  • Blerk #11 8 years ago

    Yeah, didn't get the buzz at all with this one. I thought it was a clumsily made third person shooter, with a slight comedy element.

    And an absolutely shocking frame-rate to boot!

  • sam_spade #12 8 years ago

    /hugs Blerk

  • IronGiant #13 8 years ago

    It is a great little game but one that starts off meh and gets a hell of a lot better the further you get into it.. framerate is better, though not perfect, on the XBox.

  • Spanky #14 8 years ago

    Pff i dunno really how the qualification comes about for this being third person for all intents and purposes the wee robot on the screen is just taking the place of the gun floating about in an fps innit?! Halos 3rd person, i played it as several different floating guns...

    Framerate, blimey i forgot it was multiformat, xbox was fine.

    oh couldn't find my coat, someone pilf'd it.

  • kalel #15 8 years ago

    It IS quite a lot like Halo, but it IS 3rd person, but not real third person, put kind of faux third person in a first person kind of way, and despite being pretty good, it is NOT as good as Halo.

  • KiLlerKnight #16 8 years ago

    Fun game? Yes, pretty good, better than average. But better looking than Halo, no, and you don't even need glasses to see that, especially with the v-sync problem in the Xbox-version. And R&C looks better than the PS2-version of this game.
    And Vivendi is just a wannabe-EA (but who not LOL). They don't know a crap about games (I remember they call Radical one of the leading developers in the world or something) and their 'great' LotR-games. But worse, they don't know a shit about marketing. They wanted to sell their division, but nobody is going to buy that for that amount of money, so they are now stuck with their own crap game-division.
    Maybe Swingin ape should ask MS and made it a XBox-exclusive and a potential R&C/Halo beater.
    Edited by 1 at 31/03/04 @ 18:35

  • volb #17 8 years ago


    [...] may well have fared better had Vivendi perhaps realised that releasing new brands at the same time as 300 other games isn't the smartest move.

    I guess it must sound smart in a "lazy statistics-addicted market analyst" kind of way.

    >As you can see on this diagram, the time period hereby referred to as the "Christmas season" generates [insert massive percentage here] of the video-game industry annual income, with the average household spending more than [insert probably correct estimate here] in electronic entertainment. We would be CRAZY not to release our best titles in this time frame.

    Still, it just feels so familiar to hear the people at Eurogamer mocking that. Before you know it, your forums and comments will be buried under messages of people who say they cried watching Ico's ending or that Rez was a revelation, amongst other "Prince of Persia should have sold better" declarations.

    Then again, maybe it's just fine by you, I don't know.

  • rock27gr #18 4 years ago

    What a geat game this was! IT's a shame a sequel will never be made.

    Edge has a feature on it in the latest edition; I had lot's of fun with this game, much more than more critically apraised games, like the aforementioned Halo.

    I wonder what happened tp Swingin Apes, last I heard they were working on StarCraft Ghost, but that's been cancelled hasn't it?