GRIN shut down last month, after a lackluster year that saw Terminator: Salvation, Bionic Commando and Wanted: Weapons of Fate all fail to impress. Apparently the same went for the studio's handling of Square's much beloved franchise. GamesIndustry says Square reclaimed the project after six months of work, citing quality concerns.

A lack of solid projects in the pipeline, coupled with Swedish law that severely restricts a business going into debt, forced GRIN's closure.

Last week we published some pictures taken in GRIN's office during a public sell-off of its office furniture and other items. Four of them showed concepts tied to "Fortress," possibly revealing certain details about its prototype story. The fifth was believed to be of a sequel to Bionic Commando: Rearmed, which won GRIN praise in 2008, but was a download-only title.

Square Enix, through a North American spokesperson, declined comment on the report when contacted by Kotaku.

GRIN's Final Fantasy Spin-Off Still In Development [GamesIndustry.biz]

UPDATE - While some of this art is from the Final Fantasy game, upon closer examination it looks like most of these are instead for something new! Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, most likely, given the layout and 2D side-scrolling stuff.

Here is a map of The Fortress, dated Jan. 22. "Fortress" may have been the code name for a Final Fantasy game. The map lists event locations of the different chapters in the game, possibly revealing key details of its story. "Friendship duel," "dragon event" "assassination + duel" and "boarding the floating core," are among the events listed.

These appear to be exterior concepts, possibly for Fortress. A schedule to the lower left breaks out the teams with their assignments: three different "roaming" teams were assigned to environments: "Terrain," "Desert" and "Forest." A one-man team last on the list was handling "material / sky dome." GRIN, the makers of Bionic Commando and Wanted: Weapons of Fate, went out of business a month ago. Reports had it that some former GRIN employees founded a new studio, Outbreak Studios, but it plans to focus on downloadable titles for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iPhone, Games for Windows Live and PSPgo. Something of the scope of "Fortress," a code name believed to be for a Final Fantasy game, probably wasn't taken along with them.

Pretty straightforward, this is a mockup of the namesake fortress where the game takes place.

This is labeled "Desert Layoyut Guide" and is dated June 29. The environment is rough and rent by canyons and gorges.

This wipeboard appears to be a mockup of a side-scrolling action game, or at least something unrelated to "Fortress." There are 23 stages, starting with a seaside landing, progressing through a jungle, into urban settings and factories, and finally some sort of climax aboard a crashing aircraft.

With the game now canned, and GRIN no more, the artists working on the game are now free to go posting their work for the world to see. We've seen some before, obviously, but over on the amazing ConceptArt.org forums, more has surfaced.

This time with chocobos.

Professional resume snoop superannuation has uncovered some concept art and CV listings for a game code-named "Fortress", which we're all but certain is the Final Fantasy (looks FFXII_related) action game spinoff we'd been told by former employees GRIN Stockholm had been working on from the time principal development on Bionic Commando wound up to the time they were shut down.

Say what you will about GRIN's track record of late, this would have been a blast to get a better look at.

[superannuation]

As part of a Q&A from the company's recent fiscal earnings conference call, Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto gave his two cents.

"Our analysis indicates that the game elements were not well received by customers", he said, "and that our management of overseas subcontractors wasn't thorough enough."

Translation: broken game, blame management, blame Grin. Interesting that he'd single out Grin (and Capcom's lack of thoroughness), especially when at the time of him saying this, the Swedish devs were still in business.

It wasn't all doom and gloom for Capcom, however, as Tsujimoto says the company learned a valuable lesson or two from the whole thing.

"Establishing partnerships with subcontractors allows us to absorb their know-how and incorporate it into Capcom's own development process" the bossman said, consoling shareholders. "We will take what we learned from "Bionic Commando" and apply these lessons in the future."

In a letter from GRIN founders Bo and Ulf Andersson, the CEO and director, respectively, write that "too many publishers have been delaying their payments" to the developer, ending the 12-year-old company officially. The Anderssons lament their "unreleased masterpiece that we weren't allowed to finish," going on to thank their partners and the publishers who apparently did pay them.

Rumors of GRIN's demise began popping up earlier this week, with studios Barcelona and Gothenburg shutting down and the imminent closure of the company's Stockholm HQ. That followed reports of cutbacks earlier in the year, not long after the developer's Bionic Commando and Terminator games failed to inspire sales.

GRIN was reported to have filed for bankruptcy earlier today, with Swedish news radio outlet Sveriges Radio citing the economic climate at the root cause of the closure.

Develop also reports that some former GRIN employees have founded a new studio, Outbreak Studios, which plans to focus on downloadable titles for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iPhone, Games for Windows Live and PSPgo. Outbreak was founded by former GRIN lead programmer Peter Bjorklund, whose credits unfortunately include Terminator: Salvation.

Best of luck to the guys and gals at GRIN. We really would've liked to see what became of that final "unreleased masterpiece." And thanks to all of our tipsters—Guendolin, Khoi and Johan—for the helpful info.

The last Credits from the brothers GRIN [GRIN]

In the wake of a round of layoffs earlier this year, it's now being reported that the company have closed their studios in Barcelona and Gothenburg, while employees at GRIN HQ in Stockholm, Sweden, are also being "told not to show up for work".

We've contacted GRIN for confirmation, and will update if we hear back from them.

If true, it's a sad fate for the company behind Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Then again, you may not be as sad if you paid for Wanted. Or Terminator Salvation. Or Bionic Commando...

Report: Developer GRIN Sees More Layoffs, Potential Studio Closures [Gamasutra]

Now that they've gotten the full sequel out the door, Capcom and developer Grin have been hard at work tweaking and fixing the Bionic Commando remake, slipping in support for PlayStation 3 trophies in the process. The update, which is due sometime soon, tweaks the easy and normal modes for both the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network versions of the game, while leaving hard and super hard alone for those of you with madder skills.

How much easier is it? Can you say unlimited lives? Capcom can. Now when you die you will respawn at the last piece of solid ground you stood on. You can also reel out your line if it's too short, and swinging into a wall while hooked will no longer send you falling to your death. They've also fixed a bug with the Super Joe Machine Gun, giving it more damage when upgraded along with the bigger clip.

Needless to say, if you can't finish the game once the upgrade hits, there is most likely something seriously wrong with you.

Trophies coming to Bionic Commando Rearmed plus 100% less broken controllers. [Capcom Unity]

Gamasutra got their hands on the NPD numbers for the title, which represent U.S. retail sales between May 19th and May 30th. To put things in perspective, Terminator Salvation, also developed by Sweden's Grin studio, sold 43,000 units in the same length of time. The contrast between sales of the two titles really says a great deal about how recognizable properties tend to blind consumers to game reviews. Bionic Commander garnered a Metacritic average of 70, while Terminator scored a measly 45 percent, yet the latter outsold the former by a good 16,000 copies.

Perhaps the low sales for Bionic Commando are simply a result of another month of declining video game sales, as the low numbers certainly aren't limited to Grin-developed titles. Another game released on May 19th, Ea's Boom Blox Bash Party for the Wii, only sold 23,000 units during the same period, though of course that title was a console exclusive and Bionic Commando appeared on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

While no information was available as to how the consoles split those 27,000 copies, sources tell us that the Xbox 360 demo, as dismal as it may have been, did manage to boost sales on Microsoft's console significantly.

Slow sales can't possibly be good for Grin of course, already the subject of rumored layoffs late last month. Despite the rumors and poor performance, I ran into a couple of Grin folks at E3 earlier this month who seemed completely upbeat, and when I asked "Aren't you guys supposed to be fired?" they simply laughed and handed me a pair of Grin-embroidered socks. I suppose that could mean something in Sweden.

The third-person shooter has gamers taking on Skynet and its army of robots as they fight to save a group of soldiers lost behind enemy lines.

The Terminator and its red eyes has already spawned nearly two dozen Terminator themed video games. Can Terminator Salvation set itself apart... in a good way?

Loved
Cover Yourself: Terminator Salvation has a fairly robust cover system. That's because they expect you to use it in most encounters with the different bots you'll be going up against. You press a button to stick to cover and then push the thumbstick in a direction to see if you can move to nearby cover. While other games have done this before, I've never seen a game that allows you to move around an entire map almost entirely in cover.

Vehicular Homicide: The most enjoyable moments in the game are when you're not walking, but riding in the back of a truck or buggy or piloting an over-sized robot. These moments are few and far between and relatively short, but fun when they happen.

Hated
No Diversity: There seem to be less than half a dozen guns in this game. You also get grenades and pipe bombs. And that's it. But that's OK, because you're really only facing four types of enemies. Sure you'll see a few others and there are a couple of boss battles, but this is one sparse, unimaginative war going on.

Objective Confusion: The minimalist heads-up-display does little to help this game. Since you have no radar and no objective indicator you have to make sure to follow your teammates, teammates who either constantly run well ahead of you or stick so far behind they don't seem to like your company. Even more frustrating are the moments—the many moments—when you're getting peppered with enemy fire but you can't figure out where the gray enemies, which often blend into the rubble of the landscape, are.

Voice Acting and Plot: The voice acting in Terminator Salvation is just horrendous. It sounds like the lines were read, not acted, and recorded. It's the first time I've played a video game and really noticed the disconnect between the dialog and the avatars that are supposed to be speaking it. The plot, as short as it is, is completely free of twists, turns or nuance. You need to save a bunch of guys, killing robots on the way to your goal. End of story.

Cut Scenes: Created with the game engine, the cut-scenes at times look better and at other times worse than the gameplay itself. The scenes are often blurry, murky affairs with distractingly bad lip-syncing and no real emotion.

Short, Not Sweet: It took me just under three hours to blast my way through the game on the easy setting. That included getting lost and confused about my objectives a few times. I went back and played a few levels on the hardest setting and the only difference seemed to be the number of shots required to put a bot down.

Bad AI: One of the big points of this game is that you have to work in concert with your teammates to take down many of the enemies. That entails laying down cover fire into the front of a terminator while someone sneaks around behind it to blast its weak spots. Neat idea, and when it works it's sort of fun. But when the friendly AI just refuses to help you out it becomes an exercise in tedium.

Narrow Paths: It doesn't take long to realize that much of that vast landscape of destruction is off limits to you. The game piles up cars, rubble and buildings to make sure you can't stray very far from the beaten path. There are entire levels that look more like mazes than cityscape because the path is so narrow.

Terminator isn't a horrible game, but it is a bland one. The third-person shooter does little to set itself apart from other shooters or other Terminator games. The encounters with robots are so expected, so similar to one another that the game feels more like a job than a diversion.

Terminator Salvation was developed by GRIN and published by Equity Games and Evolved Games for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Released on May 19th. Retails for $59.99. Played Xbox 360 version. Completed story mode on easy difficulty, replayed through multiple levels on hard difficulty.

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GRIN, which has development offices in Sweden, Spain and Indonesia, is rumored to be in the process of shuttering its Gothenburg and Barcelona-based annexes. Layoffs at its headquarters in Stockholm are rumored to amount to nearly 30. That reduction in staff and studios is said to affect somewhere between 100 and 160 employees total.

The developer most recently shipped Terminator: Salvation for multiple platforms to mixed reviews. It also shipped Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Bionic Commando Rearmed within the last year.

While layoffs that occur after a major title ships are not uncommon in the industry, the alleged closure of studios is more telling of GRIN's situation.

We've contacted representatives from Capcom and GRIN, but have yet to receive confirmation on the layoffs. Consider this distressing news rumor until we hear something more definitive, but given the numerous sources, all of whom wished to be kept anonymous, we'd think something's definitely up.

Users have been complaining about serious install errors all week, to the point where the game has had to be recalled from North American retail shelves. A notice on the game's official forum states:

Unfortunately a defect occurred during replication of the PC version of Terminator Salvation, which does not allow end users to install the game. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are not affected and function properly. We have recalled all PC copies of Terminator Salvation from retail in North America and are currently in the process of replicating new copies. The new copies will be on store shelves in a few days. A replacement plan for all end users that purchased the defective units is currently being set up. Details to get a replacement copy will be announced shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused the end users that purchased the defective copy.

In the developer's defence, this sounds like a proper "defect", like you'd get with any other product, rather than the result of sloppy code (yes, Fallout 3, we're looking at you).

Terminator Salvation PC Install Error [Terminator Salvation]

After reading Crecente's preview of the game and seeing this and other trailers of the title in action, I lack the will to even come up with a satisfyingly witty "Gears of ____* remark. This looks like several other games I've already played, only not quite as good, to the extent that I get an overwhelming sense of déjà vu watching the vehicle turret portion of the trailer. It isn't that I've played games like this before. It feels as if I've already played this game in particular. It's uncanny. Or perhaps over-canny. I can't decide.

At the forefront of their four press release rampage is the announcement that Sega has licensed both the PhysX technology and NVIDIA's APEX technology to serve as a development platform across all Sega studios.

"Sega has been using PhysX technology for several years, but this new agreement enables our studios to take advantage of the full portfolio of cross-platform PhysX engines," said Takashi Shoji, Department Manager, Consumer Software R&D Support Dept., Consumer R&D Division, SEGA Corporation. "APEX was an important factor in our decision because it enables us to create high quality physics content in an easier and more productive manner."

Basically taking away a great deal of the workload so Sega's programmers can concentrate on slowly killing Sonic.

Along with the Sega announcement, NVIDIA also revealed that Capcom's Dark Void uses PhysX to render weapons, smoke, and debris; GRIN used it in Terminator Salvation for weapon effects and destructible environments; and 8monkey Labs has an amazing name.

Oh, and 8monkey used PhysX in Darkest of Days to help create interactive, expressive, and natural environments.

In short, NVIDIA's PhysX technology is slowly taking over the world, and the company's public relations team has far too much time on their hands.

Noting the checkered history of movies made into games (which is still much, much better than games made into movies) the AP talked to four different studios about why they think this year's crop of movie-games won't repeat 2008's largely unremarkable quality.

Joby Otero of Luxoflux, which is developing "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," thinks somehow that studios "get it" more this year than they did last year, which gave us Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda and other check-cashing projects.

"I think Hollywood is communicating with the games industry on a different level now. There's a recognition that a game's quality can impact the overall franchise. I think part of the reason is that more of the key creative decision makers grew up as gamers themselves. There's an understanding of how wrong these things can go."

Jason Enos of Electronic Arts, which is handling G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (can we please be done with the "Rise of" subtitles?) sees his game as an extension to the movie, not its adjunct.

We pick up where the movie ends. We tell a genuine story that's exclusive to the game but ties in key plot points in the film. That also allows us to leverage the larger 'G.I. Joe' universe - characters, vehicles, things you're not going to see in the film but you'll get in the game.

Call me cynical, but no one is asking or answering the essential question of why these games should be done in the first place. What is their point, what is their value proposition to me as a gamer? Sure, films and games may not be mutually exclusive formats; what makes them mutually inclusive?

Don't bother coming up with a creative answer, because we already know it: Money. Pure color-by-numbers money-making strategy.

Summer Movie Video Games Seek to Terminate Stigma [AP hosted by Google]

But what about the game? Can it shake its movie roots and deliver an experience that is as good as or better than the movie?

What It Is
The third-person shooter takes place between the events of Terminator 3 and the Terminator Salvation movie. The game has players take on the role of John Connor as he fights his way deep into enemy lines to save members of the resistance left behind.

What We Saw
I was shown the beginning of the game and was able to play through a healthy chunk of several levels with Cos Lazouras, president of Halcyon Games, in local cooperative mode on the Xbox 360.

How Far Along Is it?
The game is set for a release on May 19 for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. I was told that development was fairly closed to finished, though the Grin is still adding a bit of polish.

What Needs Improvement?
Cooperative: With local only cooperative play, the game really needs to deliver on that experience, but the horizontally-split screen felt a bit cramped and the lack of drop-in, drop-out was disappointing.

Sizzle: While the game doesn't really have any glaring issues, it also doesn't really have anything that sets it apart from all of the other shooter games out there. It feels like a generic shooter reskinned with a thin veneer of Terminator.

Lost: In my relatively brief time with the game I managed to keep getting lost. Support characters tend to run off after you're done and I didn't see any indicators of where to go.

What Needs to Stay the Same?
Cover System: The game uses an interesting cover system that has you hopping from cover to cover to avoid getting chewed up by the enemies. The system turns hopping into cover and moving between shelter a main tactic of the game.

Rail Shooter Moments: Riding on the back of a jeep shooting down living motorcycles was the highlight of my experience with the game. The jeep tilts wildly as your driver zips around wreckage and up embankments, making this segment more challenging than I had expected.

Final Thoughts
Terminator Salvation looks like a playable shooter that will lean heavily on the Terminator name to move copies. I don't see this game winning any awards, and can't expect that I would get much out of playing through the seemingly lackluster title.

Developer GRIN had their work cut out for them in created Weapons of Fate. They had to recreate the action of curving your bullets, as seen in the movie, Wanted, without making the game far too easy. Looking at what they've accomplished here, it still looks far too easy. I was hoping for something along the lines of what was done in Heavenly Sword for the PlayStation 3, where you fired an arrow and then actually controlled their movement. Instead, this looks far too fire and forget for my tastes. Meh.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate should be out on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC next month.

Movie games tend to leave a bad taste in my mouth. They're most often cheap cash-ins Hollywood studios use to wring extra money from the huddled masses. Graphics are crap, controls are shoddy and you're lucky if there's even a soundbite from the original actors, let along a full voice over.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is only really guilty of one of those things, and luckily it's the least important.

What Is It?
Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a third person action shooter that's "based on" the box office flop Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman (and others, but those are the only two I care about). Some elements of the original graphic novel made it into the game, according to Associate Producer Ryan French, but not much. ("90 percent film, 10 percent comic," he says.) This PS3/360/PC title is meant to be a sequel to the events of the movie, picking up five hours after the film's end, but it covers events that occurred before the film via "flashbacks" where you play as Wesley Gibson's dad, Cross. Most of the game, you're moving through linear levels, manipulating curving bullets, toggling assassin time (read: bullet time, but with knives) and racking up adrenaline points so you can do more of the same.

What We Saw
I saw about 40 minutes of the first three levels or so in a hotel booked by Warner Bros. Interactive for their showcase. These levels include one playing as Wesley and more or less two as Cross. I played the Cross level boss fight on Xbox 360, which took a little more than five minutes.

How Far Along Is it?
The game is due out March 24. The build I saw looked very, very close to final.

What Needs Improvement?
The script: And you thought the movie dialog was bad. I'm to understand the writing in the original comic was edgy, clever and unpretentious; but from what I saw, the only parts of it that made it into Weapons of Fate were the swear words. It doesn't help matters that the stilted dialog is coming out of the mouths of voice actors who sound like they can't act their collective way out of a paper bag. Except the Morgan Freeman voice twin; he was good. And I also have to give the writers credit for promising not to retcon The Loom.

The face models: It's very hard to take a cut scene seriously when our hero's facial expression resembles a melted Ken doll. The unrealistic, waxy faces are especially jarring when paired off with body models that were motion-captured from people who actually know how to fight.

What Should Stay The Same?
The combat: Executive Producer Pete Wanat said it best, "When you do a movie-based game, you have to continue to innovate." And so Weapons of Fate does, turning bullet-bending from the movie into an interesting gameplay mechanic that forces you to "read negative space" in a level the way you'd solve a puzzle. To make bullet-bending work, you have to be in cover and holding down the R1 button. A line will appear between you and your target – it's red if the shot is no good and white if the shot will hit. Manipulating the line with the left or right analog sticks will eventually yield a shot (if there aren't too many obstacles in the way), but the real art of the game comes from looking at the layout of a level and just knowing you can make a shot based on where everything is. Then you can whip out from behind cover, hold R1, tap the analog stick and release R1 to fire — while already moving to the next cover. Once you've mastered this, you'll never need to wait and see if the shot hits and you'll actually feel immersed in the game.

Offensive cover system: The last thing the developer wanted gamers to do was sit behind cover and wait for the AI to come to them. Not only is the AI too smart to do that, but the game rewards you for using cover offensively; the faster you go, the easier it is to "fool" the AI into shooting at where you used to be instead of where you are. Aside from being a good gameplay mechanic, the cover system also explains something from the film: how assassins could suddenly appear behind somebody without seeming to move.

Final Thoughts
Movie games have a horrible stigma that I don't think will ever go away. The mandate of making a game fit exactly within a film's timeline (and release the same day) stifles the creativity of development teams and often doesn't leave time for the innovation Wanat wants. Weapons of Fate does do something right by rejecting typical models of movie-game development and going for gameplay originality. But even if they escape the stigma of "lousy movie-game," they'll never escape the stigma of "worst Morgan Freeman movie ever."

The mag reveals the first concrete details on Terminator Salvation, the video game adaptation of the movie directed by McG and starring a mentally unhinged Christian Bale. Developed by Bionic Commando devs GRIN, Terminator Salvation apparently has an "epic story," "numerous menacing Terminator machines" and "weapons," according to GamePro's preview.

Halcyon Games announced its intentions to bring the GRIN-developed Terminator Salvation – The Videogame to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and PC in November, promising "a visceral story with extremely polished production values to create a fully interactive Terminator experience.”

It also has a very scary look at the T-600, the massive Terminator new to the apocalyptic sci-fi franchise. It's huge! And its eyes glow!

Warning: GamePro says the issue is "about to blow your face off like the enormous Earth-incinerating blast depicted in Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Read carefully and with a spare face.

GamePro's Terminator Salvation cover story revealed [GamePro]