PixlBit

As I was writing the review for X-Men: Ravages of Apocalypse (which can be found here) I decided to email Jonny Gorden of Zero Gravity Entertainment and ask him about the difficulty to see if this would stand today. The following is his response:

Hi David,

Thanks for your interest in X-Men: ROA.

The incredibly short time frame for development of the game caused a number of issues. There was no time to do any testing outside the development team, which is mainly why it ended up more difficult than intended.

I think there's a fine line between being a challenge, and being too difficult. It's a problem that all games developers face during production. Because you're testing the game every day, you get really good at it. When you're trying to create a challenge it's easy to make it the right difficulty for the development team rather than the players. That's why testing and balancing game play is really important, and those elements usually get a lot more time than we were able to give them.

I thought I'd test it quickly before replying since I haven't played it in a really long time. In 2 attempts I couldn't get through level 1 on normal difficulty. I think the difficulty should ramp up, easing the player into the game. If a player can't even get through level 1, they're not going to rate the game very well :)

I don't know that X-Men: ROA would succeed today. Gamers expect a lot more now, and if we had a chance to do it now I'm sure we'd get a much bigger budget and time frame and do a much better job. I did have many ideas for a sequel, which I believe would still work well in a game today. Unfortunately as we started development Activision acquired the rights to all Marvel's games and their development moved in-house.

Thanks again David. Please feel free to ask any other questions, and please link me to your review when you've posted it.

jonny