Developed by Surreal Software
Published by Midway/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Announced for PS3/Xbox 360 (2/2008)
Cancelled (8/2010)
This is Vegas was originally announced in February 2008 and was being developed by Surreal Software, a studio perhaps best known for the Suffering series that had releases for PlayStation 2, Gamecube, PC and Xbox. This is Vegas was going to be an open-world game that would let you explore Las Vegas and featured gambling, racing, fighting and partying.
There was some gameplay footage released for the game (link at bottom), but it only showcases the party aspect of the game. The character walks around a nightclub, speaking with various people and obtaining objectives. One of the missions involves dancing in order to get the dance floor popping. The dancing is about what you'd expect, involving hitting button combinations as they scroll down to the indicator at the bottom. Another objective involves punching an obnoxious patron. The fighting system was proposed to have had combos and defense options and from what was shown on the video, the fighting actually didn't look all that bad.
After completing these objectives the character goes over to the bar, orders a drink, swigs it down and throws up in front of a bunch of females, who all run off disgusted. They also display our character trying to dance while inebriated, sloppily flailing about and bumping into nearby patrons. It is then demonstrated that you can bring your buzz down by using the urinal. After this, they show that you can serve drinks, which turns into a minigame where you have to serve customers quickly before they become irritated, a bit similar to the arcade Tapper, though it didn't look near as fun as that old classic.
Our character is then shown back on the dance floor, busting out some more moves and getting the whole crowd involved for some synchronized dancing. After this, apparently our character has earned enough 'party points' to unlock the wet t-shirt contest, so he gets to grab the spray hose and blast 3 giggling ladies. After this we get one final shot of the dance floor, which shows it packed up and everybody having a good time, with the party officially popping. As far as the gameplay is concerned, it looked decent for what it was but it's a bit odd how they would choose to showcase what is easily the most uninteresting aspect of the game (partying). I think it's safe to say most people would've much rather had a look into the gambling, racing or fighting. Showcasing one of these, especially if the gambling part looked good, would have definitely helped garner some more interest in the title.
This is Vegas ran into some issues when publisher Midway closed down due to bankruptcy and most of its assets went to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. At the point when the publisher changed, Midway had already invested around $43 million into the development of This is Vegas, but the game still wasn't quite ready for release yet. The game still had a lot of development time left and would take around a year to finish at the time Warner Bros. attained the property. They must have deemed it too expensive to finish and cancelled the project. That's over $40 million and several years of development time just thrown away. This is Vegas was definitely an ambitious project, maybe too ambitious, but is still an interesting one to look back on and wonder what could have been. Perhaps they should have just focused on the gambling aspect and left all that other stuff as an after-thought for a sequel if it worked out?
Related Links:
This is Vegas - Xbox Marketplace
This is Vegas Trailer - YouTube
This is Vegas Gameplay Footage - YouTube
This is Vegas Canned Announcement - Xbox Achievements
This is Vegas - Wikipedia
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