The report claims that staff arrived at work only to find the doors locked with instructions to meet at a hotel for a final meeting, and office phones aren't being answered.

Also, the unnamed project that Free Radical was working on, believed to be Star Wars: Battlefront 3, may have been sent to Rebellion, the developer of the PSP Battlefront game. TimeSplitters 4's status is currently unclear.

Since an official announcement hasn't been made about the closing, file this one in the "rumor" category until more information is available. 

Update: Confirmed.

Blame Ridley Scott for directing Gladiator and making ancient Rome hip again. Developer Koei plans to deliver a bloody good time later this month when it releases Colosseum: Road to Freedom for the PlayStation 2. It takes the backdrop of ancient Rome’s gladiator arena, pits players in the sandals of a slave, and throws smelly, iron-masked fighters, vicious tigers, and deadly traps between your character and freedom. Expect lots of gore.

Don’t fret too much, action fans – you won’t see much of a sappy love story setting up the gameplay or anything. The story is simple: Your character is sold as a slave and his only way to gain his freedom is to earn, via wowing the colosseum crowd, enough silver to cover his owner for the purchase price. So most of the game takes place inside the sandy arena pit, although there will also be time for buying armor and weapons. In fact, Colosseum: Road to Freedom looks like it’s going to end up a cross between Gladiator (the motion picture) and EA’s popular Fight Night games.

You will, of course, start your journey from the bottom. As you grow stronger and more famous, you’ll have access to harder events that in turn pay higher rewards. You’ll actually have a variety of event types in which to survive including survival, battle royal, team battle, hunting, duel, and mock battle. In survival matches you either kill everyone else or simply last until time runs out. Team battle is self-explanatory, and battle royal is just every man for himself. In a hunting match you’ll face off against tigers, bulls, and the like with some other fodder. Eventually you’ll be able to access duels against well-known gladiators and mock battles in which you recreate (in a low budget manner) historical events in fake buildings.

Be careful with all of these events – you’ll have to pay for any damage you incur. In between events you can pay a healer to fix your wounds and use the extra time to train. There are three trainers who can help you prepare in different manners, however you can only train twice a day, so best make the sessions count. This is what people are touting as the “RPG” aspect of Colosseum, but it seems rather shallow (as an RPG) at this point. It’s an RPG as much as Fight Night. You pick and choose which events you wish to compete in as well as when (unlike Maximus). Before each fight you can also choose which weapons and armor to equip. You can either take the free crap or spend some silver on the good stuff.

I haven’t played the game in person yet, but the control scheme looks like it will be something to get used to. While in the arena, you attack high with the triangle button, low with X, and the square and circle buttons attack from the left and right, respectively. Of course, there are always the special moves. Enemies will drop scrolls during the fights and picking these up will allow your character to map special attacks to the D-pad buttons. This ought to make things more exciting, not to mention that you and your opponents will drop weapons and armor when hit too hard. Once something is dropped, consider it fair game for anyone to snatch.

I’m glad Goshow is including so many different types of events. Bloody gladiator combat against scary nightmares-turned-humans and killer animals sounds fun, don’t get me wrong, but like Fight Night, it would probably get a little repetitive after a few hours. The variety in event types will definitely add some replay value to the game. Here’s hoping the combat is a blast. If so, Colosseum: Road to Freedom might be the perfect summer diversion.]]> Fri, 01 Jul 2005 12:45:00 -0500