Whatever Happened To... Trigger Man?

Has there ever been a point where you were looking through your games collection and wondered, “Huh, whatever happened to this title?” Well, I’ll be taking a look at videogame standalones/franchises and the lead up to their eventual absence. With that being said, I’ll be asking the question: “Whatever Happened To… Trigger Man?”

Well, let me start off by saying that Trigger Man is complete trash and no one in their right mind should play it… actually, that pretty much sums up why there hasn’t been a sequel or continuation of Trigger Man since its release in 2004, guess we can call it an early lunch. Not really though, as, yes, the game itself is terrible and we know that’s the reason for why it bombed as an IP, but we still need to look at what factors made it so terrible to begin with.

An easy starting point would be the developer, Point of View, Inc. (who became a part of Blue Omega Entertainment and made Damnation), as well as the publisher, Crave Entertainment (who were bought by the Handleman Company and sold to Fillpoint LLC later on). Starting with Point of View, this studio had a weird history of being successful and not-so-successful at the same time. Confused? So was I. Apparently, Point of View did development on fun franchises like NFL Blitz and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, but also worked on some more questionable titles like Spawn: Armageddon and The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian.

With that 50/50 ratio of success in mind, let’s move to looking at Crave Entertainment to see what kind of work they’ve done. The answer? Not very good work. For those out there who aren’t sure, Crave Entertainment was a developer/publisher that was known for making the ‘less than desirable projects’. Ranging from stuff like Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls to Milo’s Astro Lanes… yeah. Long story short, the company's successes were too far apart to gain any positive name brand recognition which caused Crave Entertainment to go bankrupt in 2012.

So, with the combination of ‘developers that did well 50% of the time’ and ‘developers that did well almost none of the time’, I think it’s safe to assume what happened to Trigger Man. To sum up, it didn’t take the world by storm. However, we’ve only looked at the developer and publisher, we haven’t even taken a look at the game itself. It can’t be that bad, can it? Can it?

Well, take it from someone who, not only owns the game, but got (I think) halfway into it. Trigger Man is a terrible, terrible game. Where to start with this title? Well, for something that I would categorize as action-adventure with stealth elemets, it pretty much fails on every front. The combat is clunky, the A.I. is barely there (yet able to snipe you from across the area), going into scope view on your sniper is a chore, just moving is a bit of an issue, and the stealth mechanics are what I would consider to be some of the worst in gaming as a whole. What kind of game has you do a forced stealth section, only to have the people that you’re trying to stealth around notice you if you show so much as a toe in the black of night! Also, that’s not a mistake, it’s not even daylight, you’re sneaking around in the dark and they just know you’re there! So yeah, it’s a bad game.

If you wanted to read a more official review on the game, and I wouldn’t blame you after my rant, then I would highly recommend any of the three that are available online right now. Evidently, the game wasn’t good enough for most major game review sites, so there isn’t a lot of info out there on Trigger Man.

All in all, I’d do the rundown on ‘what happened to Trigger Man’, but we all know what happened. If anything, I think the most interesting thing to take away from all this is that Point of View, the developer who was capable of making things like Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, Spyhunter, and NFL Blitz, made this and called it finished. Alas, not every game in the world is going to be a gem. With that being said, I hope you enjoyed this entertaining look into what happened with Trigger Man. This has been a fun little break piece before I get back into looking at the bigger titles.