E3 2017: Castlevania Dev's New Shooter Not Coming To Nintendo Switch

Raiders of the Broken Planet, the next game from Castlevania: Lords of the Shadow studio MercurySteam, is not coming to Nintendo Switch.

MercurySteam co-owner and game director Enric Alvarez told GameSpot today on the E3 show floor that it's not happening because the studio didn't include the platform in its plans from the start. He suggested that it might have been possible to bring Raiders to Switch if the studio started development with the platform in mind, but that was not the case, so it's not happening.

As always, things could change in the future, but for now, it looks like Raiders won't be coming to Nintendo's hybrid console.

Also in our interview, Alvarez told us that MercurySteam was initially "skeptical" of Microsoft's Xbox One X, which until recently was known as Project Scorpio. However, when the studio got the console into the office and started to work with it, the team understood what it was capable of delivering. Alvarez specifically pointed out how Raiders will be capable of reaching 4K on Xbox One and PC as two elements that might not have been possible on other hardware.

Raiders is also coming to PlayStation 4. The game is coming out in 2017, though a specific release date for the game has yet to be confirmed.

Raiders bills itself as a "brand-new" take on the shooter genre, featuring a 4v1 "counter-cooperative" campaign. One side plays as a group of four Raiders, while the other side is made up of one antagonist, who tries to stop the team from succeeding through trolling and other means.

GameSpot played some of the game's campaign today at E3, experiencing one chapter of the campaign with AI-controlled teammates. Alvarez stressed that this is only one part of the game and that the real meat and appeal of Raiders comes from the 4v1 gameplay.

Running on an Xbox One X devkit, the game looked nice and ran well. A shooter with melee elements, Raiders is a multiplayer shooter that begins by allowing you to select a hero, each with their own specific and unique attributes. In my playthrough, I suited up as a tank-like, heavy character, who makes up for his lack of mobility with his firepower.

Using the heavy, brute of a character, I wielded an automatic rifle that, like a chaingun, needed to "warm up" before it could fire. So the trick became constantly keeping my finger on the right trigger to warm up the rifle and then aiming to fire with the other. This added an element of tactics and planning, and I left my demo eager to play more and get better.

Another big element of Raiders is the melee system. Alvarez describes this as a rock-papers-scissors setup, as whatever move you perform (regular, lunge, dodge), your enemy can have a useful counter. For example, lunges are powerful, damaging attacks, but they are slower to deliver, giving your enemy the time to react and adjust. I played against AI enemies, who Alvarez told me were programmed to know the best counters to use, making it a challenging task. The intensity and challenge of this will only get more extreme with human players in the mix.

Another important thing to know about Raiders is that it's being released in chunks. The first chapter, Alien Myths, is coming out this year, with others to follow. These will have attractive price points, Alvarez said, but he didn't provide any specific numbers.

Unfortunately, the 4v1 part of Raiders was not only display at E3, which is a bummer because that's what really makes the game shine, Alvarez told me. I left my demo wanting to try more of the heroes and find out more about the world, so thankfully there is a beta that anyone can sign up for (on PC) right here on MercurySteam's website. Betas are held almost every weekend.

Alvarez stressed that MercurySteam is going to continually pore over fan feedback and refresh the game regularly to respond to what fans are saying. One further thing to note about Raiders is that there is cross-play between console and PC, but Alvarez says the studio has received zero complaints about PC players having an advantage due to the mouse and keyboard setup.

Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest on Raiders. For more on E3 in general, be sure to follow along with all of our coverage from the big gaming show right here.

In other news, Nintendo today announced a new Metroid game for 3DS made by MercurySteam.