The trailer, entitled “Last Defence”, gives us all a sneak peak of the in-game play mechanics and tricks in motion. What originally sounded as though it may end up being a boring, run-of-the-mill shooter appears to be shaping up into a truly unique, fun experience.
Cover based? Check. You never want to make yourself an easy target in an XCOM game. Beyond that, though, you and your squad can team up for some awesome tactical combinations. Want to take out a crowd on the other side of a congested 10-car pile up? Throw down a turret and use telekinesis to lift it into the air. The possibilities are quite appealing.
To see the trailer in action, be sure to check out the video in the player below this article. Also be sure to check out the game’s website here.
The Inquisitor: Book 1 – The Plague Developer:Microids Publisher:Anuman Interactive Platforms: PC (reviewed), Mac, iOS, Android Release Date: July 9, 2013 Price: $14.99 – Available Here
Overview Living in the 14th century would have been arduous to say the least. Death lurked around every corner. Wars flared up at the whim of a stubborn king, disease could hardly be prevented and, of course, the Church brought down the hammer of the Inquisition upon any hint of blasphemy.
This is an indie adventure title that follows the exploits of Inquisitor Nicolas Eymerich and is based on the historical figure of the same name. We delve deep into this dark mystery and emerge alive and unpunished, so read on!
Story
Nicolas Eymerich is summoned by the head of his order to oversee an unnatural case. Heresy is suspected to have taken root in a nearby village, with a fellow inquisitor disappearing after being sent on the case.
It is evident from the start that your old but cunning elder is hiding vital information from you, and thus the player begins a fairly lengthy detective mission in the starting area to discover the truth. The narrative is driven by the main character’s musings and realisations, with the occasional confrontation revealing more of the plot.
In case you forget just what this is all about, you can always consult your journal and hear Nicolas recount all the events thus far. As you delve deeper, Nicolas discovers that the village was hit by the plague. But it is no ordinary plague either, and he is forced to exercise his experience in dealing with satanic apparitions.
The story works well enough to suit the game’s mechanics, but it’s the amount of background detail that’s most impressive. Being based on literary works and real history, the writer has plenty of room and material to work with to bring out a real atmospheric touch.
Gameplay
If you’re familiar with point and click adventure games, you’ll ease right into the gameplay mechanics of The Inquisitor. For everyone else, it’s simple: hover your mouse over the environment and click to interact with items, move and access areas.
When in doubt, skim your mouse over the whole screen and keep clicking. You’re bound to trigger something eventually. There is also an option for keyboard input commands, made for those who want a more intimate affair with the controls.
When it comes to the puzzles they are varied enough to keep you engaged, whether it’s trying to uncover a heretic, coax a guard to talk or activate an intricate mechanism. The game provides you with a journal, inventory and a hand-drawn map to aid you. But you’ll find you’re mostly on your own in the cold, lonely areas of the game, forcing you to stop and wrack your brain to figure out where to go sometimes.
There is a solution button, however, that automatically takes the player to where they need to go and solves the puzzle if you’re stuck. Being a novice in the adventure genre, I admit I used this a couple of times when I couldn’t for the life of me work out what had to be done. There is a slight recharge delay for the button, so you can’t exactly mash it repeatedly to breeze through the game.
The Inquisitor is built on a solid adventure platform, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t niggling issues. Interacting with the UI often struggles to catch up with player feedback, forcing you to take it slow and be very deliberate with how you click on the environment. The journal for instance turns a page back rather than forward if you click too fast making you pause every single time you turn the page.
Player movement works smoothly most of the time and ensures that, despite Nicolas’ slow walking pace, the screen changes quickly enough. In terms of what you actually do in the game, I would have loved to see some more Inquisitorial justice against would-be heretics. Playing the detective and doing fetch-quests is fine for an adventure game, but this guy is based on a historically cruel Inquisitor General. Let us do his real job!
Visuals On the highest settings, the graphics are surprisingly quite nice with a minimal performance hit. There is an obvious roughness to the character models and the animation which befits an indie title, but it’s backed up by some pretty lighting, intricate backgrounds and vibrant indoor colours. The developer has succeeded in turning a dark and grey world into one that’s packed with detail and pleasing to look at.
Audio
The sound in The Inquisitor is both a hit and a miss. Firstly the team have got themselves some really talented voice actors, with each character expressing all the little nuances in speech suiting the era they’re in. Nicholas in particular has a consistently vengeful tone in his voice that makes him pleasing to listen to. The sound direction, however, could use work. Every line sounds forcefully long. It wouldn’t hurt to speed things up as you’re left waiting for the really slow lines to play out long after you’ve read the dialogue.
The voices also match the environment they’re in, echoing more in a corridor for example. This becomes an issue as they seem to have gone overboard with the effects, ending up with characters sounding like they’re in a fishbowl. These are minor complaints, as the voice actors really do sound authentic.
The music sounds strangely out of place in a game set during the Middle Ages, sounding more like something out of a classic Metroid game. It just feels like it wasn’t a priority from the start, which is a shame.
Overall The Inquisitor: Book 1 – The Plague works great as an adventure game if you’re itching for that classic adventure fix. It also happens to feature a dark, medieval world tangled in religious intrigue with attention to detail that puts big budget titles to shame.
It’s not perfect, with often strange animations and puzzling audio mixing, but it still manages to grab your attention to the very end. We can only hope future sequels see us dealing out some real, divine punishment.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Surprise Attack was an interesting idea when it was first getting started, offering aid in marketing without being a true publisher thus keeping themselves separate and only there to help. While this strategy seems to have been working for them, a year and a half after officially going to market, Surprise Attack is now becoming an actual publisher for all platforms from PC, Mac, and Linux, to consoles, to mobiles and tablets.
Still focused on the goals of helping local indie developers reach a global market, Surprise Attack is branching off further than just marketing and helping distribution, but in helping indie developers get the funding and resources that they need to finish their games. With the announcement of becoming a publisher Surprise Attack has also listed the first three games it will be publishing:
Particulars (SeeThrough Studios) – A unique combination of arcade action and puzzle gameplay, set in the mysterious world of subatomic particles. You take control of a single quark as you navigate the fundamental forces of physics. Other particles push and pull at you, leaving you on the brink of losing control and being dragged towards annihilation.
Wolfdozer (Anomalous Interactive) – A retelling of the Three Little Pigs fairy tale in the form of a pixel-art survival destruction game reminiscent of the original Grand Theft Auto games.
Burden (PixelPickle Games) – A tower defence game with a living, moving battlefield. Protect your colossus—a giant beast of burden—and your special cargo as you journey across a variety of epic landscapes on your mission to please the gods and stop the devastation in the lands of Burden. Use your engineering skills to construct and strap devices to your colossus to fend off waves of enemies, both on the beast and in the skies.
Concept Art for Burden
In addition to their announcement of becoming a publisher and their first games, Surprise Attack will also be heading to PAX Aus 2013, where all three games will be present at their booth. Plus, Chris Wright, the Managing Director of Surprise Attack and Paul Sztajer, one of the co-founders at See Through Studios, will be on the panel about game innovation on July 19th at 2.30 PM.
Today Joymax revealed a massive and exciting new player Summer Event for their hit MMO/RPG game, Digimon Masters Online. This event is not only beneficial for existing members and players but also for those of us who are yet to join the online sensation by offering hug EXP boosts and what not to bring us to up to speed with the other players. The new Tamers who regester before the end of this month will receive a 30 Day 60% EXP boost and from there players can earn so much through levelling up!
At level 10 players will receive 7 inventory expansions, 7 warehouse expansions and a DigimonArchive expansion to hold new Digimon which players will now be allowed to Tame. At level 15 players will be rewarded with an Imperial DigiEgg(Event Version), 10 amplification booster 100%, a 7-day musical headphone accessory and a pair of 7-day red sport sneakers all of which are there to help you grown stronger and level faster.
At level 20 players will receive a kit including 3 evoluters, ten amplification booster 200%, a 7-day star hoodie and a pair of 7-day military shorts. Once you hit level 25 you’ll receive 6 evoluters, another DigimonArchive expansion, a pair of 7-day white power gloves and a 7-day premium EXP booster. It seems like all the little fashion accessories will help you to look like the Digimon Taming legend Taichi who first appeared in season 1 of the Tv Show.
The final reward will be received at level 30, players will receive a full kit to help in the evolution and training of their Digital partners: 20 of both the Digiclone (A) and (B), 10 Backup Disks to help in the protection of their Digimon’s Digivolutions and 10 fruits of the Godess which are usually only received during special events. Also remember, players, that the event to snag Digidestined, Mimi, is still running so grab her while you can, details are here.
So if you’re a fan of Digimon Masters Online, or even if you’re not, start playing the game and nab yourself some sweet prizes and boosters to help you enjoy the game as much as possible. For more info on the Summer Event head to the Official Digimon Masters site here.
After being released over 20 years ago, it looks like the game Flashback will be seeing an HD remake this year. For those that don’t recall, Flashback was a game originally for the Amiga back in 1992, that then found its way onto DOS, SEGA Genesis, and SNES.
Flashback HD is thanks to developer VectorCell, makers of Amy (review HERE), and publisher Ubisoft. Though not much has been revealed just yet about how close or different this version of the game will be to the original, a making of video has been released detailing more about the game’s origins and recreation.
As an added bonus though, those that do get Flashback HD will get the original Flashback included in the game. Screenshots of the remake and comparative shots of both versions can be found in the gallery below.
Flashback HD will be releasing first for XBLA for this years Summer of Arcade, but it will making its way to PSN and Steam for PC as well. Xbox 360 users can expect to pick it up August 21st for 800 MS Points ($9.99), while the PS3 and PC version has not been dated yet.
While we wondered whether Pokemon Rumble U would be making the jump to Australia, it is looking more and more likely as it has just been announced that it will be making it to North America next month. The latest Pokemon game, and the first exclusively for the Wii U with all 649 Pokemon, all the way through Black 2 and White 2, to boot is coming to the Nintendo eShop on August 29th.
The new feature this time around is the Near Field Communication (NFC) figurines that allow players to add Pokemon to their team via real-world figurines, which in North America will be sold exclusively at GameStop starting the day of release. GameStop will have a random assortment of the 18 available figurines, such Eevee, Pikachu, Victini, Deoxys, and Genesect, for $3.99 each in a concealed capsule, but completely optional aspect of the game.
Now while this doesn’t prove the game will absolutely make its way to Australia (yet), it is a good sign that it may. Pokemon Rumble U will release to the Wii U NA eShop on August 29th, with the figurines available in GameStop the same day. Be sure to check out the gallery of screenshots below for a look at the game before then.
It looks like EA is looking to make FIFA 14 as realistic as possible, going as far as licensing as many teams and players as they can. Bringing the total to 16000 players, over 600 clubs, and more than 30 leagues, the publisher has announced today the Brazilian clubs that will be featured in the latest FIFA game from EA Sports.
Adding 19 fully licensed Brazilian clubs including crests, kits, and players, FIFA 14 looks to have a whole lot more from this announcement than previous when considering just how much 19 different clubs bring to the game. With so many more additional players, there are many more combinations for Ultimate Teams, not to mention how Brazilian consumers will appreciate their teams in the game. Thus pleasing many more fans overall than getting Bale on the cover.
Kyttaro Games have been busy at work on their innovative new game Droidscape: Basilica. The stop motion animated puzzler challenges players to guide the unarmed robot named Bishop 7 to the end of each level. Bishop 7 has been tasked with rescuing a Chronomancer, keeper of the secrets of time travel, but plenty of dangers lie between Bishop 7 and his goal. The game is broken up into two phases, the planning phase where players will decide the best course of action and the execution phase.
Droidscape: Basilica features a new experimental technology called HeadTwister that will allow players to control the game by turning their heads. HeadTwister supports iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 5, and newer devices. Those with older devices can use the more traditional analog controls. The game is currently slated to be released on iTunes on July 25th, 2013 release.
Twin Moons is ahidden object adventure game, where players take on the role of a researcher with amnesia as he tries to uncover the mysteries of his past at the Twin Moons Institute. Through his/your journey you’ll learn the secrets of immortality, the “Half World” and other creepy stuff. Twin Moons is one of those games that some will love and others will hate depending on personal taste as it’s pros and cons of gameplay can be seen throughout it’s entire genre. All in all if you like hidden object or point and click titles, Twin Moons may be right up your ally but if not and you’re looking for something casual or a little more action packed like perhaps you should move on as this has no intentions of catering to you.
Gameplay
Twin Moons puts you in the shoes of….well some researcher guy who’s got amnesia. You get yourself in a bunch of mischief sneaking around the Twin Moons Institute trying to uncover your past. Basically gameplay works like this – you tap to walk to things, open things and collect things, as well as tapping on the things you collected to use on or open other things to uncover new things you can walk to. Oh yeah and there’s cut scenes stringing it all together. The concept sounds like simple stuff but it’s actually pretty difficult. But this isn’t because the game requires a lot of skill, it’s because it requires an incredible imagination to think of stuff you normally wouldn’t think of. I’ll give you an example – in the beginning you need to open the gate of the institue which is locked, so you’re expected to figure out that you must strip your car for parts and use those parts to fix the gate. In real life that’d seem ridiculous but that’s what Twin Moons is all about. You need to open your mind and think of how to problem solve using solutions that are normally impossible. Inthe game’s defence, it’s a trope of the genre and not it’s fault…even if it does seem frustratingly silly. Puzzles are also seen throughout that while having little variety to mix up the gameplay. Some of them are pretty good, but generally they are mostly forgettable.
Possibly the biggest plus side to the game is how forgiving it is. Twin Moons fully understands that it asks a lot of the player so it has a hint system that will point you in the right direction. If that isn’t enough it’ll even tell you what to do in order to advance. To discourage players from abusing this, every time you use it you must wait abut 60 seconds or so before you can use it again. Furthermore, minigames can also be skipped as well. The plus side of all this is that the frustrating element of the game is now gone – you can cruise through it all and enjoy the story without the stress. Sure all challenge is taken away and it kind of breaks the game, but that’s ultimately the player’s choice of how their experience will be – challenging or cheap.
Audio & Visual
The presentation of Twin Moons get’s the job done, even if it is a bit of a mixed bag. Scenery is detailed and done well, with just enough animation thrown in from making it seem to static. Character models are in 3D and are less impressive but they get the job done. The animation on the other hand seems a tad choppy, with sudden cuts between various animations. As for audio, music provides a suitable creepy atmosphere that captures the mood of the game appropriately. Voice acting is ok, but lip syncing is terrible with a capital T. But hey, it’s better than no voice acting I guess!
Overall
Twin Moonsis a mixed bag of everything. The core gameplay is challenging in both good and bad ways and the hint system is far from flawless. The story is mediocre and while the 2D graphics are lovely the 3D animations are a bit off. It’s a game that requires a lot of patentice and will definitely make you scratch your head and if that’s what you’re into you’re definitely going to love it as it’s totally aimed at you. While it may seem simple, this is far from a casual game. It’s for those crazy hardcore fans of uncovering a mystery because you’re seriously going to need to bring out the magnifying glass for uncovering both these hidden items and the Twin Moons Institute’s hidden mysteries. It’s for a totally niche market and while it’s not flawless what it aims to do it does well.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
After the introduction of the Wargaming.net League, it stood to reason that the pro-competitive side of their games, such as World of Tanks was sure to heat up. Well, it seems that it certainly has and will continue to heat up with the announcement that World of Tanks will be part of the World Cyber Games competition for this years event.
While World of Tanks had its first appearance at last years event, it will be playing a much bigger role this time around, as it will be one of the games at the preliminary events at the national level for North America, Europe, CIS, and Asia. The winners from online qualifying matches will win travel to the national finals to see if they will be able to compete at the Grand Finals in Kunshan, China from November 28th to December 1st.
Because of this opportunity to show off their game on a world wide scale, Wargaming will be continuing to improve World of Tanks for both competitors and spectators, such as new features specifically for eSports. Perhaps some of these features are in the additions of the upcoming 8.7 Update or in subsequent updates down the line. Either way, World of Tanks looks to carry on its momentum in growth.
