Play a Name that Tune-like game on iOS devices with Hum a Song and a bonus that comes along with it is that it’s free! Yes, this music trivia game is free to download on the App Store thanks to Hibernum Creations.
To play the game is easy. Simply select a song from the songbank of more than 2000 songs, listen to a clip (powered by iTunes), hum (or whistle) it and submit! In the Duet game mode, your friend will then receive a notification to guess the song. If it gets correctly identified within three attempts, the two of you will receive coins and then it’s your friend’s turn to hum! Easy as that! The other two game modes are Ensemble party mode where you can play with up to three friends and Random where you compete with players from around the world.
Hum a Song is now available on the App Store for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
Get your chef hat on and run your dream restaurant with Vertigo Gaming’s “Cook, Serve, Delicious!”. In this fast-paced celebration of all things food, you start off small; you use a few thousand dollars to start your restaurant business and your job is to turn it into a successful five-star eating experience for your diners! To get there though is definitely not an easy task. Can you manage your restaurant and keep customers pleased with great service and an updated menu while succeeding in your love life at the same time with the use of “Cook4Luv” dating service?
Can you bring glory to your restaurant by participating in the Iron Cook tv show (who hasn’t dreamt of fighting against the best on Iron Chef?)? Will your next remodeling and set of new restaurant upgrades to heighten its capabilities take you to the next level of success or bring your enterprise crashing down? Find out with “Cook, Serve, Delicious!” which is available now for PC through Gamersgate, Desura and Vertigo Gaming’s website where you can also download a demo.
Robert Hayes, the former Managine Director of Asia Pacific and Vice President of Glu Mobile, has announced the formation of his new company Fei Hu Interactive. He has hired Simon Slee who has worked at Glu Mobile, THQ Wireless, Atari, and Sega as his Vice President of Publishing. “I am incredibly fortunate to find myself surrounded by a team of talented, passionate and experienced staff,” says Robert Hayes. “Our strategy at Fei Hu Interactive is simple, develop and publish best-in-class cross-platform games with multi-language support for distribution worldwide.”
They are currently working on a social RPG called Prisonhood, slated to be released in November for iOS and Android. Check out their new website here.
Grow Away! Developer: Soco Software Publisher: Chillingo Platforms: iPad (Reviewed), iPhone, iPod Touch Release Date: October 4th, 2012 Price: $0.99 Get it Here Overview
Chillingo has brought Soco Software’s, a Chinese game developer, latest game to the English market. Grow Away! pits a legion of vegetables defending themselves against twisted animals looking to snack on them. Players are armed with a variety of power ups and vegetables willing to fling themselves at the enemy with spirited kamikaze vigour. Does Grow Away! have what it takes to become the next Plants Vs. Zombies?
Story
There is not much story involved with Grow Away! Monsters have eaten so much junk food that they have gone a little nuts and now are trying to break through the garden fence to eat vegetables. Now, the vegetables have decided to hurl themselves at the monsters. I suppose this is the valorous suicide of a few vegetables for the greater good of the rest?
Gameplay
Players fire vegetables with a help of a slingshot to attack a variety of enemies and bosses in Grow Away! The normal ammunition is the humble tomato (which technically is a fruit by the way) and players will have access to a variety of special vegetables with special abilities that have a short cool down. Players will drag the vegetable back and angle their shot and release to fire. Hold the vegetable back long enough and the shot will be powered up and provide a special bonus ability that will send enemies flying. When in a bind, players can deploy a variety of special items to turn the tide of the battle and buy some extra time. At the end of the level, players are ranked based on their accuracy, speed, and remaining health of their fence.
The enemies are varied with special abilities and different statistics, requiring different tactics to combat them. This actually required a good bit of strategy to deal with depending on the size of the attacking group. However, eventually some parts of the game required the extensive use of special items rank well in the game. This would not be a huge issue if it was not for the fact beyond the fact four basic items are the only items purchasable with the common gold coin currency. The rest need to be purchased with the much rarer red gems that drop once every five to ten levels. These gems are often horded to purchase extra slots for special vegetables and items. I get the sinking feeling that the game is nudging me to make an in app purchase of gems.
The gameplay itself is rather enjoyable as a casual game if you are not playing for perfect three star rankings. It’s great in short bursts in story mode and there are two other options to play. There is a short gambling type mini games that give opportunities to earn bonus coins and red gems at an entry cost and there is a longer survival mode available that removes the ability to select your vegetable. You simply fire away until your defenses are gone.
Visuals
Grow Away! features a fun cartoony visuals that is family friendly. All the units, both friend and foe, are unique and very easy to spot. Visually, this game is perfect for kids and adults alike. The graphics scale well for Retina displays, even up to the new iPad’s monstrous sized display. There are no graphical slowdowns and the animations are smooth as butter. The UI is smartly designed for the most part, however I found myself bumping into the pause button a few times when franticly flinging fruit into the enemy. Placing the pause button on the top of the screen rather than the bottom would have been a wiser choice.
Audio
The sound effects are fun enough to listen to, but play Grow Away! for more than 3 minutes and you will come to realize that you are listening to the same song on loop over and over again ad nauseum. There is one tune for the menu and one tune for the game. For the first ten minutes of playing or so, the song is pretty catchy. But put in any more time and you will find yourself muting your device’s sound. Two different songs for each zone would have been really nice.
Overall
For $0.99, I cannot recommend this game. Although the graphics are decent, and the gameplay decent albeit slightly repetitive, the game seems to be rather bent on encouraging in app purchases. It seems practically impossible to nail perfect scores as the game progresses without spending some money to purchase a quantity of red gems. On top of it, the soundtrack is so maddeningly lacking, I found myself muting my iPad after a while. If this game was more reasonably priced as a free to play game with an emphasis on the in app purchases like similar games on the App Store, then I’d be more compelled to recommend this game as a coffee break time waster.
It looks like gamers in Europe are going to be receiving a special version of the Wii U when it launches in their region. Today Ubisoft and Nintendo revealed that they will be releasing a limited edition ZombiU bundle which will be released alongside the standard packages on November 30th.
The difference between the ZombiU Wii U Bundle is rather minute, but still worth purchasing for those eager to pick ZombiU up when it is released. This bundle includes ZombiU rather than Nintendo Land and comes with a Wii U Pro Controller. Those looking to pick up this version of the game will have to buy it for £329 while the regular Wii U Premium Pack costs £299.
Usually when a game is released for a month or so, companies begin talking about their success. Unless of course the game turned out to do rather bad which happens to be the case with Majesco’s NBA Baller Beats. NPD, a sales tracking service, has told Joystiq that NBA Baller Beats has sold only 3,000 copies since it was released to stores, which may actually be a decent number considering the title was a Kinect rhythm game requiring players to use a real regulation basketball.
This combination meant that not only did Kinect users have to have enough room to play the game, but also a tile/wood surface to dribble the ball on, probably annoying every single person in the house or building and possibly destroying glass furniture. So this is certainly unfortunate news, but also a bit expected.
As some of you may know, inSANE was originally meant to be a trilogy of games from director Guillermo del Toro that would be published by THQ starting in 2013 but unfortunately earlier this year THQ dropped the series and returned the IP rights back to del Toro.
Since then, del Toro has been quiet about his plans for the game series but today during an interview with Kotaku at New York Comic Con he revealed that he is “talking to developers” and is “not giving up” on the game. When asked whom he would love to have develop the titles, he stated that he was “a big fan of valve.” Makes sense, considering he revealed that the voice of Portal’s GLaDOS, Ellen McLain, will be voicing an AI in his upcoming movie Pacific Rim.
Nothing spoils a fighting game more than having an unbalanced collection of fighters and perhaps no one knows that better than the developers of Street Fighter X Tekken. However they are looking to fix the game up a little bit later this year as the Capcom has announced that they are planning on releasing a “hefty” update to the game that will substantially re-balance the fighters and provide some other tweaks to the game.
Those who want to check out some of the tweaks can find a list here, though this is not the final list. Along that same line of thought, Capcom has also reminded us that next week Street Fighter X Tekken is landing on the PlayStation Vita and has released a trailer for the game highlighting some of the special features this version has over others. Check out the trailer below.
Today Namco Bandai revealed some more content that is being added to the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2. As you can see in the images and trailer below, the company has not only added in a slew of excellent looking Nintendo themed costumes, making it but they have also added Tekken Ball to the game.
Some of you may remember that Tekken Ball was first introduced in Tekken 3 and the game itself involves a mix of dodgeball and volleyball as the fighters must hit the ball back and forth, keeping it from hitting them or hitting the ground on their side of the arena. The catch however is that the longer the ball is in the air, the more damage it will do once it eventually hits something.
Might and Delight is pleased to announce that Pid will be made available for Xbox Live and Steam on October 31, 2012. But what the heck is Pid? Pid offers an unique journey that places you on a remote planet where your character must make precision jumps and bend gravity in order to make it back home.
The cost of this strange adventure is only a mere 800 MSP for Xbox Live and $9.99 for Steam. Playstation Network users will be able to purchase the title later this year. Pid is surely strange looking, yet strange can be quite the selling point. Check out the interesting screenshots, and take a look at the boss battle video for some real gaming action.
Play a Name that Tune-like game on iOS devices with Hum a Song and a bonus that comes along with it is that it’s free! Yes, this music trivia game is free to download on the App Store thanks to Hibernum Creations.
