Columbia Pictures and MGM have begun their promotional campaign for the upcoming RoboCop reboot in a very interesting way. A teaser has emerged as an advertisement from OmniCorp, the fictional company that creates RoboCop. The teaser even hints at the RoboCop project as well, stating that they will ‘reveal’ him in the next up coming months, so expect more coming soon! What we do have in the meantime is an awesome look at the ED-209 that fans will remember from the original 1987 film they fell in love with. Many suspect that more information will be revealed at next week’s Comic-Con. Hopefully this is true!
RoboCop is entering production and is aiming to hit theaters August 9, 2013. For more information, check out the OmniCorp website.
Overview Licensed apps. It’s not a term that fills gamers with confidence. It’s almost common knowledge that games based on properties from film or TV are usually not worth the effort, and iPhone apps based on these are more often than not the bottom of the barrel. Where’s My Perry? is based on The Disney Channel cartoon Phineas and Ferb, and plays pretty much exactly like Disney Mobile’s previous hit app, Where’s My Water? So how does it fare, with that stigma in mind?
Story
It doesn’t need much context, but what you’re given is essentially this: You must help a secret agent platypus travel to an underground lair through vacuum tubes, by manipulating water, steam and ice. I don’t really know what Phineas and Ferb is about, but if this makes sense to you, well… awesome. For the rest of us, it doesn’t really matter.
Gameplay Of course, it’s how it plays out that’s important, and thankfully, the gameplay makes more sense. If you played Where’s My Water?, you’ll immediately get it: Where’s My Perry? isn’t much more than new puzzles reskinned with a licensed IP, like what Angry Birds did with Rio.
To power Perry’s transport, players need to direct water into a pipe, digging tunnels through dirt by dragging your finger around the screen. The water physics are reasonably realistic, and as such the water’s movements always make sense, but are not always predictable. That’s the best kind of challenge a physics puzzler can offer: if something doesn’t work, it’s because you’re doing it wrong. It’s never the game’s fault. It’s always either that you’ve misjudged how the water will react, or some small imperfection in your plan has altered the outcome. Whichever way a failed attempt pans out, it always has you feeling like the next turn will be a success. If not, surely it’ll be the one after that. Or after that.
That mindset, where victory is always just out of reach, fosters a healthy level of addictiveness that keeps you coming back, but doesn’t frustrate you too much.
This is the core of the game, but a few other layers are placed over the top. As with most games, semi-arbitrary collectables are scattered around: there are three gnomes in each level, which you collect by filling with a certain amount of water or steam. Some levels also have secret documents, buried somewhere in the dirt. Collecting all of these, before getting the water to the exit, adds an extra challenge.
Soon, additional elements are introduced, and it becomes about the relationships between them. Water can be heated and cooled to bring steam and ice into the mix, which bring with them their own uses and physics.
Heat ice and it’ll melt into water. Heat water, and it’ll evaporate into steam. Cool steam, it’ll condense back into water, or cool water, it’ll freeze into ice. It’s basic stuff, but the puzzles built around it become quite ingenious. Heating and cooling sources may be a viscous goo, or a laser. Then throw buttons, hoses and moving blocks into the mix and you’ve got yourself a classic puzzle game.
Visuals & Audio The presentation is obviously rooted in that of the base show, Phineas and Ferb. I hadn’t actually seen it, but a quick Youtube scan shows that the visual style is quite faithful to the source, and it looks fantastic on the iPhone’s Retina screen. It has the sharp-edged, Flash-animated look of a lot of cartoons nowadays. Dressing up Where’s My Water? in a Disney Channel cartoon works quite well. At best, it increases the appeal to Phineas and Ferb fans, and at the least, it combines the visual cues into a coherent whole that even those who haven’t seen the show will find charming.
The sound design continues the trend, with the show’s original voice cast reprising their usual roles. Perry remains a largely silent protagonist, besides the odd grunt or growl, but his allies and enemies are quite entertaining. Someone will pop up to talk over the radio at the start of a level, or periodically if you take too long. It might be his boss, Major Monogram, dorky lab assistant Carl, or their arch-nemesis, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, but someone will regularly be there to provide a tip or a quip. The writing isn’t bad, either, with these one-liners often eliciting a chuckle.
All together, the Phineas and Ferb packaging increases the game’s appeal, and has interested me enough to want to check out the show.
Overall If you’re a Phineas and Ferb fan who likes puzzle games, there’s no question: you need to play Where’s My Perry?
If you’re a regular puzzle gamer, who’s sick of Angry Birds, Cut The Rope and all that, Where’s My Perry? is a very worthy successor. The Phineas and Ferb flavour adds personality to the core addictive gameplay, and the whole package will charm the socks off any players.
As the video game world heads towards a digital future, don’t expect it in the next generation of Playstation. It seems Sony still has plans for the retail space for the inevitable Playstation 4, if recent comments by the Head of Sony UK Fergal Gara with MCV are led to be believed:
We’d love to see as many retailers as possible maintain their interest in servicing the space. Clearly down the road many of us are going to be doing our best to give another injection into the market whenever the next cycle starts.
Coming down off that 2008 peak has been a steep ride for many and has involved fallout on many levels, not least of all retail. So what we’re seeing is not really a surprise, a bit of a readjustment if you like and it isn’t just happening to the specialists on the High Street. There is a bit of a reappraisal around space and the commitment from other retailers.
Companies such as EA are already proclaiming the death of the physical copy and the video game retail sector, but if Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are all placing emphasis on retail in the next generation, does that make the digital point mute? It doesn’t because the change will be gradual and take some time, but it also means that an all-digital future will arrive anytime soon. Yes, Sony is pushing the digital space with the disastrous PSP Go, the push for publishing all Playstation Vita games and the recent purchase of Gaikai, but retail support is still important seeing the digital space hasn’t become the popular space many want it to be.
A filing to the FCC has suggested that there may be a new Playstation 3 model in the works. The documents detail a new Playstation 3 model with a possible model number of 4000. The current series of Playstation 3 models are part of the 3000 series, which identifies a PS3 Slim model.The specific model number shown in the documents is CECH-4001x. According to Eurogamer, the x in the model number will be replaced with a character of the alphabet to identify hard disk specifications. This means that the model may be fitted with different hard drives, offering different numerical values in terms of space available.
If this new model is in fact in development, it will be the second revision of the Playstation 3, with the Slim version released in 2009. What should be noted is that Gamescom is in fact approaching and Sony has confirmed their appearance at the German event. It was at Gamescom that Sony revealed the current Slim Playstation 3 model, so it is no surprise that the event may be the reveal of the 2nd hardware revision.
Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad Developer: 2XL Games Publisher: D3 Publisher Platform: Xbox Live Arcade (Reviewed), PSN Release Date: June 26th, 2012 Price: 800 MS Points ($10) – Available Here
Overview:
Jeremy McGrath is one of the big names in Motorcross racing, but after retiring, twice, from the two wheeled racing scene his later years saw him doing a bit of the offroad racing ones. Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad combines the developer of Baja: Edge of Control and Jeremy McGrath’s popularity among the dirt racing fans. Offroad being a pretty niche market does the game offer what the fans like most about the sport and gameplay?
Story:
While there isn’t a drastic amount of story, there is a career mode that goes from buggies, to cars, to racing trucks across 23 events including lap races and sprint at the start of every new vehicle type. While the title does say Jeremy McGrath, the player character is really just a no one starting out their career and rising through the ranks of the different offroad racing events. McGrath is still around, just at the front of the race waiting for you to prove your worth and over take him.
Being Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad, it feels a little weird that he is not the player character, but the main competition. It does make some sense, though for other reasons it gets even weirder. The career mode does have a solid length though with the number of events and the fair amount of different kinds of vehicles to drive. Though how long it takes to win all the races really depends on which difficulty you choose as it does have big difference between them. But really, that’s more the gameplay side, speaking of which.
Gameplay:
Racing games have fairly straight forward gameplay, go fast, pass everyone else, win, but there is plenty of different things that can be done differently between the varying types of racing and the feel the game wants to give the player. Offroad racing presents players with a few more details than the standard racing, which the game makes sure to feature with the clutch boost. While, I didn’t figure out exactly how it worked as there wasn’t much of a tutorial, the few times I did get it to go really made a difference. Mastering the clutch boost is probably the key to not only getting off the line, but taking turns as well, so it is the thing to learn when going head-to-head against other players.
During races there are also hazards to avoid, falling rocks, snow balls, bails of hay, that will plague the track throughout career mode. These have an option to be turned off though for Arcade mode, so anyone not wanting to deal with them can enjoy their absence. It’s perplexing to see them put in though as I’m quite sure those things don’t happen very often in real races, probably as a means of keeping the race more lively and allowing the order to at least switch up a little bit.
Difficulty has a nice three selection range from Amateur, allowing players to zip right through the opponents to McGrath as he leads the race 95% of the time it isn’t you, to Semi-Pro, giving more of a challenge through competition, to Pro, where upgrades and mastering the controls are the only way to be able to compete. The only issue is that the upgrades work on a really wonky system, that is really unexpected in this kind of racing game, or really racing games in general. Where others would have individual parts for players to purchase as they accrued money, Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad utilizes a leveling system.
Gaining experience for the leveling system has a somewhat uneven system. On one hand experience is gained from passing opponents, having cleans laps, power sliding, and finishing first, but on the other experience can also be gained from smashing fences, signs, and driving off-offroad. When you can get more experience not having a clean lap and crashing into different props than actually avoiding collisions, something seems a little wrong and kind of sends the wrong message. Then after having gotten levels and upgrade points, they can only be applied to one car in each of the different classes, so make sure to pick the sponsor you want all the way through, or you’ll have to start back over from scratch. So a pretty weird system, not broken, but an interesting choice.
Audio and Visuals:
The music of the game is pretty forgettable, it does it’s thing and fits the game well enough, but doesn’t do much to really catch your ear or really get you in the mood to race. Besides music though the vast majority of the game’s audio outside of engine noises is Jeremy McGrath himself, and man does he have a lot to say. Dropping tips in the menu pretty consistently, but that’s not all, as in the races he will be sure to tell you exactly what obstacles are coming up 20 feet in front of you. Luckily, these can be turned off, if you desire, but maybe you like constantly hearing the sound of McGrath’s voice either for reassurance or the comedy of some of the tips or whatever.
Visually the game does look very well put together though. The trucks and other vehicles look faithfully reproduced both in terms of design and paint jobs for the sponsors. McGrath’s own truck looks pretty spot on to pictures of the Monster Energy truck he has driven in real life. Besides being faithfully reproduced though, the graphics are more par for how they look, but as an XBLA/PSN game that’s really to be expected.
Overall: Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad is a good racing game. It features really well constructed racing that fans can really just get into, but it does have a few interesting choices that don’t really hurt the game, but I guess stand out as being unique for the genre. All in all, the audio is probably the weakest of the games points, so it doesn’t miss the mark all too much. I give Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad
London Boulevard Studio: GK Films, Henceforth Publisher: Entertainment Film Distributors, IFC Films Format: DVD (reviewed), Blu-ray Release Date: July 18, 2012 Price: $24.98 – Available Here
Overview
A movie with Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley and David Thewlis is bound to attract attention. London Boulevard is a movie that tries to straddle a few different genres at the same time, but whether it succeeds in that is debatable.
Story
Colin Farrell plays Mitchel, a man who has just been released from prison, and it seems that the prison system worked for once because he doesn’t wish to return any time soon. Unfortunately for him, his past ties seem to keep dragging him back into the system.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the well-meaning criminal who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is forced back into the business by some means or another. These characters tend to be a bit self-righteous and trying a little too hard to be likeable. Colin Farrell treads this fine line, he doesn’t do it entirely successfully and there are some moments that seem personally designed just to appeal to those who think Colin Farrell is ‘fit’ and want him to be in the hero role. The part I most enjoyed watching was when Mitchel flexed the strength and began to threaten others because Farrell really does have the ability to threaten with nothing more than a few mild words and a stare down.
Mitchel’s story line is the typical mob sort of story line, although with a little less length and depth than you’d usually expect because it is shared with a somewhat out of place romance with Keira Knightley’s character Charlotte. This is where the contrast of the movie comes in, it goes from a typical mob story, to a typical romance within the blink of an eye. Mitchel swaps from each story from day to night time and the fact that he does have the day time story, with a possible job going for him as well, it kind if lessens your sympathy for him.
Mitchel’s story line with Charlotte involves him taking on a sort of bodyguard, protective role. Charlotte is a internationally known actress, not unlike Keira Knightley herself, and there are a few moments and speeches that are extremely self-reflective. There’s a huge degree of irony about Knightley’s character talking about how female actors are utilized in films to support and help male characters to explore their depths, when her character has very little to do apart from seem frail, fall in love with Farrell’s character, and have a small amount of depth that doesn’t get explored because of the mob story.
It’s almost as if they wanted to make a different movie, one that explored the perils and issues of celebrity status, through the eyes of one that had been so badly treated that she had been left with a case of agoraphobia, and felt trapped by her own popularity. But then in order to sell the movie and have some fun fight scenes, they inserted the action and mob story line.
Due to these two story lines that don’t really intersect, each of them feel short changed. If Charlotte hadn’t been a massive star she probably would’ve come under attack or threat of the mob, which could have tied the movie together and probably resulted in a high-speed getaway, but there’s never a threat of this because of her status. The only thing that links the two stories together is Mitchel, and David Thewlis’ character Jordan.
The ending is something that might frustrate some people, but I can actually appreciate it for what it is and what it represents. And there’s a nice little irony to go with it that doesn’t hurt the movie quite like the irony of Charlotte’s story line.
Visuals
There are a lot of sweeping shots of London, and with the title of the movie it’s no surprise. There is some great camera work in the movie, and some shots are quite well framed and carried out. It’s a good-looking film, and there are some scenes and close ups that carry some significance, while others are trying to carry significance. Overall, though, it is done well and is enjoyable enough to watch.
Audio
The soundtrack is a quirky little thing that emulates a lot of popular UK styles of music, including what I would call a tribute to the Beatles being the main track. It’s fun enough to listen to, and provides appropriate backing to certain scenes, or adds irony to others.
Special Features
The special features on the DVD include the trailer and cast interviews on the film. It’s always nice to get the cast thoughts on the film, although it’s a fairly short special features section, it still does well for itself.
Overall
London Boulevard is a film that tries to marry two different genres, unfortunately, given that it shows promise with both but doesn’t manage to pull of either that successfully. Still, it is entertaining to watch and Colin Farrell certainly pulls off a gangster well. It deserves a watch, although don’t have high expectations of it.
Hoodwink Developer: E-One Studio Publisher: E-One Studio Platform: PC Release Date: June 28, 2012 Price: $14.99 (available here)
Note : this game will not function if your system uses an Intel HD Graphics Card, and is not compatible with Windows Operating Systems pre XP
Overview
The quirky point and click is almost a genre in itself, provoking many fond nostalgic sighs as people cast their minds back to the joys of titles like Grim Fandango and Monkey Island. Hoodwink is the latest game to try and squeeze itself into that small but often golden box, and comes to the world from a small Malaysian developer called E-One Studio. At the moment exclusively distributed on EA’s Origin service, the game description boasts a flood of buzz words that seek to hook in potential buyers. Things in this game are not only quirky, but ingenious, vibrant, outrageous and absurdly dark. Is that so?
Gameplay
As a point and click adventure, Hoodwink has a very simple set of gameplay mechanics. Main character Michael is controlled only by mouse, with a context sensitive left click accounting for all talking/pick up/open actions as well as general movement. It isn’t the smoothest thing in the world, and moving around can sometimes be a pain. Double clicking makes Michael run, but not if the area you click on is a screen transition zone, and these tend to cover the majority of where you want to go. One plus is that the inventory system is simple and never gets too cluttered, and the journal is integrated in a way that means you can ignore it completely and play by your own wits if you like. Sadly your own wits aren’t too necessary throughout the game.
The puzzles are a mix of too easy to bother and hard for the wrong reason. One of the first teasers has an obvious solution – turn a crank four times. It took me ten minutes because the control of the mechanism was so picky as to what counted as a turn. A similar lack of satisfaction is to be found in potentially trickier puzzles as they are rendered moot as the game automatically flags up what item you need to use when you click on the door/box/whatever. If it doesn’t flag it, you don’t have it yet. There are some moments where a bit of puzzling is involved, but there’s nothing here to stretch or surprise your grey matter.
Some solutions involve mini games of which the only feature is clicking a lot, and despite some flashes of imagination in the design (some Che Guevara cockroaches hint that there could be something far better lost in here) they don’t make up for a largely uninteresting, brief adventure. The inability to save outside of end of chapter check points also adds to the frustration, and despite the fact it’s a short game the inability to skip through dialogue means that any form of repetition is extremely annoying.
Story
The main protagonist is Michael Bezzle, a small time thief living in the decaying metropolis of Global-One. The city and it seems, the world, is run by evil mega corporation UniCorp, who are the sole suppliers of drugs that protect the citizens from the effects of a mysterious global disaster. Michael lives in the lower level slums of the city, which is also populated by a copious amount of police, and some robotic ex humans who have chosen to get their brains preserved in jars and attached to mechanical bodies.
Despite the post apocalypse setting things are kept light hearted, best exemplified by Michael’s main objective: to propose to his girlfriend, a wheelchair bound pawn shop owner called Francesca. There are a small handful of supporting characters who range from the intriguing (the anthropomorphic tiger detective)to the dull (Francesca, who seems to detest Michael). The game is very much focused on Michael though, and he fortunately has a good helping of personality and wit. There a pop culture references aplenty to be found, and the world created here is cohesive enough to create some immersion, even if the game is far too short to explore anything in depth.
The whole thing is very much a tease for the main feature, with the game ending quite suddenly just when things start to become interesting.
The current Origin listing makes no mention of this being an episodic game, so it’s not until the ending suddenly happens that Hoodwink is revealed to be only part of a story, so don’t expect any sort of satisfaction or closure. Despite an attempt to build some sort of cliff-hanger there’s precious little here to tempt players back to complete the story. Especially when the current price of the game is taken into consideration.
Asking $14.99 for a game that can be completed in under two hours and has a replay value of zero is nothing if a little crazy, especially when PC gamers can scoop up infinitely better and longer games elsewhere. Speaking of Steam, the title is going to make an appearance there soon, after a three week exclusivity period on EA’s Origin service concludes.
There is no indication as to how many episodes Hoodwink will take to wrap up as a story, but everyone concerned would be better served by waiting for a bundled, complete series before taking the plunge. There are elements here that could grow into something interesting, but at the moment Hoodwink is just fulfilling the less than stellar implications of its name.
Visuals and Audio
As the screenshots throughout this review easily demonstrate, Hoodwink has a very strong visual identity, using a combination of the Leadwerks game engine and cell shaded visuals to create a distinctive dystopian future. Environments carry a lot of detail and texture, with muted colours, bold black outlines and a slight haziness in the light effects adding to the atmosphere. The town is almost reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII’s Midgar, although with a more humorous edge and on a far smaller scale.
Character models can offer little in way of expression, but benefit from the highly stylised art style and thankfully move around with little awkwardness, a trick which many games don’t seem capable of pulling off these days. The voice acting for Michael is entertaining, but sadly his relationship with his girlfriend (the driving force of the story) is ruined by having Francesca voiced by a woman who sounds old enough to be his grandmother.
Despite the strong enough visuals, the audio aspect of the game is very messy and sparse. The music is a catchy little jazz number when it bothers to be around, and sound effects are also rather minimal. The background track often plays through once then forgets to get going again, leaving Michael running around in absolute silence. Certain bits of audio are also badly mapped, resulting in a record player still sounding even though Michael has changed area. Ambient dialogue also repeats very quickly, looping before you can leave an area and generally repeating the same handful of lines throughout the entire environment.
The visuals are Hoodwinks strongest point, but sadly they are undermined by lacklustre audio that despite some decent music and voice acting just isn’t in the right place at the right time.
Overall
Style over substance, Hoodwink is too short and too bland in its puzzles to make any serious impact in the point and click pantheon. The art style is unusual and the design and world are strong, but that and some solid character work can’t make up for the fact that actually playing it just isn’t that fun. Perhaps the complete story unfolds into a greater whole, but at the moment it feels like Hoodwink has been unnecessarily chopped up in order to stretch out it’s money making ability.
Sir Paul McCartney, Tweeted that he is work with Bungie, on a score. While no details have been given on what game Paul, and Bungie composer Marty O’Donnell are composing, but speculation is that it is for the Xbox 360 exclusive Codename “Destiny” which Activision and Bungie revealed a few months back. Codename “Destiny” would not be the first video game that Sir Paul McCartney has worked on, as he helped Harmonix with the Beatles Rockband. Paul had this to say
“really excited to be working on writing music with Bungie, the studio that made Halo,”
What do you think of Paul McCartney teaming up with Bungie to compose a score for an upcoming game?
Tech savvy users have discovered files in the Xbox 360 demo for Resident evil 6. The files seem to point to a 4th campaign staring Resident Evil 6 villain Ada Wong. Resident Evil 6 director did say that if players complete the campaigns for Leon, Chris, and Jake that they would get a reward could the Ada Campaign be that reward? Here are the files that people found.
seg000:000149F4 00000019 C arc\\X360\\MenuAdaResource
seg000:00014A40 0000001A C arc\\X360\\MenuJakeResource
seg000:00014A8C 0000001B C arc\\X360\\MenuChrisResource
seg000:00014AA8 0000001A C arc\\X360\\MenuLeonResource
seg000:00014EA4 0000001F C soft\\message\\mes_cutscene_tuto
seg000:00014EC4 0000001E C soft\\message\\mes_cutscene_ada
seg000:00014EE4 0000001F C soft\\message\\mes_cutscene_jake
seg000:00014F04 00000020 C soft\\message\\mes_cutscene_chris
seg000:00014F24 0000001F C soft\\message\\mes_cutscene_leon
seg000:000089F0 00000011 C ADA_MOTION_SPEED
seg000:00008A04 0000000E C ADA_POS_HOKAN
seg000:00008A14 00000011 C ADA_MOTION_HOKAN
What do you think about the files , do you think there will be an Ada Campaign?
The Playstation Vita remake of Ys IV, entitled Ys: Foilage Ocean in Celceta, has its opening animation released by Falcom. The animation introduces the cast of the game surrounded by the environment of the world they live in. Some action sequences are also used, revealing the fighting styles each character will possess. You can check out the opening below, as well as some screenshots.
At the end of the opening, Falcom detailed the 25th anniversary edition. It will include a drama CD, presumably of the game, a CD with a selection of Ys music and a cloth cleaner which has the Ys world map printed on it. It will go for ¥8,925 and should be released alongside the standard edition. Ys: Foilage Ocean in Celceta will be released in Japan on September 27 with a ¥7,140 price tag.
