Today 2K Games revealed that not one, not two, but three NBA superstars will be gracing the cover of NBA 2K13. The three stars are Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant, Los Angeles Clippers’ Blake Griffin and the Chicago Bulls’ Derrick Rose (my favorite, being from Chicago and all).
All of these stars are up and coming in the basketball world and they are certainly happy to be gracing the cover of this basektball game, as Derrick Rose states that “It’s a dream come true to be one of the cover athletes for NBA 2K13. I’ve worked closely with 2K Sports since NBA 2K10, and I’m honored to follow in the footsteps of Michael Jordan as the latest Chicago Bull to be featured on the cover.”
Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom Developer: Beeline Interactive Publisher: Beeline Interactive Platforms: iPad (Reviewed), iPhone, iPod Touch Release Date: June 21st, 2012 Price: Free Available Here
Overview
Beeline Interactive’s latest game is Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom. The game smartly mixes the traditional time based world building type games such as Zynga’s Farmville with the Shrek franchise, great graphics, and strong audio. Beeline attempts to keep the game fresh by allowing players to relive the events of the movies with simple storyline quests and creative mini-games. However, the biggest downfall of Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom may be the game’s monetization strategy.
Story
Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom loosely follows the plot of the Shrek films. Considering the films themselves are great fun for the whole family, and most games like these have zero plot, this is a great thing.
Gameplay
Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom is not a cookie cutter clone of Farmville like many iOS games that litter the App Store. Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom takes the general idea of Farmville and removes to farming aspect of the game and instead allows players to build Shrek themed objects that generate money over time. In addition, characters like Shrek and Donkey can be sent out to complete quests for coins and experience.
One of the most irritating things about the questing system is that if the character is left too long after the quest is complete, they become angry and refuse to share the quest rewards with the player unless the player expends several wishes in apology. Magical wishes is the premium currency in the game that can be rarely found during quests. Although the game is designed to be playable with no in-app purchases of extra wishes, the game can be extremely difficult and needy without an ample supply of wishes. As a video gamer, I play games when I have the opportunity to relax and enjoy myself. A game that requires me to spend premium currency unless I take care of a quest within a certain time frame sounds more like work.
It is extremely challenging to create a game that strikes a balance between fun to play and profitable and unfortunately Shrek’s Fairtytale Kingdom misses the balance by a fair distance. If iOS device owners are planning to give this game to their children, they need to be extremely attentive to the large warning on the description of the game and lock out the in-app purchases. I can easily see an impatient child quickly racking up a large iTunes bill on Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom. Although I applaud Beeline Interactive for plastering warnings everywhere, the fact of the matter is, a game that is extremely child friendly but hinges on in app purchases to get from point A to point B quickly will risk having a un-tech savvy parent getting a surprise credit card bill.
Audio and Visuals
Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom mixes together great graphics and audio. The game uses an art style that would be right at home in a child’s story book. Many of the films’ famous characters make appearances in the game and the colourful themes of the movies makes an excellent transition to the small screen. The game seems to be optimized for the New iPad’s Retina screen and manages to look great on the iPhone’s small screen. The music fits well with the fairy tale setting and there are plenty of sound effects to keep things fresh. Overall, the presentation of Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom is top notch.
Overall
It is unfortunate Beeline Interactive missed the mark on balancing Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom. The game has a lot of potential for being a lot of fun. The graphics and the audio are great, there are fun mini games, and enough of a twist on the tried and true Farmville formula to create a winner. Unfortunately, the game pushes the premium currency just a bit too much. Reducing the amount of wishes to get something done and removing the need to spend wishes after leaving a character for too long after a quest is a good place to start to steer Shrek’s Fairytale Kingdom back onto the right path.
James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot shed some light on what independent video game development entails in their debut documentary film, Indie Game: The Movie. The first full length movie released on Steam, Indie Game is a rare look at how mentally taxing the process of creating a game actually is for independent developers. From the pressure of the audience to the sacrificing of any personal life to completely exposing their feelings through the characters and story of their games, we are shown that at times there is more grief than joy involved with the creation of great indie titles.
Throughout the documentary, Jonathan Blow speaks of his experience making Braid, being inspired by his own creation and the odd depression that followed immediately after Braid was released. This narrative gives an idea of the big picture, the before, during and after of the entire process. It also provides a backdrop through the film as it follows Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Team Meat as they finish up Super Meat Boy and Phil Fish as he struggles to bring Fez into the light after years of quiet development.
“It’s not just a game, I’m so closely attached to it, it’s me. It’s my ego; my perception of myself is at risk. My identity is Fez. I’m the guy making Fez. If that doesn’t work out well then…” Phil Fish trails off and is then asked by the interviewer, “What would happen to you personally if you couldn’t finish the game?” to which Phil responds, “I would kill myself.”
Indie Game: The Movie has been very well received and is available through the website, indiegamethemovie.com and can also be purchased through Steam or the iTunes store.
Is your Kinect collecting dust after you bought it a few months ago thinking you would try to jump onto the slow moving train that is the Kinect’s gameplay library? Well you can now expand that library by at least one title fore free because if you happen to own a Kinect you can now download NanaOn-Sha’s Kinect-based haunted house adventure, called Haunt, for free.
The game is only free if you download it through the “Kinect Central” app on the 360’s dashboard and the deal will disappear after July 2nd. It is unfortunate however that at the moment no one outside of North America will be able to take advantage of this free deal.
While Dead or Alive 5 has seen the return of a number of characters from past titles including a couple of characters from the Virtua Fighter series, there have been no new characters added to the roster so far. Well it seems that is about to change as Famitsu this week will be revealing a number of details about a character named Rig.
All we currently know so far is that Rig will be a male character that is voiced by Hiroki Touchi. Also detailed in Famitsu is the returning character Bass Armstrong, though considering he was already revealed at E3 earlier this month, all eyes are on Rig. Stay tuned for more information later today when Famitsu hits shelves.
As the saying goes ‘The more the merrier’, and that’s certainly the case with the latest Sims 3 stuff pack – The Sims 3 Diesel Stuff Pack. EA has released a new trailer for the upcoming content pack which is set to feature a range of new apparel and furniture from the iconic design company Diesel.
The pack includes over three dozen clothing items, based off Diesel’s real life Spring/Summer collection, along with a collection of brand new furniture from the Diesel home collection.
Currently available for pre-order, The Sims 3 Diesel Stuff Pack is set to be released on July 10 for PC and Mac.
Set to be released in the coming days, 2K Games and YAGER’s Spec Ops: The Line has received a launch trailer. The latest game in the long running Spec Ops series, Spec Ops: The Line sets to explore a war torn, sandstorm-ravaged Dubai with a strong single-player campaign narrative.
A fresh take on military shooter genre, Spec Ops: The Line also features an extensive multiplayer component, along with a cooperative mode which is set to be released as DLC post-launch.
Spec Ops: The Line is currently available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC in North America, and is set to be released internationally on June 29.
Nothing says surprise like a zombie apocalypse, especially one that is happening quite literally tomorrow. IGN reports that the second episode of Telltale’s acclaimed Walking Dead video game series is set to be released tomorrow, June 27th on the Xbox Live Marketplace while the PC and PlayStation 3 version of the game will be available on June 29th, this Friday.
The second episode is titled Starving for Help and will pick up right where the first episode left off with the survivors beginning to succumb to normal hunger as the zombies starve them out. Gamers’ tough decisions from the first episode will be carried over into this game, creating a number of story differences depending on the choices you originally made.
After it was announced last year that the critically acclaimed Spelunky would be coming to the XBLA it seems the date has finally arrived. Or at least the date that Major Nelson chose to reveal the actual release date and price of the game which is July 4th for 1200 Microsoft Points.
Originally released for free on the PC, this new version of Spelunky will feature a new upgraded appearance, better soundtrack, four player multiplayer and a number of other extras. For those who don’t know, Spelunky features randomly generated levels which players must venture around in to gather treasures while avoiding enemies and traps.
Earlier today the official website for Tokyo Game Show 2012 was launched and with it comes a decent amount of information for the show. First of which, the motto for this year’s TGS is “Spreading Smiles Through Games.” The event will run from September 20th to the 23rd and will take place at the Makuhari Messe like it always has before. Now it is worth noting that Microsoft will be skipping out this year (though no one in Japan seems to like them anyways.)
Plenty of other big names will be attending, including Capcom, Konami, Sega, Square Enix, Sony, Namco Bandai as well as a very large accompaniment of smartphone developers. Now we plan on having a number of our team on the Tokyo Game Show floor this September and any of you who may be wanting to attend should definitely give the website a thorough once-over at least.
Today 2K Games revealed that not one, not two, but three NBA superstars will be gracing the cover of NBA 2K13. The three stars are Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant, Los Angeles Clippers’ Blake Griffin and the Chicago Bulls’ Derrick Rose (my favorite, being from Chicago and all).
