You’ve probably noticed over the past few months that THQ hasn’t exactly been doing the best financially and it seems that the best way to rectify this issue is to make at least a few changes in the highest levels of the company. SEC filings from THQ reveal that the vice president of the company who also happens to be their corporate controller and chief accounting officer Teri Manby resigned from the company back on June 14th, though he will be assisting with the transition until July 6th.
The man who will be filling this position is Rose Cunningham, who is currently senior director of financial reporting. Cunningham will be taking over all three positions left vacant by Teri’s leaving. No reason was given for his leaving of the company at this time, so it is safe to let your minds wander and think of your own reasons.
Sine Mora was originally released exclusively on the Xbox 360 but it seems that that exclusive deal that Microsoft had with Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture has ended because not only has the game been announced for the PlayStation Vita, but it is also now set to be released as a digital download on the PlayStation 3.
As for a release date, currently the only time window presented by Grasshopper is that the game will be released sometime “soon” which just also happens to be the same term applied to the Vita version of the game. Anyone been eager to pick this up but due to the previous exclusivity couldn’t get it?
Fresh Aces, the indie developer, has released a new game to Mac and PC and despite its name, it’s not very fowl. Â St. Chicken is the story of a pet guppy lost in the wild waters, but granted the special abilities to spawn and nourish offspring. Â St. Chicken then must protect these offspring to reach the safety of an item from St. Chicken’s old home. Â The game is designed for plenty of different skill levels, but getting each level perfect will require good planning and skills. Â Overall, it looks to be a great game for anyone from kids looking for some fun to hardcore players wanting a serious challenge.
While the game has just been released and is available for 25% off (or $2.99) through IndieCity for PC only and Indievania for both Mac and PC, players can try to score one of the five free copies of the game available through the sweepstakes HERE.
The creators of the popular PC series Runaway, Pendulo Studios, have teamed up with BulkyPix to publish a new point and click adventure game on the iPhone and iPad called Yesterday.
You play as John Yesterday, a guy with a terribly ironic name who is suffering from a case of amnesia and trying to figure out exactly what he did, well, yesterday. The story is full of twists and dramatic turns, and has four possible endings for you to end up with depending on your decisions through the game. You can also choose which character to control in the game’s finale, which affects your ending, obviously. You can pick between the ending where justice triumphs, it doesn’t, or a surprise ending that is guaranteed to leave you staring at your iDevice in surprise and just a little bit of horror.
Check out the trailer for the game below!
BulkyPix are also holding a contest where you can investigate with John Yesterday to help him remember who he is and win some promocodes! Head on over to their Facebook page to enter the contest!
Yesterday is available NOW for $4.99 USD for iPhone and iPad. Grab it HERE.
Temple Run: Brave Review Studio: Imangi Publisher:Â Disney Mobile Platform: iPhone (reviewed), iPad, iPod Touch Release Date:Â June 14 2012 Price:Â $0.99Â Available Here
OverviewÂ
Temple Run was one of the most popular games on mobile devices last year, and rightly so. Indie developer Imangi managed to take the simple, addictive and fun ‘endless runner’ type of game and make it a freemium title that wasn’t a rip off (which is very rare to see these days mind you). On top of that Temple Run also included a well thought-out upgrade system that would make anybody playing this casual game work hard for achievements and goals just as hard as any hardcore gamer would. In short, Temple Run is one of the best casual games available on mobile devices. Now Disney has teamed up with Imangi to create Temple Run: Brave, a title that takes the original Temple Run and dresses it up in the theme of the upcoming Disney movie Brave, as well as adding in an extra feature or two here and there. However Temple Run: Brave is now priced as $0.99 so unlike the original it’s not free. So a question springs to mind: is it worth your money? Read on to find out!
Visually Temple Run: Brave is a massive step ahead of it’s predecessor. The scenery has much more detail in textures and presentation feels a lot more polished. While for the most part this title is just the same game with new Disney-themed visuals, it’s a lot nicer to look at. However while presentation and scenery is a lot nicer, character models do look a bit out of place at times and unfortunately aren’t up to the same standard, but it’s not by much so it’s tolerable. Music is also an improvement and much more exciting than what we’ve heard in the previous Temple Run. A new addition included is voice acting, but unfortunately it sounds very awkward. To make matters worse what these awkward voices say are just as bad. Lines such as “So much jumping!” and “My legs are getting tired!” are probably the last things you wat to hear while playing an endless runner title. That being said all these flaws are easily overlooked and aren’t really that bad.
Overall
If it’s your first time around playing a Temple Run game, your going to have a blast with one of the best casual titles on mobile phones today. Disney/Imangi have gone with a ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it too much’ approach here. Temple Run: Brave is basically Temple Run with better audio and graphics with one added extra feature. It’s certainly worth picking up, however if your a hardcore Temple Run player like me you may find it frustrating having to get back so many achievements and spending $0.99 on a game you already downloaded for free. Simply put, Temple Run: Brave is a great casual title, a bad squeal/spin-off and pretty damn good for a licensed game all at the same time.
Disco Kitten Developer: IJ Software Publisher: Chillingo Platforms: iPhone (reviewed), iTouch and iPad Release Date: 14 June, 2012 Price: $0.99 – Available Here
Overview
Disco Kitten, despite its name, isn’t a music game. It comes under a far harder to decipher genre, although the disco music is certainly there. It’s all about reactions, attention span, and a little bit about knowing rhythms well enough to be able to predict certain occurrences.
Gameplay
Disco Kitten involves a kitten named Punka, who hops about on little platforms in front of these large canisters that absorb lightning that shoots down from above. You have to move rapidly from platform to platform, careful to not get caught out by the lightning as it comes down.
The canisters store the lightning and Punka drains the lightning by being on the canister’s platform, which then goes into Bunka, a giant cat head. Bunka gradually drains energy itself, so you have to try and collect energy as quickly as possible. Quick movements and speedily draining canisters is your friend, which is why it’s great if you get a speed bonus because you can flicker between each platform and gather the lightning as quickly as possible.
Moving quickly between platforms also activates disco time, and gives you bonus points at the end of the level. Disco time is like most bonus modes, it lets you drain lightning faster and leads to more points in general. Disco time is presumably why the app got its name, although I don’t really see it’s purpose apart from having some colours, lights, and making the soundtrack go crazy. As a power-up mode goes, I don’t really see why it seems to be the focal point for the game, but putting that aside, it isn’t really a bad thing in any way either. It’s just a little random.
You can fail the level in a few ways. First, if Punka gets caught on a platform that is hit by lightning, although this doesn’t result in immediate failure. It just drains lightning from Bunka and sends you back to the main platform, unless you’ve run out of energy that is stored in Bunka, in which case you fail the level. Another way to fail the level is if the canisters become full and they then turn to stone.
You play through the different difficulty levels: easy, normal, hard, expert, and master. And with each difficulty level there is a different number of stages within each level. As these progress you get different types of canisters, and the rhythm gets more difficult and you have to get quicker and quicker as you go. So if you’re finding it too easy in the beginning then be patient. One downside is that you have to complete each difficulty before moving on. If each difficulty had the first stage unlocked so that you could unlock it at your own speed and without needing to go through all the easier ones first, then that would have been great.
Visuals
Disco Kitten looks a little like a stereotypical disco threw up all over it, which sort of fits the title. It also takes one a bit of an Asian anime feel, with the cute kittens and the expressions on the canister’s faces. The graphics are decently done, but they’re just a big too crazy and colourful for my taste. Still, it certainly represents what the app is supposedly about, so it can’t be faulted for that. Especailly when it hits Disco time and the whole game goes crazy.
Audio
The soundtrack is basically the same as the visuals, a stereotypical disco with a whole bunch of extra energy and craziness put in. And unfortunately that just results in an extremely repetitive soundtrack that basically doesn’t change unless you enter disco time, when it manages to get even crazier, more in your face, and a little grating. While the fast pace of it helps to keep you on your toes and keep the blood pumping, it might also be a good idea to turn off the music, because chances are it’ll annoy you.
Overall
Disco Kitten is a really fast paced game that demands a lot of attention, can get somewhat frustrating because of this, but also works well in small doses. This is the sort of game that you can power through a couple of stages, then hit a wall, put it away, and grab it later on and play it again. It takes some definite patience to master, but is easy enough to learn, and is a pretty easy way to wile away the hours and pit yourself up against your friends, and random strangers on the internet, to judge just how good your reflexes are.
Eager Beaver Developer: Gamagio Publisher: Chillingo Platforms: iPhone (reviewed), iTouch and iPad Release Date: June 14, 2012 Price: $0.99 – Available Here
Overview
Puzzle games are a huge thing on mobile devices, they’re easy, levels are simple to make and easy to add on to if the developers ever want to introduce some in-game purchases. In short, they are just the easy option for game developers to pursue, so it’s no surprise that the mobile gaming market is quite full of such games. It takes some serious individuality to be able to have a game rise above the rest and set itself apart.
Gameplay
Eager Beaver is about a beaver called Edgar who is just so damn good at building dams that all the other beavers are super lazy and let him do all the work. You play as this master beaver, covering for everyone else as water threatens your habitat and you use your handy little crane to drop different shaped rocks to stop the flow of the water. The crane rotates each stone, and can be moved around the screen, which are both aspects which become important so care is important. While this is not really a realistic representation of beaver’s building dams, that is where the puzzle part comes in.
For each level you are given a mark out of three stars, depending on how many rocks you had to use to stop the water. The minimum for if you successfully stop the water is one star, and if you only use a few of the stones and have quite a few left over and then you’ll probably get three stars.
The star system works under one of my preferred system, in that to progress onto the next village you have to get thirty stars, but you can earn far more than thirty in the levels. This basically means you can skip a level if you can’t finish it, or just leave it at one star if you can’t accomplish any more (or can’t be bothered). There are ten levels per village, with five villages, and if you really can’t get past a certain village or stage then you can unlock all the stages and villages with an in-game purchase of $0.99.
There are a few different aspects you have to get a handle on to successfully progress through Eager Beaver. The first is the ‘rapids’, or the speed of the water. Often this will cause your stone to move, and if the water is deep and the stones are small then they will generally carry quite far. Then there’s the fish that swim around and love to either bump into the rocks and throw off your carefully balanced piles, or start to eat them. You can also stun these fish by dropping rocks on them, although that will cause them to bounce and fall elsewhere. If you practice enough you can use this to your advantage, but prepare for some frustration to begin with. Plus there are also explosives that go off if you drop something on them, magnets, and fans that you can set off by pressing down on a button in the map. And, on top of all of these features, the rocks you have to drop are completely random and can go from some nice square or rectangular ones, to random rusty items that don’t really seem like they should be being dropped into a river.
Each puzzle is fairly interesting and does involve some thought, although with some levels you could basically just drop each stone on top of each other and it would eventually result in stopping the water.
Visuals
Eager Beaver has really good graphics that pop and look quite crisp on the screen, while also being super cute. The cartoon style of everything really suits the game well and gives it that extra little cute factor that is always a big thing in mobile games.
Audio
To be perfectly honest, the soundtrack reminds me a little of the Sims. It has that little adventure-like, sweetness to it that goes with the visual style and the general feel for the game. It doesn’t distract from the game or get annoying, which is something of a rarity in apps.
Overall
Eager Beaver is a fun little app, with enough of a challenge to keep you interested and thinking up ways to take on each level. With a decent system for game progression, and some interesting features and a good look and feel for the game, this is certainly a buy if you like these types of puzzle games. As to whether it sets itself apart, it isn’t ‘different’ so much, but it certainly is one of the better options to pick if you like this genre.
Today, Ubisoft announced that James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes is now available free for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. With more than 140 intriguing puzzles and riddles, James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes has you playing as a contestant on a TV game show who must turn his puzzle solving skill to a string of murders linked to the show.
A diabolical criminal mastermind manipulates and defies players at every turn, and former winners are killed one after the other. To get out of this situation and discover the identity of the murderer, the player has to solve the puzzles left by the killer on every crime scene.
It’s availableHERE, and be sure to check out the accompanying launch trailer below if you’re interested.
“Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” These are questions you will have no doubt heard as people spot Superman in the sky. But the question on everybody’s lips when Superman took to the skies on this occasion was “Will he fall off?”.
To celebrate the launch of Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes on June 22 (for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Windows PC, as well as Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation Vita) a Lego Superman Mini-figure was taken for a ride over London on an Remote-Controlled Helicopter.
The helicopter used required the same clearance as commercial airlines – which made for some fantastic views over the city of London – flying high above Hyde Park, Docklands, Primrose Hill and Soho.
Dungeon Twister, Hydravision Entertainment’s latest Playstation Network title, will be heading to Europe and Australia on July 4. North America will be receiving the game a day earlier on July 3. The game is based on the board game of the same name, blending chess and Dungeon and Dragons into one game. In order to obtain victory, players must accumulate five victory points, which can be done in two ways: defeating an opponent or fleeing the dungeon. No price has been announced.
In addition to the release date, Hydravision Entertainment have released 12 new screenshots of the game, showcasing the gameplay elements. On the official website, players can retrieve tips if they get stuck on how to use their eight adventurers. The tips for the game come from the game creator himself, so you know these tips must be good.
The creators of the popular PC series Runaway, Pendulo Studios, have teamed up with BulkyPix to publish a new point and click adventure game on the iPhone and iPad called Yesterday.
