There are some that say that video games need to tone it down a bit. And there are some who respond by shouting obscenities, chainsawing the naysayers in half and speeding off on a jetpack drill.
Sega and Arkedo Studio’s upcoming title, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, looks set to feature all that. And blood. Lots of blood.
Little was known about the game besides its obsession with excessive violence, but a new gameplay trailer has revealed a bit more about how it will play.
This is one we can’t help but keep an eye on – the game simply won’t let us ignore it.
Not everyone wants their beautiful iPhone encased in a thick bulky battery case or maybe you tote around an iPhone and an iPad but don’t want to use two separate external battery cases for both device. LUXA2 has solved your problem with their new P1 external battery. The P1 sports a 7000 mAh battery with two USB ports meaning you can charge two separate devices at the same time. Compare that to the 1500 to 1700 mAh most external battery cases sport these days! 7000 mAh is enough to fully recharge the iPhone battery three and a half times. The P1 is just a little bigger than an iPhone 4/4s and extremely light weight. It takes eight hours to fully charge the battery and has four LED lights so you always know how much juice is left. The battery pack also comes with an Apple authorized 30 pin dock connector so you can leave one cable at home attached to your computer and still have one to travel with. No word on pricing, but the P1 will soon be available at a store near you.
Max Payne 3 Issue #1: “After the Fall” is out now for your reading/viewing pleasure. The comic book is written by Dan Houser and Remedy’s Sam Lake, and features cover art from Greg Horn and pencils and inks by Fernando Blanco. The three part series will delve deep into Max’s dark personal history, and “After The Fall” features characters from all three Max Payne games as the series weaves together events from various points in Max’s life.
Max Payne 3: “After the Fall” is a free download via the Rockstar Newswire, the Max Payne 3 Official Site and additional digital comic channels: Check out the link here to read it online at Marvel.com.
Regular Show: Just a Regular Game Developer: Cartoon Network Publisher: Cartoon Network Price: FREE – Play Game Online Here
Overview:
Regular Show is one of those absurdist humor shows that has been popular in recent years. A rag tag cast of characters that can have any type of adventure, that despite its name might indicate, is anything but regular. So, what exactly can be made out of a show like this? Pretty much anything, actually. The question really comes down to if the game is worth spending the time, as that is about the only thing it will cost.
Story: Regular Show: Just a Regular Game is actually based in part off of parts of two different episodes of the show. But, that really only provides the idea for what to do in the game as the story is completely straight forward and presented to the player in the instructions/introduction of each section of the game.
The first part of the game, “Put the Hurt on Him!”, is based off the idea of bouncing Rigby off a trampoline as seen in “The Power”. Of all the parts this is the smallest of all the stories in the entire game, as the goal is to attack Beef Burrito to get revenge for saying bad things about Rigby’s mom and simply ends when the timer expires.
The second part, “Escape From the Moon”, is also based off of “The Power” and features multiple characters all riding in a golf cart to escape the Moon Monster. This part actually has a resolution if players can make it past all eight stages, which can be a little confusing if players haven’t seen the episode to know that a keyboard was the MacGuffin, but given the nature of the show isn’t really anything a fan might not accept.
The final part, “Destroy the Destroyer!”, comes from the episode “Just Set Up the Chairs” and features Rigby and Mordecai fighting the aforementioned Destroyer, until help can arrive. Of all the plots this one is probably the best as it has the most satisfying conclusion of them all, but that isn’t really saying much.
Gameplay:
Each part of the game features a very different style of gameplay, of which the only connecting attribute is being completely controlled via the mouse. “Put the Hurt on Him!”, has the mouse dragging the trampoline into the right position to hit Beef Burrito, clicking on Mordecai to throw Rigby, and seeing if Rigby does impact. There is a time limit to keep the game from going too long, as well as an energy bar, but that takes almost to long to run out against the clock. Getting combos allows Rigby to pick up extra items to attack with and get more points, but missing will forfeit these items. This takes a little bit getting used to establish the best placement throughout the room, but the game is a bit forgiving, so generally isn’t overly difficult.
“Escape From the Moon” features the mouse controlling the golf cart’s position on the screen and clicking to jump over obstacles. With eight stages it is the lengthiest of all the parts of the game, and even includes a suitable difficulty curve as the part progresses. The golf cart must jump over holes, crashed ships, and boulders, but jump into items and UFOs to crash them for points, while also avoiding the slamming fist of the Moon Monster. The game is forgiving enough at least to provide 99 lives to aid in making it all the way through stage eight though , so players it’s more of a matter of time getting a good run through each stage though could understandably be too tough for some.
“Destroy the Destroyer!” has the player using the mouse to aim at where to throw objects at the Destroyer and clicking to actually throw them. It also has a second stage once help has arrived for Mordecai and Rigby, where players control a giant conglomeration of arcade video games by using the mouse to aim auto-fired attacks at the Destroyer. The first stage has two special attacks that randomly drop, bananas and grenades, where bananas are thrown in bunches of three that split and can even hit more than one spot at a time and grenades are simply more powerful. After getting distances and timing down this isn’t too hard and for the most part is only really time consuming.
Audio & Visuals:
The music and visuals fit the show about as perfectly as a flash game can. Each part of the game does feature its own music and fits within the tone of the part itself, from the frantic escaping of the moon to the epic fighting of the Destroyer. Voice acting is pretty minimal, only really being clips from the show itself and nothing for anything other than quick bursts that players would simply be expecting sounds for. The visuals of the game follow the art style of the show completely, which isn’t hard as cartoons are fairly easy to convert into flash. The only real downside to the visuals is that there does seem to be a lock of assets, but there are enough to be satisfying, just more might have been able to be done.
Overall: Regular Show: Just a Regular Game is interesting and certainly has a good chance of having something players might be interested in. It goes more of a shotgun route to game content by providing several different experiences, though none are necessarily overly fun however. It’s a solid time waster, all the different parts at least give the impression of accomplishing something, though it doesn’t really offer anything lasting. Fans of the show would probably get the most out of it as a way of reliving those small aspects of the two episodes or a means to spend more time around the shows characters.
As my Steam stats will confirm, indie games are filling a larger role than ever in the current industry. I clocked in a measly 3 hours in the AAA zombiefest Dead Island, while Edmund McMillen’s The Binding of Isaac has claimed more than 50 hours of my time. Despite being generally smaller titles, they usually seem to hold my attention for much longer.
If you’re the same way, or are simply interested in seeing what this whole indie game fuss is all about, there’s a fantastic selection available to try out for free right now at ACMI in Melbourne.
The Best of the Independent Games Festival (IGF) is a small exhibition running until July 8, which showcases some of the winners and notable games to come out of the IGF this year. Some of them have become commercial success stories, some are hidden gems, but all are unique interpretations of traditional formulas.
Perhaps the centrepiece of the exhibition is Phil Fish’s Fez (say that ten times), which has been in development for five years, and winning awards for almost as long – including the 2012 IGF Grand Prize. The central mechanic of Fez is to swap your perspective between 2D and 3D: a level can be rotated 90 degrees left or right, which brings elements together in different ways and may open or close paths to the player. It’s like playing a game wrapped around a Rubik’s Cube.
Fez was released on XBLA a few weeks ago to unanimously positive reviews – unsurprising for a game whose impact has been felt long before it hit the digital shelves. It already has a series of accolades under its belt, and the story of its production featured in the documentary, “Indie Game: The Movie”.
Another entry has reignited the whole “What the hell IS a game, anyway?” discussion: the quietly moving, minimalist Dear Esther.
Players (for lack of a better word) simply wander a mysterious island, listening to narrated diary entries addressed to the titular Esther, and taking in the beauty the environment has to offer (which won the team the award for Excellence in Visual Art). There’s no jump button, nothing to pick up and use, no combat. Your only interaction with the game is to move, to see, and to piece together the story from letter fragments.
It’s been described as the video game equivalent of a poem: it only takes an hour or so to finish, but repeated play-throughs yield different results. There are different diary entries the second time around, and you may spot other things that reveal more, but never fully solve, the mysteries of the island. Keep an eye out for shadowy figures as well: people have reported ghost sightings at various points, but they aren’t your typical horror game jump scares – they’re subtle enough that many players miss them entirely.
It’s a fascinating exploration of the medium’s narrative and emotional potential. The fact that it has sparked debate over whether it’s actually a game or not, based off a set of criteria of “gameyness”, shows how limited our definition of “video games” is. Rather than throwing in scores, combat, and whatever else is “required” to make it a “game”, Dear Esther is what it is, and that’s how it should be. The definition should be altered to fit the product ascribed to it, not the other way around. Video games will never evolve if we force them to stick to tried and tired old conventions.
Whether or not you call it a “game”, Dear Esther is an important experiment, and one you’d do well to check out.
That’s not to say that developers won’t find fascinating things to do within the comfortable confines of video game conventions. Frozen Synapse borrows elements from a few classics, combining the familiar in an unfamiliar way.
It’s a twist on the old turn-based strategy game: instead of players alternating turns, all players simultaneously plot their next turn, submit them, and then watch how their actions intertwine.
The game has a dynamic somewhat like chess, forcing you to consider the potential moves your opponents might make, and use that to decide where to position your own pawns.
For example, you might assume an enemy unit will move down, so you pre-emptively send someone to cut him off. You have the unit crouch behind cover, and assume that when the opponent comes past, you’ll be able to take him out. But when the turn plays out, as you get into position, he goes around a corner, and comes at you from angle you hadn’t expected. Suddenly the cover you took is useless, leaving you vulnerable from behind.
There’s a plethora of options for movement and combat, and using them all effectively creates a level of strategy deeper than most. Without the immediacy of real-time strategy, players must plan their actions several turns in advance. Watching your well-laid plan unravel in a single turn, and being somewhat helpless to stop it, is more exciting than having the ability to call it off mid-execution.
Frozen Synapse has been out for a while now, so if you missed it, it’s worth looking into for strategy fans. It’s on Steam for the very reasonable price of $25 – which includes an extra copy for a friend, so you’ll have someone to play it with.
These are just three of the games on display at the Best of the Independent Games Festival exhibition. Head along to ACMI to check out the others, including the beautifully detailed point-and-click adventure Botanicula; the “ninjanitor” action of Australian-made parkour platformer, Dustforce; the touching, story-driven RPG, To The Moon; and the rhythm-based stealth of Beat Sneak Bandit.
This past weekend while promoting the Nintendo 3DS in Paris, Shigeru Miyamoto, the Father of Gaming himself, sat down for an interview with EDGE Online, during which he gave his thoughts on rival company Sony’s latest handheld offering.
When asked what his overall thoughts on Sony’s PS Vita, in classic Miyamoto fashion, his response was both respectful and decidedly honest:, “It’s obviously a very hi-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it, but I don’t really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product.”
He went on to paint a more hopeful picture for Sony’s console’s future and drew some parallels to the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, “When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn’t have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn’t have Mario Kart 7, we didn’t have Kid Icarus: Uprising, we were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren’t able to deliver them at that time. We were kind of hoping that people would, nevertheless, buy into the product, find 3DS hardware promising, but looking back we have to say we realise the key software was missing when we launched the hardware.”
Miyamoto himself does believe that the PS Vita, which is currently being outsold by the PSP, PS3 and even PS2 in Japan, can make an impact. All it needs is some good games to support it’s good hardware.
What do you think of what Miyamoto had to say about the PS Vita? Is he right? Is he wrong? Sound off in the comments section below letting us know your thoughts.
This week, Amazon’s weekly PC sale is fine indeed. You can get Costume Quest, Psychonauts, and Stacking for just $9.99 for all 3. If you already have 1 or 2 of these awesome games, you can also pick up each one separately at a discount. Psychonauts is a mere $1.99, while Costume Quest is $2.99 and Stacking can be had for just $7.49. Check out the current weekly deals on Amazon here.
Twisted Pixel have released the 4th instalment of their Ms. Splosion Man XBLA themed challenge series, the latest of which is titled Splokour. The challenge will be available to Ms. Splosion Man players from May 5th-20th through the main menu of the game.
The Splokour challenge is Parkour themed, with the idea being that the player must try and keep Ms. Splosion Man airbourne for as long as possible. This challenge of course comes with some hefty rewards for those who splode their way into the top 5. Those who manage to do so will win a Ms. Splosion Man plushie along with a copy of Twisted Pixel’s next Xbox offering which is due to be revealed at E3 2012 next month.
Be sure to blow up the comments section below with your thoughts on Twisted Pixel’s latest Ms. Splosion Man challenge. Also don’t forget to take part in the challenge which ends on the 20th of May. So what are you waiting for? Get splodin’!
Hello everyone and welcome to another installment of the haphazardly posted series, Capsule Theatre of Vision, now with knowledge of having a misspelled title. I, Linkage Ayexe, will be your host for this joyous occasion taking place right now as you’re reading this sentence.
How many of you are religious? How many of you are fans of the Anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion? Do you love action movies? If you answered yes to being religious, this video may be sensitive to you. For those who answered ‘No’, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’ will probably find this trailer to be particularly amazing.
Spot the Evangelion references in the video embedded below.
Masters of point-and-click adventures, Telltale Games, have progressively been converting their catalogue of games to point-and-touch: porting a number of games to iOS. If you are a fan, then head over to the App Store and pick yourself up a copy of Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space, for the low low price of $0.00. All other titles in the series are now 40% off at a fantastic $2.99. But act fast, these titles wont be available at this price forever. Just follow the links below!
