Some gamers may remember the glory days of space combat genre like Wing Commander and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, well one studio is trying to bring the genre back with Starlight Inception. Being developed by Escape Hatch Entertainment, LLC, Starlight Inception aims to improve on the space combat genre by adding elements of strategy and tactics and is planned to release for the PC and PS Vita.
Escape Hatch Entertainment has a Kickstarter to try and help them develop Starlight Inception and the closing date of May 8th is coming fast. Backers can receive anywhere from a set of desktop wallpapers, to digital copies of the game, to a PS Vita with the game already loaded with the game and you as a character in the game. Check out the video below for more information and visit the Kickstarter page HERE.
IndieGala has pushed out their fourth pay what you want indie bundle today in support of Child’s Play and Save the Childrens’ Italian branch. Only five of the nine games that comes with the bundle have been revealed. Seven of these games will be available on Steam, the rest can be downloaded DRM free from the IndieGala website. Currently, two of the games are only available to those who pay more than the average bundle price. This may change as more games are announced.
If you’re getting bored of your Xbox Live avatar’s clothes, then here’s your chance to deck yourself out with new Darksiders II themed premium avatar items. A wider variety of clothing, props, pets, and full armour sets are available for 80 to 400 Microsoft Points. If you’re a Playstation 3 owner, have no fear! You aren’t totally left out. Premium items for Playstation Home will be released at a later date.
To celebrate the release of the premium avatar items, THQ is giving away free Darksiders II t-shirts for XBL avatars. Just Like them on Facebook to get a redeemable code. Hurry though, quantities are limited.
Nordcurrent, a European game developer, announced that their new game Happy Chef for the iPad has been released. In Happy Chef, players will have to manage their time wisely as they cook for five different restaurants across 70 addictive levels. Players will be able to upgrade their restaurants in game and cook over 100 different dishes.
Players will be able to cook everything from the humble hotdog to exquisite seafood meals. Those who appreciate the fine art of sweets won’t be left behind, as levels dedicated to waffles, crepes, and pancakes are available. Happy Chef is available for free on the iPad with an in app purchase of $4.99 to unlock the full game.
Anuman Interactive and SDP Games have announced that Anuman will be publishing Save the Furries for PC coming in May. The game will be made available in both physical release and digital, for international release. The partnership is Anuman Interactive’s way of rounding out their puzzle catalog, which until now has been mainly hidden-object and time management games. While SDP Games sees Anuman as the best publisher to market too an international audience.
Save the Furries itself is a puzzle game where the player must protect oblivious green Furries, as they ever march straight ahead. Players must utilize different means to clear a path and ensure as many Furries reach the end goal as possible, without being eaten or killed, in over 60 levels. Be sure to keep on eye out for it come May.
The demo for Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma is now available on Xbox Live for anyone who is a Gold Member and available for everyone who simply has a PSN account. The demo will cost you only 1.5GB of space and will obviously give you a chance to try out the game and face off against some mythical creatures before it is released on May 24th.
It is worth noting that anyone who feels like picking up the title can spend a lot of time in character creation because players will be able to transfer over their characters to the full retail game once it is released.
Online Warmongers Group Inc. has released their game War Inc. Battle Zone out of beta and it is available free to play. War Inc. is more than just a shooter game, it’s a shooter game that has been designed to work for both first person shooting and third person shooting, so fans of both genres can play without feeling treated unfair.
Online Warmongers has also released a trailer to better prepare new players and tote the features of their game. From ultra in-depth weapon customization to 32 vs 32 battles, War Inc. has been crafted thanks to the aid of the beta testers from 175 countries and putting in 120 million hours of gameplay to make sure it was prepared for release. Not only that, but with a partnership with Alienware Arena, new players to War Inc. have a chance to win Alienware X51 gaming computer. Check out the contest HERE and War Inc. Battle ZoneHERE.
We’ve seen a few images and even a couple of teaser trailers for Crysis 3 so far, but no actual gameplay. Electronic Arts remedied that situation today when they released the below trailer that contains a few tidbits of gameplay as Prophet fights his way through the urban jungle that is New York.
Fans of Crysis may notice that the game appears very similar to the second game in the series but considering Crysis 3 is still relatively early in its development stages this is probably a good sign. Anyone eager to play the title after seeing this footage is going to have to wait awhile however as Crysis 3 isn’t set for release until sometime in 2013.
If you own a PlayStation Vita you can now download the Skype Video and Voice app from the PlayStation Store for free. This is the very first time that Skype has made a video calling app on a mobile gaming device. The calls will work over both WiFi and 3G and will use the front and rear Vita cameras if you choose to do a video call.
The app will allow you to pause a game, take a skype call and then resume playing the game. It is worth noting that calling anyone from Skype that is using a landline or cell phone will cost money, but any calls between Skype users will be free of charge.
Bullistic sticks very much to the style of the Angry Birds physics puzzler, but brings a tongue-in-cheek crassness that’s bound to put a smile on your face… at least, the first time you see it.
Story
Erm… I guess a group of bulls are hatin’ on a Mall of some kind? Maybe they weren’t allowed to return a china tea set that clearly had a defect before they accidentally broke it… /shrug/
Gameplay
As mentioned above, this is very much inspired by the Angry Birds catapulting disgruntled creatures at walls to cause the most amount of havoc possible. It does add it’s own spin on the genre, however, and brings a lot of interesting style to the table.
When you first get into a level, you see a bull is “sitting” atop a pole of some kind. It doesn’t look comfortable. Of course, to launch him, you need to drag him away from the pole and let go, a-la Angry Birds. But when you pull him away, you see he is attached to the pole by his scrotum. Two bull-sized balls remain firmly attached to the pole, allowing you to harness the elasticity of the male cow scrotum and launch him into the air.
The bull with then roll up into a ball, crashing through stalls, items, and people, doing as much damage as he can muster to the Mall and it’s customers. There are also special components, like bumpers and cannons that you can use to keep up the pinball-esque combo going. Unfortunately, everything seems a little out of your control; and if you manage to use the cannons correctly (tap on them to fire; they change their aim themselves), and are lucky enough to hit the bumpers, then you can be bouncing around the mall almost indefinitely.
With Angry Birds, it’s all about figuring out the right place to hit the structure; to find it’s weak point and bring the whole thing toppling down. But with Bullistic, there’s not really much finesse you can develop, or even use to better complete a level. So you simply end up launching and hoping it hits something, or that it reaches a component that prolongs it’s travel time to hit more things. This can result in very long, at minimally productive shots.
Each level is pretty bland. While the art style and detail is good, every level looks exactly the same; they’re just laid out differently. The level selection screen looks okay, but selecting the level you want to play is a little on the buggy side.
As you progress through the game, you’ll be introduced to new bulls with special abilities, again, just like Angry Birds. This time, however, you can choose which bulls you want to use for a level, and there’s quite a few to choose from. One, for example, nosedives to the ground when you tap the screen while he’s flying through the air. Unfortunately this particular one may end up flying through solid ground if he’s going too fast for the physics to keep up.
From time to time a bull will appear presenting you with some choices, or informing you of a particular feature of the game. To close them, you tap on the “X”, as with most popup interfaces; but they are situated in particular parts of the bull. His groin, for example; or maybe an eye. So when you close the popup, the bull reacts as one would it he was poked in those particular places. This adds well to the humour and style of the game.
Unfortunately this humour only works the first couple of times you see it, and so isn’t enough to carry the whole game. There are nice touches to the gameplay, reacting to a bull rolling over a person, people screaming and running away, or when a bull falls into a meat grinder. Each level requires a certain level of damage to pass it, and when you hit that mark, it makes sure you know it through sound effects and animations.
Audio & Visual
The sound effects are super high quality, and really accentuate the cartoony and over the top nature of the gameplay. There’s pretty much no music, apart from an awesome 10 second track announcing your completing a level.
This game looks great; there’s no two ways about it. The style is clearly defined, and has a good dollop of crass humour to keep things sweet. The bulls have a great character to them, as do the customers roaming the levels, and the animations to go along with the numerous forms of destruction that can happen.
Overall
Even though the quality of the assets in this game is amazingly high, especially for a physics-puzzler, the humour doesn’t really last that long, and the gameplay is buggy and unengaging. This game is annoyingly close to being awesome, but it’s flaws really keep it from reaching it’s true potential.
