BulkyPix’s latest title, JAZZ: Trump’s Journey, is out now for iPad and iPhone. It follows Trump, a Jazz musician in his adventures chasing fame and building up his own band in an ambitious parallel with Louis Armstrong’s life.
From the looks of the trailer (below), this 2D platformer’s unique art stlye and great soundtrack is sure to make a game to remember!
Stay tuned for our review, coming soon! – Game is currenty available on iTunes for $2.99 (BUY HERE)
Earlier today, the company behind the online massively multiplayer role playing game (Warner Bros), Dungeons and Dragons Online, unveiled the first expansion to the now free-to-play game. The expansion to the game, titled Menace of the Underdark, is set to be released in the coming Fall of this year.
This latest expansion is set to increase the player level cap, as well as introducing a plethora of new content for the game, as well as releasing the much anticipated Druid Class for use within the game.
“2011 was a year of growth for Dungeons & Dragons Online as we celebrated our fifth anniversary and completed a successful launch of the game in Europe,” said Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons Online. “2012 is going to be our biggest year yet with a wealth of new content throughout the year including the launch of our first expansion pack. We are very excited to expand into the Forgotten Realms setting with a whole new storyline, level cap increase and the new Druid class!”
Check out a more comprehensive list of new features quoted below.
NEW FEATURES:
Journey to the Forgotten Realms- Experience the classic fantasy and adventure of D&D’s most imaginative and renowned setting. Arrive in the village of Eveningstar and adventure through the surrounding King’s Forest wilderness area where the citizens of the nation of Cormyr must unite to face a new threat to the Realms.
Brave the caverns of the Underdark- Come face to face with the Underdark Drow and Lolth, their Queen and goddess, as you explore this vast and twisted, subterranean world. Infiltrate the Drow stronghold of Shindylryn – the city of portals – where Lolth’s forces work to further her schemes.
Attain Epic levels to 25! Forge your Epic Destiny and create a unique Epic hero with powerful character customisation options as you advance beyond level 20 to epic level 25.
Play the Druid Class- Play as the all new shape-shifting Druid class! Wield nature’s magic or transform into a powerful animal form with this classic D&D class.
Interested players should look into starting a new character on the game, by checking out the official site and downloading the client.
Synqua Games has released a new action game that answers the question, what would happen if Vikings and Pirates fought against each other? I mean, Pirates and Ninjas is old, but Vikings? Well, that’s definitely a showdown that would be loud, rowdy, and very axe-y.
In Save Your Booty you have to defend Captain Goodthrow’s booty against the evil conquering Vikings who think they can have a right to everything just because they have epic hairstyles. In this game you use your finger to draw a path on the screen on which to release a battle-axe to bring those damn landlubbers down! You also have barrels of beer and cannons at the ready to take them down, so get your fingers ready for some intense fighting!
Extra treasure can be collected by tapping on treasure chests when the Vikings aren’t looking, and guiding it inside your ship.
Save Your Booty has 48 levels, spread across 4 stages, and two modes ‘Save Yer Booty’, or ‘Do or Die’. One stage, which is twelve levels, is included in the initial download, with the following levels available for in-app purchase.
Save Your Booty is available NOW for iPhone and iTouch for FREE – Get it HERE
Who doesn’t love taking on the gangs of the seedy underworld? Whether it is as an undercover cop, or a gang member. And hey, 9MM is neither and both at the same time, with John ‘Loose’ Kannon who is a corrupt narcotics detective and who kills a drug lord’s brother and steals millions of dollars. Now here are a few questions from me, firstly, does anyone just call him ‘Loose’? Because personally, my feelings would be a little hurt if my nickname was loose. Secondly, why not kill the drug dealer? Surely he has more money, and that would be kind of helping out your buddies in blue. Third of all, has anyone counted how many times swearing occurs in this game? Because it’s actually pretty impressive how many swear words they manage to get into it. Fourth of all, this game resembles both GTA and Max Payne, so which side will it fall on?
Gameplay
My last question is the easiest to answer, which is unsurprising since it is the least sarcastic one. While it does ring reminiscent of GTA, it definitely follows Max Payne far more. Instead of having a sandbox that you can wander around in, you have to keep to a certain area and follow the line that the game likes you to follow. If you try to deviate from this set path a message will pop up on the screen, the game scolding you and shooing you back onto the path as if you’re some wayward Kindergartener.
While the app brags of destructible environments, most of them aren’t. Bottles, boxes and speakers are, but apart from that you won’t get the pleasure of wreaking destruction as much as you would in other games, which is a bit of a shame. It would have definitely added to my fun factor if I’d been able to smash a few more things while being all renegade badass.
There are a couple of quick-time events that will pop up, so make sure that you don’t tune out too much during the cutscenes, because you might end up missing something you need to do. Other than that the controls are fairly standard, and don’t cause too much trouble. Similar to Max Payne, you can enter slow-motion ‘bullet time’ to take out a group of gangsters, pinpointing each one and wiping them out as quickly as possible, which is invaluable in parts of the game. The slo-mo bar is charged by kills or simply letting time pass, so using it for one or two people is a bit of a waste.
There is in game cash with which you can buy armour, ammo, so on and so forth. You can either earn this with level completion, kills and achievements, or go for the in-app purchase option. However, you don’t really need to, unless you want all the best things absolutely right this second so that the game isn’t hard at all and you can own absolutely everyone with a glance. That’s up to personal preference I guess.
There are 12 levels in single player campaign, with about 3 gameplay hours in them, and once you’ve completed the campaign you can try harder difficulties or have a go at the multi-player.
Multi-player involves either death-match or team death-match modes, with up to 12 players either over Wi-Fi or online, or two players via Bluetooth. To play online you have to have a Gameloft Live account, which is free, and you play through the Gameloft servers. There is definitely lag in the multi-player mode, however, so if you are someone who can’t deal with jerkiness during gameplay then you should perhaps look elsewhere.
Visuals
The grittiness of the culture that 9mm is set in is reflected in the visuals. I mean, there are strippers guys.
When I started playing on an older laptop the graphics were completely unplayable, only some of the background would actually show, and nothing else, however this was my fault as the laptop had clearly just freaked out a bit over the graphics requirements. Or perhaps it was self-censoring. Either way, once I traded up it fixed itself up. Apart from some glitches, which drove me up the wall a bit (I have a low tolerance for glitches), the graphics were pretty good considering it is technically an app.
Audio
The soundtrack makes me feel like I’m stuck in a car with a bunch of guys who think that they’re super hardcore and ‘gangsta’. Which makes me feel a little awkward because I’m far from that and I opted to turn my volume down so that others didn’t think that this was the sort of music I listen to while I’m on my laptop.
The voiceovers are alright. They aren’t great, and at times they are quite heavily stereotypical, but that sort of lends itself a little to the game. Why play as a crook cop if you aren’t going to go all out stereotypical, with choice cheesy lines and accents and all.
Overall
If you’re a fan of Max Payne this is definitely a game to get. Sure, it’s the watered down, app version but that doesn’t take away from the entertainment or fun of the game itself. It certainly is enjoyable in single-player mode, and as long as your laptop can deal with it, it plays well.
Crazy Escape the fun, and crazy, app from BulkyPix and developed by KoolFing, has been given a brand new price of $0.00! That’s right, to celebrate their new update, Crazy Escape is FREE for a week.
In Crazy Escape you play as Cutlet and Mishmash (the oddest named penguins, apart from Mumble), heroic penguins who have decided to ditch their comfortable Artic environment and journey to the land of cowboys saving their sheep friends (having met at the cute animal mixer I guess?), from wolves, and turning the whole natural habitat thing on its head.
The update has 25 new levels, as well as Crazy Coins, which allows you to get new vehicles that you can use in all the levels of the game.
Check out the gameplay video for the update below!
Crazy Escape is available NOW for FREE (for a limited time) on iPhone, iTouch and iPad – Get it HERE
Three new songs for Michael Jackson the Experience HD are now available to purchases on the App Store. The songs ‘Bad’, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’, and ‘Ghost’ are downloadable for game at $1.99 each.
As well as theses new songs, an update for game now allows for AirPlay support, which givers players the option of using Apple TV to play the game on their big screen. Ubisoft have also released a new trailer highlighting the King of Pop’s hit song ‘Bad’ – check it out below.
Michael Jackson The Experience HD is available now iPad for $4.99. See what you think of the game by checking out our review here.
Capsule Computers were recently invited to check out The Darkness II at Sydney’s night of gaming ‘Insert Coins‘ at Oxford Art Factory. While we’ve previously checked out The Darkness II Vendetta co-op Multiplayer mode, this was the first time we’ve gotten a taste of the game’s actual campaign and those horrifyingly awesome darkness powers.
First person shooter games aren’t exactly renown for their story, but the most striking thing about the original The Darkness was in fact its narrative. And likewise for The Darkness II, narrative will be another major draw card in this sequel. The original Darkness (released back in 2007) was a nice twist on the whole mafia revenge story with Jackie Estacado acquiring the powers of the Darkness and subsequently faces the consequences of possessing them.
The sequel kicks off two years after the events of the first game, Jackie is now the Don of the mafia and has not used The Darkness since then. However, all of that is about the change with the introduction of The Brotherhood. An ancient secret society that wants the Darkness for their own use, they know exactly what The Darkness is and more importantly how to fight it. The demo dramaticlly opens with a hit on Jackie at a restaurant by The Brotherhood in an attempt to capture him and The Darkness.
Having played the first game, The Darkness II feels both familiar and different at the same time. The same basic game mechanics are still here, but the developers have introduced a new system dubbed ‘Quad wielding’ where players are literally controlling four weapons at a time – Two demon arms and two standard firearms.
This system works very well and is a welcome improvement over the first game, where Darkness Powers could only used individually. Now the left demon arm is used for grabbing and throwing objects and right demon arm is used for slashing. In the heat of battle you will need to use these abilities and the interactive environment around you to your advantage. For example, car doors can be used as make shift shields or can be thrown at enemies.
The Darkness II also sports a very distinctive comic book/cel-shade art style, an obvious nod its comic book roots. The game itself looks very good, especially with its gore. Word of warning this game is very violent, enemies will be decapitated, ripped in half and executed left, right and centre throughout the entire game. So if you don’t like that sort of stuff, then it’s probably not a good idea to play this game.
Overall from my short time playing The Darkness II, the game delivers exactly what players expect from a sequel. Taking things from the first game that people liked and improving things they didn’t like. Narrative is a strong point in this game evident in the fact that its co-op multiplayer Vendettas will tell its own storyline in parallel with the main games campaign.
A demo of The Darkness II is currently available for Xbox LIVE Gold members. The demo will become available for Playstation 3, Steam and Xbox Live Silver members on January 24.
The full retail version of The Darkness II is set to be released for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC on February 10.
Check out our interviewwith The Darkness II producer Seth Olshfski and our impressions of Insert Coin(S)
Yep. It was bound to happen. If you are getting tired of facing the same dragons over and over again, then this mod should certainly give you a chuckle. It seems one user enjoyed his pony pals so much that he went to work in replacing all of the Dragons in Skyrim with My Little Pony’s Fluttershy.
So far, Fluttershy has received well over 1000 downloads at Skyrim Nexus, and by all means each and every one of you should add to that number as quickly as possible. For the unfortunate few of you with the console version, you should at least give the video down below a look, as there is nothing like seeing the army of treacherous ponies cause havoc in the skies. Ah, Internet, thank you yet again for all your services.
Fresh off the heels of the 3D Classics announcement, Nintendo have prepared even more meat for fans of Pit to chew on today. The first comes in the form of a new trailer, showing off some of the high-flying battles and beastly bosses that players will encounter in Kid Icarus Uprising.
To top off the stunning clip (which you can watch below), a ton of new details have surfaced as well, finally shedding some light on the single player mode found in the game.
Introduction: The game’s story begins with the return of the dark goddess Medusa and her Underworld Army. With the help of Palutena, goddess of light and guardian of the human race, the heroic angel Pit must combat the forces of darkness as he battles Medusa and her minions by air and by land.
Fiend’s Cauldron: The Fiend’s Cauldron is an incredible new system that allows players to customize their play experience by adjusting the intensity level. Intensity ranges from 0.0 – 9.0 for each individual Chapter. As the intensity increases, players will be able to earn more Hearts and more powerful weapon drops from defeated enemies. Hearts also can be used to purchase new weapons. The standard intensity setting is 2.0, but players can precisely adjust it by increments of 0.1. In order to increase the intensity, players must bet by placing an increasing number of Hearts into the Fiend’s Cauldron. If the player is defeated during the Chapter, some Hearts will be lost and the intensity will be lowered.
Weapons: A wide variety of collectible weapons offers an extraordinary amount of replay value. With nine different categories of weapons, ranging from Bows to Claws, players can learn the unique characteristics of each weapon and determine which is best suited for each battle and their style of play.
Vehicles: During certain parts of his adventure, Pit will have access to special vehicles such as the Exo Tank. Pit can use the tank’s powerful drift ability to boost over jumps or defeat enemies with the tank’s ramming horn.
Stand: Kid Icarus: Uprising uses a control scheme designed to fit the game’s unique blend of flight, shooting and melee combat, and offers tremendous precision and depth for dedicated players. The left hand uses the Circle Pad while the right hand uses the stylus. Every copy of the game will come with a free stand that holds the Nintendo 3DS at an angle above any flat surface, providing players with a new kind of gaming experience.
Circle Pad Pro: Kid Icarus: Uprising is compatible with the Circle Pad Pro accessory, offering an alternate control scheme for left-handed players. With the Circle Pad Pro, players hold the stylus in their left hand and use the Circle Pad with their right hand.
Vehicles, claws, and customizing difficulties. Yep, this is still looking like a day one purchase for all of us here, and the circle pad seems to be utilized just right for our left-handed friends out there, allowing for comfort for all. Watch the trailer, re-gawk over the details, and get that bow dusted off, as we are just two months away from the final release of Kid Icarus Uprising.
Remember when the U.K. got the promise of 3D Classics Kid Icarus for free by exchanging a couple of Club Nintendo codes? Well, this news has spread to the U.S. finally…but with a twist. Nintendo recently announced that anyone that pre-orders Kid Icarus Uprising will receive the remastered classic as an added bonus.
It’s a bit unusual anymore to see any kind of pre-order bonus with a Nintendo title in America, so this is of course good news. To make this deal sweeter, Club Nintendo members can redeem two of their 3DS game codes to receive the 3D Classics version without spending a penny as well. Either way, nothing says “BUY ME” better than getting something for free, and this classic version of Kid Icarus is sure to hit a few nostalgia spots when it is offered at participating retailers at the launch of Uprising on March 23rd.
