Rescue City is a strategy line-drawing game that puts you in charge of helping the citizens of cities by driving ambulances, fire trucks and police cars. The three cars have different qualities and requirements, all of which you have to take into consideration while you send your cars out to take care of the city.
Rescue City is free for the first fifteen levels, with the other fifty-one levels unlockable by an in-game purchase. There are two modes, classic and arcade (which can otherwise be referred to as survival, since you just see how many you can rescue).
Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception needs no introduction, Sony’s current flag ship series is a juggernaut in the gaming industry and Uncharted 3 has some pretty big shoes to fill. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Will Nathan Drake’s new outing surpass it’s predecessor? Sony and Naughty Dog sure think so, and to be honest I’m not here to answer such weighty questions. What I am here to do is talk about the shindig Sony and Naughty Dog threw last night at the Sydney Opera House for the Uncharted 3 Australian launch. The event was kicked off by a video introduction of Nolan North, the voice behind Uncharted‘s main character Nathan Drake. After some witty banter (which North is famous for) we were greeted by our host of the evening Keith Guerrette, the lead effects artist for Uncharted 3. Guerrette divulged a lot of behind the scenes stories and insights about the production like sending the team to the dessert to do research on sand, persuading Sony to allow them to build an entire new capture stage so they can do mocap and capture dialog at the same time or how the sequence on the ship was originally planned on being created by just using animation before the team ultimately decided (Naughty Dog never being one to cut corners) it would be better to simulate an entire ocean. It’s these details that set a team like Naughty Dog apart from the rest of the heap. There’s an attention to detail that you don’t get in your standard fare. And that goes for how they throw a launch party. The Auditorium Sony occupied in the Opera House was completely decorated for Uncharted with nets, bullets and models dressed as Nathan and Elena. After talking about the game and showing us some behind the scenes videos, Guerrette demoed a short level for us. However, instead of staying on stage he moved into the audience and sat down so he can play it on the giant display that we were all watching on.
[singlepic id=10740 w=320 h=240 float=left] After the demo we all had a chance to go hands on with the game. I’ll spare you the details as not only am I sure you’ve read countless previews already, but chances are you’re already playing the game. Obviously Uncharted 3 is a big deal and Sony is certainly treating it as such. If you’ve played previous games then you know what to expect. I did however get a chance to check out the game in 3D, which I was surprised how well it worked. I must admit I’m not really a huge advocate of 3D in general as I find it only works for animated films but using that logic and now trying out a few things, 3D works remarkably well for games. I find it’s a natural evolution as you already have the assets working in a 3D space so moving it into stereoscopic isn’t a huge leap. In addition to 3D we also got some hands on with a 3D headset where you no longer need a TV. Everything is built right into the visor you wear. I was startled how well it worked as a display and obviously the 3D was quite smooth as it’s already rendering an image for each eye. Sony also had Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the PS Vita on demo with the same build from E3. However, it was my first time with the game so I’ll just say quickly that it’s jarring seeing the fidelity of what’s basically a PS3 game running in your hands. The game played well and the motion controls worked well enough. I’m still not sold on the idea of using them but they’re optional so at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. So what do we talk away from all of this? Well Uncharted is a killer franchise and it doesn’t look like Sony and Naughty Dog have shown us the last of Drake’s adventures. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is available for PS3 and is out in stores now.
Karkadann Games have released details on their fighting game based around Filipino star, Manny Pacquaio: Pound for Pound Volume 1. You control Manny as he searches for his lost friend in a long story that leads him into underground fighting pits and who knows where else. You carry out his infamous combination of pummeling punches and martial arts techniques and combos. You do so by interacting with the screen, swiping across the screen in various directions to unleash attacks and dodge, or using the keyboard and mouse for the Facebook version.
Check out the trailer below (there’s no gameplay but you get to learn more about the game and check out Manny Pacquaio in all his glory)!
Manny Pacquaio: Pound for Pound Volume 1 will be released on iOS, Android and Facebook.
The popular MMO game Civilization War has been given an update by Blue Onion Soft Inc. Civilization War gives users a chance to lead a nation from ancient times through to the modern age. You get the chance to go head to head with history’s greatest leaders, gathering armies, discovering new units and building the most powerful empire. Starting as a small country, you work your way up to world domination and who doesn’t love that?
The new version gives the game a thorough update, improving its performance and making it a better for for iOS 5. As well as the performance upgrade there have also been a few improvements to gameplay and five more countries to play for.
Civilization War is free so go grab the updated app NOW
Electronic Arts has announced the launch of Family Game Night 4: The Game Show. This gives families the ability to bring the fun of the Hub Network’s FAMILY GAME NIGHT television game show into their own living room.
Family Game Night 4 consists of five well-known games, BOP IT! Boptagon where you have to rely on your reflexes, Scrabble Flash which depends on your word skills, Connect 4 Basketball where your basketball aiming is put to the test, SORRY! Sliders, which is kind of like lawn bowls, and making sure to line up your ball just right in YAHTZHEE! Bowling. These games are hugely popular, bound to bring together the family and make it fun for the whole family.
Check out the trailer for the game below!
Family Game Night 4: The Game Show is currently available in Australia on the Kinect, Move and Wii for $59.95.
Infamous 2 Festival of Blood Developer: Sucker Punch Publisher: Sony Platform: PSN Release Date: October 25 2011 Price: $9.99
Overview:
Dear Developers,
Have you released a well received game recently? Why not stick some horror movie monsters in there for no apparent reason? I hear that the zombie bandwagon is pretty good these days!
Okay, so I may have been a bit cynical about the idea of Infamous 2 Festival of Blood, and am sick to the back teeth of the zombie trend that’s festering in the gaming world right now. But vampires? That’s a bit different. In Infamous, and I get to be one? Hmm…
I am happy to report that Festival of Blood has made me take back that initial cynicism, throw it on the floor and call to the mighty Cole MacGrath to strike me down with a bolt of electricity. For $10 it’s a heck of a lot of fun, and is a worthy addition to the world of Infamous that fans should definitely pick up. You don’t have to own Infamous 2 for Festival of Blood to work either, it’s a completely stand alone title.
Story:
Set in New Marais, Festival of Blood takes place at an undetermined point during Infamous 2. Cole’s ever present sidekick Zeke is loitering in a bar one night when lo and behold, an attractive woman grabs the stool next to him. Being a bit of an idiot Zeke’s chances are pretty non existent to start with, but he lucks out when he mentions his superhero pal. Thus begins a game that stems entirely from Zeke’s desire to get laid impress a girl.
Neatly putting the entire thing outside of official Infamous canon, Zeke narrates a tale of Pyre Night, a festival where the citizens of New Marais light bonfires to remind the evil undead that they have no place with the living. Cole finds himself in the catacombs beneath the city, rescuing revellers from a mysterious enemy. He moves ever deeper into the tunnel, and finds one last victim at its end.
Suddenly Cole finds himself the captive of a coven of vampires, and is brought face to face with a shrivelled old corpse on an altar. Powerless to escape their clutches he can do nothing but watch as the vampires slit his throat and revive their Mistress with his super powered blood. Transformed into a beautiful woman, the leader of the vampires plunges her fangs into Cole’s throat – making him one of her own.
With only 8 hours before the sun rises and renders him a true slave to Bloody Mary, Cole must battle through the vampires and find a cure for his curse – and a way to destroy the one who gave it to him.
It’s not exactly original – in fact it probably forms the plot of a hundred horror movies, but were the people in those stories ever electrified super heroes? There lies the key. Festival of Blood isn’t telling you a story about vampires to enjoy or to scare, it’s telling you a story about vampires so that Cole can get some awesome new moves. Bloody Mary is a waste of a villain though: a cliched old world vampire strongly reminiscent of the Conduit Sasha that Cole encounters in Infamous. She never really does anything, but thankfully the quality of the gameplay ensures that you’ll still whiz along through Festival of Blood.
Gameplay:
Cole still has the majority of his powers – he can throw rockets and grenades, propel himself through the air and clamber up buildings in fitting vampire style. All the ionic powers are gone though, replaced by a couple of new abilities that have you feeling like the Prince of Darkness in no time. Cole can drink blood, use his vampire vision to see human hearts, and most importantly, turn into a cloud of bats and fly across the city. All the vampiric abilities are fuelled by a blood gauge, which can be filled by drinking from the citizens of New Marais or by defeating vampires. Canopic jars take the place of Blast Shards, and collecting enough gives Cole a bigger capacity for blood.
This is where you would expect the Infamous morality system to step in, but it doesn’t feature at all. Whether you kill everyone you can or never touch a drop, there’s no impact on the storyline. You can leave all those innocent necks alone and still complete the game, but sticking your teeth in is the best way to enjoy Festival of Blood – you are playing as a vampire folks, take advantage and enjoy!
And the best way to do that is with the bat swarm ability. Sure, hunting down hidden vampires and stabbing them in the back is damn satisfying, but flinging yourself up into the clouds and plummeting back down to earth whilst the city rushes up to meet you is where it’s at. Combine it with the familiar electro hover and you can travel huge distances, flinging yourself around New Marais and killing vamps left right and centre. Awesome.
There are five different enemy types haunting the city, including grotesque and batlike Firstborns and minigun toting Harpies (below). Most of the enemies have the ability to teleport, and can be pretty fast on their feet. Harpies hang from buildings and cling to the gutters (sometimes getting a bit stuck and doing a little spasm dance on the walls), whilst others will leap from the ground flinging stakes and blades at poor old Cole.
The combat is as frantic and fluid as ever, and staking the screaming defeated vampires is a lot of fun. Combining the usual electric powers with the upgradable bat swarm rush adds a fresh flavour to the fighting, and nothing beats grabbing the nearest human after a chaotic fight and draining them dry. There are a few camera issues that can get you stuck or make you lose sight of the teleporting blood suckers, but that’s nothing to take away from the enjoyment of hunting down the vampire packs.
If there is one thing lacking then it’s a strong big bad boss fight. As mentioned before, Bloody Mary isn’t the best of villains, and there’s never really any difficulty unless from overwhelming numbers.
Some players may find Festival of Blood a bit on the short side, but you have to remember that this is a $10 game. Taking things at a normal pace with a bit of collecting gave me about four hours of gameplay and 71% of the trophies upon plot completion – but I’d be more than happy to dip back into it to get 100%. $2.50 an hour is no bad thing considering the length of some full retail price titles.
There is some replay value offered with the User Generated Content from Infamous 2 included, which gives you a few more options for creating your own episodes of the game. It is also Move compatible, but being behind on the motion control times I am not currently equipped to test it out!
Audio & Visual:
Fans of the series will have seen the New Marais environment before, but the atmosphere has been cranked up a notch for the Pyre Night festival. The people wander the streets with grotesque masks and neon glowsticks, fire jugglers perform and music blares from random parts of the city as fireworks light up the sky. The atmosphere is perfect, taking you through subterranean tunnels and graveyards as well as the inner city. Fans of Infamous 2 may clamour for the other half of the island, but I honestly didn’t feel that New Marais was suddenly small.
The cut scenes are fairly minimal and keep to the usual Infamous style, with Cole and Zeke providing some good banter throughout the game. The music is either a non entity or kick ass vampire killing tunes, and there are plenty of moments where everything comes together to make you feel like a proper undead butt kicker.
BUT – where’s the blood? Sucker Punch promised a darker take on the Infamous world, but no one seems to bleed when getting their throat torn out. It’s a shame that the game was probably toned down for a younger rating – can we have a patch with a nice little blood toggle please?
Overall:
Festival of Blood is a strong shot of Infamous gameplay. The vampire twist is made to work by letting the player in on the supernatural action, and as Zeke says, Cole is kinda badass as a vampire! Fans of the series should have no hesitation in picking this up, and it would serve as a great introduction for newcomers to the Infamous world.
Personally it’s nice to see vampires get a bit of the action – down with the zombies I say. It’s a rare thing indeed to be able to free roam in a New Orleans-esque city as a vampire who also happens to be an electricity wielding super hero. It doesn’t happen enough Sucker Punch, hint hint.
In an acquisition that looks like it will definitely have benefits for both parties involved, Ubisoft have announced it has acquired Redlynx, the Finnish based developer of both Trials and Drawrace2. Redlynx are very well established, especially within the digital games market, with over 100 top notch titles under their belt across a multitude of platforms from PC’s through to mobile technology. “Trials” is a highly realistic physics based game, that after initial success on PC, has moved on to become one of the best ever selling XBL Arcade games with over 2 million downloads. Drawrace 2 is the bestselling racing game in both Europe and across the United States.
On the acquisition, Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft said “The team at RedLynx has developed exceptionally strong digital brands that stand out for their high replay value, their long tail sales and their multiplatform positioning. We are delighted to welcome RedLynx to the Ubisoft family. Their expertise in asynchronous online games and physics-based game mechanics provides us with a great opportunity to bring their powerful brands, most notably Trials, to an even broader range of fast-growing digital platforms.”
The team at Redlynx also sees the move as a step in the right direction, and hope to extend their exposure, brand recognition and leverage across all distribution channels. “The team at RedLynx has developed exceptionally strong digital brands that stand out for their high replay value, their long tail sales and their multiplatform positioning. We are delighted to welcome RedLynx to the Ubisoft family. Their expertise in asynchronous online games and physics-based game mechanics provides us with a great opportunity to bring their powerful brands, most notably Trials, to an even broader range of fast-growing digital platforms.”
Ubisoft have been quite busy lately in the acquisition department and Redlynx should only enhance their continued move towards being a major online player in such a changing market. The success of The Smurfs and Co. Facebook game is testament that they are moving in the right direction and collaborating with studios that can carry them into the more mobile gaming market. Other studios now part of the Ubisoft family include Massive Entertainment who specialize in multiplayer titles, Nadeo who created Trackmania, Quazal whose technology powers Assassins Creed Multiplayer as well as Owlient whose expertise lie in online community management.
Christopher Gerlinger of gaming publisher Frogster is set to step down at the end of this year. After seven long years with company, the CEO is leaving to persue other entreupreneurial challenges. Though, fortunately, the man will be staying on as a consultant for the company in the future.
Gerhard Koning had this to say about Christophers resignation –
“Christoph Gerlinger founded Frogster in 2005 and took it public the very next year. He established Frogster as one of the leading European online games publishers with foreign subsidiaries and over 200 employees and conducted its recent integration into the company group of its new main shareholder constructively. We thank him in the name of the Supervisory Board and the employees for his entrepreneurial achievements and the value added for the shareholders.”
As many people are aware, Frogster is the main (and leading) publisher of MMO titles in Berlin. Players will recognise them from titles such as Runes of Magic, TERA and Bounty Bay Online. Whomever is next in the role has some pretty big shoes to fill.
Recently Macquarie University held a three-day event known as GAME. Day two was a stimulating day of academics presenting their thoughts on videogames, play, fun, education and games and lastly, the future of gaming. The Future of Games was the last discussion of the day, featuring a panel of experts discussing where they think this giant of a medium, this incredible industry, known as “games” might be heading. The panel included Dr Mark Finn of Swinburne University of Technology, Edward Fong of iGEA and Ubisoft Australia, Dr Michael Hitchens from Macquarie University, Dr Larissa Hjorth from RMIT and lastly Martin Slater from Darkstorm.
So, what exactly will the future of gaming hold for us, the players, the consumers or whatever you want to call us or identify yourself as? Well, apparently, the future is here. To be more blunt and completely pessimistic, the future is the same old stuff for the next fifty years, and apparently has been for since the beginning of gaming. At least that seemed to be the general vibe of the panel.
There were a few things that bothered me about this discussion. Firstly, the aforementioned statement that we are living in the future of gaming, or have been for the past 25 years. This claim completely ignores the effect of graphical realism and technological innovation this has on game mechanics. Sure, in 50 years we may still have the same genres: shooter, platformer or whatever your poison is. They’ve been around for some time. But what about the technological developments that allowed for larger, more engaging game worlds like GTA III or the way the controller and Halo together completely changed the way FPS are designed, let alone how they are played! The ignoring of the spectrum of subjective player experiences, the fundamental essence of videogaming (yeah, that’s right, more important than the money) seemed a little odd. I can understand that the discussion was framed by the topic of commercial games and was therefore leaning more towards the business side of things. But when it comes down to it, we buy the games, we play the games and we have experiences based on the games.
Elements such as the emergence of motion control and mobile devices were mentioned, but swept under the rug with a small “we eventually realised we didn’t have to move all that much” comment. The panel acknowledged that designers needed to adapt to these new technologies, but the argument around this seemed to be that the industry adapted, rather than changed. The games are essentially the same, but there are just different ways of interacting. Again, I feel that some discussion of the way we engage and interact would have been helpful.
The panel went on to discuss narrative in games: arguing that there are better media to tell stories with, indie games: stating that while they may make innovative products once they start to make money they are moving into commercial sector and even educational games: where cynical views about transfer of skills seemed to be across the board. Overall, we could argue that the future of gaming looks bleak. But perhaps this is just a commercial and industry-centric standpoint. We as players benefit from their work, and if we enjoy the games, even if they are the same games, then at least we are going to derive at least some small amount of pleasure from gaming.
While discussion was somewhat limited, there are still some valid points. Will the core mechanics of games ever change? Have they changed at all since gaming began all those decades ago? James Cameron argues that 3D is the future of gaming, but how does that impact game design, if at all? What of augmented reality? It’s widespread adaption to portable gaming devices surely will influence the means in which games are designed, and therefore played. Let’s not allow the discussion end at 5pm on October 28. Where do you think the future of gaming is heading?
Gamevil, the developers of the Android outing of the Cartoon Wars franchise, today announced that Cartoon Wars: Gunner+ would be available for free to all Android users. This marks the first time that a game in the Cartoon Wars series is available outside of iOS devices.
The game puts players in the shoes of Captain J as he battles the forces of an evil king with everything from guns to mech suits to area-clearing spells. Which is good because he’ll be up against 30 enemy types, including dragons. Players can upgrade their weapons and skills, giving the 2D action shooter additional depth and RPG functionality. The game is available for free download here.
