Zen Studios is once again expanding the line of pinball tables present in Pinball FX2. However, this time instead of ‘sploding little people, they are bringing the undead, citadels and sorcerers to the game.
“Story, theme and design come together in a beautiful blend of fantasy” in this new table as you “avoid pesky traps, defeat an army of undead skeletons, explore six cellar missions and restore peace to those who reside within the walls of the ancient Citadel as you fight to escape the grasps of the evil Sorcerer.”
As usual, the new pinball table will “seamlessly integrate into the Pinball FX2 platform on Xbox LIVE Arcade, with full social feature support. Sorcerer’s Lair will also feature new Achievements, operators menu and rule sheet.”
In an exclusive article over at wired, we are told of how a suspicious piece of software has made it into the US militaries drone computer network. This network intrusion is reported to have been coupled with a keylogger to record keypresses made by drone operators.
So far, the virus has had no effect on the operators abilities to fly the drones, nor have they seemingly developed a Skynet like intelligence. Word is that this is a benign virus, that could just be standard malware, but it has been able to avoid deletion for the moment.
Are we secure? Should the US government stop using these drones before something happens? Let us hope that the infected software remains safe.
Hey, are you ready to play as the Potter in block form once again? Well then, get ready! This new trailer shows off the gameplay elements present in the new game and what we can expect from the story. Spoiler alert! You play with Lego blocks, solve puzzles and go through the plot outlined in the Harry Potter books.
Seriously though, so far, the developer has done an excellent job with the Lego license and we can’t wait to play some more Lego Harry Potter. How about you? Prepare for battle!
Hey, do you want another costume to dress Batman in when Arkham City launches? Funny thing about that: You have to buy the Green Lantern Extended Cut Blu-Ray combo pack to get that costume.
So you have decision to make: Do you pay the extra $60 to buy a digital costume and then burn the Bluray, or do you wait a couple of months after the games release and spend $1 on the XBM or PS to get the awesome new skin for the Bat? We think the decision is pretty obvious: Burn as many copies of that wretched GreenMan’s movie as you can! Let us know your decision in the comments below.
Also, you must buy the Bluray combo pack thing at Best Buy stores and the code for the digital costume in the Bluray pack is most likely a PSN exclusive. Hopefully the costume won’t stay exclusive.
The Green Lantern Bluray launches on October 14, 2011.
Playing as a little undead cowboy shooting up the West was an awesome experience. Now, Twisted Pixel aims to extend that expereince. They are releasing a 16-inch Gunstringer Mini Marionette. This mini puppet can only be purchased on the Twisted Pixel website for the price of $100 or $110 for the autographed version. If you want to ensure you get one, you can preorder now. At the end of November, preorders will cease and you can buy one straight up. Will you picking one of these awesome ‘toys’ up or is the game experience good enough for ya? Let us know in the comments. For more on The Gunstringer, check out our review here.
Later this month, Sony is planning to release an updated remote control that will work with the PS3, in addition to TVs, and stereo systems that are made by Sony. Basically what this means is that now volume and channel buttons will be included at the bottom of the new remote, whereas previous versions of the PS3 remote control did not have these extra functions.
This new remote has already been released in Japan. Pricing has not yet been confirmed for the new control peripheral, but the previous remote cost about $25. Will you be getting one?
Arkedo Series – 03 PIXEL! Developer: Arkedo Studios, PastaGames Publisher: Sanuk Games Consoles: Playstation 3 (reviewed), Xbox 360 Release Date: Out Now Price: $2.99/€1.99/£1.59
The Arkedo Series has been on the Playstation Network over the last few months with two games, JUMP! and SWAP!, both reviewed at Capsule Computers. The trilogy of games conclude with the latest release PIXEL!, a platformer about a pixelated cat. Although it adheres to the standard platforming formula, there are interesting and unique elements that divert it into a new direction. Its art style also offers some great looking visuals. The music is quite average, however, and the difficulty could have been tweaked a little. That should not deter the curious consumer to pick up this game.
Gameplay
The gameplay of PIXEL! adheres to the same formula that has made 2D platforming a great genre to grow up with. A lot of the basic elements of the genre are present. Dominated by the act of jumping, the player will use this skill effectively as the player will jump across a variety of gaps and onto various enemies. Simple platforming mechanics. The cat can also sprint its way through the levels, another staple in the genre. The running mechanic works very well with the jumping mechanic, with the long jump very useful in certain situations. The controls are fluid and responsive, a must for any platformer.
What makes this game very unique lies within the L2 button. Pressing this and a magnifying glass will appear. Now, when does a platforming game ever have a magnifying glass? If you name one other than PIXEL! then I haven’t heard of it. So, what purpose does this magnifying glass have to the game? Well, if you encounter a ! box, then pull it out. Once you select it then you will be transported to a maze mini game, where the objective is to find the golden square within the abundance of grey and white square. At first they are simple but will get gradually harder. A time limit will keep you under pressure. Succeed and you’ll receive some treasure, such as restoration of your health.
Yes, there is a health system in the game. Now, rarely one would see a health system in a platformer, but it is present in this game. The cat’s health is represented as three hearts, with enemies taking off at least half a heart when the cat is hit. So that means six hits and the cat passes into the next life. Every time the player dies, he or she must start at the beginning of the level, losing any progress they had made, unless they encounter a checkpoint. Another bar the player will notice lies at the top of the screen. This is a bar that charges your roar attack, stylised as a MEOW. It is charged by jumping on enemies. Defeat five and it will be fully charged. Press triangle and unleash the power of MEOW.
The difficulty of the game is where some disappointment will be felt. The problem is that it is a little on the easy side. Sure, I don’t mind the first few levels being easy to get the feel of the game, but this is a little too constant for my taste. The later levels should have been a little tougher in order for the player to be tested. However, this does not resonate to the mini games. Due to the time limit and the varying layouts, this is where the challenge lies. I suggest that, every time you encounter these ! boxes, do travel into them and challenge yourself to a great puzzle.
As a player, it really is an enjoyable experience. With great controls and unique elements, the gameplay keeps itself fresh while retaining the platforming elements that make the genre so great. The MEOW attack adds to the charm of the game as well.
Visual/Music
The Arkedo Series all feature different art styles and PIXEL! is no exception. So, what did they take this time? It lies in the name. Our main character is pixelated as with the different environments and enemies. The rest of the game is very blue. Well… the background is the only thing left to describe, with elements of the background also pixelated. To be honest, this direction is quite charming. It also gives the retro feel a more modern look and a good one at that.
The music is a throwback to the retro days, which fits with the whole game. Although it is not one for the player’s collection, it still has its own charm to it. It complements with the game, both the art style and the interactivity. I still enjoyed listening to it, but if it ever had a soundtrack, I wouldn’t run out and buy it.
Overall
Despite the lack of a challenge, PIXEL! is a fantastic game. The gameplay retains the retro charm while adding some unique features and the art style adds to the charm. The music is enjoyable and has a nostalgic factor but isn’t something that will be memorable. On its own, PIXEL! is a game that fans of the genre will enjoy. Maybe not multiple of times but it is an experience that players will not regret.
Name: Tiny Farm
Developer: Com2Us
Publisher: Com2Us
Genre: Simulation
Platform: iPhone/iPad
Release: September 22, 2011
Price: FREE – GET IT HERE
Overview
From afar Tiny Farm looks like a Farmville copy turned into an app. It has the animals, the plants, the decorations and the time sensitive aspects of the game, so does Tiny Farm manage to set itself apart from Farmville or is it just one big clone?
Gameplay
The game runs several tutorials in the beginning, rewarding you with experience points and money for completing them, which is nice. The game is fairly simple to pick up, although there are a few different aspects to the game such as four different shops for a range of things. There’s the animal shop, the equipment and decoration shop, the ranger shop, and the plant shop.
There are bells, love and gold that you have to spend in the game. You use bells to speed up the growing process of plants and animals, however you barely earn them so the main way of getting them is to purchase these with money so once you run out of bells that’s it. You can also buy love with real money, but you also earn them over time. Love is used to make your animals feel all loved so that you can breed animals and also so that they just feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Gold is pretty self-explanatory – it’s how you buy things. You can also buy more gold with real money if you want to grab more money without earning it.
You start off with a couple of sheep and, at the game’s suggestion, use bells to make them grow up and then breed them. For some reason breeding two of the same animals creates a different colour and type of sheep. Not really sure how that works, but you kind of just roll with it. Then you can take this offspring and (once grown up) breed it with one of its parents and create another brand of sheep. Now there’s a definite gross factor with that, but ignoring that this is probably one of the things that sets the app apart most from Farmville. Once you breed your animals enough, you complete each species’ collection and are given the prize of the last breed of the set.
There are also animal rangers, who search and find special animals for you. The downside of this is that most of the rangers are bought with bells, so unless you get yourself a big lot of bells there isn’t much chance of utilising it to the best of its ability.
You have to be ‘licensed’ to own a certain number of animals on the property, meaning that once you reach the limit you have to dish out another couple of grand to be certified to own another animal. This means you either sell your animals to keep it at a constant number, or you let your money disappear every so often.
The differences pretty much stop there however. In terms of plants the system is pretty much identical to Farmville. You plant, you wait for a set amount of time, you harvest, so on and so forth. For the impatient people there is alfalfa, which takes a minute, doesn’t cost anything, and sells for five pieces of gold. For those interested in a bit more profit and who doesn’t have the time to harvest and plant every minute, there is a large range of things that make 300% profit and take several hours to grow.
You can also visit neighbours around you and give them a helping hand with their farm that they may have been neglecting which earns you XP and gold for being a good citizen. While in Farmville this worked well because there was such a high amount of people involved in the game, I only had one neighbour and a whole bunch of empty lots around me. This might have been because I’m not playing when the interest in the game was at its peak, but for whatever reason it just wasn’t a useful feature for me.
I had the push notifications turned on, which became rather annoying because every time an animal was ready to grow up it would come up as a message, even if it was at 1 in the morning. However, what would be annoying for me would be helpful and useful for someone looking to upgrade their animals as quickly as possible.
The main issue with Tiny Farm is that it lags like crazy. You need to press the screen a few times to get it working, sometimes to even start the game you need to select the start button several times, wait for it to load, have it fail, and then try again until it works. This is something that really needs to be worked on by the developers and patched, because it is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game.
Visual/Audio
Tiny Farm looks and sounds just like you’d expect from an app based around tiny farm animals and plants. It’s tiny, cute and almost enough to give you a toothache. The animals wander around with giant eyes and hearts over their heads if you show them enough love.
The soundtrack sounds like something out of Disney, with birds chirping and the music cheerfully playing in the background.
Conclusion
Tiny Farm has got the whole cute farm growing simulation down, but the separation between it and Farmville isn’t quite enough. Although the inventive and major involvement in animals is a good step forward but the system put in place in terms of farm management is far too similar to Farmville.
Escape The Ape Developer: Com2uS Publisher: Com2uS Genre: Casual Platform: iPad(reviewed)/iPhone Release: 04/10/11 Price: $0.99 (Buy Now)
Overview
I came to get down, I came to get down, so get out your seats and jump around, jump around. Okay, enough of the monkey business quoting House of Pain lyrics, it’s time to get down to human business. Escape The Ape is the latest iOS title from Korean developers Com2uS. The game features a little monkey, JoJo, who must jump to escape the lethal grip of a giant ape. Along the way there are bonuses and power ups, but our new simian can’t escape all on his own. This is where you come in.
Gameplay
At first glance Escape The Ape may seem like a typical draw and jump title for iOS, of which there are numerous. However, even before you start to progress deeper into the game and the range of more complex means of playing emerge, Escape The Ape sets its self a head of the others by integrating a story arc into the game. While it isn’t the most amazing tale ever told, it adds a little extra element to the gameplay and gives the game just that extra touch of life. Com2us have expanded the base mechanics of drawing and jumping to include a number of power ups to help JoJo reach new heights. Firstly, which is not all that uncommon, as you jump you can collect bananas as a power up. Eventually you will have gathered enough banana juice to perform a spinning leap into the air, narrowly missing the grasp of the giant ape chasing you. This is not the only way to get a little boost however. Com2uS have rewarded precision in this game. If you perform a perfect, or ‘cool’ jump you will jump higher than normal. Manage to perform three in a row, and you get a combo jump that sends your little simian friend flying off into the sky.
As well as collecting bananas, there are a number of gems to collect on your way up. Gems can be used to purchase upgrade for the trampoline, the banana based energy drink and also the likely hood of getting an advanced jewel. The only downfall here is that these upgrades are a little costly, ranging from 200-500 gems for only the first upgrade. This means that you will be playing for some time before you can earn enough to buy an upgrade. Despite this, it does add that little extra bit of motivation to the title.
One of the most surprising and interesting features I think is the addition of balloons. Balloons can be grasped as you climb higher, and used to transcend with ease: collecting bananas and gems or even destroying spiders as you float upwards. What is most interesting about this is the change in controls. Rather than using the touch screen to control the balloon, you can tilt the device left or right as a means of moving across the screen as you automatically levitate. While it may seem a little cluttered to mix control mechanisms like this, Escape The Ape pulls it off well.
Visuals and Audio
Escape The Ape, as you no doubt may have noticed, has a lot to do with primates. While the villain of story, the ape, is designed in a rather sinister and thuggish style, the hero has a rather cheeky and cute feel to him. Coupled with a simplistic background, and a responsive foreground which features falling leaves when you bump into trees, the game has the feel of an interactive little cartoon. I feel like the audio helps push this idea forward with just a hint of circus music about it. The over the top sound effects of boings and whirls really add to this sense as well. A nice little feature I like that brings the graphical side of the game back to typical video game representations, is after collecting a lamp, the monkey will transform into a giant pixelated version of itself. So too will the ape. The best part is, during his minimalistic form, the monkey is now invincible.
Overall
Escape The Ape adds some new and interesting elements to the draw and jump formula of iOS gaming. While the main goal is to just endlessly jump, the game makes some innovative ways for you to soar to new heights. While Com2uS have done a good job trying to keep the their title from growing stale, as many others similar to this quickly do, by adding in obstacles such as spiders or green bananas, Escape The Ape is still just a small casual game. Honestly though, for 99c you don’t expect a high level of innovation, or to invest hours of your life into it. The only downfalls of the game would be that it is at risk of being short lived, and that the price of upgrades are a little too high for a casual game that you may not play religiously. Other than that, Escape The Ape is everything you need from a casual game, featuring simple yet charming graphics and an entertaining range of audio elements.
Capcom has just released 3 new Street Fighter X Tekken videos and they all reveal new characters. Can you find them all?
On another note, if you press play on all 3 videos below at the same time, it sounds pretty trippy. Just thought you would like to know.
Street Fighter X Tekken, or Street Fighter Cross Tekken, is an upcoming fighting game produced and developed by Capcom. Gameplay will mix various elements of the two franchises (Street Fighter and Tekken) to create a new breed of fighter. The publishers of the Tekken franchise are also working on their own game that will mix the two series together. Street Fighter X Tekken is set to release in 2012.
