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.
Mini Gunstringer Marionette available for preorder
New PS3 remote on its way
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! Review
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.
Tiny Farm – iPhone review
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.
I give Tiny Farm
Escape The Ape Review
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.
Check out other Com2uS news and reviews brought to you by the team at Capsule Computers
Capcom’s latest Street Fighter X Tekken videos
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.
[pro-player]http://youtu.be/mPXtogJxQsw[/pro-player]
[pro-player]http://youtu.be/pEIUj5RZXNk[/pro-player]
Crusader Kings II Contest
Have you ever dreamt of your family living in aristocracy in medieval past? Have you ever imagined coming from a long line of conquerors striking fear in the hearts of people across Europe? Have you ever envisioned your name being immortalised in gaming history? Paradox Interactive is giving you the opportunity to have just that, or at least something similar! Through a contest for their upcoming strategy game, Crusader Kings II, to be released on PC early 2012, you will get a chance for your name to be included as one of the dynasties in the game!
The contest:
Tell us the story of your family name – true or false – it’s up to you! What needs to be included are the following: Your family name, its origin and the story behind it!
Submit your entry by October 31th to be in with a chance of immortality in Crusader Kings II.
CLICK HERE to submit your entry.
For more information on Crusade Kings II, visit http://www.crusaderkings.com/
For more PC news, CLICK HERE
Bullet Time gear customization trailer released
A new trailer for Bullet Time has emerged, revealing the gear customization abilities of the action-adventure iOS game. Bullet Time is an impressive looking game, given that the customization options are better than some of the retail games out there. Basically everything is customizable, the amount of detail that the game developers must have gone into with the design is truly impressive.
Check out the gear customization video below. For the trailer and screenshots you can see them HERE.
Bullet Time is due for release in November and it’ll definitely be worth grabbing a copy. Keep an eye on the site for more information as it gets closer to the date.
Muffin Knight updated with Online Multiplayer
Angry Mob Games, have released a new update for their brilliant iOS title, Muffin Knight (which we previously reviewed here).
The update introduces a new Online Multiplayer mode which ties in with Game Center. You can now versus people across the world in matches to see who can get the most muffins. This online feature works through a quick online matchmaking system through which players tick a box in single player mode and it will automatically search for other players online for you to versus.
Not only that but a free version of Muffin Knight is now available here and of course the full version is still available here.
SKET Dance – Episode 27 Review
SKET Dance
Episode 27 – “Together with Onee-san and Bad Scientist”
It has been 27 weeks since SKET Dance began, so why now of all places is this a good time to jump on board with SKET Dance if you have yet to do so? Well, this is an episode of SKET Dance that really drives home what this anime is all about. Not only that but there is a new character introduction as well as a great showing from those characters that are already established.
There was so many thing’s I loved about this episode, all of which are reasons I love SKET Dance and actually prefer it over it’s inescapable comparison series Gintama. The way they introduced the new character, Onee-san, was classic SKET Dance. We open the episode with the SKET-Dan in their home-room. Their science teacher (the one who somehow defies the laws of science itself with most of his experiements) informs them that they have a new teacher for home-room. In comes hyper-energetic former children’s programme presenter, Onee-san! The room falls deadly silent.
The episode goes on to give Onee-san the SKET Dance introduction we have grown use to. By the time the episode ends she has developed from simply a former children’s programme presenter to a person with dreams of teaching and overcoming her clumsy nature.
Over the course of the episode the SKET-Dan help Onee-san try to handle her clutz-like behaviour as well as let her assist them in taking on an odd job for Yabasawa, with a hilarious show-case of Switch’s box of misfit inventions in between.
On the topic of the inventions, things like this is why I love Switch. While I absolutely adored his origin story, “Switch Off” a few weeks ago, I needed to see his comedic side again. Now these inventions of his were comedy gold for SKET Dance. We have the bizaare “heads” that serve little to no purpose besides being creepy. The repeated gag of the moe head asking if Bossun’s ramen was cold, really got a haughty laugh out of me.
When the inventions all tied together in the end to solve Yabasawa’s case, I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it. But it was a great shot seeing Bossun, jetting off with; hover-shoes on, a baboon head backpack on with a bazooka propelling him through the air. The thing that topped it all off was Bossun using the zoom-glasses as his usual concentration mode glasses, it was a perfect touch from the writers on their comedic peak. Little moments like that is where SKET Dance shines through most brightly.
The animation is SKET Dance is usually pretty tame, but they really let put their budget to use with the final scene with Bossun taking off. That scene just looked amazing. As usual the art style is fun and homely, watching this series just makes you feel like you are hanging out with some friends and that is really the experience you look for in comedies like this.
This episode also marks the debut of a new opening and ending theme for the series. Both of which aren’t bad, but I had really grown attached to the previous opening and this one really just doesn’t feel as good in comparison. The ending theme featured a lot of imagery that will excite fans of the series female cast, if you know what I mean. Both were good in general.
Episode 27 of SKET Dance is both a great episode of this series in general and is also a good point for those late to the party to jump on board. It’s episodes like this that remind me why I watch this anime each and every week and will continue to do so.
