I don’t know about you guys, but ever since E3 I’ve been really looking forward to finally getting my hands on Ronimo Games’ Awesomenauts! Coming to Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network later this year, Awesomenauts is an awesome-looking 2D sidescrolling MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game that appears to play like Metal Slug with Tower & Defence elements, with a very 80s Saturday morning cartoon style to it. As of today, Ronimo Games have released the trailer they debuted at Gamescom via their Youtube channel for the world to see, which you can below! Further more a walkthrough of the game in action can be seen here, thanks to game2gether. The game is really shaping up to be a really exciting title by the looks of things! In fact, I suppose you could even go as far to say that Awesomenauts is looking well, awesome!
The Asskickers
Platform: PC (reviewed), Mac Publisher: AGO Games Developer: AGO Games Release Date: 30 June 2011 Price: $4.99
Overview:
The Asskickers is the first title to come from indie developer AGO games, and is meant to ape the styles of classic beat ‘em ups like Streets of Rage and Double Dragon. There are three modes on offer; a six levelled story, survival and time attack. Both the story and survival modes can also be played via local co-op.
‘The Asskickers’ is a brave name for a first release, and had me expecting a lot of tongue in cheek attitude and fun beat ’em up action. What I actually got began as follows:
Create a profile didn’t allow text entry or to exit the menu. Restart game. Select a profile works but I cannot progress past character selection. Restart game. Create a profile – it works! But the game crashes after character selection. Restart game. It does it again.
At this point I am more than ready to beat something up. Perhaps this is the idea. Satisfied that the bugginess is just an elaborate trick to increase my enjoyment of the game, I promise to forgive the Asskickers this opening salvo if the gameplay holds up.
Story:
The Asskickers does go in for a bit of anti establishment attitude, with an introduction describing a corporation ruled mega state where the police are privately owned and the politicians corrupt. The action kicks off with a confrontation between your character and a pink-shirted idiot who turns out to be the son of the current world leader. The police pay no attention to your regular Joe, immediately smacking you on the head and throwing you in jail. The goal is escape, and kick ass. Simple.
It’s a nice idea to try and tack a bit of social commentary onto a beat ‘em up, but sadly it’s just not pulled off. The writing is dull, unfunny and skippable, and the opening text even has a few basic errors (thespacebarwasobviouslybroken).
Admittedly plot and setting aren’t what beat ‘em ups are all about, so the poor writing can be forgiven – as long as the gameplay holds up!
Gameplay:
The gameplay, it turns out, does not hold up.
The three characters on offer are pretty standard fare. There’s the tough girl who’s quick but weak, the balanced good looking guy, and the bulky tight t-shirt wearing muscle heap (a ringer for Stephen Lang’s bad guy in Avatar). They have a few funny lines between them, but don’t really register as individual characters.
There is no character progression and without much personality on offer your choice is really down to your play style – or it should be. I usually go for quick characters but the difficulty is so badly designed it’s almost impossible to get anywhere past level two unless you pick the bruiser, and this is on easy.
The enemies are equally lacking in any charm, with riot police, frat boys and incredibly annoying drop kicking women forming up the bulk of the onslaught. They have a habit of walking off screen where you can’t hit them but they can hit you, and occasionally get stuck there so that you can’t progress any further.
Bosses are bosses because they have big health bars, but do provide a bit of a WTF diversion from the rest of the game when at the end of the fight you bend them over and spank them (!). It’s a tiny shred of personality, but it’s stuck in a big heap of frustration and boredom.
Enemies can only be hit when you are perfectly lined up with them, and when you are, you can’t block their attacks. The lack of blocking reduces the gameplay to lining up and button mashing, which would be all well and good if the game actually detected half of your key presses.
And it’s the detection that is the biggest nail in the coffin. I can live with having to be precise, and can almost deal with the lack of blocking, but when the game ignores half of your input and the majority of the rest misses anyway, it’s really difficult to want to keep going.
Another part of the game that deserves some special attention are the pick ups, somewhat ironically named given that half the time you can’t actually pick them up. See that health restoring burger? The one that’ll stop you from having to replay the entire level right from the beginning? You can’t have it. You can dance around it spamming the use button all you like, but that little burger is actually super glued to the ground in an elaborate ploy to raise your aggression levels, thus making you more likely to keep beating stuff up (that’s what I told myself at least).
Combine all of the above with the way you get busted back to the very beginning of the level despite having passed a load screen and/or reached the boss fight , and that ‘No’ button on the continue screen just screams to be hit.
Co-op lessens the frustration a little, and so do the time attack and survival modes, but really, the gameplay is just not fun anywhere, anyhow.
Audio & Visual:
The visuals are one of the games only redeeming features, and do pretty well to ape the retro beat ‘em up style without being completely copy cat.
The audio is a bit of an afterthought, the background music especially. An awesome soundtrack can really lift this kind of game, but sadly in the Asskickers this is completely lacking. What starts out promisingly enough in the menu screens completely evaporates in game – a couple of dull background tracks and sometimes no music at all.
As for the sound effects the punches and kicks do have a nice retro smack to them, but enemy characters only have one attack sound and when you have a handful of them on screen all doing it at the same time, it becomes annoying incredibly quickly.
Overall:
The Asskickers has a lot wrong with it (including some snippets I didn’t mention, would you believe), but what it all boils down to is this – it’s not fun to play: it’s a chore. Avoid it.
Itching to play PES 2012 but don’t want to wait until the October release date? Konami have you covered. It was recently announced that Konami would be releasing two demos for the next entry in the famed soccer franchise, giving players a early taste of what to expect. The first demo is set to launch as soon as August 24th, and will be a “preview build of the game.
In this free downloadable demo, players will be able to try out the “Teammate Control” elements of the game and experience the realism that the new Active AI brings to the sport. This preview build is also not slacking on teams, featuring the likes of Manchester United, AC Milan, FC Porto, S.S.C Napoli, Santos FC, and C.A. Panaro all ready to compete in 10 minute matches. The new control scheme for PES 2012 will also be in full display with the Challenge Training elements, letting players get a feel for how things work months ahead of time.
A more final build of the game will then be released via a second demo in mid-September, but with a different team roster of Tottenham Hotspur, FC Bayern Munich, FC Internazionale Milano, Rangers FC, Club America and Sport Club Internacional.
“We have spoken a lot about the new additions to PES 2012, and now we want users to see it for themselves,” explained Jon Murphy, European PES Team Leader. “By releasing a demo for preview purposes, we want people to get in early to try out the Teammate Control elements and to see for themselves how the Active AI works. This will then be followed by a second demo that offers different teams, and a closer approximation of what the final game will play like. We truly value the support and input of our user base – and these demos are so they can see how their help has aided the most ambitious PES to date.”
I would say Konami seem to be very excited about PES 2012 seeing how confident they are in letting players experience the game months early, and if you are a Xbox Live, PSN, or Windows PC user (link to demo for this format can be found here), now is your chance to take to the field and give this one a full run-through.
PES 2012 is set to officially release for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC on October 24th, followed by a PS2 and PSP release October 28th, and finally the Wii version on November 4th. The dates are still pending for the 3DS and iOS versions of the game, but once we receive a date, we will sure to bring you the news here so stay tuned.
The Playstation Vita isn’t the only handheld Sony will be releasing in the next 12 months. At Gamescom, Sony revealed the 5th iteration of its first handheld, the Playstation Portable (read here for the announcement). Not much was known except for the price, which comes at 99 euros. Some more specifications have been revealed, however, via the UK Playstation site.
The notable differences from the PSP-3000 (and earlier models) would be the lack of wifi, however, the PSPE-1000 is also considerably heavier than the 3000, thus a little bulkier. The PSP-3000 weighs in 189 grams. The PSPE-1000 weighs in The PSPE-1000 will also sport a monaural speaker. Earlier models supported stereo speakers.
The model has only been announced for the European and PAL markets, which means Australia and New Zealand will also be receiving it. It will see a release in the autumn/spring of 2011.
In celebration of The Sims Social launch on Facebook, The Sims 3 World Adventures (usually priced at $2.99) is now free to download for iOS devices but for one day only. This iOS spin-off of the first expansion pack for The Sims 3 on PC game sets your sims across the world in new exotic locations such as Egypt, China, and France.
The game also features 55 new goals and 4 mini games as well as new personals, careers and fetches quests. You can also import your sim for The Sims 3 into your handheld game. The Sims 3 World Adventures is defiantly worth a look, and remember it’s free but download quickly because it’s only for one day!
Download The Sims 3 World Adventures from the App Store here
A new trailer for Need for Speed World was released at Gamescom and they seem to have pulled out all the stops. The trailer shows off the sexy curves and turns of a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and a Lambourghini Murcielago LP 640 racing through the streets of Rockport. Its less about giving you information about the game and more about getting your pulse racing, which it damn well does.
Still, they manage to also show off the great customization details that has always made Need for Speed fun. Nothing like pimping up your already sweet ride so that it makes every other car pale in comparison.
Boasting millions of worldwide players, this foray into the free-to-play MMOR genre seems to be hungry for more. And hey, who can resist those curves?
To celebrate the recent release of His Adventure for IOS devices, we spoke to young 17 year old developer Oliver Pezzini of Pezzini Games about His Adventure and Highway Madness available now on IOS devices, and about what it’s like to get into creating games for the app store.
Let’s start off with the most important question of all: what’s your high score on Highway Madness?
That game is damn near impossible at some points. Last time I remember it was around 156.
How did you get into developing games for IOS devices and can you tell us how you got around to starting Pezzini Games? How long have you been doing this for?
I started watching videos on game development on youtube. There was one person in particular who I enjoyed who now has a show on the escapist magazine called extra credits. I finally though I would just try and make a game so I googled “create games for the app store” and the first hit was GameSalad.com. I was just planning on creating games for fun but then I found out I could publish my creations to the app store for only $99 a year so I went for it. That was back in February, so less than a year but I plan to continue this for a long time, it’s a lot of fun.
How has the reception for your latest release, His Adventure been so far?
As I am new to the app store and developer scene I am always learning new things. How to market apps and that sort of thing. Press releases and contacting sites has been a completely new experience for me, and one I can improve on. The reviews on sites and on the app store really made the whole development process worth it. I have also had a lot of feedback saying the difficulty was too hard for some and there was need for different controls. I have released an update to fix these issues and I hope people continue to enjoy the game.
His Adventure is quite a unique title, where did the idea behind it come from?
The idea came from a flash game I used to play a while back, I always wanted there to be an iOS version as I thought it would work great. I thought of all the cool things you could do with it and realised I could do it myself, so I did.
Can you tell us a bit more about the character, and his design? I imagine eating McDonalds would be hard for him since he doesn’t have any arms or a mouth!
On my initial brainstorm I had narrowed the art style down to the hand drawn/ cartooney style. I’m no artist so simplicity was the key, the less complex the better. I was just drawing random sketches of potential designs and just thought of the simplest one, a bit round face, huge eyes and small body. Turns out that worked in my favour because he looks cute and fits the style perfectly.
An interesting update for His Adventure has recently been released, can you tell us a bit about that?
I had a lot of feedback from various people once the game had been released. Two issues came up, the game was too hard and the controls were annoying. In the update (1.1.1) the difficulty has been lowered on some of the harder levels. The main improvement though it the new control style. In the options menu you can now chose from the regular style (the platform follows just above your finger and jumps to where you touch) or the relative style (the platform moves relative to the position of your finger). There is also a short tutorial added to explain the basics if the in game tutorial isn’t enough. Hopefully people will be happy with the update.
His Adventure is a very challenging title! Any hints or tips to gamers out there aiming to get all 216 stars?
It’s the ultimate challenge! From world two onwards some stars start to disappear after a set amount of time. The key is to learn which ones disappear first and go for them in that order, try and use the shortest path from star to star.
Any plans on any more future updates? I’d love to see an option for struggling players to skip levels or something similar!
I will continue to support this game for as long as I can. That’s certainly feature I will look into for a future update.
Do you have any other up coming projects in the works at the moment, or any ideas for future titles you would like to share with us?
I am always toying with ideas for new games. I can’t share any with you now but be sure to look out for future Pezzini Games titles.
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We here at Capsule Computers would like to thank Oliver Pezzini for his time and insightful answers, and wish him and the best of luck with the future of Pezzini Games! You can check out our review of His Adventurehere!
Although the rabbids have been hanging around consoles for a while now, it’s been quite a while since Rayman himself got a taste of the limelight, so it’s great to see Ubisoft giving both the crazy rabbit things and the limbless wonder a shot at the action with Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking and Rayman Origins. Raving Rabbids will be an Xb0x 360 Kinect title, whilst Rayman himself will appear across all platforms bar the PC.
Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking is the next instalment in the party game series, and the first to have been developed solely for the Kinect on Xbox 360. As you would expect from the freaky little dudes the trailer promises plenty of mad mini games with the added bonus of the Kinects full body motion control to make players look extra silly.
Warning: one of the trailers below includes hairy men moshing, air licking, and a strangely empty room…
With the Rabbids safely out of the way on Kinect, Rayman once more gets to be the star of his own franchise, this time in an origin story set before even the very first Rayman game. It’s all set to be a return to the originals style, with sidescrolling platforming in a gorgeous 2D world. The Rayman games have always had a goofy sense of humour, so it’s great to see that it’s still very much alive in the trailer for Rayman Origins, which although featuring no moshing, does have an old lady beheading her husband.
EA Sports have unveiled the final two legendary players that will be available in NHL 2012 are none other than “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux. These two complete the list of nine legends, joining Gretzky, Chellios, Bourque; Yzerman, Salming, Roy and Roenick.
You will be able to use these players in all game modes, including of course the game’s new headlining mode “Be a Legend”. That wraps up the list of ice hockey legends in time for next month’s release. You can check out the final reveal video of Howe and Lemieux below. That outta keep you happy or at least another day or two while you wait for the game to come out.
What do you think of the final list? Did one of your favourite legends get snubbed? Let us know in the comment section at the bottom of the page.
So what exactly do Razer have planned for us come the 26th of this month, the destruction of all household consoles via some kind of virus or electrical pulse; who knows? All we have been given is this cryptic video courtesy of a newly emerged website with the URL pcgamingisnotdead.com.
“There is something terribly wrong with gaming” claims the electronic voice in the video, referring to consoles as closed systems that offer shoddy ports. In what sounds like a call to arms, the video urges all 300000000 PC gamers to end their silence and stand tall.
Interestingly there are more open system PC gamers than all console gamers combined, making sure that the platform that made gaming what it is today remains alive and well.
