Reviews
Because of my lack of fashion and decorating skills, I often fear that the Gay Mafia is going to come and take away my membership card one day. Luckily, Style Savvy for the Nintendo DS doesn't require you to know anything about fashion aside from matching like colors and not trying to mix punk and preppy. I also want to make it clear up front that this is not a game about fashion designing. You are a stylist, which means you will take the 10,000 different items of clothing to create fabulous ensembles. Technically, there is a teeny bit of designing, but it only amounts to a label asking you to pick the colors for one of their clothing items.
Obviously this game isn't going to be for everyone, but long story short, I had a complete blast. Full details after the jump!
One of our readers has created a cute iPhone game called Pocket Oinko. He writes:
Need a friend in your pocket? :P ... and when I say 'friend in your pocket', I'm talking about a cute little pig of course. I mean, what else could I possibly be referring to? ;)
Although I was never taken with the Tamagotchi craze in the mid 90's, I was certainly aware of it. How could you not be, right? However, as I am currently developing an iPhone app for GayGamer, this caught my eye when it landed in my inbox, and I decided to check it out. Let me just say it's very cute.
Oinko is a cute little pig with a mind of his own, living inside your iPhone® or iPod touch®. Watch him as he eats, sleeps, bathes, plays and uses the restroom.
Guide him through his daily routine by suggesting things to do. Keeping Oinko happy rewards you with bonus points. Use these to buy him more toys and snacks.
Pocket Oinko has dozens of unique animations and events, and plenty of items for him to interact with. Every major update will add more content for you and Oinko to enjoy together!
I have found myself checking in with my pocket friend from time to time. Thankfully he doesn't become emaciated when I don't check on him for a couple days. The game is well crafted and the animations are charming. The gameplay is very simple with menus of items to buy for your pig and clickable items in his room to give him instructions. I look forward to see what future updates will bring. Nothing like a little piggy sass to lighten your day.
Score: 7 out of 10
ngmoco, the developer responsible for extremely popular iPhone apps like Topple and Rolando, has released Eliminate Pro at long last. What they're billing as the "the first online FPS that fits in your pocket," Eliminate Pro is a free, micro-transaction supported FPS that allows you to compete against other players over 3G or Wi-Fi in deathmatch style arenas.
The game is completely free to download; when you first begin you have an energy bar that depletes as you play, becoming completely exhausted in a few matches. While you have energy left, you generate credits that are in turn used to upgrade your unit's armor and weaponry, improving your survivability. While your energy will replenish over time, you can purchase power cells in-app that will do it immediately, allowing you to continue playing and generating resources. The cells range from $0.99 for a pack of 20 to $29.99 for a pack of 975; if I understand the menu correctly, your energy meter caps out at 30 cells, but I wasn't brave enough just yet to spend the dollar to find out. I was out of energy after about three rounds, with a one-third recharge not happening for seventy-five minutes. When you run out of energy you're still able to play in arenas, but you cease accruing points until you've recharged. Energy recharge cells can only be purchased for cash, while gear can only be purchased with credits, although purchased power cells can be traded in for credits at a ratio of 120 power cells to 1000 credits. While out of energy I was warned that I would "queue slower," meaning that priority is given to players with full energy when match-making. Unfortunately, if you want to play anything more than casually you're going to need to shell out for the purchased energy cells at some point. After the first one-third recharges, the next recharge doesn't happen for another four and a half hours.
For an iPhone game the graphics are pretty stellar. The game is 3D, set in first person perspective, complete with requisite "training video" cut scenes that set the basis for what you're doing in the arenas as well as explaining how to play. I was extremely impressed with the appearance of everything and the visuals-- from the game itself to the UI and everything else-- looked amazing and very well polished. From a visual standpoint Eliminate Pro definitely raises the bar on what's possible on the iPhone.
In terms of gameplay, my impressions were a bit more tempered. When I first heard about this game months ago I was looking forward to it heavily, although I was slightly concerned about how a FPS would play on a touch screen device with no controls to speak of. Although I will give this the caveat that with the limitations of the platform I think ngmoco did as best as they could, controlling my character during an arena was an exercise in frustration. The game uses two fingers for control: your left thumb controls a virtual joystick in order to move your character, while your right thumb is responsible for both aiming and firing your weapon. You aim where you want to shoot and then tap rapidly to actually fire-- there is also an "auto-fire" option that can be turned on, which makes your weapon fire as long as you have a target in your sights, and without this option I think the game would frankly be unplayable. While I'm sure it's a toggle for the masochistic "hardcore," for me it was the thing that saved me from putting the game away a few minutes in, because the attempt at aiming, moving and firing all at once was just too difficult to manage on such a small device with such a small amount of screen space.
After I cranked up the sensitivity for the look controls to their max, the game got easy enough for me to deal with that I think it's going to be a matter of just getting used to how to play, rather than a failing of the game itself. Again, although the controls frustrated me, I have to stress that for what it is I think they're really good-- the iPhone itself is just not the most intuitive of gaming devices (despite whatever Steve Jobs wants to say to the contrary) and I think ngmoco succeeded as best as anyone would be able to. Perhaps ironically, in the maps I played I was consistently either in first or second place, which means I'm either doing well or the controls are that difficult for a newbie-- I'll leave which to your opinions.
There are five maps for combat which are selected randomly when playing with others. The maps are pretty diverse in appearance and have a scattering of environmental hazards and powerups; the powerups range from things like accelerated health to increased damage to cloaking devices or jetpacks and give a strategic edge on the otherwise straight-shooting gameplay. Missions have a time and kill limit so they go by pretty quickly-- great for a quick in-and-out experience.
Social networking is enabled over their Plus+ platform, which is responsible for both score-keeping and match-making. As games against other players are ranked, the match-making system ensures players are grouped against others with similar skills and prowess on the battlefield. In my limited experimenting it appears that skill ranking points only accrue while you are energized. There was hardly any wait to be matched up for a mission (even with the above "slower queue"), but that could depend on time of day. I'm not sure where I connected to since there was no feedback on ping or the location of other players, but while fighting there was hardly any discernible lag on Wi-Fi. 3G took a bit longer getting into a match but while playing I didn't notice a huge difference in latency there either. Rounds can either be matched with strangers or with friends in private gameplay.
When you have your shiny credits in hand, you can purchase additional armor and weapons or cosmetic skins for your appearance. At the moment, when something is purchased it's final, there's no way to trade items back in for credits. You can also use credits to purchase upgrades on items in inventory, everything from improved shielding on armor to increased clip size on weapons.
Overall the game is an impressive effort in porting first person shooters to the iPhone. Where the control schema is unwieldy, I do think it's probably as good as anyone could do on the device, and the game more than makes up for it by the impressive quality of its appearance and the wealth of customization available between armor, weapons and your character's look. The matchmaking has been handled seamlessly in my experience so far, giving you a great gameplay experience whether connected over Wi-Fi or the cellular network. All in all it's a fun game and an example of what future titles can aspire towards.
If you're on it feel free to add me as a friend: mixvio is my username.
Left for Dead is a "family" experience. Weather I play with friends or a random group of strangers I know if I am going to succeed I will have to rely on the help of my teammates. This holds true from start to finish and is the first hard and fast rule to survive the cacophony of dangers that lie through out a campaign. Zombieland is a tart and sweet love letter to any game that celebrates these team based design mechanics. As Zombieland opens we are settled into the shoes of a lone Warcraft playing college student as he experiences the advent of the apocalypse. The first few minutes play out like an open-ended tutorial of sorts flicking buzzwords that punctuate the narrative providing both levity and pop culture credibility. It is this introduction that places our every-geek hero Columbus (Jesse Eisenburg) on the path to learn and as any first time Left for Dead player will attest to: he will probably not get by without help from his friends.
The first time Woody Harrelson uttered the words: "Nut up or shut up" I was prepared to endure another hour of dumb heterosexist pandering by diction of many a shock jock action title. The subsequent minutes of Zombieland had me surprised. With a well-written script and a superb cast Zombieland pulls you along a veritable undead country safari as the cast of seeming near-do-wells attempt to find their own ways in a world without custom. Columbus' rules do a great job of bridging the gruesome action with comedy. His survival tactics quantify his actions to the audience while tying the story and characters together. It is this "Tao" of Columbus and his innate humanity that eventually (and after several very funny misunderstandings) pull this cast together for some zombie shooting mayhem.
This film is gory. At times my laughter was swiftly tucked into submission by the sheer amount of blood and zombie repugnance. A supermarket filled with boomer doppelgangers gets shot up and euthanized with the superlative gunplay of Tallahassee leaving the floor looming with blood and bile. A terrorized Asian woman in Times Square shoots a possibly infected person with a magnum only to have her legs graphically devoured by a hoard of squirrelly zombies. Even the seemingly tacked on "guest cameo" finds place for a little grossness in a completely ridiculous but completely awesome side story that reveals perhaps more than I needed to know. The massively bloody body count only rises as the movie forms a thick head of frothy zombie flesh in the carnival ending, a very obvious nod to the upcoming Left for Dead 2's Dark Carnival campaign.
Zombieland's touching story and fantastic cast make for solid movie going fare for you and your Xbox Live crew or that special someone who doesn't mind holding your remote. This trip to the theatre reminded me that when I play online with friends, we are all in this together. Even so, the next time your playing Left for Dead you may not feel the need to tell GLoRIOuSDEAtHANGeL12 that you love him but perhaps give him that pipe bomb you've been saving because for the next hour or so he's "family".
Chaim Gingold, the lead designer behind the creature creator tools found in EA's Spore, along with Brutal Legend artist Jane Ng, has released Earth Dragon for the iPhone. In the game, which appeared on the App Store yesterday, you play the role of a smash-and-roar green dragon tasked to claim revenge against humanity on behalf of Mother Earth for their transgressions against her world. You can chomp enemies and buildings, slam into them, or set them on fire with your flame-breath.
I picked it up on the credentials of the developers alone, even though I made a bit of a frown seeing controls were all accelerometer based. I won't spend too much time complaining about it because I haven't felt accelerometer-based controls have really worked in any iPhone game I've played, so it's not a complaint specific to this title. I hate their inclusion in many titles on the App Store and Earth Dragon didn't change my opinion. I tend to find "tilt your device to move!" a really lackluster gimmick and combined with the iPhone's poor viewing angle on the LCD screen, it doesn't really lead to a compelling control scheme in my opinion. Nevertheless this isn't specifically a knock against Earth Dragon (though I do feel it would have been improved without it) since in typical usage I wouldn't be the target market.
The game has fifteen levels which were really pathetically easy, even with my fumbling inadequacies with tilting the iPhone appropriately. I beat it in about twenty minutes, and the majority of that time was spent on the last two levels-- which also brought me to the first time I ended up getting killed. The first couple of levels explore your various moves and how to execute them, and gameplay from that point forward is basically the same repetition of attacking bigger castles and more enemies. Levels are interspersed with quick side-scrolling challenges to collect coins as they slide past you, but other than that there's not much to the game until the last level. Archer units can shoot you and wizards can cast a magical fireball towards you, but the archers are more or less irrelevant if you're out of range and the fireball is so slow moving that it's easy to dodge unless there's a lot of wizards flailing their wands at you.
This game is an iPhone app so I'm not expecting a forty hour gameplay escapade here, but I was surprised with just how quickly it finished. I have spent literal days playing other games available on the App Store at the same price or cheaper than Earth Dragon-- Sentinel and Sentinel 2 come to mind as titles that took me a while to beat, both because of content and because they were actually challenging-- so I do think the experience could have been fleshed out a bit further when there are games at similar price points with more to do (and more of a replayability factor) available for purchase. The repetition behind each level was also irksome for me; in a game that took me twenty minutes to complete, I don't think I should be getting bored.
The graphics, on the other hand, are cute and fit the comical fantasy setting well, even if according to Chaim the game has "the most intense level of cartoon violence Apple allows." I didn't consider them that violent but they were definitely appropriate-- I especially liked the way my dragon exploded into a watercolor smear of colors when killed.
Overall it was an amusing debut game and the graphics were a bonus in its favor, but the short experience and extremely repetitive levels felt under par to me compared to other similar titles available on the iPhone platform.
Since I don't yet have a PlayStation 3, (although the price drop should change that, come Christmastime!) I have always looked on in envy at SingStar (especially SingStar ABBA). So it was with great enthusiasm that I embraced the Xbox 360 alternative, Lips. Unfortunately, it was severely lacking in the gameplay arena, but darned if that gussied up karaoke machine didn't keep me coming back for more over and over again.
So now they're back with Lips: Number One Hits. There's been some tweaks to the gameplay, and there's 40 new hit songs to belt out... but is it worth the upgrade? Make the jump for the skinny!
About a year ago I heard about a point-and-click adventure game in development featuring a quirky little robot and some astounding artwork. In preparation, I decided to check out some of the developer's previous work, and was introduced to the wondrous world of Samorost. It had a refreshingly minimalist gameplay style while still having more personality and character than most big budget games. And so I waited, not very patiently, for Machinarium to come out and bring more of Amanita Design's unique touch to the point-and-click genre. Now that Machinarium is finally out was it worth the wait, or is this little robot destined for the scrap yard?
Dear readers, let's have a brief chit chat about some RPG trends that I've noticed recently. I've found it progressively difficult to get into many RPGs today, especially JRPGs. Sure there is the rare exception here or there, but compared to their heyday back in the SNES/PS1 days, these entries have been fewer and farther between these days. Even the ones that do manage to catch my eye require what I would call extensive research to be able to actually play. This got me thinking, what if I was a gamer that hadn't played an RPG before? What games released for today's consoles and handhelds would welcome first timers into the fold without an intense initiation ritual of terrible in-game failures, relying on previous game experience, or tracking down obscure information through FAQs? Someone over at XSEED must have read my thoughts (again) and sent me a copy of a game that might just hit the spot.
I've really been looking forward to A Boy And His Blob. Though I had never played the original on NES (side note: my boyfriend not only had played the original, but it was one of his favorite NES games, and we alternated playing through this) I'm a big fan of the developer, WayForward. Their DSiWare game, Mighty Flip Champs!, is one of the most impressive games in the current DSiWare catalog. Despite being from a relatively small developer this game has received a lot of hype leading up to it's release. Does blob take shape into something interesting? Read on to find out!
Graphics and Sound
I put this at the top of the review, because the graphics in A Boy And His Blob are the best part. The hand drawn sprites are are beautiful, and the sound and music often sounds like a movie score. The animations for the boy and monsters look like they came straight out of a Studio Ghibli movie. Though they're not quite perfect; There a lot of times where the hand drawn backgrounds seem lazy (detailed hillsides will often fade into a solid color) and sometimes character animations look weird when when the hand drawn walk cycles don't match the speed that the sprite is moving. I also can't help but suspect that the big detailed background images are contributing to the unusually long load times. The music for the first half of the game is reminiscent of a Steven Spielberg adventure movie and really sets the right mood. But the music for Blobolonia feels like a lame Danny Elfman knock off and often took me out of the experience.
In case you missed it last week, here's a reprinting of our Uncharted 2 review.
Note: This review is only for the single player experience of Uncharted 2. Look for another detailing the multiplayer aspects coming soon.
When I played Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for the first time, I was mesmerized. Still being new to the shooter genre I was a little nervous as, at the time, my aiming skills were less than stellar. But the pure beauty and fun of the game drew me in and kept me playing through to the very end. Quite simply, it was the best title on the PS3 at the time. Hands down the best graphics, best gameplay and best character animation. A game that truly lived up to the potential of the then infant PS3 console.
When Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was announced, hopes were high. Gamers were anxious to be reunited with the handsome, extremely athletic Nathan Drake and his sassy love interest, Elena. But, would Naughty Dog be able to equal the experience they had given us in Drake's Fortune? Or would this be yet another in a long line of crappy sequels that video game companies seem so eager to thrust upon us? Read on, gentle readers, to find out!
I was a huge fan of the original
Kingdom Hearts. The three act storyline was "simple and clean", more or less comprehensible, and featured a handful of likable original characters interacting with Disney characters. I also played both
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and the hidden bonus game,
Kingdom Hearts: Reverse/Rebirth. Those games introduced The Organization, but were still very much Disney-feeling and hyper focused on Sora, Riku, and Kairi. In
Kingdom Hearts 2, things started to feel a little different. The Organization was now at the forefront of the plot, and the Disney elements were somewhat put on the back burner even more. I felt
Kingdom Hearts 2 was a step forward in gameplay, but a step backwards in story. The new characters introduced were not quite as compelling as the original Destiny Island trio, and questions left over from the first game
(Kairi's past, the origin of the keyblade, the identity of the voice that guided Sora, the contents of Kingdom Hearts) remained unanswered.
So,
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is the the first real Kingdom Hearts sequel to make it to the US in a long time. It's the first game where Sora isn't the primary protagonist
(not counting Reverse/Rebirth, where you play as Riku traveling through Sora's memories). Instead, you play as Roxas, a boy who doesn't exist. He's a Nobody, which is basically a human that somehow escaped going to that non-existing place that video game characters go to when they blink off screen.
Kingdom Hearts 2 also vaguely hinted at a relationship between Axel and Roxas. And though you spend the first three hours of
KH2 playing as a 'digital copy' of Roxas, you only see the real one for a few moments. So is Roxas's relationship with Axel interesting enough to carry an entire game? Is Roxas, himself, interesting enough to carry a game? Is the gameplay any different this time around? Read my review to find out!
As I mentioned in my hands-on, Nintendo's new Wii Fit Plus is technically more of an expansion pack for the original Wii Fit as opposed to a true sequel. And while I took a full six months to do my review of the first game, I'm happy to say that since I already know that it can actually get you in shape, I don't have to spend quite so long reviewing Wii Fit Plus!
Basically, your mileage with Wii Fit Plus will vary depending on how you reacted to the first. If you already have and enjoy Wii Fit, this is kind of a no-brainer, as the additional games are well worth the $20 price tag for just the disc. If you tried Wii Fit, but found it lacking as an exercise program, you might want to check this one out as it is a little more focused, and you've already got the Balance Board. On the other hand, if you never bought Wii Fit, well, this is the game that will now come bundled with the Balance Board, so you don't even have to worry about the first game. Oh, and it should go without saying that if you really hated Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus is probably not going to change your mind.
I'll get into some details after the jump!
And girls who like girls who like rumble packs!
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