Carrier Command: Gaea Mission has released an interesting new teaser video that had me watching for a girl in white with black hair crawling out of my monitor. So since I am afraid I only have seven days to share it here is the video and a gallery!
Video:
Gallery:
GUILDFORD, Surrey – July 19, 2012 – Electronic Arts Inc. and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club today announced they have agreed to a three-year partnership that will make EA SPORTS the Official Video Game Partner of the English Premier League club.
“We are extremely excited to join a world class football club like Tottenham Hotspur as an Official Club Partner,” said Matt Bilbey, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Football, EA SPORTS. “This is an opportunity for us to create a deeper connection with their passionate, global fan base, and use our game as a platform to engage Spurs supporters all season long.”
In addition, EA SPORTS will create a special Tottenham Hotspur game packaging sleeve for FIFA 13, which fans will be able to download from the club website (www.tottenhamhotspur.com) prior to the games launch.
Battlefield 3: Armored Kill promises a brand new game mode called Tank Supremacy, over 20 vehicle specific unlocks and the largest map in the Battlefield franchise history. Enjoy this gameplay trailer!
Trailer:
If you didn’t manage to make it to E3 or didn’t have the time to get hands on with the Metro: Last Light demo here’s a look at what you missed and what we can expect! Enjoy!
Two things that need to be stated off the top, The Book of Unwritten Tales is a bit silly and it is fun for the whole family. That being said the reason it is fun for the whole family is some of the jokes are visually silly bringing the giggles of the children into play or they are pop culture references that will go right over a kid’s head and smack the adult right in the face. Usually in my reviews you have to wait until the end for final judgement but in this case I wanted to make sure parents knew to pick this up for family friendly fun.
Story Time Kids!:
A goblin professor of archeology discovers an ancient artifact that contains great powers, powers that the bad guys want to harness for their own needs. After his whip is used for a brief escape the story really begins as he enlists the aid of a sexy female elf and a hobbit looking gnome with a magic ring to take two separate adventures for the common goal of getting the artifact into the hands of the good guys. Between those sentences you should get some of the first pop culture references that keep on going through the whole story. The story is well thought out and very original which seems kinda funny when just about every idea is borrowed from something else. The key is the interweaving of references to tell a good coherent story. That’s why it works so well, the character’s may be talking about a game called WOB and subscription rates but on the screen you are seeing a server monkey (literally a monkey) throwing a silly fit. This quite honestly is one of the best told point and click puzzle game stories ever.
Graphics And Audio:
The graphics are really nice and the sound is crisp and clean which works well since the voice acting is excellent and draws you in, never seeming mismatched. The gnome is particularly well acted which is good since he has so many lines and so many of the pop references. The key to great graphics is for them to occasionally make the player stop and admire them which happens and the key to great sound is to not draw much attention to itself which works perfect here. The only slight drawback to these is that there are lots of loads but they are so quick that there is no load screens, just some turning cogs and the next part is ready to go!
Gameplay:
Control wise there is really only so much to be said about a point and click puzzle game since the controls are all point and click. The real question of gameplay in these games comes in about how difficult the puzzles are. A good puzzle game will be able to be solved by it’s target audience but be difficult enough to make the player think, by their nature puzzles are supposed to stimulate the brain. This game does a good job of balancing the two while still having fun with references and silly humor. Many of these games have a hint function in the heads up display but this one doesn’t, which could be one of the frustrating parts of the game for some folks, getting stuck on a puzzle then realizing they had what they needed in their inventory the whole time, that they simply needed to go through a transition for the storyline to continue or that they needed to change characters to solve a puzzle. These issues really make family play a high recommendation because the more minds working on a puzzle the easier it generally is to solve. At a certain point in the game it requires character changes to solve puzzles so that is definitely something to keep in mind.
Last Call:
The Book of Unwritten Tales uses very creative storylines and pop culture references to elevate the game to one I would recommend to the family just so that all the jokes can be gotten. It also helps to have adventure movie geeks playing because just a few of the references without giving away the story are to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, WoW, The Three Musketeers, Magic the Gathering and believe it or not that really is just naming a few. The game even takes jabs at itself, making fun of the point and click genre and the family fun nature of it. I recommend this game not to just fans of the genre but to fans of pop culture in general. This is a point and click adventure game that is smarter than the sum of its puzzles.
Gameplay Trailer:
Gallery:
DUXFORD, UK – The Fighter Collection and Eagle Dynamics have released the pre-purchase for DCS: Combined Arms and a series of updates to DCS World, DCS: P51D Mustang Beta, DCS: A-10C Warthog and DCS: Black Shark 2. DCS: Combined Arms combines real time strategy gaming, first person armor warfare gaming and directing the ground battle from the cockpit of a DCS aircraft like the A-10C Warthog, Ka-50 Black Shark or P-51D Mustang. Using the Command Map to move ground forces, set artillery fire missions and control the ground battle, assume the role of a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and designate targets for close air support aircraft in multiplayer games or directly control armor vehicles or air defense weapons and engage the enemy. It is now available for open beta as well to get you right into the action.
Download the pre-purchase of Combined Arms for $29.99 from: http://www.
Trailer:
Gallery:
I recently reviewed Tiny And Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers which was a great game with a polished and modern stylized look. Resonance on the other hand I appreciate for its rough, old school look that warms my gamer’s heart. It reminds me of the days of Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and Alone In The Dark, back when Sierra was creating its point and click legacies. Well I am obviously not the only one who remembers it because xii games and Wadjet Eye Games teamed up to bring this game for gamers by gamers to life in all its old school glory with a new school twist.
Storyline:
The game starts off letting you know that bad things have happened around the world, some great attack that is being covered by the world’s news feeds. You can’t tell quite what and right before you get a chance to even guess the game takes you back in time where you get to choose from four clocks on the screen, each one representing a moment in the four main characters’ lives. With this you begin to piece together and influence the events leading up to the disaster and cause all the characters who were otherwise strangers to cross paths over a research project called Resonance.
Graphics And Sound:
These are all designed to give you the feeling of playing the game back in the old days and the game never breaks the illusion of being a two decade old point and click game. It doesn’t fill a wide screen, the graphics can only look so clean and the audio is far from state of the art. All this comes together to create nostalgia for those who gamed in those days and a sense of discovering the old days for those experiencing it for the first time. Heck this seems to be reason enough to pick up the game, then when you add a complex timeline and engaging story this is a definite pick.
Gameplay:
This retro feel continues heavily into the gameplay which, for the most part, is a standard old school point and click where you move your arrow around the screen until you find something you can click on and you do and see what happens. You do the same thing with your inventory items, sometimes separating an item, some times dragging them together. Anyone who has played a point and click adventure will find this all the same as it was two decades ago. The twist in the game is the use of long term and short term memory. During conversation or examining things subjects will automatically pop into long term memory to the character you are playing. This can be dragged down to the conversation bar or interact with the short term memory items which consists of items in you inventory you think might be important and you drag into the short term memory.
So maybe you pick up a coin next to another character. That character sees it and it triggers a long term memory. You can drag that down to the conversation bar and discuss it or you can drag it to short term memory and see if it helps triggering more long term memories. It sounds complicated but really is based pretty much on the same principle of items in your inventory interacting or being dragged down to interact with your environment. The items just have more locations to interact with and you have two more “inventories.” It is obvious though they wanted us to remember the old days they also wanted to improve on a system that hasn’t changed much over the years. It would not surprise me if this wound up becoming the new standard for these type of games if enough people take notice of it, the curse and blessing of an indie game is how easy it is for the mainstream to overlook it.
Last Call:
It is hard to talk about the game much without giving away plot. It mostly plays and looks like an old school game with the exception of new innovations in the “inventories” and the fact that you can create your own timeline to a certain degree. If you like the old school point and click play or you are curious about the new additions to it this game is an absolute steal at $8.99.
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I know that with a name like Tiny And Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers you expect a hardcore game with over the top shooter action probably produced by Sony for several million dollars. You are wrong sir! Or madam! This is an indie game release from Black Pants Game Studio that made has already won a bunch of awards and deserves every one of them. This is one of those rare occasions where I really gush over a game because I think it is a defining example of what an indie game can bring that rivals the big name companies.
Story Time Kids!:
The legend unfolds with Tiny racing across the desert with his trusty companion The Radio and a robot driver in Robot Taxi’s Taxey in search of Tiny’s mean big brother Big who stole an ancient artifact given to Tiny by their grandpa for safe keeping. The artifact is some tighty not-so-whitey crusty underwear which are worn on the head and give the wearer great powers! This is all discovered in the first few minutes of the game so no need for a spoiler alert. Tiny is preparing for the confrontation with his brother by practicing on his Reality Boy game system when HIT! the taxey is wiped out and the journey begins in earnest to catch the daunting and deadly older sibling and save the world!
Graphics And Audio:
Normally I talk graphics and audio at the end of the review but I just have to address them now. They are terrific and amazing in their stylized fun. They set the mood for the game as much as the introductory storyline and the concept art matches the actual game graphics so well that it looks like they were just copied exactly whereas the concept art on most games is usually far more detailed than the final results.
I ran around my little sandbox plenty of the time just to take in the sights. It screams indie, comic books, even a little Borderlands in a playful way. The fun doesn’t stop there either. Instead of just a couple songs here and there composed as background music they loaded the game with a whole album worth of indie bands and made it so that you find the songs on cassette tapes throughout the game. While writing this review I have already listened to one of the songs on YouTube a half dozen times. The sound effects are good and match the action perfectly and the visual interpretations of the sounds look straight out of old Batman episodes but far more creative.
Gameplay:
You cruise along behind Tiny as he uses his gadgets to solve puzzles and playfully destroy his sandbox environment. His main weapons are a laser, a grappling hook and a remote grasping rocket claw. So basically you can push directly, push and pull from distances and cut things up.
This sounds like a fairly basic amount of powers to have at your disposal but you quickly realize how diverse the options it gives you can be. For example say you need something from the top of that rock pillar above. You could push and pull rocks and debris over to create a set of stairs to jump up to get the item or you can use your laser and just cut the the pillar down and retrieve the item on the ground. Just about every puzzle has more than one way to solve it and some require some seriously creative thinking to figure out one of the ways. In this game like many trying something creative can get you killed but luckily that just means you try again from the last save point which generally isn’t too far back.
As if the puzzles aren’t tempting death enough your egomaniacal brother Big is also trying to slow you down/kill you off so that he can make sure no one can take those ancient undies and their power away from him and stop him from ruling the world. He also taunts you more than a Frenchman with an outrageous accent at the top of a castle wall. At one point the game gets a bit more challenging as you have to use your laser to cut rocks in half in mid air so Big can’t squish you with them, practice makes perfect with this and failure means you are squished and just have to try again.
Personally I would be tempted to let him keep the undies and take my buddy The Radio to the store and buy a fresh pair but Tiny isn’t so easily discouraged. Plus using the laser and rocket claw are so much fun there is generally very little environment left in his wake and the time flies by. Did I mention you crush weird black creatures that live in holes? No? Well you do that too with pieces of the environment. All this is done with an excellent physics engine they built themselves that makes just about everything move or be destroyed exactly how you imagined it.
But I Want More!:
If there is any complaint I have with the game it would only be that it is short. On their website Black Pants Game Studio put (Episode One) after the name of the game which I hope means that this is just the first installment of many more to come. Also since the game has so many ways to solve puzzles and hidden things it is a definite replay.
Last Call:
If you read any of this article you can tell I really love the game, the only thing that can compete with the game itself is the price of $9.99 on GOG.com and comes with wallpapers, avatars, music track, artbook, poster and a map. This game is a total brain teaser to play and a no brainer to buy. Show the Bigs of the world that the Tinys can save the day just as well as they can.
Here is a music video for one of the songs with special animation made by the developers!
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Our Editor-In-Chief is a rabid simulator fan, he has a cockpit in his house because he can’t play a flight simulator without a cockpit. True story! So when he let this one go to me I knew it was a painful choice for him but he knew a bit about my youth. I grew up on fishing boats since I was six years old (mostly purse netters), learn to helm them by the time I was eight, and spent about 12 years on them as mostly crew but occasionally at the helm. So I learned that taking a boat out is a slow process, steering a boat is as much about the feel of the wheel as it is the compass and for every interesting few minutes of fishing there is tedious work to be done getting there and getting back. So I went into this game very excited about it, expecting a bit of the nostalgia I had been listening to “Downeaster Alexa” by Billy Joel because “I was a bait man like my father was before, but you can’t make a living as a bait man anymore.” In some ways I got just that and others I just ran into the trappings of a video game, something you really want to avoid in a simulator.
The Features:
Ever wonder how it feels to sail a half-million-ton supertanker through the perfect storm? To take on illegal whale hunters in the Antarctic? Or to feel the rush of being part of the Coast Guard as you evacuate a cruise liner in distress? Ship Simulator Extremes has players take on exciting missions all over the world as they pilot an impressive array of vessels and live the stories of real ship captains. With missions based on actual events in realistic environments at locations all over the world, the new Ship Simulator game is sure to take you to extremes!
Key Features:
Gameplay:
Ok That all sounds pretty dang sweet and exciting doesn’t it? I read that and I was pumped, not only would I have a chance to helm ships like I did in the old days I would actually get to fight ecological disasters with Greenpeace while keeping my feet dry? Sign me up! So I dove into the Campaign and was immediately, well, lost at sea. The controls appeared to be point and click which at first I liked because moving the mouse was very similar to steering a ship, you had to push up on the power lever and move side to side with your mouse for the wheel and the controls required finesse which most people who have only plowed waves in a speedboat don’t often understand. You turn the wheel a bit and you wait for the ship to react. You speed up a bit and then checked your speed for maneuverability. This the game had down perfect, even the larger the ship the harder to control aspect was solid.
The problem came when you were in situations where you really needed to crank the wheel to make a heavy course correction. The wheel would at first turn that way then the graphic elements of the wheel would start jumping and the wheel would suddenly be turned in the opposite direction. This happened in the case of collisions and was very understandable then but sometimes when reading a waypoint wrong and making a sharp correction in clear water it would do the same or when even trying to make a subtle adjustment trying to maintain a position to complete a mission. There was a solution to the whole problem which I discovered, using the arrow keys. The sad problem with that is the feel of a simulator is immediately lost and it just becomes about holding a couple arrow keys then using the mouse on occasion. I tried to use a game controller hoping for at least a little more interactivity but the game is not compatible. I don’t have a helm controller which may work wonderful with it, or my fear is it may not.
Getting past the controls the Campaign has no learning curve and you are just tossed in the game without a tutorial. To do the tutorial, which is lengthy and rather in depth for the different ships you will have to steer you need to go to single missions and look at the bottom of the list. It still doesn’t explain everything but hovering over the different buttons on your HUD will help you find just about everything you need to know. The first mission of the first section of the campaign is Greenpeace, which is one of the more exciting looking missions. The problem is they mostly consist of going to where there are wrongdoers, positioning yourself at a certain spot for a certain amount of time then going back to port. So you pull your ship out, spend several minutes getting to the location, hold in place or course for a given amount of time then spend several minutes going back to port. So the most realistic part of the simulation is how boring/calming it is getting to and from the needed work.
This seem to be a running element throughout the game, several minutes of just full speed, maintaining course followed by a few moments of actual interesting work. During one of the cruise ship missions I had to make numerous course corrections, understand the speed the ship could maneuver at to get it out of one harbor to meet a boat for a minute or so then cruise to another port, meet a boat then maneuver through the port. Not counting restarts from frequent save points the mission took two hours at least 20 minutes of which I was able to lock down the throttle, set my course and go get a snack from the kitchen. When I was at the computer I was primarily hitting the three arrow keys (reverse in any ship larger than a pontoon is a sign that disaster has already struck). The game really does take steps to help pass this time by having camera mode so you can take pictures of passing scenery or of the ship and you have three viewing options while sailing (third person, helmsman and crew hand) which try to help mix up the experience but these only seem interesting for so long and when in the harbors where the more interesting scenery is you have to constantly be handling the arrow keys for course and speed adjustments.
The only other concern with gameplay is that sometimes the AI doesn’t understand the common necessity of the games physics. Here is a good example of what I mean: You are the captain of a cruise ship and you have the former captain onboard ill and you need to meet with a runner boat to get him to shore, the runner boat will meet you at a location just before leaving port. So you maneuver through the port in a vessel that makes a double trailer semi look like a Lamborghini maneuverability wise and the ship stops at a location in front of you. If you are going slow enough you kill the engines and hope to stop in place, if you are going too fast you throw the engines into reverse, wait the time and then try slowing down. All this while trying to make the subtle course corrections to hit the vicinity of the smaller vessel. I was pretty proud of how close I got but the vessel didn’t close the distance between us. In fact it just sat there on the water, cutting bait. I had to launch a raft, go to the small boat and tow it over to right next to the ship in just the right spot for a countdown to begin completing that part of the mission. I then cruise on only to have the same issue with a pilot boat in the next harbor. It isn’t maritime law but it is a general given that when two vessels intercept the smaller vessel makes approach on the larger vessel. More maneuverability. more motion control. We used to bait boats at sea on a regular basis and the only time we made approach was when the ship was bigger. The AI should have approached the larger boat when it stopped or entered the rendezvous area or the smaller ship should have been given to player control. Towing a pilot boat to your ship is just plain silly.
Ok now that I seem to have gone through a rant about the issues I really do need to point out the features that work right. The physics are incredibly spot making the gameplay very realistic. If a person isn’t used to the physics of a ship at sea they will be frustrated at first but after playing this game they will actually have a fairly accurate idea of what it is like. I wouldn’t go out and immediately take the captain’s test (you need to learn your maritime law first) but in the case of an emergency they could learn enough to get a ship back to dock or at least a pilot or tugboat. The helmsman view is very accurate as well and I spent a lot of my gameplay time in the wheelhouse with the instruments displayed in front of me using them as my guide as well as my view from there, usually only coming out of that view to dock. With the exception of the control issues mentioned above all the other controls and menus had excellent reaction time and everything you need to get the job done is there. When it comes down to the gameplay simulating real life basic ship experience this game is spot on.
Graphics And Audio:
Like many simulators the details are in place but may not be as graphically detailed as they could be as a tradeoff for the physics. You have your instruments displayed well and clear but the counter they sit on doesn’t have a detailed realistic look anymore than the sights on shore. The details of the water though are spot on as well which is where the ocean experience is important because how a ship cuts the water and the waves break on it’s side can be crucial for negotiating the waters and in some cases staying afloat. So the graphics are as good as most simulators and are very good in crucial elements. The audio is excellent and truly adds to the feeling of a real ship. When in third person behind the ship you hear the loud noise of the engine, when you are off to the side third person you hear the water and gulls. In the wheelhouse you hear the constant squawk of the radio, a sound that if you are sleeping behind the helmsman can actually become comforting to the point that after a while at sea you need to listen to television or radio to go to sleep because you are used to constant chatter. And as a crewman or cameraman you hear wherever you are on the ship the noises appropriate which must have taken a while to get done well all itself.
Multiplayer, Single Mission, Free Play And Community Maps:
The game has a multiplayer element that allows you to go and sail with your friends which let’s face it can take a game that is getting a bit boring and breath new life into it. So can Single Missions and Free Play which enable you to just jump in the game and play it a bit from time to time when you are too busy or tight on time to play a campaign. I always look for these features in a game because as a reviewer sometimes it is hard to find time to get back to a game I like so this gives a nice option. An even better addition is a mission editor which this game also has allowing players to design maps and mission making it so that in theory this game could never stop having new content. Plus there are DLCs and extra ships being released regularly!
Last Call:
This game is truly for an extreme simulator fan or someone who has spent quite a bit of time at sea. There are slow times that can be pretty long like real life and the game has a few issues that need to be worked around to get the most out of it. If you commit to it though it can be a rewarding and in many ways very realistic experience. And with the core game being $19.99 and the collection being $29.99 this is a game that can give affordable play as vast as the seas themselves.
Golden Axe II was definitely a sign of its time and did things right and wrong which video game sequels today tend to do even though this is a history lesson over two decades old. Golden Axe was a huge success, even more so on the console than on the standup arcade game so the decision was made to get it out on console first, then work out all the logistics of the arcade version. It makes sense, the software is written and stuck on a cartridge then sent out to Genesis players without having to worry about motherboards, standup displays and monitors. They could rush it out, have it on the market and work out the arcade version later. So they did and it didn’t do so hot. Some players of the time probably don’t even remember there was a sequel that came out in 1991 and those that remember might wish they had forgot. It isn’t a bad game, don’t get me wrong, it does have some solid play value. The problem is that it suffers what many game sequels do: it feels too much like you are playing the original game to warrant a new one.
Storyline:
Evil forces are back and they claim Golden Axe again causing our three adventurers from the first game to take on mostly the same minions from the first game in a battle to get Yuria free again. If you didn’t play the first game that was fine, this is essentially a rehashed plot without a twist that occurred in the first because, well, the twist already happened. This was a failing of the sequel and many sequels both in games and movies since, they didn’t come up with a new story so the story didn’t really matter.
Gameplay:
Gameplay is just like other games on the Sega Genesis and the original Golden Axe so there is no learning curve if you are familiar with either or both. Directionals on the keyboard or OnLive controller combined with three assigned buttons for battle. One is dedicated to magic potion attacks, one is for weapon attack and the last is for jumping. A combination of hitting and jumping can give you a jumping strike or if you hit the buttons both at the same time you can do a special class combo and each of the classes which are the same from the first: warrior, amazon and barbarian have their own combo attack as well as their own magic attack. In the previous game I favored the barbarian’s magic attack but in this one the amazon’s magic stands out above the rest with its fiery phoenix. Strategy is a little more key in this one than in the previous since besides high ground there are also falls that can happen if you line your enemy up just right during battle. Just like the first one it is good to save potions for bosses, heavy attacks or resetting your location after death and I can’t recommend enough using the four save slots that come with the Sega Gaming Classics on OnLive which allow you to save anywhere so if you are doing particularly good or know there is a particularly rough spot ahead make sure to save! There were some concerns when the game came out that the game was easier to beat than the original, setting it to “challenging” gives you the similar difficulty but I found if you use proper strategy this game is much easier.
Graphics/Sound:
The graphics in this game are VERY superior to the first, I don’t use all caps lightly. This is something they really got right, everything is more detailed and honestly kicks the crap out of many indie companies of today. Every aspect of the game looks better, though unfortunately they used the same tricks to improve them that they did in the first game to make them that good. You fight the same minions a lot, some taken directly from the first game. So a minion has a fist weapon instead of a mace, the other one has the same club and they both look just like more detailed versions of the first game’s enemies. The characters are the same from the first game too, just more detailed (especially the amazon’s boobs) so that once again people who bought it at the time wondered if it was worth the money they plunked out. Also the sound actually seemed a bit better in the first, though it is possible it was the exact same quality but gets so out shined by the graphics that it just seems worse. It really fell into the sequel trap: if the graphics are better but the sound, story and characters are basically the same then is it worth it? Of course in this case it is part of the same PlayPack as the first so it definitely IS worth it because it doesn’t cost you any more money, it just gives you more playtime of the game. Plus the new rideables in this game I think are a lot more fun to ride and more challenging to dismount.
Last Call:
I mentioned to someone that I was reviewing this game and they said, “There was a sequel?” even though they were a heavy Genesis player at the time it came out. It isn’t a bad game, I totally recommend playing it especially as part of OnLive’s $9.99 PlayPack which comes with over 200 other games as well so if you get bored you can play a different one. So when you consider how many games there are it costs 1/2 of a penny to play a month, pretty good deal I think. If you still aren’t sure you can always go to http://www.onlive.com/promote where you can demo just about every game that OnLive has to offer.
