Author - Ripper71

Gas Guzzlers Combat Carnage Preview (PC/Open Beta)

2012/03/19

So after being down for the count a couple weeks with first pneumonia then a bad cold I have been itching to get into a new game (ed. note: Glad to have you back!!). When Gamespires announced their Open Beta of Gas Guzzlers Combat Carnage I was more than ready to put my Sentra in the garage and get behind the wheel of a dino hogging beast. My first love was my small block Malibu Chevelle and the only thing that could have made her better would have been machine guns (figures California would ban such things right when I got her). So you put some horses under a hood and ammo cases on a roof and there is a good chance I will have at least some love for the game.

Believe it or not, that was my first concern with Gas Guzzlers. It put me in a Fat Ficho (imagine a Fiat). Now if I were pulling a heist in it or driving through insanely narrow European streets I could still probably get behind it but the tracks provided are off road. I understand the idea of starting small and working your way up I really do, but this vehicle doesn’t even begin to live up to the Gas Guzzlers title. It is a slow, squirrely car that if you make the slightest mistake in you will lose the race. The slightest mistake. Your initial weapons are fairly ineffective as well so it comes down to racing a stock Fiat in dirt. The beta luckily also includes a vehicle that looks straight out of the Fast and The Furious and this car handles much tighter plus the first weapons upgrade they give you to try is missiles so that it is possible to eliminate the competition as well as outrace them. The vehicle is still designed more for street racing but it is such a leap above the Fat Ficho that I found myself in my Motor Zen place soon enough.

I do want to mention again that this game has just gone into Open Beta so any issue I might have with the game will probably be resolved by the time it is released or the ability to upgrade performance gear alone will probably help clear these issues when implemented. These issues aside the graphics are excellent, the vehicle damage system looks terrific and the courses are well designed and engaging. I even enjoy the “road kill” bonuses you get when you take out a chicken, rabbit or prairie dog that happen to wander onto the course because it is handled in a fun and cartoony way.

The only other nagging issue I had was the voice over. Sounding straight from the mouth of an old school professional wrestler, the voice over is part commentator, part co-pilot and a bit confusing. At times it seems to be making comments for you about a weapon you picked up for example, then other times it seems to be griefing you like if you hit a wall too hard the game actually said “That wasn’t too fuckin’ smart!” and another time said “Aw, shit!.” The language seems to be raw simply to be raw and uses mature language regardless of whether you are doing well or bad, though the worse you do the more it seems to curse. As an adult I heard far worse language when my dad was working on an engine but it generally wasn’t aimed at me. When I don’t correct enough for a turn and drop back two places in a race I will probably be cursing enough without the game saying “son of a bitch!” or my still favorite “that wasn’t too fuckin’ smart” which I am probably already feeling. It’s adult humor and meant to be funny but it almost feels like it could be abusive to a child. I think the game may continue to tend toward this angle since it appears that it is being marketed in Europe as “Gas Guzzlers Shitload of Gas” as opposed to the U.S. “Gas Guzzlers Combat Carnage.”

Last Call:

I really look forward to reviewing and tearing up some tar on the final game. Gas Guzzlers is in Open Beta which is still a very early process, heck at one point I had a collision error and found myself driving through the sky shooting my machine guns at clouds before the game corrected me back onto track. All it does is give you a taste of the game and an idea in which direction they are going. As a gorgeous, racing game with excellent tracks and fun weapons this game is headed in a great direction. The only question is whether it wants to keep going in the mature direction solely for the purpose of being mature and edgy, which could in the end easily lose them a whole player base. I’ll enjoy it either way, but it is not headed towards family entertainment.

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Vessel Preview (PC/Steam)

2012/02/13

Ripper71

News, Previews

When I first heard about Vessel it sounded interesting, stylish 2D side scrolling action game involving water. That description didn’t really do justice to the game and the exceptional physics involved in it, the grace and style that can be made using water in a Victorian Steam Punk environment.

The story is about an inventor named Arkwright who created Fluro, liquid based mechanical creatures, that have been integrated into every part of our modern life. Arkwright used this knowledge and resulting wealth to improve liquid physics and finish his latest creation “The Device.” He steps outside his home laboratory and finds himself locked outside the house by one of his latest Fluro so he goes to get his tools to get back into his house only to find the Fluro have ran amok all over town particularly causing havoc on the fluid based technology. This technology all looks like Victorian Steam Punk in design though it is actually Victorian Liquid Punk and there is water water everywhere, some of it walking on two feet. All of Arkwright’s inventions run on it including the multiple weapons he uses to set things right throughout town.

The animation style combined with the haunting music creates an atmosphere very similar to Limbo. Where Limbo painted a world of shadow, Vessel paints with a world of water. Water is involved in all the puzzles and Strange Loop Games went to painstaking lengths to plot the physics of all the water, even the ones not involved in puzzles. This world would come to an end if there was ever a drought but anything that can be liquified is put to use to keep the world going. Fans of Penny Arcade may enjoy how much Arkwright looks like he came right out of it.

The puzzles definitely vary in difficulty and some are more a matter of timing than brain work but there seems to be another challenge around every corner and you get so immerse in moving Arkwright through it you can easily lose time. With so many levels and puzzles to solve there is a lot of time to be passed and I was just playing the demo!

Features:
* Fully physically-simulated world of liquid interactions. Experience flowing and splashing water, scalding thick lava, drippy glowing goo, and explosive reactant chemicals, simulated using fluid-dynamics.
* All creatures in the game are composed of simulated liquid, and maintain the fluid’s properties and abilities . Collide water creatures with lava creatures to create steam, use creatures made of glowing goo to navigate dark areas, and mix creatures of reactant chemicals to trigger explosions.
* Solve puzzles by combing the unique behavior of each creature with the fluid they’re made of. Drop a ‘Drinker’ Fluro and lure him by spraying goo. Create a ‘Dark Fluro’ and chase him with light.
* Explore a world of fantastic, detailed machines and strange, wondrous environments. 2D hand-drawn textures combined with 3D normal maps and lighting creates a unique, other-worldly look to the visuals.
* Gain the powers of the creatures you encounter in the field and apply your discoveries to your next great invention, ‘The Device’.

Last Call:

The graphics are beautiful and haunting, the gameplay puzzles are excellent and if you pay attention the liquid physics are almost awe inspiring. Hopefully it will get the notice and gameplay of Limbo because it truly deserves it. Maybe this year it will be on top indie game lists like Limbo was this past year.

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King Arthur 2: The Role-playing Wargame Review (PC/Steam)

2012/02/10

Ripper71

News, Reviews

I consider myself lucky that a while back I had the opportunity to play Total War: Shogun 2 and review it for Gaming Shogun. At the time I felt lucky because I got to experience the immense depth and choice players had when playing that game and how it had great replay value due to all the choices. You even had a choice of how deep you went, you could play it a lot like a Risk simple strategy game or you could go in and orchestrate the movements of each of your units each step through the battlefield. I tried a bit of each and still it took days, weeks, just to get a grasp of all there was to do in that game. There is a reason that some magazines and some websites didn’t just list it as one of the best games of the year but also listed it as one of the best games of all time. It was a great play and a gorgeous sight loaded with amazing detail setting a new bar for strategy games like it to come.

Another reason I feel lucky to have played it is when I got the opportunity to review King Arthur 2 which lists itself as a “role-playing wargame” I may not have realized it was another name for strategy games in the very same vein as Shogun 2. I may also not have realized the benchmark set by Shogun 2 should be considered when reviewing this game. Can it stand up to such competition?

At the opening screen of the game players are given the option to play the prologue if they like which instead of being a long animation is actually playtime with tips and a great opportunity to introduce yourself to the game play. I thought it was to be just the first part of my nights play only to discover that I had played for hours and only set the stage for the actual story. I don’t want to spoil it by giving away too much detail but I can safely say the prologue does an excellent job of leading into the game itself and sets a timeline for the rest of the game. This part of the game would have made a decent, though somewhat short, game all on its own and uses both historical facts and mythology to weave an excellent tale.

After playing the prologue and reaching it’s pinnacle it is a bit hard to start the game with lowly means and have to work your way up to glory again. But at the same time it is like getting a chance to play the prologue over again with a better understanding of the game aspects and a different cast of characters. So in a way it is like having a short game and long game depending on your time allotment you can play one of both.

If you are familiar with Shogun 2 this will all sound a bit familiar but the game allows you to control pretty much ever aspect of your growing empire. You have to make diplomatic relationships with the lands around you, you have to listen to and defend your people and when all else fails you have to draw your weapons and start trying to beat the snot out of your enemy. The beating the snot out of the enemy part can often be conducted through auto battle but sometimes it requires you to get your face down with the troops and make their movements, use your heroes’ spells, take over temples for deity’s favor and watch the direct results of your moves or lack of moves cause your soldiers or your enemies to fall to the ground.

If someone comes into the game thinking of it mostly as a war game they will find themselves hemorrhaging money and burying their soldiers left and right. Strategy is important to not just surviving the game but winning it is realizing that war is the last resort of strategy. Then when it comes down to war it is as important to have a good strategy on the battlefield from troop placement to upgrading, from who to have attack first to the attack formation. Where are their archers? Do you really want to charge head on with your cavalry into pikesmen? Which of your heroes can best help which section of your troops and do they stand a better chance going on the offensive directly? And at the end of this battle how many of their ally territories are going to side with them over you? When those ally’s make a move will you and yours be able to stop the retaliation?

If this game had come out before Shogun 2 and been as heavily publicized as Shogun 2 had been (one of the biggest video game media blitzes of the year) there is a good chance that this game could have been the one that others were compared to. Graphically it is amazing with good voice acting and tons of action when action is called for. The immense control over your forces and the historical accuracy of the possible formations, units and general events of the time work perfectly together so that even armchair historians will recognize names and places. Every decision has to be weighed against the consequences to make sure you don’t find yourself facing down many more enemies than you can cut through. The name of the game being King Arthur may bring up images of the round table and Merlin’s mists but this game tries to be more historically accurate than many of the Arthur tales basing itself more on the historical figure the myths were supposed to be based off of though you can expect some units that are more supernatural than natural.

The drawbacks to the game are a bit minor and definitely the result of being spoiled in today’s game market. The game is a pretty beefy download and will probably take a decent while to get you into the action. Load screens are pretty long and could use more interesting images than the game logo. Also there were some pretty serious crash issues which at first I thought might just be an issue with my system but then I tried the game on another of my computers and checked forums, communities and other reviewers to see if they had the same issues and it seemed universal and quite often at the same point. I found that I had to actually change my pattern of attack in a couple spots to keep it from crashing due to too many units, spells and special abilities going on all at once. In at least one case the results was a less substantial win than I would have liked and in another case the random prize generator gave me a rare the first time I beat a battle and gave me a common the next time I played it after a crash. Also you can’t save during battle so if something comes up you have to accept a defeat rather than saving it and coming back when you have more time. There have been nearly daily updates though so I think most of these issues will be gone before you know it.

Last Call:

This game is a lot of fun and has a lot of similarities to Total War: Shogun 2 so if you like that kind of game it is definitely worth playing. If you haven’t played Shogun 2 and you like detailed strategy games then this is definitely a game worth picking up along with Shogun 2. It will feel like the same kind of play but you will get what seems like 3 games for the price of two with the long prologue on King Arthur. It has glitches like many new games do but it also has some fun and very well detailed game play, just remember to save often until they get the glitches and crashes cleaned up.

Law & Order: Legacies (PC/Steam)

2012/02/08

Ripper71

News, Reviews

So there were plenty of nights that we would watch a television show that makes the noise Dun Dun throughout it. We would follow the witnesses as they discover the victim and continue as the process carried right through the sentencing of someone who may or may not be guilty and may or may not be found so. It usually had some degree of closure and most episodes tied up the story, sometimes neatly, other times as messy as the audience could except. Dick Wolf has continued to bring up Law And Order in many fashions over the longest running television crime series ever so it would make sense that eventually they would make a video game and try to recreate the experience we had watching the show but take it one step forward and make us part of the show. But are fans of the show ready to step up?

Law And Order: Legacies will include a total of 7 episodes covering multiple cases and does not restrict itself to the most recent casts of the Law And Order shows but makes all star match ups so you can get a feel for how they would work together. As a player you take the role of the investigators both in interviewing the suspects and checking the crime scene for evidence and sometimes the evidence can be a bit harder to find. Once you collect all the information and evidence you turn it over to the prosecutors and then take their place in the courtroom in what amounts to multiple choice answers about a section of testimony you just heard or a question that should be asked. When it comes down to it that is pretty much what you do through the whole game but your choices have actual results on the way the story plays out with multiple story lines and multiple endings. It seems most of the time that the better answer is obvious or that if you listen closely to the testimony you can object at the right time with the right objections but sometimes it gets into a grey area and you really aren’t sure which might be the best way to go with the questioning or objections. Ever so rarely a real mind twister will pop up and you might find yourself jeopardizing the case.

I mentioned there are 7 episodes but at launch there are only 3 so that, much like a real television season, the episodes will release one by one and you will have to wait until the next episode for your fix of animated justice. The characters are well rendered and even without openings taken right off the TV series you easily recognize the faces and voices. And of course the infamous music and Dun Dun! which I began to predict during the many nights my wife and I watched it together and still makes her laugh even while I did it to the game.

If someone likes the show this game is a seriously fun fix and could be played together so that different people make different decisions, maybe assigning characters so that it can be as interesting as the television show but more like the game night. This kind of brings up a point, the audience of a game of this type and this subject is older for the most part so there is the problem of hitting their target audience. The people behind Law and Order teamed up with TellTale games who target toward the younger and older generation which this game would be great for, kids learning a bit about the legal system and decision making and folks who have watched this series since it began and will love to get to participate in the action.

Last Call:

Fans of the show will no doubt enjoy Law And Order: Legacies and just like the television show they will start with a couple episodes, get hooked and have to wait for the next episode of the season to arrive. If the right word gets out about this game and the audience responds right I could see this becoming a long lasting series to rival it’s record breaking television counterpart because there are so many crimes, and these are there stories… Dun Dun!

Please Stay Calm Review (iPhone)

2012/01/30

Ripper71

News, Reviews

This is one of those games I have been playing for quite a while (back in it’s beta days) and keep meaning to write up but find myself playing it instead. Please Stay Calm is a zombie apocalypse game that utilizes your phone’s GPS and FourSquare to create locations for it’s MMO. This isn’t the only game out there that does it, it is just probably one of the most successful. Did I mention it is free?

Please Stay Calm is set in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse when all the government agencies have pulled out leaving survivors to their own devices and decisions on how they are going to live their lives. Scavenging becomes a daily way of life and survivors rely on each other for defense or medical attention and build safe houses and outposts to store supplies and be able to hopefully sleep safe at night. There is a global communications system designed to find fellow survivors and help them in any way you can. You can help others, you can hunt others, you can join clans or you can lone wolf your way through a huge variety of zombies, some holiday related, some the bane of your pre-zombie life. The key is survival and how you do that is really up to you.

The graphics are styled and enjoyable, there is a minimum amount of sound to it which works well if you are checking your outposts in the middle of the night while you are checking the time. You build up stamina for healing of dueling, action points for scavenging and hunting and health is pretty much what you would think. Things are bought with one of three things: cash, supplies or credits. Cash and supplies are gotten through scavenging and hunting and credits can be bought with cash or by watching commercials and downloading programs, most of which are other free games. This game can be played completely free just using the currency you get in game, but if you get impatient you can buy credits at a very reasonable price for a free to play currency.

Hunting is a fun game of watching a bunch of you weapons pop up at the bottom of the screen and try to pick the best one before they go away and it is the zombie’s turn to take a shot. You have to watch your health though because sometimes the zombies are strong enough to take you down with a single hit. Dueling is picking someone who is rated around your level and then you have the choice to add a bonus item such as explosive ammo to give you an edge, in case they put a defense bonus on them such as a land mine. Defenses usually last 6 hours so that you can go to bed and get at least a little sleep with some hope you might survive. Unlike most games Duels aren’t live for both parties, someone attacks and wins or loses and the attacked gets a notice so they can get revenge if they want and attack back. Using the same stamina as dueling is healing which just means picking someone on your friend’s list, checking their health and healing them. The final thing, scavenging, involves moving a flashlight around your screen avoiding moving green dots, if they get in your beam of light you are caught and get nothing.

One of the real keys to the fun of this game is that you find yourself doing all this at real life locations. Between GPS and FourSquare you may find yourself scavenging the local supermarket or fighting zombies in your neighbor’s shower. Any place with a check-in is territory you can hunt, scavenge, outpost and safe house. Right now I have an outpost on the Death Star. Who knew that would have landed in Reno?

Last Call:

This is a great pick up and play a bit game that you can play a couple times a day and if you are like me those days wind up turning into weeks and months. I love this simple free game and I know if I get too frustrated with the pace of building up my weapons or defenses I can pick up some credits for a real affordable price. New players arrive everyday and meams new friends to play and chat with and people get really into the game with back and forth duels and clans being at each others throats. At the end of the day though, it is about surviving the zombie apocalypse and the more practice we all have the better off we are! Did I mention it is free? Well, it still is.

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The Dark Knight: Golden Dawn Deluxe Edition (Graphic Novel/DC Comics)

2012/01/30

Ripper71

News, Reviews

It really isn’t too surprising that with the success of the Dark Knight movies, the incredibly well done Batman Arkham games and the cancellation of Batman The Brave and The Bold for a darker Knight animated series in development that Dark Knight graphic novels and comics would start to take a grittier, darker approach than previous incarnations of the caped crusader. As a result, a lot of jewels of the writing world got to shine in this element. A couple of the more notable being the dynamic duo of David Finch and Jason Fabok who were given the reins of the Batman: Dark Knight series in which we get to feel the pain that Gotham inflicts on it’s citizens, villains and superheroes in this modern world.

Gone are the days of the smooth skinned, perfectly painted Joker and the laughable bumbling Penguin and in its place are villains wracked with disease and addiction, a Batman whose lines have definitely blurred between hero and villain, and a Gotham where hell is closer than anyone would like to think. The story concentrates on the disappearance of one of Batman’s oldest friends, Dawn Golden, who is one of his only good links left to his past before his parent’s murder and runs through Gotham’s usual list of suspects with some surprisingly strange twists. I have read a lot of Batman over the years, particularly the darker ones such as The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, and I have seldom seen the question of villain versus victim so well and deeply explored or had the lines between the heroes and the villains be so thin. Gotham has damaged all its inhabitants and none feel truly safe from the street folks to the socialites. Going into any deeper detail would spoil parts of the storyline but I can say the artwork is exceptional, as dark and gritty as the story itself and I often found myself stopping to just take in the detail of a panel or a page.

The Deluxe Edition is a collection of the first six issues of Batman: The Dark Knight and also includes Batman: The Return “Planet Gotham,” a short tale by Grant Morrison in which Batman realizes the best way to protect Gotham is to protect the world and start fighting terrorism in the Dark Knight way. The story is really well written with excellent artwork and sets up a concept that bridges several previous Grant Morrison Batman stories together and defines new roles for the different individuals who have taken on the bat logo as well as Robin. It was originally published as a one shot a year ago so it might have been easy to miss but is a solid read on it’s own. There is even a two page story called “Eternal” by David Finch at the end of the book that tells the story of two of the inheritors of the Batman and Superman names walking toward the statue dedicated to their mentors and discussing what it means to be these iconic superheroes. When all this is put together in a nicely bound hardcover format this is really a “deluxe edition.”

Last Call:

I am really glad I got the chance to read this graphic novel. The main story is so well-written I want to go out and pick up more copies from the comic series right now and the additional Grant Morrison story makes me want to read a few of the stories I have missed from other graphic tales. It is a true “deluxe edition” and is not only a great read but if read carefully can bestow the reader with a better understanding of how thin the line between good and evil really can get.

Yesterday Preview (PC)

2012/01/30

Ripper71

News, Previews

Yesterday recently came on our radar so it was time to give it a look and see how the company that brought us the Runaway series and The Next Big Thing did when they took on a thriller. Pendulo Studios maintain their excellence in 2D animation with this work though the mood from the opening animation is one of creepiness and occult. After the first animation it plays like a standard puzzle game, introducing the quirks of a couple of likable characters who it is soon revealed have some very unlikable quirks. In New York City, beggars are disappearing one after another later to be found burnt alive. Meanwhile, a Y-shaped scar forms in the palm of the hands of seemingly unrelated people. The police and the media give little attention to these deaths so Henry White, a young and rich heir dedicated to a charitable organization, and his friend Cooper are the first to investigate these disappearances. The preview is fairly short but tantalizing, giving us a chance to see that the gameplay is very much like that of the Runaway series but the subject matter might be a bit strong for the squeamish, even when rendered in amazing 2D. Here are some screenshots to get an idea of what to expect but you will have to wait until March to get your hands on the game!

Screenshots

Dustforce! Review (PC/Steam)

2012/01/14

Ripper71

News, Reviews

Games are usually an escape from life and so often have strange and unusual premises but you don’t find a whole lot that have you play a janitor armed with your push broom. Even fewer have you play as part of a janitorial team working to clean up the forests of leaves. That however is the premise of Dustforce and in it’s format the theme works just fine.

Dustforce is a 2D platform aerobatic action game in which players have to sweep, swipe and jump their way through multiple levels cleaning up leaves while avoiding thorns, destroying leaf clumps and saving woodland creatures from leaf possession. I honestly didn’t fully understand the last part of leaf possession but it did make for more interesting play as you cook through the levels trying to keep combos going, make smooth jumps and avoiding death by thorning or being beaten to death by poor possessed possums. You move on to cleaning leaves, dust and grime from other locations but with similar play. You get 4 characters to choose from though they don’t appear to have any real difference between them except appearance.

The graphics are cartoonish and simple but also nicely stylized and works really well for the 2D platform game style and the music is calming and a little old school sounding trying to offset the often hectic action. There are over 50 levels in the game, most of them only unlockable by getting an extremely high score on one of the lower levels. This results in usually having to play a level a few times to beat the necessary score even if you complete it so the game does require patience and an understanding that a learning curve is necessary for working your way up through the game and though the levels will become more challenging you will still be working your way up using the same moves and weapons just perfecting them more and more. That kind of repetitive gameplay may not be for everyone, I actually had more than one player try this game and someone who was good at it got bored and someone who had a hard time got frustrated.

Luckily if this winds up becoming a problem you can invite a friend to play with you and try multiplayer mode where one team makes a mess and one team tries to clean it up and you see who winds up having the mad mess or crazy clean up skills. This could be good for a pretty decent amount of playtime since some gamers get so competitive. There is also a level designer that is currently a work in progress and that too might make the game more interesting, especially if friends wind up challenging each other to their own devious level designs.

Last Call:

Dustforce! is a solid example of a 2D platform aerobatic action game designed with challenges that are necessary to overcome before level advancement, completion is not enough. This game will probably appeal mostly to the hardcore platform player due to the level of excellence required to advance and the skill at the jumping, wall hopping, and broom swiping that has to all be timed perfectly to pass obstacles and if they aren’t passed on the first try you won’t be able to advance past the level. The music which can be calming and has subtle differences in the scores may also become a bit repetitive so playing some tunes in the background might be a good plan. If it genre which if you love, like might not be strong enough, at $9.99 it is a bargain with hours of challenging game play. Dustforce will be available for download on Steam starting January 17th.

(Correction: It was originally-stated that there was a demo available for this title. That is incorrect. The game is not out until Jan. 17th)

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All Zombies Must Die! Review (XBLA)

2012/01/08

Ripper71

News, Reviews

I’m an old school gamer as avid readers know, so as soon as I heard this title and saw how it was made my first thought was “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” that blasted onto the Super Nintendo and into the hearts of old school zombie hunters as you ran through 50s style camp saving the neighbors and killing the zombies. So when I saw a trailer for All Zombies Must Die! I figured we were in for this generations version of the same game, just with updated graphics but what I found was a very well made game which while paying homage to the old game also pays homage to pop culture in general and doesn’t forget to be a good play.

The game starts with you controlling a video game junkie named Jack who in the opening moments of the game says “Strange things are afoot in the town of Deadhill.” Upon realizing the strange things afoot are zombies he says “cool!” and dives right into the fray. In no time he has a shotgun and starts making “Campbell Combo”s with his Boomstick and kicking Ash all over the place. All the pop culture references in the last couple sentences are nothing compared to the ones stacked all through the game, homages to camp, horror and the zombie genre in general. Even a well seasoned zombie hunter like myself had to catch a couple of them more than once to get them. The game even pays homage to video games themselves as Jack realizes slowly that everything happening in Deadhill seems a lot like a video game. Missions seem like quests to him and when he has to fight a big zombie he mentions how much it feels like a boss fight in a video game. He continues to break down the game while fighting his way through it and running into such characters as Rachel who upon seeing Jack points out “Apparently restraining orders don’t apply during the Apocalypse.” Both the storyline and the dialogue itself is all camp and good fun, not taking itself seriously for a single moment. The wonderful campy soundtrack helps reinforce the whole thing as well as the cartoon like graphics.

Just because a game is campy though doesn’t mean it is easy. All Zombies Must Die! makes sure to have a steady enemy strength progression that if you explore a bit and take in the joy of wiping out zombies then you should find your strength matching theirs maintaining a solid difficulty. If you find yourself hitting a level where you seem to be well out of you league you have the ability to go back a level and work at leveling yourself. One of the game hints on the loading screen even suggests a bit of farming for better level matching and weapon upgrade ability. Weapon upgrades and additions don’t miss their chance at camp either, such as when you get the cricket stick which was “made famous by a guy called Shaun.” Upgrades are upgrades though and you find yourself relying on different weapons to survive different zombies and getting sillier weapons to take on bigger beasts. Health boosts come in the form of cheeseburgers and cooked turkeys dropped by zombies, which goes into a whole sanitation and storage question that I think we will just skip in this review.

This game also requires the standard tactics of just about any zombie game, control of attack direction, watching your six while not getting cornered, all the survival skills you need for games that take themselves serious are necessary to surviving one that doesn’t. Tactics come into play even more during local multiplayer where each of the characters you can play have their own strengths and weaknesses that play into the battle plans. You can also use ability points to work on strengths and weaknesses of your characters as you level.

Last Call:

On the surface this seems like a simple cartoonish zombie game with tons of camp and pop references but it turns out to have a nice depth and a very solid level progression and enemy system. All the tactics and gameplay strengths you would need for a serious zombie game can be found in this silly top down arcade shooter which has finally replaced my zombie camp love “Zombies At My Neighbors” as my favorite campy game of any genre. As Jack says “a horde of zombies…a loaded shotgun…it’s Christmas!”

Yoostar 2 And Yoostar On MTV (Review)

2011/12/03

Ripper71

News, Reviews

I learned a long time ago that I have a face made for radio. Back in college, I studied being both behind and in-front of the camera and realized my place was “in the rear with the gear”. So, being there I got to know the gear pretty well – from taped together scripts rolling through a prompter which was little more than a rigged overhead projector to state-of-the-art, programmed HD equipment. When I heard a PC game had come along that had green screen clipping capabilities I got really excited. Commercial keying gear costs a fortune and is one of the harder expenses a start up television station has to invest in so if we could get the keying to clip well on our PCs then home workshops could be realistic at a fraction of the cost. Yoostar was the name of the game and it claimed to make people actually look like they were in the movie. Before I had an opportunity to pick it up however I heard there were major software and keying issues so I let is slide by thinking maybe I would try somewhere down the line.

Well down the line came in the form of Yoostar 2: In The Movies and so once again I told myself I would pick it up eventually – this time waiting on the money to pick up a Kinect for the Xbox 360, the new platform for the game. So more time passed and I found myself in a conference room at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, eating a sandwich and watching Snoop Dogg through a glass window as he gestured to the press who had made it into his viewing room with him. The sandwich was tasty, so was a cookie or two but we couldn’t hear a single word Snoop said. He came out, said a quick “Hi” to the folks who had been watching him like an animal in a glass enclosure at the zoo, then left quickly as did a bunch of grumbling journalists. I finished my sandwich, confirmed my appointment time and thought this may not be the best start to what I already considered the next step in party gaming. You can see my shoulder in the image below, right at the edge of the window with the beige strap on my shoulder, it was when I got my sandwich.

I arrived promptly for my appointment later that day and the mood in the room did not seemed to have improved, if anything they looked deflated. The story was all about Yoostar On MTV and their partnership with such individuals as Snoop Dogg and Lady Gaga as well as having clips from pretty much every MTV reality show including the infamous “Jersey Shore.”

The tech op who took me in for the demonstration was showing some tiredness from the long day as well as rumors that the Snoop Dogg interview hadn’t gone so well. When I immediately started talking clipping and the “halo” or white area around him in the clip he said they were working on it but he personally thought it was fine. With assurances that it would have a much less obvious halo, I wrote it up then gave it little thought until I picked up my own Kinect and, with it, Yoostar 2. It is hard to truly appreciate the fun of Yoostar until you do it in your own home with someone else. Acting out the scenes, messing with props, changing the dialogue, with Yoostar 2 I could see this game might be the next evolution of party gaming to take the place of the music karaoke games. The greatest part is that there is no setup. Step in front of your Kinect and away you play!

You first choose a clip then you will be asked to frame yourself into an outline, once you are matched up with your location in the shot you can start performing.

(ed. note: I love the picture)

This one of the first ones I did, yep I am pretty comfortable being an idiot if it brings people a good laugh and as you can see I gave it a run with this “300” clip. My actual profile will be linked at the bottom of this article so you can see all the wonderful videos I have done so far. This was really a fun game and I could see it working in conjunction with games like RockBand but people tend to want to sing more than act so both would probably need to be set up. That was when I started looking forward to Yoostar On MTV coming out because not only would party goers be able to act along with the reality shows they could also sing along with their favorite songs and get keyed into them. So when the game arrived I was so excited to get it going, I figured a few test runs and I would be ready to have guests over.

It was at this point that I realized much like I had with Yoostar 2 there was a halo around me and though they had settings to try to help minimize it the only true saving grace is all about lighting. You need lots of good light, the closer to neutral colored bulb the better. In some it was just a couple spots like above, in others whole sections of clothing would go missing or the halo would turn into spikes.

Or on a few occasions the camera would place you in a certain location and the scene wouldn’t quite match up, you might look tiny compared to the others in the clip.

Or in others you might seem absolutely gigantic and terrifying to small kids.

Much like the music games you can play them for a score or freeplay and there is even a Challenge Mode that is pretty much the same as Career Challenge on music instrument games. The great part about this is you get stuck into the official videos. I would say my biggest concern with the game is that it came with over 80 possible scenes and only 10 of them were music videos. I guess I am more of the old generation but on a Music Television game I would hop that more than 1/8 of the scenes would be music. Since a good deal of their programming though is now reality shows it does make sense to pick its clips according to what MTV viewers are used to and let’s face it, some of the most notable popular culture characters are on those shows it is still pretty fun to act like The Situation and Snookie or somebody weeping on Road Rules Challenge.

Yoostar also has an excellent online community of like minded people having fun and being foolish plus they can vote on your videos and Yoostar 2 and Yoostar On MTV both interact through the same site so whichever game you upload from it puts them all on the same account.

Last Call

Let’s face it, you don’t need a clean “key” and perfect lighting to have fun with the Yoostar games, but it helps. All you really need is a fun group of people, a good collection of clips, which between the two games will give you over 150 to work with and a willingness to lose your inhibitions and be silly or serious depending on what seems like the bigger blast. These games are fun, they just need a bit more music in them to balance all their tv and movie scenes. I plan to take the games to the next party I go with that I know has a Kinect in the place! As promised here is a link to my account!