By John Walker on July 13th, 2010.
Have you ever played a beat-em-up and thought, “What this needs is to be in much brighter colours, with a far larger mix of combat styles, and a billion other people on the screen at the same time? We all have. Which is why there’s a Zone 4: Fight District. Watch the trailer below. If you can survive it without wanting to stare at a grey wall until you calm down.
By John Walker on July 13th, 2010.
Last month a puzzle game appeared from Jesper Rudberg (16th century bishop of Skara, Sweden) and Anders Pistol (Swedish latinist and medievalist), now working under the name Doctor Entertainment, and Jim told you this. It’s called Puzzle Dimension. I was reminded of it by GameTrailers, as they sometimes do, peculiarly posting the “debut trailer” a month late. I’m glad they did, as it led me to play it, and it’s rather good.
By Kieron Gillen on July 12th, 2010.
The second special edition complete re-mastering of the Monkey Island games came out last week, and I thought since we’re not going to be Wot I Thinking it, it’d be worth having a quick look at and seeing how seaworthy this once-flagship of the genre is with its new lick of paint. Because… well, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that, for a sub-section of our readership, it’ll be their favourite adventure game of all time. Possibly the last great classic adventure they ever played. It’s certainly mine.
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By Jim Rossignol on July 12th, 2010.
I’ve been playing a bunch of Revenge Of The Titans, which is currently available in incomplete form via demo, and also via slightly more complete pre-order beta access at half price, I think? Yes, that seems to be the case. Anyway, there’s something about it.
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By Kieron Gillen on July 12th, 2010.
First thing: keep reading. Second thing: We’ve written about Toki Tori before, in passing, but with a demo released, it’s now time for you to pay proper attention. Third thing: keep reading. Fourth Thing: despite its hyper-cute styling, this is a devilishly smart little puzzle game which recalls me of the intricate post-Lemmings stuff which appeared on the Amiga. You simply have a limited number of tools and have to collect all the eggs on the level. The level doesn’t want you to. Who will win? It’s just lovely pure game design. Fifth thing: It’s also dirt cheap. The game’s five dollars (aka Three-quid-fifty) from all your favourite digital download places (Steam! Impulse! Gamers Gate! And – er – Mac Game Store!). Sixth Thing: Demo’s on the steam page (or the Mac Game Store page) and you can watch some actual little footage below.
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By Kieron Gillen on July 12th, 2010.
That looks familiar, you may think. And you’ll think right. It’s UFO: The Two Sides which is a freeware fan-remake of X-COM/UFO which has just entered the open Beta stage. And having a few quick missions, it’s an impressively complete thing. The big change is that when it’s complete, you’ll be able to play the aliens rather than the humans. At the moment, it’s more conceptual – you select aliens, but there’s no Human AI (Which you could take as a particularly sharp piece of commentary on humanity’s nature, if you wished) though you can play the two-player with one person as aliens and one person as humans. Apart from the usual Beta issues (i.e. It’s a Beta) the main problem is that there’s no sound and some missing graphics… unless you run an extractor which takes them from your legitimate copy of X-COM and puts them in the game. In other words, promising stuff and totally playable even now. There’s been a few small editions since the beta went up, so I’ll direct you at the blog where you should download from the latest post. And here’s some footage…
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By Kieron Gillen on July 12th, 2010.
Just catching up with the Internet chitter-chatter suggests that a couple of announcements may be incoming. Perhaps most predictably is that following Popcap sending a Save The Date August 2nd 2010 with a zombie hand attached people are speculating that Plants Versus Zombies 2 is going to be announced. More unusual is the news that leaked out in advance of next week’s San Diego Comic Con is that the EA’s panel will feature “a brand new, Sci-Fi Action-RPG based on the DNA of Spore.” VG247 speculate this could be “Darkspore”, which EA trademarked earlier in the year. This will have to go some to actually impress people, but you can see the logic in doing an action-RPG based on some of the still-brilliant character-creation technology. I’m at San Diego, so will try and bring you an update straight from the con floor, unless I’m lying, passed out on the con-floor. Which is far from unprecedented.
By Jim Rossignol on July 12th, 2010.
TechCrunch has some news about Google investing in Farmville developers Zynga. If TC’s “multiple sources” are correct, then the secret deal is intended to furnish a new Google Games project:
Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources… Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal’s biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant.
This is backed up with some project lead job ads for games from Google itself. Which is interesting.
By Kieron Gillen on July 12th, 2010.
Monday morning flashgame time, I think. Coma‘s been around for a little while now, but I’ve only just picked up on it from Alice Wonderland and it’s actually a quite lovely little platforming adventure which goes heavy on the graphic style and atmosphere. Alice says it makes her want to replay Machinarium and warm-up for Limbo, and I can’t disagree with that. Well, I could, but I’d be a churlish knave. It features the best player-propelling anus I’ve seen for a while. You can go play it here and – if you get stuck – you’ll find a walkthrough video below.
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By Jim Rossignol on July 12th, 2010.
A new version of Evochron, this time called Evochron Mercenary, has just been released announced for the autumn. It’s another iteration of StarWraith’s ongoing 3D freeform space sim project, this time with a reworked graphics engine, and some serious new options for multiplayer, including player-built (and destroyed) structures for multiplayer games. Seems interesting, and I’m going to take a closer look when we can get hold of a copy. Trailer showing a bunch of the new stuff is embedded below decks.
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By Quintin Smith on July 11th, 2010.
Is Max Payne back on drugs? It looks that way to us, after eye witnesses saw him stumbling out of London’s popular club, ROAR. Close friends told RPS of how they’d seen Max arrive already out of it, before hitting on various waitresses as the evening went on. One friend of Payne’s told us,
“He was out of control, throwing back pills every few minutes, and I thought his recovery was going so well. Right, hope all’s well. I’ll try to catch you later, as my battery’s going.”
Rumours that the pill-popping ex-cop will be checking back into rehab have yet to be confirmed.
