Gamer Blast

Smashcraft – Ambitious Starcraft 2 Arena Fighting Mod

Connor — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 02:30:03 +0000

There are a lot of mods (or “custom maps”) available for Starcraft 2, and a lot of them can be quite fun. But most of them have a feeling of amateurism and a lack of polish that fails to allow them to take full advantage of the mechanics they put into play – however innovative those mechanics may be.

Smashcraft is a mod that gained popularity the other day, when popular Starcraft 2 caster TotalBiscuit put up a 42-minute video of him being introduced to the game by one of it’s programmers. The “Smashcraft” chat channel in Starcraft skyrocketed in popularity over night as more and more users discovered TotalBiscuit’s video, and it has now reached quite a wide audience.
I started playing it two days ago, and let me tell you… It is by far the best custom map for Starcraft 2 that I’ve played yet. I’ve not played any arena fighting-style games before this, so I don’t have much to compare it to, but it has a wonderful presentation and awesome gameplay that make it feel like a game of it’s own, rather than a mod.

The idea is this — you’re on one of two teams, each comprised of up to three people. (Believe me, it’s much more balanced if you have a 3v3 match, so hop on the “Smashcraft” chat channel and gather a team.) When you load the map, you have to choose a character out of the sixteen available. There are four character classes –

Guardians, which are high-damage characters who have a large amount of health. They’re your brute-force characters, able to deal a good bit of damage to the opposing team while staying alive long enough to inflict even more.

Assault characters, which are primarily used to put pressure on the other team while dealing a good bit of damage. They can’t take as much damage as the Guardian characters, but they’re very powerful.

Psions, which have the lowest HP, but can deal unbelievable amounts of damage if used correctly. More finesse is required to use a Psion character, due to their inability to take a lot of damage, but in the right hands they can turn the tide of the battle in an instant, dealing out immense damage before retreating or repositioning in order to stay alive.

And Support characters, which are designed primarily to help your team, rather than to inflict great deals of damage upon the other team. A good Support character is always great to have on your side, especially if you have a Guardian character such as a Pyro, who can deal a lot of damage, but has to get close in order to do so. Because of this, a healer is very good to have by your side.

Inside of each of these classes are four characters, making, as I said, 16 total. Each of these characters have unique attacks and abilities, allowing for an insane amount of strategy when it comes to team composition. Some characters use guns, others use melee attacks or magic attacks… And while these are the general classifications for the means of attacking, they are broad terms, in that no two characters have the exact same attack. One character could have a shotgun, while the other has a rifle — both very useful in very different situations.
There are both hit-scan attacks and “wave” attacks. An example of a hit-scan attack is gunfire. While attacking, you have to keep your mouse cursor pointed in the direction that your opponent is in… It won’t automatically find them for you, and you can’t just click on them once at the beginning of the attack. Depending on the gun, the game’s engine draws lines for the trajectory of the bullets. If your opponent is directly within this line of sight, they will be damaged accordingly. A pistol or a rifle has a single line drawn directly from the barrel of the gun to the direction your mouse is pointing, whereas a shotgun has several different scattering lines, each with their own potential for damage. A physical object, such as a pillar or a tree, can stop a hit-scan attack, so it’s always smart to make good use of your environments. The height of your target can also be a factor… If you’re far back from the edge of a cliff and attempt to shoot somebody down below it, you won’t hit them. However, if your’e close to the edge and can conceivably see that person, your chances are much higher.
A wave attack is kind of hard to describe in text… It’s a magic attack that affects enemies in front of you, and as such, you must aim at them, as with a hit-scan attack. However, a direct line of sight isn’t as necessary. Where a hit-scan attack would fail from atop a cliff, a wave attack will still hit your enemy, as long as your aim is accurate. They still cannot penetrate trees or pillars, however.

Each character has some common abilities that are shared throughout, such as the ability to quickly dash in one direction in order to avoid an attack, or to slowly heal yourself if your HP is low and there’s no healer on your team. (This should, however, be used very sparingly, as it takes forever to recharge. Because of this, in many games, you’ll only have the opportunity to use it once.)

Each character also has a “Fury” attack. If you’ve ever played mostly any fighting game, you’re probably familiar with this idea… You have a Fury meter, which fills up a little bit whenever you deal or take damage. In some situations (such as when you successfully block an attack), you’ll gain extra Fury. Once your meter is full, you’re able to unleash a devastating attack on your opponents. Each character has a different Fury attack, and all of them have to be performed just right in order to be very effective, but it can be the deciding factor in a match.

A game is a best three out of five battle, and in order to win, you have to kill the entire opposing team. However, I’ve had rounds that have lasted an hour or two with the same group of complete strangers, as we just kept rematching. (My team kept losing, but it was a good time with good people, so we kept playing.) This is a game that can certainly be picked up for short amounts of time, if you only want to play a match or two, but it can easily be entertaining for long periods, especially if you’re playing with a fun bunch.

Speaking of the players, the community, or what I’ve seen of it so far anyway, is fantastic. Everybody is generally very nice. I’ve yet to see any bad-mannered players. At this point in the game, a lot of the players are new to it, so there is a very high tolerance for beginners. As such, I don’t think that your inexperience with Smashcraft should prevent you in any way from dipping your toe in it. The community has been incredibly helpful to me in learning how to properly play, and how to construct a team with the best strategy in mind.
The complexity of this mod is outstanding, and I very much look forward to playing it a lot more. For more information, watch TotalBiscuit’s video, and visit the Smashcraft forums. It can be intimidating at first, but it doesn’t take long to learn the basics, and from there you’ll likely be hooked.

Desura – A Steam-Like Service for Indie Games and Mods

Connor — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:18:43 +0000

Today, while browsing Reddit, I came across this post, outlining a service called “Desura.” (You’ll notice I also shamelessly stole the title from that post — I couldn’t think of any better way to put it.) I looked into it, downloaded Desura, and gave it a shot.

Let me just say — This is pretty sweet. If you’re really into modding your PC games, I’ll consider this application a must-have. It’s a fantastic resource. And besides the modding, it’s also got an awesome indie game marketplace similar to Steam, but with some titles that aren’t available on the latter. A whole lot of the games are super cheap, and there are a lot of great looking games on here that I haven’t even heard of. (Of course, some of them look… Less than good, but you’ll get that anywhere.)

Desura also actually ties in with your Steam account pretty awesomely. If you open the application and go to the “Play” tab, you can have it automatically detect games that the service is compatible with and put them on your list — this allows you to launch them from inside Desura, as well as quickly find mods for the games you already own. While going through this process, it asks about your Steam account, and proceeds to add the games that you’ve got on Steam.

Downloading and installing mods is incredibly simple, and I think this is going to be great for the community if it kicks off well. A lot of people choose to ignore the mod scene because they don’t understand how it works — moving files to game directories is, for some people, too confusing, or just not worth the effort. Desura automatically downloads and installs the mods for any games you have. All you have to do is click a button to start it. After it’s done, you launch it, and that’s that. No moving files, no finding directories. It’s all incredibly streamlined and makes the entire process so incredibly simple, and I’m looking forward to seeing some non-modders get into the scene and get even more enjoyment out of the games they’ve bought.

The layout for the application is very reminiscent of Steam, which I find nice. It’s all very familiar. Everything about Desura just feels like an Indie Steam, which makes it so great. There are even groups that members can join, just like in Steam. One feature that I find really cool, and will probably help build an awesome community, is that users can all have their own blogs. This is a really cool aspect that could definitely help the service gain popularity… Everybody likes to post on blogs. (I know I do.)

I really like the design for Desura, but I’m finding one major flaw with it… Where the hell is the search bar? I can’t find a search bar in the “Games” tab or the “Mods” tab. I’m not sure if I’m completely blind or it doesn’t exist, but either way, that’s a big flaw in the design. Even if, somehow, it’s in there and I’m just missing it… It definitely needs to be more evident. The fact that I’ve had to search for a search bar for this long, and still haven’t found it, is enough to say that there’s a problem here.
You can browse by genre, you can browse by popularity, by sales, but… I just can’t find the search bar. Please fix that, Desura. It probably doesn’t seem like much, but little things like that can make or break a first impression.

Regardless of that, I think Desura has huge potential. It can definitely bring a much wider audience to the modding scene, which will help everybody — Players get more enjoyment out of their games, and mod developers get a bigger audience for their work. Not to mention the indie developers who have their games listed in the service. Exposure is key with indie games, and Steam doesn’t accept all of them — having a service that accepts a wider range will help more indie devs get more customers. There’s even a “Development” tab in the application that outlines how Desura can help indie devs. It contains things like a wider audience, mods and DLC, auto patching, a community, and so forth. Everything that an indie dev could dream of.

I would definitely give it a look if you’re really into mods (or want to be), or if you’re into indie gaming. Or if you just want to be a part of a new gaming community. Regardless of your interests, this is probably worth a look. It’s free, it’s a small download, and there are hours upon hours of free entertainment by the way of mods available therein. Unfortunately, it’s only currently available on Windows, but with any luck they will soon branch out.

Super Meat Boy Review

Connor — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:41:25 +0000

Super Meat Boy is quite a ride. Let me lay this out for you — It’s a fast-paced platformer where you play as a chunk of meat trying to save Bandage Girl (your girlfriend) from a fetus (with a doctorate) named Dr. Fetus who, already at his age, has a very negative disposition on the world and just seems to be pissed all the time. He walks around in a robot suit… thing.
Along the way, you are met with many different obstacles, ranging from flying sawblades to meaty enemies and quite precarious heights. It’s… Silly. And awesome.
Let me explain why.

The gameplay in Super Meat Boy is freakin’ fantastic. It’s a platformer with an emphasis on speed and precision in movements, making you rely on skill to get the job done. The learning curve isn’t too steep, in that you don’t have to learn a whole lot at once, but you are constantly figuring out new tactics and just little bits of information about gameplay that will help you out along the way. (You figure these out on your own, through exploration and experimentation — the only levels with tutorials are the first few.)

Once you get past the tutorials, the gameplay will get progressively harder, and beating levels gets progressively more and more satisfying. Completionists will have a blast with this game, as there’s a ridiculous amount of content! First, you’ve got the basic levels. No big deal there, not incredibly difficult on their own. Now add bandages, and the difficulty has shot through the roof. Some of the bandages are just found through exploration of unnecessary bits of the levels, but a lot of them are intentionally placed in locations that make them near impossible to get. I’ve spent upwards of an hour on one level just trying to get the bandage — the level itself I could beat in about ten / fifteen minutes. (But, if you’re a completionist, you have to get the bandages. Bandages unlock characters! We’ll get more into the characters later…) Then there’s also a speed aspect to it, where you’ll get a grade of A+ if you beat the level in a short amount of time, which is less and less and the levels fly by. Once you get A+ in a level, you unlock the “Dark World” counterparts to that level. There are 20 levels in each world, and the Dark World versions are essentially all of the levels with the same layout, but with lots and lots of traps added in there to make it a much more difficult experience. You’ll want to tear your hair out at some of these, but that’ll pass.
There are also “Warp Zones,” which show up every now and then and bring Super Meat Boy to a different dimension. Sometimes the art style is even different. In these Warp Zones, you’ll have the opportunity to collect bandages or unlock characters, but the levels are quite difficult. Hell, even spotting the Warp Zones is sometimes a challenge. Keep an eye out for ‘em.

Unlocking characters is an amazing feeling in this game. Not only does it give you something new to look at as you play, but each character has unique abilities that can help you overcome specific situations. It’s incredibly helpful to be able to play a level with a character better suited for getting that almost impossible-to-get bandage, rather than spend hours trying to get it with Meat Boy. Each character is fully capable of completing each level and grabbing each floating bandage, but some of them will make your life that much easier.

Now, before we proceed, let’s take a general look at Super Meat Boy. It’s a platformer with awesome physics and a heavy focus on speed and wall-jumps (which are executed brilliantly here). It’s got an unbelievable amount of content, and will take a completionist quite a while to fully experience everything that it holds. The development of such a game was, in my opinion, a very bold endeavour — it was undertaken by only two people, and it’s a very unique idea, gameplay-wise. They put a lot on the line, and it’s surely paid off, as it was one of the most popular games of 2010, winning several awards on different websites, including IGN’s “Most Challenging Game” category of their Best of 2010 awards. And not without good reason, this game is hard as hell! But it’s not, for me anyway, the kind of game that will make you ragequit and never return. Every time I died (and believe me, there were plenty), I realized that it was due to my own ineptitude. The game never feels unfair. You just have to focus and not suck, and when you finally get that bandage and you finally reach the end of the level, you will sometimes want to celebrate. That’s a milestone in your life right there.

Let me break this down for all the completionists reading this review… In Super Meat Boy, there is a total of about 350 levels. Within those levels, you will find 101 bandages, and 20 warp zones, which will help you unlock the 25 unlockable characters. There are also dark world counterparts to each of the levels, which you have to score A+ on said levels to unlock. In order to reach 100% completion in Super Meat Boy, you will have to dedicate a hell of a lot of time to playing, and you’ll have to muster up more patience with yourself than most other games require. This game is chock-full of content, and there’s even more to come.

In an upcoming update for the PC version of Super Meat Boy (which will also be compatible with Mac OS X soon), there will be a fully-featured level editor put into the game. This means that players will be able to create and upload their own near-impossible levels that anybody else can then download and enjoy, thus making Super Meat Boy a game that theoretically never ends, as long as the community picks up, which I’m sure it will. A stipulation to upload a level you create will be that you have to beat that level at least once, to prove that it’s not impossible, which is definitely a fantastic idea from Team Meat.

In conclusion, this is one of the best games I have ever played. It’s inventive, incredibly long, has awesome unlockables, and has just the right amount of frustration. I wholeheartedly recommend this game, especially for PC users who will soon be able to utilize the level editor, making the experience that much more amazing.
The story isn’t much, but it doesn’t have to be. The characters themselves are great, and the nonstop action keeps the fun going. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a game with this much content for the price of $15.
Super Meat Boy is available for PC through Steam, and on the Xbox 360. It’ll be coming to the Mac sometime in the first half of this year, but we unfortunately won’t be seeing it on the PS3 or Wii (which they had planned, but canceled).

Steam Holiday Sale – Off To An Awesome Start

Connor — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:57:35 +0000

Everybody, ever, looks forward to the Holiday Sale on Steam every year. It’s always a spectacular show of incredibly low-priced games. It never ceases to amaze me, and nothing empties my wallet quicker.

Today marks the first day of the 2010 Steam Holiday Sale, and boy is it fantastic. Let me list some of the sales for you…

- Super Meat Boy is $3.75 (75% off the normal price of $14.99)
- Portal is $3.74 (75% off the normal price of $14.99)
- Battlefield Bad Company 2 is $6.79 (66% off the normal price of $19.99)
- F.E.A.R. Complete Pack, includes F.E.A.R. 1 & 2 and expansions / DLC, is $9.99 (75% off the normal price of $39.97)
- Deus Ex Complete Pack, includes Deus Ex: GOTY Edition and Deus Ex: Invisible War, is $2.99 (85% off the normal price of $19.98)

Those are just SOME of today’s deals. There will be more each and every day until the sale is over.

But wait, that’s not all! There are also stupendous packs that have an unbelievable amount of games for cheap, such as

- Valve Complete Pack, EVERY Valve game, for $49.99 (72% off the normal price of $180.82)
- 2K Mega Pack for $79.99 (81% off the normal price of $424.65)
- Epic Games Unreal Deal for $14.99 (79% off the normal price of $69.95)

And more. Those are where the real savings are… Some fantastic deals. I’m running out of adjectives here, people!

There are also a bunch of Indie game packs, which all have amazing games. They’re all $5 for 5 games, all of which pertain to a certain genre or theme. Then there’s also the Indie Heavy Hitters Pack, which is eight particularly awesome games for $19.99. It’s normally $102.92.

There are also entire publisher catalogs on sale, including Valve, LucasArts, PopCap, Codemasters, and THQ.

If you flip to the last page that is the virtual magazine that is currently Steam’s home page, you’ll find deals for Mac-compatible games. Braid’s only $5 (although that’s also in the Indie Heavy Hitters Pack), Torchlight’s $10, and The Orange Box is an amazingly low $14.99. That’s Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half Life-2 through Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Five of the best games ever made for $3 each. Can’t beat that.

Of course, a lot of the deals seem like that. “Well, can’t beat that!” But the fact of the matter is, they very well might. Every year, somebody buys a game that they think is priced the lowest it could be, and then it gets marked down even further the next day. It’s all a gamble that you could lose a few bucks on, but some of these games are absolutely worth the regular price, let alone the current sales price.

Now go buy some games and break the bank. This is what you’ve all been waiting for. Plus, if you’re lost as to what to get your gamer pals for Christmas, well… You’ll never find anything better than some of these games. Hours upon hours of cheap entertainment lay ahead.

Aussie-Gamer.com Harasses Reddit User Over Negative Comment

Connor — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 02:05:57 +0000

This is the first I’ve ever heard of this website, and I’m a tad appalled. I normally stick to writing about games themselves here, but I feel this is relevant, seeing as it’s a happening in the gaming community. Well, the owner of Aussie-Gamer.com took a negative comment from Reddit user mathewferguson way too personally, and has acted out in a quite despicable way.

Mathewferguson posted a comment on Aussie-Gamer’s article titled “Federal Minister Doesn’t Care What You Say About R18+ Rating for Video Games,” saying that it’s a “terrible article, poorly written hype.” Tynan Muddle, owner of Aussie-Gamer.com, then began to harass him over it.

Since his comment was posted, mathewferguson been insulted personally, has received a cease and desist email (which can be read here, basically tells mathewferguson to remove any and all information about Tynan from his own personal website, including links to aussie-gamer.com and his Twitter account, or he will inform the police), and has been stalked to a degree. Tynan emailed him asking “How’s the weather in Moonya Rd tonight?” which is where mathewferguson used to live.

Mathew has contacted the police about the incident. Tynan has deleted comment posts, forum posts, and has now threatened legal action to stop this from spreading, but his website does not deserve a good reputation. A post on his Twitter account says that Aussie-Gamer is a bully-free zone, and the owner then proceeds to track down a negative commenter and harass him via email. This is unacceptable behaviour. And it’s not like Tynan can even defend his website — he’s even got those annoying advertisements that appear when you hover over certain words. *Shudder*

Mattaugamer has assured us not to have a bad taste in our mouths about the whole Australian game blogging community about this.

Do with this information what you will. I, however, will begin avoiding this website (instead of just being unaware of it) and downvoting any links to it that I see. (That’ll teach ‘em.)

UPDATE: Tynan Muddle, owner of Aussie-Gamer.com, has come forward with his side of the story.
With this new information, I apologize to Tynan for being so forward and negative toward him in this post. It seems that both sides are to blame in this altercation. If you’re interested in what’s happening here, I highly suggest you read the blog post I’ve just linked to, as well as his update here. Looks to me like both of them just got kinda caught up in the moment, which lead to heated discussion, and mistakes were made on both sides. Unfortunately, with some information on one of their blog’s and more information on another, we don’t really have an impartial look at this. We can’t, since private emails were exchanged. But with the information we have now, it seems that it’s calmed down.

Super Meat Boy PC Released – Problematic, With Potential

Connor — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 01:14:28 +0000

Yesterday, Super Meat Boy was released on Steam. It’s going for $15, but if you preordered, it was only $10. There was a whole lot of hype surrounding this release… It’s one of the most loved downloadable console games of the year.

Unfortunately, upon release, many problems were found. Problems ranged from crashes, to bosses not appearing, and some display issues. There was also some complaint about control issues — this is because the game clearly states in the beginning that it should be played with a gamepad, but currently only supports the Xbox 360 controller. Luckily, Team Meat said they’re going to add more support soon. (And from what I’ve heard, the keyboard support isn’t bad at all.)

As for all of the bugs that have been found, Team Meat is on the ball. They made a blog post earlier, laying out the issues that people had been having with the game, and saying that a patch to fix them would be released today. (I’m not quite sure if it’s hit yet, but if not, it should pretty soon.) I’m truly impressed at how quickly they’re reacting and getting rid of all these problems. Team Meat is comprised of only two people, and they’re getting stuff done really quickly.

With all the bugs aside, this game’s pretty awesome. I haven’t picked it up on PC yet (plan to really soon), but I’ve played on a friend’s Xbox 360. The music is great, the graphics are awesome, and the gameplay is freaking amazing. I can see why it’s got so much love.
The PC version has several characters that the console version doesn’t. They’re all from PC games… Seems Team Meat’s trying to centralize some of the character choices to give you a better experience depending on the platform you’re playing on.
The PC-specific characters are…

Steve (also known as Mr. Minecraft) (Minecraft)
Captain Viridian (also known as The Captain) (VVVVVV)
Josef (Machinarium)
Headcrab (Half-Life)(Steam version)
Goo Ball (World Of Goo)(Non-Steam version and Steam version via code)
RunMan (RunMan: Race Around the World)
Naija (Aquaria)

I’m most excited about Steve, Captain Viridian, and the Headcrab. All awesome choices from great games. (Except RunMan. Well, I mean, it’s probably a good game, but I’ve never heard of it. So I can’t really say that it is.)

There are, however, some characters that shall remain exclusive to the Xbox 360 version of Super Meat Boy. These characters are…

Alien Hominid – Can shoot downwards to increase jump height or slow descent
Gish – Can stick to walls and slide across ceilings
Tim (Braid) – Can rewind time three seconds
The Spelunker (Spelunky) – Has an explosive jump
Ninja (N/N+) Can sprint fast
Pink Knight (Castle Crashers) – Can perform a flutter jump

It’s a shame, really. All of those characters are awesome. I would very much like to play as Ninja, or The Spelunker. But, you win some, you lose some.

You unlock these characters by collecting bandages throughout the levels. They’re sometimes quite hard to get to, but they’re incredibly satisfying to collect. (Especially if you’re a hardcore completionist — this game will take you forever to beat.) You can also unlock them by finding “Warp Zones” in the levels, which make it look like you’re playing Super Meat Boy on an SNES. It’s pretty freakin’ awesome. The different characters not only change what you look like, but also how you perform. Many of them have special powers that affect gameplay, and give you different ways to beat levels. The good part about this is that it feels like every single level was built with every character in mind — it never feels like you’re at too much of an advantage or a disadvantage, or that you’re out of place. It always just feels “right,” with different styles of playing.

This game is freakin’ packed with content. There are “about 350 levels,” according to Wikipedia. As I mentioned earlier, if you’re a completionist, this will take you forever, with all the warp zones and bandages you have to collect. But even non-completionists will be more than pleased by the longevity of this title — Super Meat Boy is incredibly difficult at times, and it takes a good while to get through some levels. That said, it never really gets too frustrating… It remains charming and fun no matter how many times you’re turned into ground beef. But the difficulty does its part to lengthen the playthrough time, and makes everything much more interesting. If this was an easy game, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

To further extend how much content there is to an unreal degree, there will soon be a level editor available for PC gamers. Level editors lead to limitless gameplay options — take a look at N! It’s one of the most popular indie PC games of all time for a reason, which is the fact that its level editor really took off, and now there are thousands of user-made levels. I’m, personally, really looking forward to the level editor. I love stuff like that. Creating levels is loads of fun, and adds lots of play time. And then, I can hop online to download other people’s masterpieces to extend play time even further! It’s a fantastic cycle that results in me (or you) being perpetuously entertained with the cost of a single (cheap) PC game. In essence, you get a whole lot more “bang” than you give up “buck.” (This seems to be very common when it comes to indie games, which is why indie developers deserve our support. The games may not be as popular, but you get much more fun for your money, and in the end, that’s what really matters.)

There’s not much to the story, but it’s just enough to remain interesting. You play as the title character, Meat Boy. Your girlfriend, Bandage Girl, is kidnapped by the crudely evil Dr. Fetus. Dr. Fetus shows up after every level to snatch up Bandage Girl just as you reach her. Then every now and then he battles you. It’s just kind of a back-and-forth kind of thing, much like… *Gasp!* Super Mario Brothers! Super Mario Br… Super Meat B… SMB! Coincidence? Pretty sure I read somewhere that it’s not. For now we’ll be unsure, together.

I personally think the soundtrack alone is worth the asking price for this game. It’s got fantastic music. It all does a great job at replicating the retro gaming feel that Super Meat Boy goes for. Some of the music from Super Meat Boy will be released for Rock Band 3 in January, which is pretty sweet.

The gameplay in Super Meat Boy is better than most platforming games I’ve ever played. Meat Boy controls fantastically, the wall jumps add a lot to the gameplay, and the different character choices do wonders for the variety in this game. You can choose how you want to play. It’s pretty awesome. I feel that this game is one of the best that has come out this year. My friend was having trouble tearing me from his Xbox after he handed me the controller. It’s a game where the saying “easy to pick up, hard to put down” is very much true. You’re started off with a few tutorial levels and gently eased into the core meat of the gameplay. The learning curve isn’t very steep, but it is definitely hard to master, especially when it comes to getting everything out of this game that there is to offer (including all of the bandages. Believe me, some of them seem impossible. It’s like Vini Vidi Vici in VVVVVV all over again), and once you get accustomed to it, you likely won’t play much else until you beat it.

If you picked it up pre-launch on Steam, awesome, you got a discount. Otherwise, this game is well worth the $15 that it’s selling for. It’s actually worth a hell of a lot more than that, with how much game time you’ll get out of it, and with the impending release of the level editor, you’ll get an insane amount of user-made levels. Well, most likely, anyway — this game’s fairly successful for an indie game, and lots of people love level editors. Let’s just hope that level creation catches on. A lot of the time, community-made levels can be much better than any levels that the developers themselves made. It’s amazing what gamers can do with the proper tools.

You can go and pick it up on Steam now for $15. It’s also available on the Xbox 360 for the same price, and will soon be available on the Wii (via WiiWare) and Mac OS X (via Steam), as well as Linux. Release dates for those versions have yet to be announced. I’m hoping that they make Tux a playable character on the Linux version. (Unfortunately, they’ve even come out and said that there will, beyond any doubt, not be a Playstation 3 version.)

If you’d like to, you can check out the original Meat Boy flash game on Newgrounds. It was the beginning of Super Meat Boy, but don’t use it as a sole source with which to judge SMB — it’s a good bit different. Although it is still a fantastic flash game. (And a pretty big hit on Newgrounds, apparently. They even have a t-shirt.)

Valve Announces Portal 2 Delay (Again)

Connor — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 02:39:58 +0000

The Internet froze in complete and utter shock earlier today when Valve issued a press release, officially pushing the Portal 2 release to April 2011.

Okay, not really. Well, it really is delayed again, but it wasn’t at all a surprise. Valve’s been kinda well known to pull this stuff, and boy do they know it. Here’s their statement…

Valve today announced that Portal 2 — the sequel to the ground-breaking title that won over 30 game of the year awards, despite missing its original ship date — will now be available the week of April 18th, 2011. This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve’s proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date.

The title of the email was “VALVE ANNOUNCES SHORTEST DELAY IN VALVE HISTORY”. See, this is why I love Valve… They make great games, and they’ve got character to boot. They’re well aware of what we say about them, and they do nothing but confirm our accusations and just play along with it.

That said, Portal 2 is definitely one of my most anticipated titles of 2011. The original Portal is tied with Diablo II as my favourite game of all time, so the next year should be pretty sweet.

They’ve altered the release date. Pray they don’t alter it any further, again.

iOS Review – Game Dev Story

Connor — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:14:20 +0000

Game Dev Story is exactly what it sounds like. But the simple presentation is highly deceiving — this game has got a lot going for it, and is one of the most addictive iOS games I’ve ever played.

You start off a humble game development company, with four employees (not counting your secretary) and low review scores. But as you progress, you hire more talented individuals, level up the employees you’ve already got, and unlock many more types of games to create. Eventually, with enough patience and hard work, you’re rolling in dough, constantly bringing in fresh money from the new releases.
But… It’ll take a while.

Game Dev Story is fun as hell, let me get that out of the way right now… This game is incredibly satisfying in every way. There are random events that can, at times, be infuriating, but with enough dedication to your fictional game development company, none of that will matter.

As I said earlier, you start off with just four employees. You hire them in the beginning of the game, and can get to work immediately.
Working on a game is a pretty hands-off process… There are different attributes to a game. The success of said game relies on how high the numbers attached to these attributes are. There’s Fun, Creativity, Graphics, and Sound. Your employees are all specially-trained in different parts of creating a videogame, and will, through the process of development, increase these attributes accordingly.

The development process starts off with a game proposal. You can either have somebody create a proposal in-house or outsource, if your employees aren’t skilled enough. The proposal gives you your initial attribute points, and this sole process of development does a whole lot to decide how the rest will go.
After this, the development proceeds with your employees randomly achieving attribute points. This goes on until the game is 40% completed, at which point you exit the “alpha” phase. This step forward gives you a chance to work on your graphics.
This is very much like the proposal, in that you can do it in-house or outsource. Whomever you assign to the Graphics will primarily work on them, as such, but you’ll also get some Creativity and Fun points.
Again, the development from your team continues, up until 80%. At this point, you exit the “beta” phase, which gives you a chance to work on the sound for your game, very much in the same way.

After the development is complete, you have to spend time getting rid of bugs that accumulate throughout the developmental process. You then ship the game, titling it if you wish (otherwise the title will be “Game #x”). You then receive reviews from four different magazines, ranging in score from 1-10, all with a little comment. The higher these are, the more likely you are to ship lots of units.
You can ship a bugged product, but don’t expect great reviews.

Throughout development, you’ll also accumulate Research points. You can use these points to level up staff members, or you can occasionally use them on random Boosts.
A Boost is when an employee comes up to your desk and says “I’d like to work on improving our sound / graphics / fun / creativity.” If you agree, you spend a good bit of money to give them that opportunity. You then choose how many research points to give to their efforts — the more you give, the higher the probability they’ll succeed. (And the more skilled they are, the less they’ll need.) The maximum probability that they can succeed is 80%, so there’s always a risk. If they, by chance, happen to fail, you’ll rack up a good bit of bugs from their mess-ups. (But in the debugging process, you regain 1 research point for every bug eliminated, so it’s not THAT bad.)

As you work your way up in the industry, you’ll eventually move to a new office, with room for two more employees. Eventually you’ll get an even bigger office, with room for two more employees, giving you a total of eight workers at your disposal. Things will get done much faster, and you will be much more successful if you properly train your staff.

Another large part of success is advertising. There are many options for advertising your company and video games, from demo distribution to writing your name in the sky and more. Advertising will effect your audience — how many fans you have. The more fans you have, the more sales you’ll make.
You will also occasionally get a nice, free increase in fans. These are usually prompted by receiving a fan letter, all of which are nice and actually make it feel like you’re making these games for a reason.

Back to development itself… Something that will greatly help your development process if the items included in this game. Every now and then there will be a traveling salesman who stops in your building to try and sell you his wares… The more you buy, the more expensive they become, to be careful about the order you make your purchases.
There are several items you can get. My favourite is Dead Bull, which reinvigorates your staff so that they work more efficiently. But there are also the much more useful boosts that you can purchase and choose to use on a staff member, at the expense of some research data.
The good part is that it definitely works, 100% of the time. The bad part is that you don’t benefit as much as you do from random boosts.
The items will make your life much easier, as long as you can learn how to use them properly.

But once you get all that down — once you learn how to make a great game — there’s gotta be a reward other than virtual money, right?
Of course! Virtual trophies!
There’s a yearly event in which trophies are handed out to developers in several different categories. Winning one of these trophies will greatly increase your fandom, as well as put a bit of that virtual money in your pocket. Virtually.
The trophies alone are sometimes what drives me to make a new game. It’s very rewarding, winning one.
And if your game does well enough to win a trophy, that means it might have done well enough to make it into the Hall of Fame.
Depending on review scores, your game could make it into this very Hall. Being in the Hall of Fame means that your game will, guaranteed, do well on the market, AND you can make a sequel.
Sequels are the best. They automatically start off with a good bit of points in each attribute, so they’re much more likely to do well (and then get into the Hall of Fame so you can make ANOTHER sequel).
This system makes me feel kind of bad, though, as I realize that, in this virtual world, I’m just like EA Games is to Madden. Releasing just about the same thing every year and still making mad money.
Regardless, it keeps the people happy and it keeps my company expanding.

Speaking of expanding, once you get far enough into Game Dev Story, games may not even be your primary focus, depending on how you choose to play. You can eventually create game consoles. These bring in a lot of money, and, unlike videogames, do not go off the market ever, until you create a new one. This means it’s a steady stream of money that you can use to fund the next console development, or game development. Once you get to this point, you’re pretty much set for life.

But if you’re ever not doing so well, you can always take up contract work. You develop something for a third party for cash money. Normally it’s simple, but don’t ever accept a job you don’t think you’ll be able to complete — failing to meet a deadline for a contract job means lost respect for your company. That’s never good.

Graphics-wise, this game’s got it covered pretty nicely. It’s nothing spectacular to look at, but it’s simple, appealing, and gets the job done. Besides, most of the time you’ll just be watching numbers and reading words — the graphics honestly don’t even matter that much. But, for what they are, they’re nice.

All-in-all, this game is fantastic. It’s only $3.99 on the App Store and is worth far more than that. I’ve gotten countless hours of gameplay out of this, and don’t intend to stop any time soon. I’ve completely drained my battery doing nothing but playing Game Dev Story. Very much worth a purchase, especially if you at all enjoy simulation games or the idea of feeling like you’ve accomplished something.

Bloody Good Time First Impressions

Connor — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 16:43:06 +0000

I haven’t played enough of Bloody Good Time yet to write a full-fledged review, but I’ve played enough of it to tell you that the title doesn’t lie. If anything, it undersells itself; I’ve had a pretty great time with it so far.

Bloody Good Time is the sequel to a game called The Ship. I’d never heard of it before this, so I can’t really compare the two. But the basic concept is this — In the main game mode, you’re an assassin. But you’re also a target.
You’re on a map with several other players online, and you’re given a name. You have to kill the person whose name you receive. Everybody else also gets a name. In essence, the hunter becomes the hunted, whilst remaining the hunter.

You’re not told who is after you, so you have to keep a keen eye out. You also must be careful not to expose yourself to your target… Keep your weapon and intent concealed until you get close. If you kill your hunter, you get extra points, but if you kill somebody unrelated to your mission, you lose points.

Points also vary with what weapon you use to do the deed. Weapons get more and less popular as the match progresses, so keep up and make sure you’re using some high-point-wielding kill tools. There’s a wide variety of said tools to choose from… There are flamethrowers, knives, rocket launchers, and even remote-detonating rodents. There are also traps set up around all the maps that allow you to dispose of your target with an environmental kill, not getting your own hands dirty.

You’ll also want to keep your actions hidden because of the guards… Guards are scattered around maps, and you’ll gain a “Wanted” status if they see you holding a weapon for too long (you get warned when they first spot you), or if they see you trying to kill somebody. Guards will then chase you down and taze you, resulting in lost points.

But this game isn’t just about killing and avoiding death — there are also special needs, human needs, that your character has. You’ll occasionally need to sit down and rest, grab a snack, or use the restroom. The facilities to please your needs are located around the maps, but you’re very vulnerable while you fulfill them. You’ll just be sitting there for several seconds, and you’re not able to stop mid-process… Once you start, you have to allow the character to finish. This spells trouble if you don’t time it right.

One thing you won’t want to buy this game for is the story — it’s pretty stupid. But it’s hard to say that’s unintentional. The story and characters seem purposely cheesy in a way that gives it a certain charm. In fact, right in the Steam description, it describes the characters as being “stereotypical B-movie characters.”

Bloody Good Time is only $5 on Steam, and is well worth it. It’s built on the Source engine, and has fairly low system requirements.

Indie Game Review – VVVVVV

Connor — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:29:35 +0000

When I first bought VVVVVV, I was a bit skeptical. I had enjoyed the demo (which is free to play on Kongregate, or to download on Steam), but I couldn’t see the lasting appeal. However, it was only $5, and I’d heard so many good things, so I decided to buy it.

I’m so happy that I was wrong about that “lasting appeal” thing. One of my favourite things in VVVVVV is the level design — every screen makes you think in a different way, and it gets progressively more difficult, sometimes to the point of being frustrating, but overall satisfying as hell.
The puzzles in this game never get old. I was constantly amazed at how “fresh” each section was… Some of it was so difficult that I can only imagine how big a pain it must have been to playtest this game, making it only just possible to succeed.

I’m sure that, if you’ve looked into this game at all, you’ve heard about the “Veni, Vidi, Vinci!” sequence of screens. Everything that you’ve heard is correct — it’s incredibly difficult. Hands-down the hardest part of the game, and developer Terry Cavanagh knew it. I’d venture almost as far as to call it torture, if it weren’t for how great it felt to finally overcome the challenge.
And, while that is the hardest part of this game, that’s not the only time you’ll get that feeling.

Let me get into the general gist of the game… In the beginning, you and your crew are all happy on your spaceship — but then you hit interference and the threat of a crash is imminent, forcing you to evacuate. You all go into the nearest portal room and teleport out. The only problem is that everybody teleports to different areas, and the whole place is huge. It’s up to you to find everybody, going through traps that somebody for some reason installed in the ship and other parts of the game world.

VVVVVV is a 2D sidescroller with a twist — you can essentially “flip” gravity, causing you to float to the ceiling and come back down to the ground on command. You use this power to overcome obstacles and weave your way through traps and complex deathly happenings. It’s somewhat of a free-roaming sidescroller, in that you have a goal — to save everybody — but you can go about it however you please, for the most part. You can find challenges at different parts of the game than other players, which is pretty interesting.
As you travel, you’ll come across teleporters. These allow you to travel to previously found teleporters, getting around the map very quickly if you realize you’ve missed something or need to backtrack to find trinkets. (We’ll get to them in just a bit…)

Every challenge is incredibly well designed. A few of them are simple, many are not, requiring cat-like reflexes and sometimes superhuman patience and toleration for failure. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s one very much worth experiencing.

Aside from the main goal of saving all of your coworkers, you can also collect aforementioned “trinkets” — there are twenty in all, scattered about the world. They have special sections of the world, special challenges of their own, leading up to them. In fact, the “Veni, Vidi, Vici!” sequence that I mentioned earlier is for nothing but one trinket. The hardest part in the entire game is for a collectible item that is completely optional. Although, they’re not useless — through collecting the trinkets, you unlock other ways to extend VVVVVV’s playtime. Believe me, it will hold your attention for quite some time if you’re a dedicated completionist.

There’s a certain charm to VVVVVV, as well. It’s an audio-visual joy, with humour in both dialogue, terminal messages, and, most prominently, screen names. Each and every screen has a name to it, and some of them are quite funny. I’ve gone through and read almost all of them, and that’s one part of the game that I’ve really enjoyed.
Back to the audio-visual aspect… The graphics in this game are simple but effective. Okay, VERY simple, and equally as effective. Each screen has its own colour, which is pretty neat. It’s a nice break from the all-brown-and-gray world of first-person shooters, and definitely gives the game a nice quality.
Sound-wise, this game is fantastic. It’s got one of the best chiptune soundtracks that I’ve ever heard. You can actually buy the soundtrack, titled PPPPPP, for only $4. (Very near future purchase for myself.) Collecting trinkets in-game also allows you to unlock new songs, which is a big reason I went around collecting them.
The sound effects are about as simple as the graphics. In fact, there are probably only five or six sound effects in all, but they all fit the simplistic theme of VVVVVV very well. No complaints there.

In fact, the only complaints that I do have about this game are that it’s pretty short (took me but two hours to beat) and the story isn’t great. (It’s sufficient, but nothing special.) I would pay another $5 just to get a level pack DLC, but as it is, this game’s pretty short-lived if you just play through once, and don’t play the other game-modes you can unlock.

All in all, it’s a pretty fantastic game. One of the more popular games on the indie front, and not without good reason — it’s charming, intuitive, fun, and has amazing music. The music alone is worth the purchase price.
This game is purely sadistic, but you won’t be able to put it down.

I give it a

9.5/10

Buy it on Steam or on the official website.