Gamers With Casts

Review: Sum Fighter (Xbox Live Indie)

Lilikka Winger — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:46:37 +0000

Sum Fighters is the first foray into the world of Xbox Live Indie Games by On The Fly Entertainment. Inspired by Tetris Attack, it is a mesh between Puzzle Fighter and Blocksum. If you’re unfamiliar with Blocksum, it’s a puzzle game where numbered blocks rise from the bottom of the screen. Your job is to combine the blocks to get rid of them before it reaches the top. To do this, you need to have two 2 blocks, three 3 blocks, four 4 blocks, etc. next to each other. 1 blocks are immune to this and need to be added together in order to make them disappear.

As you remove blocks, you send locked blocks over to your opponent’s screen and your power meter fills up. Once full, it allows you to use a special attack against your opponent’s screen and hopefully hamper their progress. The player whose screen fills up first is the loser.

There are four characters available (as well as two secret characters that I haven’t figured out how to unlock yet) based on high school cliches: the jock, the nerd, the graffiti artist/stoner, and the goth. Each has their own special move, some of which are better than others (I particularly like the ones that add numbers to the individual blocks, changing a 2 to a 3 and so on).

There are two modes: Story and 2-players Vs. (with a Survival mode in the works, tentatively scheduled for July 1). Each character has their own story. I initially ran through as Edison, whose whole goal was to woo his true love, Audrey (his teacher and one of the hidden characters).

The animations are smooth, though it’s difficult to really notice when you’re in the middle of “fighting.” I really enjoyed the overall feel to the art of the game, though. It was well done and looked to be something that could have had its own Saturday morning cartoon series.

Overall, I had a great time with the game. The action was fast paced, but never too fast that I felt like I couldn’t keep up. I only hope that, in time, there’s an option to play with someone over Xbox Live. While I enjoy Story mode, it’s awfully short and the AI is sometimes a little easy to beat. For 240 MS points ($3), it’s a solid game and will especially be worth it once Survival mode comes out.

Review: Pinch 2 HD (iOS)

Scott Morse — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:32:05 +0000

If you’re looking for a puzzle game on the iPad, you’ve got plenty of options. However, if you’re looking for a great puzzle game on the iPad, you’ll have to dig a little deeper. After playing the first level of Pinch 2 HD, I was afraid that the game might be part of the mediocre majority. In this first level, all I had to do was drag a colored ball (which the game calls a “Norb”) through an extremely simple maze to the finish line. Disappointment set in – surely there’s more to the game than this?

Thankfully, the game does get much more interesting as you move along, with subsequent levels gradually adding more and more elements to the gameplay. Soon you’ll be combining multiple Norbs together to cross over gaps, splitting them apart to fit through narrow doorways, activating switches, and combining specific colors of Norbs in order to pass through color-coded gates. Finishing a level simply requires you to get a certain number of Norbs to the exit. However, each level also has four optional medals that you can earn for “rescuing” every Norb, finding all of the hidden stars, finishing the level within a given time limit, and using the minimum number of splitting actions (also known as “pinches”). Making these goals optional gives novice players a better chance to finish the more challenging levels, while simultaneously giving completionists a reason to revisit each level.

All of these clever design elements would be meaningless if the game didn’t control well. Thankfully, the controls in Pinch 2 HD are straightforward and effective. It feels very natural and intuitive to drag Norbs together to fuse them, and to spread your fingers apart to split them. The tactile nature of the game makes it a great fit for the iPad. In addition, the game wisely adds an option for those who are color blind. With this option activated, each color of Norb also has a unique geometric shape drawn on it. Levels that require specific color combinations will even use these geometric shapes on gates to show you which color combination is required.

Pinch 2 HD is available as a free download which includes the first 20 levels of the game. If you enjoy those levels and want more, you can unlock an additional 80 levels from within the game for a fee ($4.99 as of the writing of this review). While I really enjoyed the game, I found that as I reached the later levels, my patience for the optional goals began to fade, and I was more content to simply finish each level. Still, the developers of the game (Coatsink Software) deserve a lot of credit for the manner in which they gradually introduce new concepts and combine them with existing gameplay elements. I found myself eager to finish each level just to see what new idea would come into play next.

With its creative design and deft combination of various gameplay elements, the base version of Pinch 2 HD is highly recommended, especially since it’s free. Even within the first 20 levels, I suspect that many players will find a lot to like, and those who want more will almost certainly get their money’s worth by purchasing the full game upgrade.

Review: PaperCraft (Xbox Live Indie)

Lilikka Winger — Tue, 24 May 2011 20:48:48 +0000

I’ve never been a big fan of shmups. I have poor reflexes and get panicky when I see too many bullets flying around the screen. That being said, PaperCraft isn’t your average shmup and I kind of dig it. The goal is to fly your paper aircraft (your “papercraft,” if you will) to various refineries to pick up cargo and tech, then bring it back to your base. Once at your base, your cargo is converted to cash, which you can spend on various power-ups. These power-ups will give you more fuel (so you can fly to more refineries before needing to return to base), more cargo space (so you can carry more cargo at once, before needing to return to base), and less time between refineries.

You also need to be able to save up enough cash to buy a Defense Tower, as enemies are closing in on your base and you will be obliterated without one. You’ve only got an hour before they get there. Of course, you can’t just save up your money and never buy power-ups, since you’ll never earn enough cash to buy the tower with just the level 1 refineries alone. It’s a game of resource management as much as it is a shmup.

The game accommodates up to four players in local co-op, and I’ve found it is definitely more fun with more people. At the very least, you’re not the sole focus of all the bullets. Each player also gets to decide where to spend their tech points, though only the session leader can dictate what cash is spent on. Tech points are used to upgrade individual ‘crafts. You’re also able to re-spec your ‘craft on the fly. It’s an interesting feature that allows the game to adjust to each person’s individual play style.

Overall, PaperCraft is a pretty neat game, though I think replay value is a little low. You end up going to a lot of the same areas over and over, and the scenery doesn’t change at all. The graphics also aren’t the greatest, but the music is pretty hip. For 80 MSP, it’s not a bad value, but it’s also not something I’d play a lot of.

Review: Destructopus! (iOS)

Michael Hannon — Thu, 19 May 2011 15:19:18 +0000

As a quiet, giant octopus, you were living peacefully under the ocean until an oil driller woke you from your slumber. Upon your awakening, you find that greedy industrialists are well on their way to destroying the planet. Naturally, your only solution is to bust everything up.

You play as the titular Destructopus in a side-scrolling, classic beat ‘em up. The core gameplay is very simple, with the on screen buttons controlling your movement and ducking along with your chomping and swiping. The only real goal you have in the level is to rescue small, furry animals at the end of each level while destroying enough stuff in the environment to earn yourself a medal.

There’s a ton of content in the game, too, between a large number of well-sized levels and a good number of items for purchase in the in-game store. The in-game store uses both points you gather for destroying items in each level along with real money, but the points you get from playing accrue even if you die or fail a level.

I wish there was more to say about Destructopus, but it’s a simple, fun, and incredibly cheap game that continues to be updated by the developers. Put simply, it’s well worth your time and money.

Review: Hector: Badge of Carnage Episode 1 (PC)

Michael Hannon — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:54:55 +0000

Hector: Badge of Carnage is the latest game in Telltale’s series of point-and-click adventure games. Badge of Carnage Episode 1: We Negotiate With Terrorists features the titular Detective Inspector Hector, the one man that Tactical Weapons and Tactics (yes, that’s right) things can get a hostage situation resolved.

Except he’s a bad cop in a town full of bad cops, though he’s an excellent drunkard. He also wakes up at the beginning of the game locked in a cell and seems to be missing his pants. Oddly enough, that seems to be the norm for Hector’s life.

There starts the first puzzle, one that actually uses a used condom as part of the solution. None of the puzzles are overly challenging if you still remember puzzle game logic from the previous adventure game boom. Thankfully none of the puzzles require any strange leaps of logic like past games in the genre.

To aid you in your policing and puzzling, there’s a built-in hint system with multiple levels of hints, ranging from vague, “Hey, you most likely already have this in your inventory” to the game explicitly laying the solution out for you if you ask for it. I liked how the hint system was always slightly insulting, keeping the same ton as the rest of the game. It may have even recommended that I go play Angry Birds when I tried out the hints for one of the puzzles.

Both the story and the voice acting were both fantastic. Hector sounds just bored enough and is just enough of a jerk for me to be excited about the next rude thing he was going to say. And Hector’s character fits so well into the dirty, nasty town that he’s working to protect, when he’s not drunk. There are junkies lying half-dead in the park, old ladies with tasers, and the only store that seems to be doing well in town in the porn shop.

Hector’s first game is a great, snappy, and incredibly fun. I completed it in a little over four hours, which turned out to be a great time: not too long and not too short, especially for the low price it goes for. If you’re like me and fondly remember adventure games or want to see what all the fuss is about, Hector Episode 1 absolutely gets my recommendation.

GWC Is Coming Back Online

Michael Hannon — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:47:57 +0000

Hello, I’m Michael Hannon, the new Editor-in-chief here. You may remember me as the guy who loves virtually every game he’s ever played. Except for X-Blades. I draw the line there.

A few months after I’ve taken the site over from Chuck, I’m finally getting around to cleaning out the last of the cobwebs and getting this facility back up and running (Portal 2 jokes are still funny, right?). You’ll see new pages, new reviewers, and new content at the same low price as before.

I love feedback and never mind answering any questions, so feel free to post in the comments for this story, email me at michaelh@gamerswithcasts.com, tweet @gamerswithcasts, or just yell really loudly. I have great hearing.

Eric Cartman (and something called Lady Gaga) Coming To Rock Band

An Open Letter to Kinect Owners: Mute Your Microphone

Brent Tyler — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:01:51 +0000

I absolutely adore the social aspects of Xbox Live. Over the years, I’ve met many like-minded gamers simply by playing the games I love to play. Finding a new person to talk to and joke with really adds to the camaraderie (and playful smack-talking) that go so well with online gaming. Wearing my headset when no one else wanted to talk was always a small price to pay when the payoff was finding a new gaming partner from across the nation or world.

When the Kinect launched last November, I was one of the first people I knew to buy one. I’ll tell you it was for my two daughters but, really, it’s because I’m a technophile and I wanted to really bust a move in Dance Central.

During the setup of the Kinect hardware, Microsoft asked me if I wanted to use the internal microphone (you know, the one that responds to your voice commands) as a substitute for my regular headset for in-game chat. I thought that was a really novel idea and would make my gaming sessions ever-so-much more comfortable. Ultimately, I decided against enabling that feature because I thought I might forget it was on and people would hear things I didn’t mean to say out over the Xbox Live service or I’d flood them with background noise if I was enjoying a custom soundtrack at a ridiculous volume level as I’m wont to do when playing casual games.

I did not realize how right I was.

Lately I’ve been playing very social online games like You Don’t Know Jack and Bejeweled Blitz Live, the latter of which supports up to 16 players at a time. As fun as it is still to play with and against other people in the games I love, the chat-enabled Kinects out there have turned the social aspects I love so much against me.

According to Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, at his 2011 CES keynote, Microsoft had shipped eight million Kinect devices in the first 60 days. Now, in early March, that number has undoubtedly grown even more. With more and more of these devices being attached to Xboxes around the world, there are more and more people playing games on Xbox Live while their Kinect is silently listening and broadcasting what is going on in the room to the other players in their session.

The problem here is not so much the annoyance of the other players but it’s the fact that I would wager most, if not all, of these players do not realize it is happening. This became really apparent when I would play You Don’t Know Jack (a fast-paced trivia game meant for parties) against other players who had their spouse, family, or friends there with them all shouting out answers. Normal living room conversations unknowingly broadcast to the three strangers playing in their game.

I have to wonder if these players realize they enabled this feature. Even if they intend to use it other times, this passive chat-enabling is easy to forget when you’re not actively plugging in and wearing a headset. They don’t want to be heard when they don’t mean to be heard as much as we don’t want to hear them.

Now I realize that I have it in my power to silence all random strangers I play with on my end with just a few button presses. The problem with that solution is that no one should have to change the way they enjoy Xbox Live or limit their opportunities for social interaction because other people aren’t aware of the problem they’re causing. It’s very different needing to mute an individual player because of what they’re meaning to say than it is to mute everyone because of this new development.

I implore everyone with a Kinect to disable the chat function primarily for your own privacy but also on behalf of every social gamer like myself who is being slowly pushed away from enjoying one of the core features of the Xbox Live service.

Further, I beg the Xbox team at Microsoft to rethink having this feature at all. Perhaps, at the very least, the next scheduled dashboard update could include a warning to Kinect owners with the setting enabled about what might be happening without their knowledge and offer then to disable the feature for them.

Leaving it as it is punishes everyone that enjoys using Xbox Live to its fullest.

Review: You Don’t Know Jack (360)

Chuck Dowling — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 08:00:24 +0000

Finally!

The mid to late 1990s was a very memorable time period in my life. I was emerging from a very dark place (ie marriage) and had a new job with new friends. One introduced me to a little PC trivia game called You Don’t Know Jack, and from then on it was something all of us played religiously. We bought every new edition, the spinoffs, even the console remakes on the original Playstation. We’d hang out after work gathered around a PC, answering trivia questions and laughing our asses off.

Even though my friends and I were convinced that a YDKJ revival was a no brainer for current consoles now that downloadable and episodic content had become commonplace, I was still a bit dubious when I learned that a new version was hitting consoles and PC all these years later. While the game had continued online in various forms, there hadn’t been a proper release since 2003. What if its time had passed?

If you share my concerns, I’m here to tell you that you can brush them aside. This 2011 version of You Don’t Know Jack is picture perfect. It retains everything that made the original games great while still being an excellent test of random knowledge. And seriously, EVERYTHING is here: the studio chatter, the wacky commercials, the creative numerical introductions to each question, host Cookie Masterson (voiced by Tom Gottlieb)… even the fonts are accurate.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series but enjoy a quiz game with some hilarity mixed into the proceedings, YDKJ is for you. While the sights and sounds trigger all sorts of wonderful memories for me from times gone by, under all the nostalgia lies an incredibly smart trivia game. Questions work on multiple levels. You’re not just being asked to answer a simple question, but to decipher the question itself along with the phrasing of the multiple choice answers to determine exactly what the host is looking for. If you’re not paying attention and miss a clue, you’ll suffer mightily.

There are 73 episodes to play, each lasting at least 12 minutes or so when playing solo and even longer when playing with friends (older versions of the game were limited to three players but here you can play both online and off with four). That’s nearly 15 hours of snarky game play for only $40. And packs of additional episodes should be available as DLC soon if the details in the game’s achievements are to be believed. Most $60 games these days don’t give you that much entertainment.

If I was forced at gunpoint to say something negative about the game, it would be that you must use four controllers if you’re playing a local four-player game. That may sound like a silly complaint, but the PS1 version of YDKJ allowed two players to share a controller, one using the directional pad to ring in while the other used the face buttons. I can only guess that the four controller requirement is due to Xbox Live policies / different user profiles, etc. Fortunately you are able to use the Scene It controllers if you have them, and if you don’t you can find them various places fairly cheap.

That’s my only complaint about the game, and like I said it was coerced from me via threats of gun violence. If you’re a fan of the series then this is a triumphant return. If you’ve never played a YDKJ game before but like things made with an ample helping of snarky jokes, intelligent trivia and lots of love, you should check this out on the platform of your choice (it’s also available on PS3, Wii, DS and PC).

We should embrace the quality games when they come along. Well here’s one, so get to embracing.

In Defense of… The Boxee Box by D-Link

Chuck Dowling — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:11:42 +0000

(Editor’s note: I admit that the Boxee Box’s connection to gaming is tenuous at best, but it’s also a cool piece of tech that many gamers might find useful. So shut it.)

There is no perfect anything. Even your most cherished things in life: your smartphone, your spouse, your choice of entertainment… all of these things can and do have downsides. You just overlook them because the good outweighs the bad. Hopefully.

Set-top media devices are a shining example of a product that, depending on its feature set, can appeal to a wide variety of consumers. For some people, a DVD or Blu Ray player with built in Netflix and Hulu capabilities are more than enough to keep them happy forever. For others, an inexpensive Home Theater PC type device that will play their local files is more desirable. Still others still are chasing after the holy grail of these types of devices: a set-top box that will play both local files and all available web content.

Unfortunately no such device exists, nor do I think we’ll ever see one (at least not until a couple generations of network TV executives die off). While not blatantly doing so, the Boxee Box from D-Link appeared to be hinting at it being “the perfect device for all”. As a result, a handful of very vocal customers have been quite displeased with the product, and in its current form it most certainly is not perfect. You might be seeing some harsh comments in tech forums or in the reviews section on Amazon.

If you’re still on the fence though, allow me to attempt a different spin on it.

This Customer’s Background

I currently have more Netflix-capable devices than I actually have disc players, and I have at least four ways to access Hulu and Hulu Plus. As far as getting internet content to my eyes, whether it be on a computer or on my TV, I’m set. The bane of my existence has been local files.

I’ve been attempting to archive my VHS collection of rare movies and TV shows for a good 10 years or so. And over time, file formats have come and gone, each purporting to be the next big thing in digital media but eventually are abandoned for the something else. Trouble is that once I’ve archived something, I’ve disposed of the original tape. So often times I’m stuck with some goofy format that now needs to be converted to some new format that takes 18 hours to render while using 100% of my computer’s processor. Or the devices that are connected to my TV are only compatible with two or three basic types of video files and therefore my movie won’t stream. The constant converting, transferring, burning, realizing that a certain player doesn’t like a certain brand of disc reburning, etc. process I was going through was driving me insane.

My initial solution worked fairly well for a while. Once the Xbox 360 launched and the original Xbox was discontinued, I bought up a slew of the cheap systems and converted them to XBMC players. XBMC is a feature rich media player than runs on a number of devices. Unfortunately XBMC support for the original Xbox has been discontinued, as the software has outgrown the limitations of big black beast’s original hardware.

Enter the Boxee Box

The Boxee Box is a product that I’d been looking forward to for a while as a long term solution to my problems. “Powered by XBMC!” is what the teaser site proclaimed. That was certainly appealing. And you could download a version of the Box’s software for your computer to tinker with in the meantime. While it wasn’t as feature rich as XBMC, the software was still in Beta, and so clearly it would only be getting better.

What we got at launch was a bit of a mess. No Netflix or Hulu… two of the most popular components that were available on the computer side of things. Also, the UI was revamped almost entirely from what we’d been tinkering with on the PC/Mac side, and in some ways not for the better. Focus had been shifted from local media management to online video, and there just wasn’t any notable online content available unless you like foreign documentaries about goats with a hot chick on the cover to trick you into clicking on it. Shifting the focus of the software only highlighted the fact that the big boys weren’t playing ball yet.

There are a slew of web apps currently available, most of which have little to no interest to me but can be a treasure trove of media to others. Online workout videos, plenty of tech and entertainment related podcasts, hell even adult entertainment if that’s your thing. It’s not mine of course but… is my wife still reading? No? Okay… there’s porn here too! Yay porn! (You can block adult content, if you’re a prude or have kids or just hate pretty things.)

Recently added was the VUDU app, which is Wal-Mart’s video on demand service. This is a very slick app that gives you access to a ton of movies (at a price). While I can’t see myself paying upwards of $5.99 to stream an 1080p HD rental, there are plenty of catalog titles available for less and there’s even a daily $0.99 special.

The Actual Box

The most important distinction that needs to be made here is that this is two different products. Boxee is the software (which needs work). The Boxee Box by D-Link is a piece of hardware running that software. I have absolutely zero qualms about the box itself.

However, the included remote is both genius and a bit stupid. The back of the remote is a full QWERTY keyboard, but it’s not backlit or even made with any kind of luminescent lettering. So often times you end up turning on a light somewhere when you need to use it, and that can break the zen like flow of a properly set up home theater experience.

And it comes with a HDMI cable. Holy cow a device with an included HDMI cable! I know you can get them from online retailers for cheap, but still… suck on that Apple, Sony and Microsoft!

But Does It Do What I Want?

So if you’ve been following along, you’re like me and want something to play all your local files without any file conversion or hiccups of any kind. This is where the Boxee Box is worth its weight in gold. I have yet to find one single file out of the thousands and thousands that I’ve tested so far that won’t play. That’s. Awesome.

On the flipside, organization of my media has been somewhat of a nightmare. I can’t understand how something “powered by XBMC” can ship with simple things missing like the ability to disregard articles like A, An, and The at the beginning of a title. While this “feature” has since been added via an update and now works like a dream, the fact that something as simple as that wasn’t included at launch furthers the theory that the Box was taken out of the oven way too soon.

The aformentioned VUDU app further demonstrates Boxee’s appearance flaws. VUDU is organized amazingly well. It’s clean and fast, and gives cast and crew info for the movies listed which you can click on to take you to other available movies in the library. It’s even connected to Wikipedia. THIS is what your library of local files should look like!

Conclusions

It sucks to be an early adopter just to end up having paid money to become a beta tester. This is essentially what happened to those of us who jumped in at the beginning. The alluded to features of the software just weren’t there, and it’s been a struggle ever since just to get the box to accomplish basic organizational tasks.

But unlike XBMC, which really isn’t an organization per se, Boxee is a legitimate company, and as such they’ll be updating the box’s firmware at regular intervals. There have already been three HUGE updates, and now they’re releasing smaller ones in between to address specific problems. They’re clearly working on it and are passionate about getting it right, and so I can get behind that. Plus, Netflix and Hulu ARE coming…

Is it naive to think at some point this will be an amazing bit of tech? Maybe. But so far I like what I’ve seen, and the potential is definitely there. For my needs it’s the best product currently available for less than $200, so I’m here for the long haul. Hopefully Boxee will be too.

Review: Breach (XBLA)

Michael Hannon — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:56:26 +0000

Breach is the latest game from Atomic Games, long-time developers of the Close Combat series. Breach is a team-based, first person shooter that focuses on highly destructible environments.

Thankfully, the destructible environments are more than just eye candy. One of the loading screens suggests that, if under fire from a sniper in a building, bring the roof down onto his head. Impressively, tactics like those actually work. There were a few matches that had the tide turn partway through because our team was able to destroy a building that was used as cover by the other team, forcing them out into the open. And, to be honest, watching a building explode into wood planks and shrapnel was incredibly satisfying.

Breach’s other basic system is Active Cover, its third-person cover system. While certainly useful, I never really got comfortable with it during my time with the game. Peeking out from cover seemed a little twitchy and I had trouble moving from side to side while in cover. Active Cover may work in the long run, but my first few matches with it felt needlessly frustrating.

All the usual suspects are here for leveling and progression. You get XP for kills, assists, and an amount based on how your team performed in the match. The XP you’ve accumulated serves a number of different purposes for both leveling your different roles along with purchasing different gadgets/perks for your loadout. As you play one of the game’s five different classes (Rifleman, Gunner, Sniper, Support, and Recon), your XP gained for kills while playing that class go towards unlocking new guns for that same class. Additionally, overall XP gained can be used to purchase gadgets, perks, and attachments. With so many different classes and so many items to buy in-game, it’s nice to see a game that you can’t blow through in a solid weekend.

The five different game types are pretty standard, too. Team Deathmatch is here, along with Sole Survivor (no respawns until one team wins), and Infiltration, the Capture Points mode. The other two modes were the ones that I preferred; Convoy has your team escorting a pair of trucks through the enemy’s base, stopping to repair the vehicles or blow up blockades, and Retrieval, where your team needs to grab canisters and return them to your team’s points. I should also note that there are no single player modes in Breach and no bot matches.

Overall, nothing in Breach really blew me away. The graphics are less-than-stellar, the sound is okay, and the game comes with a small number of maps (I only saw two, though I heard there were five). Breach never clicked with me, though that doesn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t recommend it. With a little post-release love from Atomic and a strong community, Breach could have lasting power. If team-based, first person shooters are in your wheelhouse, Breach is certainly worth a try.

Review: Crossfire 2 (Xbox Live Indie)

Leroy Capasso — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 13:49:41 +0000

Crossfire 2 is (naturally) the sequel to Crossfire; the fantastic little take on the tried-and-true Space Invaders from radiangames. If you hadn’t played the first game, the main hook of the game is the ability to flip between the top and bottom of the screen area to avoid an otherwise unavoidable assault of attacks from one end (or the other).

Not a whole lot has changed from the first game, but what has changed is pretty good. There are some new enemy types, include large-sized “mega enemies,” a more robust and fully customizable upgrade system (where you get to choose how your ship’s powers evolve instead of it being pre-determined) and a mode dedicated to online leaderboards.

The game has three main modes: Conquest, which is a static set of stages, Conquest Plus, a tougher version of the previous mode unlocked upon completion of Conquest and Score Attack, a competitive version of the game with a score multiplier and online leaderboard support.

If you are unfamiliar with the first game, you control a ship firing at enemy ships in the middle of the screen. You have a regular shot and a power shot. The power shot uses ammo collected from defeated enemies and is used for quick destruction of enemies and/or possibly as a saving maneuver. The power shot can even be upgraded to penetrate shielded enemies (which would normally need to have surrounding enemies powering the shield eliminated first). You are able to move only left and right on the playing field but you are able to jump from the bottom to the top (and vice versa) with the click of a button. Given the excessive nature of enemy firepower, this is needed to stay alive, as well as used as some enemies can only be defeated from on end or the other. Bonus enemies float past the top or bottom occasionally that drop items if defeated granting full power shot ammo or a temporary slowing of all enemies. Don’t forget to grab these as they can sway things in your favor greatly!

Every two stages (ten in Score Attack) you given an allotment of points to put into a variety of upgrades, from speed and health to a great variety of upgrades to your shot and power shot. Each upgrade stop also refills your health. Now my biggest (only?) complaint I have is that this happens pretty quickly and frequently in the stand Conquest modes. Given how quickly you can blast through two stages it tends to be a real momentum stopper.

As the first sequel in the radiangames series, it’s very much a game to grab if you really enjoyed the first one and want to tear it up on the leaderboards or if you haven’t played the first game. If you didn’t like the first game, the changes here probably won’t sway you as it’s definitely an incremental update to the first game (which is good news to fans of the original). Obviously the big draw here is the Score Attack mode and competing against other players on a worldwide scoreboard always amps up these types of arcade shooters.

Review: Intellivision Lives! (DS)

Brent Tyler — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:44:45 +0000

When the Intellivision home video game console released at the dawn of the 1980’s, I was a toddler. My father chose to purchase it over the popular Atari 2600. Whatever his reasons, my earliest video game memories involve the Intellivision, particularly beating him in Armor Battle when I was four or five years old and ending his desire to play video games ever again. That is a true story.

Ultimately I would leave the Intellivision behind for my Commodore 64 and IBM machines as the decade changed. As time went on, I looked in my parents’ attic for the old system but it was gone. I scoured flea markets and garage sales in high school and college (before eBay) to no avail. Then it was announced that The Blue Sky Rangers (a group of original Intellivision programmers including Keith Robinson) had acquired the publishing rights to their old games and were releasing a compilation called Intellivision Lives! on the PC. I purchased that as soon as it was available and was instantly transported back to my childhood. It was what I had been searching for.

Time went on, life happened and I moved away from the PC for the new consoles. Mostly because my job kept me at a PC and I didn’t find it relaxing any more. I left behind my copies of Intellivision Lives! and its successor, Intellivision Rocks!, and picked up the Xbox controller. It wasn’t long before I purchased the Xbox version of Intellivision Lives!, but it wasn’t the same.

What made the Intellivision unique was its controller. If you’ve never held one or even seen it, it’s hard to explain. It was like a telephone keypad with twelve face buttons, two buttons on each side, and an omnidirectional disc that was your joystick/d-pad. Each game used the sixteen buttons differently and came with overlays that you would slide into your controller to let you know how the buttons were mapped using custom artwork. It was very elegant and robust. However, it’s impossible to fully emulate today. That’s why the console version, to me, never worked as well as the PC. With a joystick and keyboard, I could easily get back into the games with only a minor adjustment. The console versions tried to map the twelve face buttons to the second analog stick. It never felt right to me and it relied on memorization to know which direction mapped to which function for each game.

I would be remiss to not mention my disappointment with the emulation of the Intellivision games in Microsoft’s Game Room for the Xbox 360. While one would think the games would play as well as the previous retail releases, they do not. Krome Studios did a very poor job with them. Most notably the inability for the engine to register multiple inputs simultaneously. This is important in video gaming when you want to move and shoot at the same time, for example. Whether it was Astrosmash not being able to use the warp function unless you stop moving or Night Stalker when you’re running away from a menacing robot sentry and you want to shoot behind you before you turn the corner. Not to mention actual twitch games like Sub Hunt or Space Battle which require quick reaction. Even with these problems, I’ve still purchased more than a dozen titles at $3 each because I love the games so much.

Okay, okay, enough rambling, how is Intellivision Lives! on the Nintendo DS? It’s phenomenal. Go buy it now.

This port was announced many years ago and as soon as it was, every Intellivision fan knew this would be the premiere version. The secondary touchscreen of the DS provided the PERFECT mechanism to replicate the overlays AND give them functionality. While I’ve had to wait many years since announcement until The Blue Sky Rangers could secure publishing and get the game in my hand, I’m so very happy by what has been delivered. The added ability to utilize the DS’s single-cart multiplayer really rounds out the package.

This compilation contains over 60 classic and unique gaming experiences to which most people haven’t been exposed. Every game is presently faithfully from graphics, sounds, music, controls, and even the Intellivoice peripheral (yes, the system could speak through some games!). Sadly, there are no Imagic or Activision titles that appeared on Intellivision Rocks!, but I imagine there has been some realigning of publishing rights there.

My kids are slightly older than I was when I first got an Intellivision and they’ve already been exposed to the highlights of three decades of gaming history. Between playing Pac-Man, Galaga, Dance Central, Rock Band, Mario Kart, The Maw, Splosion Man, and many other games, I’ve managed to introduce them to some of these games. They enjoy the simplicity of Frog Bog and Thin Ice as well as the frantic action in Snafu and Space Armada.

I can’t imagine anyone that would be disappointed with this release. Whether you owned an Intellivision three decades ago or you’ve never heard of it, you will find several games to which you can keep coming back. A time capsule of perfect emulation. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Keith Robinson helped design the Nintendo DS for this very purpose.

Review: Avatar QuizCall Xmas Edition (XBLA)

Chuck Dowling — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:32:53 +0000

I have to admit that, while my opinion of the original Avatar QuizCall wasn’t stellar, the game itself grew on me. So when the Xmas version of this indie quiz game came out, I was interested enough to try it out. My first thought was wondering if there were even enough questions about the holiday to warrant a special version. Turns out there certainly is, especially if there are questions about Thanksgiving thrown in there for good measure, making it more of a “Holiday Edition” than “Xmas.”

This time around, the in-game “studio” where the show is hosted has been decorated for Christmas and piano renditions of various Christmas songs play in the background, which is certainly nicer than the original game’s music. Also missing is the incessant pulsating sound that I complained about in the first game. I don’t know what it was supposed to be, but I’m glad it’s gone. It makes the game so much more enjoyable.

Like the original, you’re able to choose from Short, Medium, Long and Extra Long games (5, 10, 20, and 40 questions respectively). However, the game takes into account that not everyone is from the same country and allows players to choose from US questions and UK questions, or a mixture of both. Being an ignorant American, I did find that I didn’t know the answers to most of the UK questions, but it was still interesting to play with them, especially if you want to pick up a little bit of trivia from the other side of the pond.

My major gripe from the original game is still here: the game lags a bit after answering questions, probably due to the movement of the avatars in the audience. It doesn’t seem as bad as it was before, as it’s at least bearable now. The game doesn’t feel like it’s terribly long, even playing the Extra Long game, and is actually kind of fun. And, at only 80 MS Points, it’s not a bad price. After decorating our Christmas tree, my family and I all sat down to a game and had a good time.

My (Personal) 2010 GAME OF THE YEAR Picks

Chuck Dowling — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:43:38 +0000

I won’t be starting any new games before the end of the year, so I guess it’s time to vomit up my trivial little choices for the best (and worst) games I played in 2010. Keep in mind that these are simply personal choices… I haven’t played everything that came out in 2010 nor would I attempt to pretend that I did. Plus, my choice was pretty much sealed by the end of January, as you’ll see below.

Healthy debate and childish namecalling is hereby encouraged.

OVERALL GAME OF THE YEAR:
* Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)
- Runners Up: Deadly Premonition, Alan Wake

MUSIC/RHYTHM GAME OF THE YEAR:
* Rock Band 3 (Xbox 360)

RACING GAME OF THE YEAR:
* Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (Xbox 360)
- Runner Up: Blur (Xbox 360)

DOWNLOADABLE GAME OF THE YEAR:
* Pinball FX 2 (XBLA)
- Runner Up: Pac-Man CE DX (XBLA)

MOBILE GAME OF THE YEAR:
* Words With Friends (iPhone)

GAME OF THE YEAR (Had I Played Them When They Actually Came Out):
* Batman Arkham Asylum and Dead Space (tie)

“CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR” NICE TRY OF THE YEAR:
* Alpha Protocol and Metro 2033 (tie)

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR:
* Game Room (XBLA)

Review: Fireball (Xbox Live Indie)

Leroy Capasso — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:15:00 +0000

I had a feeling that Fireball might be a breakout hit for radiangames when I let my girlfriend try it and over an hour later, I was fighting to get the controller back so I could continue with my evaluation.

Basically, Fireball is an extremely expanded take on the Pacifism mode from Geometry Wars 2 with some slight differences. You move your little ship (which is actually the titular Fireball) around like other twin-stick shooters except you don’t have a direct means of attack. Instead, you must lure your enemies (various ice based meanies out to put out your flame) into the paths of mines that exploded when you float past them. The basic baddies tail you directly, so you can easily manipulate dozens to hundreds of little ice cubes in a Pied Piper like fashion into the face of a mine. The more you blast at once, the higher your score gets!

While that’s the basic premise and pretty close to GW2: Pacifism, Fireball adds a few elements to it. For starters, the game progress in stages, with more enemies and new enemy types after passing each kill count milestone. This adds an interesting element to the formula many people already know. The Pied Piper like trail you create can be hampered by a few little stationary enemies, no? Or how about black holes that suck in anything that gets close to it?

You can also pick up little drops that each defeated enemy leaves behind. Instead of acting as a multiplier, these simply increase in score value for each one picked up, so you still want to balance between staying alive and risking death to pick up as many as possible. As a secondary feature, each drop picked up adds some juice to a “boost meter,” giving you temporary ability to speed up in times of desperation. In addition, every time you take out fifty or more enemies in one clip, a special mine is left behind that you can trigger instantly by floating over it that happens to have a larger explosion radius. There’s also the aspect of increased multiplier for enemies destroyed by mines that have gone off in comb succession (though this is much tougher to pull off intentionally than the gates approach of GW2).

In addition to the standard mode (that progress through eight stages), you have five special themed challenge stages that start off at maximum capacity and instead of giving you a kill goal; you have a set time limit to maximize your score. I personally found these a lot more fun than the stage approach and the action starts off so intense. There’s also a “chilled” version of the main game with a reduced difficulty.

If you looked back at the radiangames releases, you could almost agree across the board that one of the biggest things missing from all of them is online leaderboards. If I understand correctly, this is mostly due to them not being part of the current XNA development libraries and Fireball (and other XBLIG games that have leaderboards) are supported due to a sort of “work around.” Technicality aside, online leaderboard support elevates this game to another level by letting you compare scores to worldwide players or your friends and pushing you to get higher and higher.

Visuals and soundtrack are on par with the past few radiangames releases although I find the blue and orange color scheme to be much more pleasing than the last couple of games visuals. An recent update allows you to change music tracks on the fly, a good idea to allow you to switch to your favorite track during intense moments.

Fireball is a great, addictive game and the leaderboard support puts it in my rotation far more often than not. It really makes you hope that Microsoft gets proper leaderboard support into XNA so more XBLIG games can add this great feature without having to use the existing workarounds. Another dollar WELL DESERVED to radiangames!

Review: Sonic Free Riders (Kinect)

Michael Hannon — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:35:49 +0000

With the launch of a new platform or high-profile peripheral, especially something as controller-free as Kinect, there are bound to be issues. It’s a shame that Sonic Free Riders has so many issues that keep it from being much else other than frustrating.

The problems start early, with a menu system that’s cumbersome at best. You’re presented with a ring of icons; flick your hand to the left or right to move through the items and pull an icon towards the bottom right-hand corner to launch. Though it can be frustrating to use due to its insistence on accuracy (especially on the pulling step), the menus get downright frustrating when you’re presented with more than a few items, making navigation and purchasing items in the in-game shop a bear. Either presenting the player with a grid on-screen that requires the standard hold-your-hand-in-front-of-it selection process or allowing for controller inputs would have helped monumentally.

The control issues extend beyond the menus and into the game itself. You’re instructed to stand sideways, similar to riding a skateboard, to auto-accelerate. Unfortunately, every other motion I tried worked intermittently at best. To steer, you lean forward and backwards. That wouldn’t be a problem if the detection was better; there were times where I’d lean a little and turn sharply and other times where I was bending backwards in a near contortionist-like, ab-burning movements. Jumping, item usage, and track-specific motions all fall short because of the control issues.

The game’s main draw is World Grand Prix, a mission-based mode wrapped by fairly standard Sonic interactions and a predictable story (spoiler alert: the Chaos Emeralds are in trouble again). Sonic’s team has a rival in the Babylon Rogues, with their captain Jet the Hawk. All of that is window-dressing for a fairly standard mission mode, very similar in feel and objectives to the mission mode in the recently released Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. The other modes are the typical time trial modes, along with a few variants of regular races, and standard online modes. In the time I spent with the game, I was unable to find a full lobby to race online.

It’s a shame that there are so many problems because when the game was working correctly I really got into it. Leaning to take turns while collecting rings and actually throwing weapons (not just pressing a button) was fun. Sonic Free Riders needed a little more time in the oven to iron out the problems. With those in place, there are better alternatives for putting your new Kinect to use.

Review: Jam Party – Be the Music (PC)

Leroy Capasso — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:42:07 +0000

Upon first hearing of Jam Party: Be the Music, I was almost immediately made to think of a few other products that have quickly come and gone over the last few years thanks to the plastic guitar genre, another “me too” product in a market that was in some ways already on the way down.

Thankfully, Jam Party was something different. Jam Party is something of a “free form” music creation game. Instead of pressing pre-determined buttons to the beat of the song as it plays (which is like, 99% of the genre), you control all of the individual drum, bass, chord and melody tracks, turning them on and off to actually create the song from the ground up.

The game supports a few control methods, including USB versions of those little guitars you may have lying around. Unfortunately, I only had a wireless guitar available so I stuck with the mouse, which after playing, feels like the natural control method for the game as it’s more about controlling the music in the studio as opposed to pretending to play the song.

Each jam sessions starts with you selecting a song and a venue (for background visuals) and then you select a time length for your jam. From there the rest is up to you! The song selection is varied, ranging from rock and pop to electronic and experimental. Then you are presented with an interface showing off the various tracks, separated into groups of five (such as five bass tracks, five lead tracks, five vocal tracks). You can turn each track on or off individual or right click a series and let them all go at once. The goal is to turn the tracks on or off to create a seamless song. There is also a small series of free form jams you can click to play at your own rhythm.

Jam Party suffers a strange identity crisis. It’s marketed as and tries to play as a game but it feels like more of a virtual toy. It’s extremely fun to play the songs in the game but it never actually feels like a game and the scoring and unlocking system almost seems shoe-horned in to actually classify it as a game. You’ll have to play to earn points to unlock additional songs and venues. Jam Party would have benefited from having the “game” aspects removed and having the full track list unlocked at the start. A lot of the songs sound great (though it’s nothing you’ll be familiar with) and it seems like a chore to have to play more to get to songs you may want to try out.

Another thing is that the spread of music genres doesn’t really feel like they meld well with the game system. The electronic songs in the game work AMAZINGLY with the tracking system. As a fan (and writer) of electronic music, I even connected to it a bit as far as the familiarity with building different aspects of the song up and down and dropping parts out for a great breakdown. But the rock music feels a little awkward with how the system works.

At $10, it’s certainly something that you can have a lot of fun with, I know I did. I just think that working it and branding it as a game seems like a move to attach it to things like Rock Band when it may have been better identified as an interactive music toy (or tool maybe, if toy carries a negative connotation to you). A larger focus on electronic music would have benefited as well, mostly because it just works better with what the game system offers and secondly, it’s a genre that its fans (like me) feel isn’t well represented in the music game world and certainly, fans of rock music have plenty of other choices.

How to Save Rock Band (And Maybe Even Rock Itself)

Chuck Dowling — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:22:49 +0000

With the reportedly lackluster sales of the latest Guitar Hero game and the impending sale of Rock Band makers Harmonix to one of four bidding companies, gaming journalists seem to be overflowing with eagerness to trumpet the death of the music game genre. I’ve yet to understand this mentality within gaming circles, as if there are still people with the “go play a real instrument, dork” mindset as they try and concentrate on their real space marine fantasy soap opera.

But that’s not what I want to focus on today. My beef is with the music industry, specifically record companies who are always bemoaning the loss of revenue due to piracy and other digital means. Quite frankly, the music industry is doomed if they allow this video game genre to crash and burn. And yet the fact that they haven’t embraced it as wholeheartedly as they should just proves their level of cluelessness. If they want to increase revenue, especially from product collecting dust in their vaults, the solution is right here and they’re going to let it die?

I know it’s unrealistic, but in a perfect world where businesses want to make money, all the record companies need to join forces and create a shell corporation which then purchases Harmonix. Give Harmonix carte blanche to license music, and then PROMOTE ALL YOUR ARTISTS’ MUSIC WITHIN THE GAME. Appropriate new releases should have album/Rock Band bundle downloads. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to buy a new album in stores and get three tracks from it in Rock Band with purchase.

Even if a company not related to the record industry manages to purchase Harmonix, licensing a track to Rock Band (or Guitar Hero) is simply win-win. The record company gets paid for the license, and it’s the only existing digital file of a song that’s both piracy-proof and useless anywhere else. You can’t burn tracks from RB/GH to a CD or import them into an iPod, which means if the consumer ever wants to hear the song elsewhere, it has to be purchased. Again. For an industry that is constantly crying over lost revenue due to piracy, this should be a revelation. It’s the very definition of new media. As gamers we’re buying a song which could potentially lead to buying the song again. That’s pure genius, and yet, record execs don’t seem to be grasping it.

I like music, I do… but I don’t “follow” it. Unless you seek it out, there’s no way of really staying on top of what’s released each week. It’s not like movies where even if you don’t go to the movies you know what’s playing thanks to online and TV advertising. I’m a busy guy. I don’t subscribe to Spin or Rolling Stone, so my knowledge of music these days essentially comes from Satellite Radio for about 15 minutes per day as I’m driving to and from work, and whoever the musical guest is on Saturday Night Live.

Now here are some of this week’s new album releases:

Of those, I know who Sarah Boyle, Reba McEntire and Aaron Neville are. And Creed (shudder). But the rest? No effing clue. Yet they’re all listed as Pop/Rock, a genre I obviously enjoy. Why not promote them within a game tailored toward people who like pop and/or rock?

Now, last week’s Bon Jovi DLC release in Rock Band? Right on. I get to play songs I like, and it made me aware of an album release that I didn’t know was coming. That’s the way to do it. MORE LABELS SHOULD DO THIS.

Also out this week is Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010:

Often credited as being one of the all-time greatest guitarists, and known amongst his peers as one of the all-time greatest collaborators. The ultimate Clapton collaboration took place on June 26, 2010 at Chicago’s Toyota Park. For one day only, Clapton gathered the past, present, and future of guitar music onto one stage for an incredible all-day musical event in front of a crowd of over 27,000. The third Crossroads Guitar Festival was a sold out, 11-hour tour de force with all profits benefiting The Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a treatment and education facility founded by Clapton for chemically dependent persons. Includes performances by Eric Clapton, ZZ Top, Steve Winwood, BB King, Jeff Beck, Sheryl Crow, Buddy Guy and many others

Now, you can’t tell me that’s not a perfect match for Rock Band. If you included some tracks in the game, it then makes me aware of both the album to go purchase and the charity to support. How is this not abundantly clear to the people in charge? Even just one track, ONE, would generate awareness. It’s for charity, for pete’s sake.

I don’t know which companies are interested in Harmonix, but I would hope one of them is Apple. It would seem that if anyone can make this work, they could. Integrate Rock Band with iTunes? Makes perfect sense to me.

Review: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds Decade Duels (XBLA)

Ryan Full — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:38:42 +0000

At first glance many gamers might scoff at Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds Decade Duels due to the demographics of the tabletop game and of the anime skewing a relatively younger audience. However, beneath the middle school exterior is a pretty solid collectible card game that is meaty enough to keep CCG fans engaged for many hours.

The CCG genre is something pretty vacant on the Xbox. Magic the Gathering came out over a year ago and many gamers were frustrated by the lack of individual deck customization it allowed. Decade Duels remedies that complaint by allowing the player to completely empty their deck and build it with unlocked cards from the ground up. As a CCG fan, that alone kept me playing the game for far more hours than it should have been due because it continually evoked the classic Civilization “just one more turn” feeling as I unlocked a new card I just had to try out.

Games like these are extremely difficult to recommend because it depends entirely on what kind of background with the genre someone has. So, in order to simplify:

Are you new to the Yu-Gi-Oh CCG?

There is a tutorial. Actually there is a big tutorial with a decent amount of text to read (and a little interaction when it asks you to pick cards or do take the step it is modeling) broken into 17 different chapters. All in all, the tutorial took perhaps 30 minutes to go through all the chapters.

Then you must know is that it is punishingly hard in the beginning. So difficult that it took probably 2.5 or 3 hours of solid playing against the computer before I won a single round. Typical to the genre the player is given a starter assortment of cards that really don’t interact in any meaningful way while you are playing against finely tuned decks that will demolish you with hardly a glance. In one of the earliest games the AI pulled out a combo on the first turn that allowed them to kill me in three turns. Absolutely nothing in the starter deck had even the slightest chance against their first turn.

The game expects you to lose though and, even after a loss, it rewards you with a handful of random cards that you can then integrate into your deck to slowly improve, streamline, and perfect something competitive. Be aware though, the cards are completely random so you might have one part of a brilliant combo and have to play hundreds of games to get the one single other card you need for the combo. This is dramatically different from previous YGO games on the Nintendo DS that allowed you to choose packs of cards from specific runs (and therefore increase the odds of getting the specific cards you wanted).

Are you a Yu-Gi-Oh CCG veteran?

The game offers online play, Tag mode, and basically one huge tournament in the single player mode. That may not sound like a huge amount of game but none of it will be done quickly. For example I have put approximately 10 hours into the single player tournament and have yet to win the tournament even once. There is a qualifier tournament that requires you to win three matches (or two depending on how the AI fares) to then enter the main knockout tournament. The main knockout tournament has significantly beefed up AI decks so right around the time a player begins regularly beating the qualifier tournament they will enter the knockout tournament and get kicked around some more.

Unlike the DS versions of the series there is no in-game currency. In previous iterations you unlocked expansions and then bought individual packs of whichever expansion you wanted. In this version the game gives you a bunch of cards after a win and you simply deal with it. As of now there is no DLC available but it is obvious from the setup that expansion packs will be sold for MS points down the road. Prepare to pay.

Should you get it?

If you are a CCG junkie it is a pretty easy recommendation. The game is 800 points and has a huge number of cards to integrate into whatever cunning plans for domination you might have. The lack of in-game currency and the method it has for gaining cards is a complete kick in the teeth, but those gamers cursed with the crave to collect cards, organize them by abilities, and then dream up new ways to use and abuse their abilities will be able to push past that glaring omission. The average gamer out there though will probably find the game relatively convoluted and pretty frustrating. Giving the demo a shot is necessary for this one. But if the tutorial annoys you then you know the game isn’t for you.

Review: Disney Sing It – Party Hits (Wii)

Lilikka Winger — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:55:19 +0000

Disney Sing It Party Hits for the Nintendo Wii features such chart-topping artists as the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber, and more. Obviously, this means the target audience for this game is quite a bit younger than myself. Once you get over the selection of music, however, you realize it is actually a solid karaoke game.

There are two play modes: Sing It! and Party Play. Sing It! mode is a solo player mode, where you choose a song from the default list and you, well, sing it. Party Play can be both solo and multiplayer and has a variety of different modes to choose from. You can sing cooperatively or against each other, depending on which settings you choose. You can even use a single microphone and pass it between each other for co-op play.

There’s also a Vocal Coach if you’re looking to improve your singing abilities. It’s not bad as far as vocal coaches go, but it’s basic and you can’t really get any more feedback than through singing songs regularly (i.e., scoring well on a song means you’re doing well, scoring poorly means you’re not).

After you’ve sung a song, you can play it as an Encore, where you’ll hear your performance over. There are also various effects you can apply to your voice to make it sound different. The “squeaky” effect is easily the funniest one to hear and it’s the one my daughter insisted on using each and every time.

My big gripe is that, while other games will give you a bonus for singing vibrato, Sing It will actually detract points for it, since it shows that you’re dropping out of pitch. This happens in every difficulty level, even if it’s just a minor shift in pitch. Of course, the scoring is such that it’d be difficult to truly fail a song. Even on songs that I didn’t know, I managed to at least get 3 stars by just goofing around.

Overall, Disney Sing It Party Hits is a good game for the tween and younger demographic, but older teens and adults will probably want to pass on this.

Review: ClaDun: This is an RPG! (PSP)

Leroy Capasso — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:46:33 +0000

CalDun: This is an RPG! is a retro 8-bit styled action RPG developed by System Prism and published by Nippon Ichi Software. Right off the bat the game hits two home runs for my personal tastes by featuring pseudo 8-bit graphics and music and being an action RPG. But does the game end up delivering on those ideas?

The game starts off with two pixilated kids getting lost into a crazy dungeon world. There are some mildly humorous dialogue exchanges and the expected little tutorial segment and then they’re finally dropped into the game’s main town and central hub.

The normal game flow from here on out is tackling a dungeon level, watching some cut-scenes to introduce new features and/or to expand the story and then repeating the process. Initially, as the game’s various systems and elements are being introduced, you’ll spend almost as much time in cut-scenes and having new things explained to you as you do in the game’s very short initial dungeons. But things start to ramp up and you’ll spend plenty of time spelunking soon enough.

As an action RPG, you have full control of your character as you move around the dungeons. In addition to standard attacks, you can also run, jump, block and unleash special skills (that vary based on the class of the character you’re using). The way your character controls is a little slow and sometimes quite clunky, which may be one of the only shortcomings I had with the game. It’s not game breaking, but as an action RPG aficionado, I vastly prefer faster, tighter action.

One of the game’s more unique systems is the magic circles. They are little maps that allow you to customize the character you want to take into the dungeon. Basically each magic circle has different grid configurations allowing you to link other characters and items to your main character, offering stat boosts, etc. Linked characters act as shields for your main, taking damage in their place while you’re in a dungeon. One fun aspect to this is that if a linked character loses all of their HP, your main character loses all the bonuses from the link. It can drastically change the way you need to act in certain situations.

In my review of Persona 3 Portable I noted how tiring I find overly long RPGs these days. It works for some people, granted, and for me in specific situations (having admittedly clocked close to two hundred hours in Dragon Quest IX this summer). So I was glad to find that ClaDun features a rather brisk main quest. But the game offers a ton of content to extend the replay value of the title. You can replay dungeons for various reasons (speed running dungeons earns you various rewards, for instance) and at one point in the game, a random dungeon opens up, throwing you into randomly generated, loot-filled dungeons. You can also create an endless supply of characters (even so far as drawing them out, pixel by pixel). The customization possibilities are quite large!

Graphics and sound are deliciously retro, which is kind of the idea. My only real beef here is that the game features a rather ugly mix of high-resolution and low-resolution pixel art. It’s a horrible design choice and it sticks out a lot if you’re into this style. Also, there’s a “non-retro” soundtrack that is set as the default that sounds rather bland compared to the bleepy bloopy soundtrack you can switch to in the options menu and what you’d expect to surround the visuals.

I had a lot of fun with this game despite some initial disappointment in the battle system. The story may be a little short but it’s extremely humorous and tongue-in-cheek and the game offers a lot of stuff to do. If you’re a fan of retro gaming throwback, action RPGs, loot-filled dungeons or not-so-serious plotlines, CalDun is a great PSP game that can offers great, quick “pick up and play” sessions.

Review: Fluid (Xbox Live Indie)

Leroy Capasso — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:58:28 +0000

Fluid is the fourth release from radiangames. Their first three games have all been shooters of some kind, so it was a pleasant surprise to see them take on a different genre. Fluid is sort of an analog “Pac-Man meets racing” obstacle course game. Each level features a course of little dots and the goal is to roll your little fish over each dot while avoiding dangerous red areas and the jellyfish that spawn from each dot collected and give chase. Some levels feature various power-ups or gimmicks such as speed pads and teleport holes. In most cases, these items are essential to surviving the level (such as grabbing an item to ward off enemy jellyfish when you must backtrack through a large swarm of them) or simply used to help reach new time goals.

There are thirty levels with five “extreme levels” that are unlocked after scoring three stars or more (you a star rating based on how quickly you complete each level) on the initial thirty levels. Every fifth level changes things up by eliminating the evil jellyfish that spawn from each collected dot and putting you strictly against the clock. It’s a pretty quick ride but it’s extremely fun and challenging (especially when trying to earn the highest rating on each level).

Graphics and sound are similar to past radiangames releases. The simple graphic style is elevated by lots of great effects and the music can be changed on the fly with a press of a button.

Fluid is another solid indie game from radiangames and an exciting new direction showing that they are not one trick ponies relying on shooter mechanics. My only issue is that I blasted through the levels provided rather quickly! I certainly wouldn’t mind putting another dollar down for another set of levels and once you’ve played through Fluid, neither will you.

Review: Didgery (Xbox Live Indie)

Lilikka Winger — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 05:00:19 +0000

It’s difficult to describe Didgery from Lotus Games. At its core, it’s a puzzle game that uses a deck of standard playing cards to form chains of numbers, from higher numbers to lower ones, within the same suite to build up “Harmony”. But once you start really getting into it, it’s much deeper than that. If you’re not fast enough connecting chains, you’ll notice the music growing quieter and the wind picking up. Eventually, if you run out of Harmony for a certain suit, the edges of your screen will fade to black and lightning will strike. If you don’t get your Harmony back up in time, it’s game over. On the flip side, if you perform well enough, you’ll be able to summon the god Didgery.

There’s a storyline that goes along with Didgery. That’s probably why I continued to play the game, even though I’m personally not all that good at it. It’s an intriguing story about the Earth being doomed by a curse that only you can break by bringing harmony back. As you play, you’ll be given the opportunity to learn more of the story through unlocking Forbidden Texts that appear on the playing field. You can unlock these by forming chains of 6 or more, which will set off a Holy Explosion.

This game could very well have been an XBLA release, as far as I’m concerned. It’s solid and I really couldn’t find anything I didn’t like about it, except that the text is awfully difficult to read on a standard definition TV, but that’s true with just about every Xbox 360 game. I enjoyed the dynamic changes the game goes through depending on how well or poorly you perform. This game is only 240 MS Points, and is a great value for what you get.

Review: Comic Jumper (XBLA)

Brent Tyler — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:25:37 +0000

When Comic Jumper was announced by Twisted Pixel Games, the studio that brought us XBLA standouts The Maw and ‘Splosion Man, over a year ago I was already in love. The concept is that of a superhero, Captain Smiley, whose comic book has been cancelled and the only way to regain readership is to guest star in other series that differ not only in era, but genre as well. Slowly information trickled out in the form of teaser videos and comic book covers showcasing the visits our hero will embark upon. Everything I saw looked and sounded inspired; I couldn’t wait.

Finally the day arrived and I realized I had no idea what I was in store for me. I really couldn’t remember seeing much gameplay footage. What I got wasn’t what I expected. At its core, Comic Jumper starts off as a passable/mediocre side-scrolling beat-em-up or twin-stick shooter. It’s very underwhelming at first but once the game gets rolling, Twisted Pixel switches it up ever-so-slightly by moving the camera around periodically. Sometimes the camera will drop behind Captain Smiley for run-and-gun gameply like Space Harrier or Sin & Punishment. These are subtle changes of pace that don’t really alter gameplay, but they help keep things fresh.

Quickly you’ll discover that the best part of this game is everything but the game. The real star of Comic Jumper is the production, the characters, the quips, the numerous pop culture references, the soundtrack, and all of which are bursting at the seams with humor. And it’s everywhere. So much so that if you blink, you’ll miss it; if you aren’t listening, you’ll miss it; if you don’t stop and read the marquee, you’ll miss it. Make sure that near the end of the game you keep a keen eye out for a cameo by an old friend from ‘Splosion Man in a very satisfying Ghostbusters homage.

Twisted Pixel has gone above and beyond by including a multitude of unlockable extras including concept art, videos, songs, a premium theme for your Xbox’s dashboard, and even two new levels for ‘Splosion Man. If you own that other Twisted Pixel game, you’ll be very satisfied with the brutality of the new single player level (I haven’t had a chance to try the multiplayer level yet, unfortunately). The songs in the game are all amazing. I could sit and listen to them for hours on end. I sure hope some of these end up on Rock Band Network (not meant to be a subtle hint at all).

Between four and five hours, it is a relatively short game, but it’s very long on satisfaction (that’s what she said). This is the first true narrative Twisted Pixel has delivered and they completely smashed it out of the park. While the gameplay prevents Comic Jumper from being a masterpiece, I have no problem at all highly recommending that everyone experience everything in this package.

Review: 7strains – The Infectious (Xbox Live Indie)

Jeri Klein — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:37:29 +0000

If a mad scientist were to combine the old-school arcade version of Pac-Man with all things zombie and only had rudimentary graphics at his disposal – after all, mad scientists aren’t known for their logic and reason – the resulting game would bear a striking resemblance to 7strains: The Infectious. And like any good mad scientist, he would create not one, not two, but seven different types (or strains) of zombies, each complete with its own set of rules. Some would be quite docile and would not attack unless provoked. Others would be a bit more aggressive, biting everything in sight. As far as killing these crazy strains of zombies go, the more docile ones might be killed by simply throwing a rock at them, while provoking the aggressive ones with the same rock would undoubtedly anger them, causing them to multiply.

Yes, a mad scientist must have created 7strains: The Infectious. After all, only someone a bit off his rocker would skimp on both the storyline side and the graphics side, and expect zombie fans to get excited over playing basically a dots game. Yes, you read that correctly. The graphics are literally dots. You play a little dot, (and no, you are not cute like Dot from Animaniacs) who gets five little dots – I mean rocks – to throw at all the zombies, who are also represented as dots. Granted there are about 16 levels of game play, which is quite a lot considering this game costs a mere dollar (or 80 Microsoft points), but even for a dollar, I want to see graphics. At the very least, I want to see some bloodshed when either killing the zombie dots or when they kill my dot.

You can have some fun playing the co-op version, but that’s mainly because you can throw tiny rocks at your friends. And if you really love all things shooter, then you might enjoy aiming and throwing the rocks. But don’t get too excited. You can’t run and shoot simultaneously which is problematic considering you are trying to outrun zombies.

Overall, 7strains is a game that fails to meet many of its good intentions. It’s worth noting, however, that this game was created and designed by one person (Dustin Tigner). So, even though it’s not the most amazing game on the planet, it’s worth checking out just to see what one individual, without a ton of funding, can create.

No Quarters 15: Bringing the Funder

No Quarters — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:42:41 +0000

Episode 15 of No Quarters podcast features a multitude of games played since the last recording. Among those are Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Red Dead Redemption, Williams Pinball Collection, Shank, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero and plenty more. For a bunch of dudes who rarely have a chance to play games, they brought more than A game to this party.

After the break they talk trial and error games with ‘Splosion Man and Trials HD. Then it’s a demolition blowout with demos of five games. And finally, value picks.

Download audio file (nq015.mp3)

First half!

Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions (Harlo does not like his dimensions to remain intact and likes this)
Dead Rising Case Zero (Maki enjoys this, but the again, he really liked Dead Rising which puts him in the minority)
Rock Band DLC (or, How Maki Filled a 16-gig USB Stick)
Red Dead Redemption (BJ joins in the addiction while lassoing bears)
Splosion Man (Hard as hell but almost worth it for the closing cinematic)
Trials HD (Also hard, also worth it)
Shank (That’s some super-polished ultraviolence)
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World The Game (Like the movie? Like River City Ransom? Chances are you’ll like this, then)

Second Half! (57:57)

Mass Effect 2 Shadow Broker DLC (Maki declares it the best Mass Effect 2 DLC ever)
Dragon Age Origins (How many missions is too many? Or, “Hey, I Took Care of Your Rat Problem”)
Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection (Super-good pinball on the Xbox? It’s true!)
Pinball! (Dude! We talk pinball! The real kind!)
Playstation Plus (Harlo got it. He wanted Hulu that bad.)
Borderlands (Not even a speed round, we talk Claptrap DLC and online cheating on 360?!)
Demolition!!!
- 99 Nights II (You get to kill LOTS of dudes. More than 99.)
- NCAA 11 (BJ amends his thoughts. Also, he plays as Tebow. Ok, not really.)
- Madden 11 (No play calling? No problem!)
- Mafia 2 (Like GTA, but with slower cars and less polish)
- Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2 (Midair refueling? F YOU)
- Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light (Smash TV + Puzzles + Co-op = Good!)

Value Game Picks! (2:06:19)

Plants Vs Zombies (Harlo says it’s great no matter what the platform)
Resident Evil 5 (Maki says Co-op… TO THE MAX)
QWOP (BJ didn’t really recommend this)
Angry Birds (BJ didn’t really recommend this either)

Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions (Harlo does not like his dimensions to remain intact and likes this)
Dead Rising Case Zero (Maki enjoys this, but the again, he really liked Dead Rising which puts him in the minority)
Rock Band DLC (or, How Maki Filled a 16-gig USB Stick)
Red Dead Redemption (BJ joins in the addiction while lassoing bears)
Splosion Man (Hard as hell but almost worth it for the closing cinematic)
Trials HD (Also hard, also worth it)
Shank (That’s some super-polished ultraviolence)
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World The Game (Like the movie? Like River City Ransom? Chances are you’ll like this, then)

That Video Game Podcast 152: Collecting 7UPs

That Video Game Podcast — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:08:52 +0000

Hosts: Michael “Boston” Hannon and John “Knobs” Knoblach
Cameraman: Ryan Pratt
Running Time: 1:29:31
Music: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Download audio file (TVGP_Episode_152.mp3)

Before the TVGP crew gets buried under TGS stories, they chat their way through The Williams Collection, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Split/Second, Madden 11, Alpha Protocol, Bayonetta, and Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker.

TGS: Re-release of Ico / Shadow of the Colossus finally confirmed
TGS: Ninja Gaiden 3 announced
TGS: Dead Rising 2 epilogue Case West announced
TGS: Devil May Cry prequel, DmC
TGS: Somehow a new Kinect-based Steel Battalion game is coming
TGS: Shadow of the Damned
TGS: Dead Space 2 miltiplayer looks like what we were hoping it was
TGS: Valkyria Chronicles 3 coming to PSP
TGS: For some reason the new Yakuza game has zombies in it
TGS: Microsoft announces partnerships with five Japanese developers
TGS: Square Enix talks about the Dissidia Final fantasy sequel, teaches us what Duodecim means
TGS: More comfortable, Monster Hunter-focused PSP
TGS: Sega announces Phantasy Star Online 2
Valve and AMD team up to deliver Catalyst updates via Steam
Valve also announces the Steam Wallet
PSA: Demon’s Souls is now a Greatest Hits title
Super Mario Bros. makes us feel old by turning 25 years old
APB, unfortunately, will be shutting down
Left 4 Dead comic, The Sacrifice, starts now

For the Love of Gaming 34: French Vanilla Reach

For the Love of Gaming — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:45:56 +0000

Episode 34 features all Halo: Reach all the time, except when they also talk about Spider Man: Shattered Dimensions, Borderlands, Call of Duty 4, news from TGS 2010 and the August NPDs.

Download audio file (episode_34.mp3)

Review: Avatar QuizCall (Xbox Live Indie)

Lilikka Winger — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:36:04 +0000

When Microsoft announced that they had canceled 1 vs. 100 Live, I was pretty sad. I mean, what was I going to do if I wanted to prove my trivia prowess while being represented by my Xbox Avatar? Then I found Avatar QuizCall by BBQ Games.

You’re able to choose from four different game lengths: Short (5 questions), Medium (10 question), Long (20 questions) and Extra Long (40 questions). The questions themselves are a mixed bag. I found that all the sports questions were generally regarding golf and soccer. There were also some trick questions in the mix, such as “When is a door not a door?” (When it’s ajar!) Some questions were ridiculously easy while others were pretty difficult, but they’d be randomly thrown about instead of getting progressively more difficult as the game went on.

I do have some minor gripes. First, it was a bit laggy as I played. After answering questions, it would freeze for a split second while the avatars were trying to move. This wasn’t too bad except in the longer games, as it made them feel even longer.

Second, there was an incessant pulsating sound that persisted throughout the entire game play. I’m talking from the menu, to the pause screen, to the actual game itself. It got to be so annoying that I had to play with the sound turned down, which wasn’t too bad because the music kind of sucked, too.

Finally, in the longer games, there was an advertisement break halfway through. I suppose it was to make it feel more like a real game show, but it ended up being annoying and it threw off the pace of the game, which already felt slow because of the lag.

Avatar QuizCall isn’t a bad game, especially if your head is filled with random bits of trivia. It’s no 1 vs. 100 Live but you shouldn’t expect it to be.

Brigadier Broadcast: Episode 29

Brigadier Broadcast — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:22:17 +0000

Episode 29 of the Brigadier Broadcast has arrived! Slitt, Shlugendah, and UncleGramps are here with a show that’s a little… different. They talk about Duke Nukem Forever, Sword & Poker 2 (and the new Apple Game Center), Metroid: Other M, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, Resident Evil 5, TerRover, Lego Batman, and more. Stick around for the outtakes – they’re good! Oh, and don’t forget to enter the Twitter contest for a chance to win 1600 Microsoft Points! Check out all the details at www.8bitbrigade.com!

Download audio file (BrigadierBroadcastEpisode29.mp3)