Apologies for the lack of posts in the past week, but it’s because I been slaving away, along with my team of Renfields, to launch the new CountGameula.com. It looks awesome, with dedicated pages for videos, screens, reviews, news, interviews and previews. That’s a lot for one person to handle, so I’ll be soliciting writers after the launch. It should be ready for mass consumption by the end of this week, but in the meantime you’ll have to visit twitter for all your gaming goodness.
What do you do when your controversy courting iOS game about shuttling illegal immigrants across the border gets rejected by Apple’s arbiters of good taste? Why, you just tweak some art assets so Smuggle Truck becomes Snuggle Truck!
“The changes made to the game consist only of minor art changes and some swapped sound effects. Gameplay remains exactly the same,” Owlchemy’s Alex Schwartz said in an interview with Joystiq. “Instead of smuggling immigrants over the border, you’re now bringing animals from the wilderness into the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided plenty of food, water, shelter, and state of the art health care.”
Instead of smiling Mexican babies bouncing out of the back of your speeding flatbed, you’ll get an adorable assortment of bunnies, rabbits and bears, though Mac and PC players will have both. That release costs a couple dollars more, but allows you to switch between the cuddly Snuggle Truck and controversial Smuggle Truck with the press of a button.
Snuggle Truck is available now on the App Store for iPhone ($2) and iPad ($3) and on Mac/PC ($5).
Despite its mediocre Metacritic score, I enjoyed the hell out of Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood, Techland’s surprisingly sturdy take on the nitty, gritty western.
Hence my confusion over Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which trades the best part of the series – the wild west setting – for a present-day urban war zone, complete with the Grand Theft staples of mob bosses, drug lords and gang members. What they’ve kept, according to this latest story trailer, is the series’ sense of moral ambiguity, weaving a tale of modern gunslingers from the DEA, FBI and LAPD waging war against lawlessness on both sides of the border. Think The Shield, but with Walker Texas Ranger’s wardrobe.
Though I can’t pass judgment before playing the finished game, which for all we know could elevate Michael Bay parody to Kaufman-esque levels of genius, I can tell you that the last thing gamedom needs is another nightclub gunfight level. Trash a coffee bar, an irish pub, or the outdoor seating area of pricey, but nonetheless popular bistro. I don’t care, just no more nightclubs. Those dancing girls’ hiring bonus doesn’t cover health insurance.
The console port of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf never materialized, though not for lack of trying, but there’s still hope that The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will be coming to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as PC, says Polish PS3 site Polska.
According to a translated television interview, CD Projekt RED’s Michael Kicinski has confirmed that “Yes, [console versions are] for us an entirely new project. But of course, already working on it. You can expect that during such events as the largest fair in the world of computer games, or E3 and Gamescom inform you about what is currently working on.”
Just in case you’re worried a few misplaced pronouns in “Google translate” could be getting your hopes up for nothing, Polka assures that “this is not a statement or taken out of context or incorrectly translated.”
Okamiden,Minecraft, and World of Warcraft have all put their game-specific spin on that timeless staple of elegant casual wear, the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt, but there’s just something about Valve’s take on the fashion forward meme.
I think it’s the eyes. Or rather, it’s the eye. Those red cyclopean windows into the turrets’ complete lack of souls on the Portal 2 inspired Three Turret Moon t-shirt really captures the raw sexual energy of the original wolf pack. My only complaint is that they didn’t superimpose GLaDOS over the moon’s craggy face, but that would probably have been too much awesome to cram into a single wash cycle. Especially if you tossed it in the same load as your Three Keyboard Cat Moon t-shirt.
Angry Birds fills Epic Games’ heart with, unironically, anger. Their hatred is not reserved solely for revenge-seeking avians, but pretty much all cheap mobile games, and in particular the dreaded dollar app, which the developer claims will be the death of boxed games.
“If there’s anything that’s killing us [in the traditional games business] it’s dollar apps,” said Epic Games’ Mike Capps. “How do you sell someone a $60 game that’s really worth it? They’re used to 99 cents. As I said, it’s an uncertain time in the industry. But it’s an exciting time for whoever picks the right path and wins.”
“We have not been this uncertain about what’s coming next in the games industry since Epic’s been around for 20 years,” he continued. “We’re at such an inflection point. Will there be physical distribution in 10 years or even five? Will anyone care about the next console generation? What’s going on in PC? Can you make money on PC if it’s not a connected game? What’s going on in mobile? Tons of really scary things.”
I’ll concede that mobile gaming is helping itself to a bigger slice of the consumer cash pie than ever before, but there’s no way it’s muscling traditional gaming away from the table. You just can’t compare the two. I mean, sure, a $5 handy behind the dumpster at the Popeye’s Chicken will get the job done just as well as an evening with a high price escort, but only one leaves you gently weeping into a 10-piece bucket. The real issue isn’t cost, but value, which is where traditional gaming needs to step it up.
Quit focusing on price gouging and start focusing on making games not destined for the bargain bin, ‘cause that Popeye’s line ‘aint getting shorter.
For those of you who missed out on American McGee’s Alice, the delightfully dark PC-only release that marked EA’s first foray into M-rated games, you’ll get you chance this June 14. The developer has confirmed that the upcoming sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, will ship with a code to download the 2000 original on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
“There’s also going to be [a] pretty significant release which is the original Alice brought over to the consoles so that a person who’s purchased Madness Returns gets a download code and is able to bring Alice 1 onto their console and play through the entire original game alongside playing Madness Returns,” the developer said in an interview with CVG. “There will [also] be DLC in the form of dresses that the player can download and Alice can wear [that] come with special abilities and enhance how you play through the game.”
No word on whether the download code or the dresses will be made available for free, for fee or as part of some exclusive pre-order shenanigans, but let’s focus on the positive – American McGee’s Alice is getting ported to consoles. Not that I didn’t enjoy the PC release, but navigating all those perilous ledges and dangling ropes should be a lot less frustrating with a controller. And even if it’s not, I’ll hopefully be distracted by the (fingers crossed) remastered HD graphics of Alice’s twisted trek through the looking glass.
The next time you’re bitching about the difficulty of your latest videogame acquisition, let me simultaneously humble and inspire you with the reminder that 23-year old college student Terry Garrett, who lost his sight at the age of 10, can navigateOddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus with near-perfect precision by sound alone. Garret uses “sound landmarks,” like the whisper of voices, the pounding of a hammer or the shuffle of footsteps, along with quick save, to play through games I never beat even with cheat codes.
He’s currently working his way through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and through a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Colorado, with plans to become the first blind astronaut.
L.A. Noire, Rockstar Game’s decent into a hard-boiled 1940′s pulp detective novel, has reached my favorite stage of the game development life cycle – the ERSB description, which reveals all sorts of story details, coupled with an as always WAY too graphic description of the naughty bits.
The game’s main story will follow rookie Cole Phelps’ mission to stop a deranged serial killer. But first he’ll have to earn his detective’s badge, advancing through the department’s different desks (i.e., Patrol, Traffic Squad, Homicide, Vice, Arson) by solving cases pretty much run the gambit of every Law & Order spin-off ever aired.
According to the spoiler-rific ESRB description, the open world detective story’s “shootouts … highlighted by realistic gunfire, cries of pain, and blood spurts that stain injured characters and the surrounding environment,” would have been more than enough to garner the M rating, to say nothing of the crowbar beatings, morphine injections, and pedobear hookups.
The day after Anonymous promised to wage war against Sony in response to the company’s legal actions against fellow hackers Geohot and Graf_Chokolo, the PlayStation Network went down. And stayed down. Sony claimed “sporadic maintenance,” even after Anonymous took credit for taking down the service, and several Sony websites, in an interview with PlayStation LifeStyle. Well, looks like Sony’s ready to concede that maybe, just maybe, they’re not the ones tinkering under the hood.
Sony admitted today that it is “currently investigating [the network instability], including the possibility of targeted behavior of an outside party,” a company representative told GameSpot. “If this is indeed caused by such act, we want to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service. Our engineers are working to restore and maintain the services, and we appreciate our customers’ continued support.”
If you can resist customizing your simian-like character long enough to get down to the business of playing, Splash Damage’s Brink will allow you unlock all sorts of special abilities. This latest gameplay video, titled “Ready and Able,” shows off some of the multiplayer mayhem that will come with leveling up your persistent character, including the ability to hack enemy turrets, chuck Molotov cocktails and sticky bombs, and resurrect yourself with an injection administered Pulp Fiction-style.
And yes, okay, it also shows off some of the nifty hats you get to wear.
PopCap have announced the formation of a new small games label, 4th & Battery. Named after the cross streets of the game maker’s Seattle headquarters, the studio within a studio will act, according to Executive Vice President Ed Allard, as “a pressure valve intended to keep [their] heads from exploding.”
“The PopCap brand has become closely associated with ultra-high quality, polish and attention to detail – which is a great thing. But our standard game development process is therefore long and involved, and doesn’t really accommodate all of the creativity pumping through our collective veins,” said Allard. “4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops.”
Pocket God gets a transfusion of tiger’s blood in today’s “Two And A Half Pygmies” update, with the addition of a character named Charlie who in turn transform into a tiger and a Vatican assassin warlock.
“A mysterious stranger arrives on Oog Island and he seems a little addled,” says the official description for the iOS title’s thirty-eighth episode. “He speaks in a strange code and keeps babbling about ‘winning’. He also does other weird things like transforming into a tiger that slices other pygmies in half. Gross! What makes this pygmy so crazy? Well…he’s a total freaking rock star from Mars!”
I thought it was the fact that he never sleeps and carries around a briefcase full of coke, but maybe I’m thinking of a different Pygmy.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, the iPad point and click sensation, wouldn’t be the success it is without the haunting, hypnotic score of Jim Gunthrie, now available as Jim Gunthrie’s Sword & Sworcery LP: The Ballad of the Space Babies. This means I can enjoy the Toronto-based artist’s sonorous stylings without exposing myself to the temptation of tweeting every line of dialogue. Apologies to my Twitter followers.
You can grab a digital copy of the 27-track album at iTunes (currently Canada only) for $8.99 or at Jim Guthrie’s Bandcamp for $7.99. In addition to being a buck cheaper, buying straight from the artist allows you to choose “about any [music] format you could possibly desire.” For $30, you could be the proud owner of a 12″ vinyl copy, which features an embossed jacket by Craig “Superbrothers” Adams, a limited edition art print by Cory Schmitz, and the digital copy.
Meanwhile, the iPhone version of the Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is still on track for release sometime in late April.
Sony’s handling of the case against PS3 hacker George “GeoHot” Hotz has attracted the attention of “hactivist” group Anonymous, who have previously targeted Gawker, Amazon, Mastercard and the whole of Scientology.
“Congratulations, Sony. You have now received the undivided attention of Anonymous,” reads the statement on the group’s website. “Your recent legal action against our fellow hackers, GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo, has not only alarmed us, it has been deemed wholly unforgivable.”
“You have abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information on how your products work. You have victimized your customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target every person who seeks this information. This is the information they were willing to teach to the world for free. The very same information which you wish to suppress for the sake of corporate greed and the complete control of users.”
