I believe that Guacamelee for PSN was made specifically for me. Samurai Jack’s artwork, Smash Brothers’ combat, Metroid’s exploration, and a Mexican theme. I. Loved. This. Game. Download it on your Playstation 3, or at least enjoy the soundtrack and dream about what could have been.
On the iOS space, Year Walk (universal app) is the most recent game to catch my attention. I know it’s been out a while… I’m usually late to these parties. As you can gather from the trailer, it’s a super-atmospheric, dark, exploratory, puzzle game. I’ll admit I had to look some puzzle solutions up, because the designers expected me to be much more clever and patient than I actually am. I think the highlight for me came after I reached the end, because that’s when I started digging through their companion app (which is like a mini encyclopedia for the game) to make sense of what just happened. It’s a neat structure, the whole two-app thing, but it sort of hides the story away outside of the game, and I don’t know if I’m in love with that. All things considered, it engages your brain muscles and gives you lots of neat stuff to look at. Well worth picking up.
Adam the Artist
I picked up Lili for the iPad recently, a game developed by a team of former Epic employees. I like to imagine them working on Gears of War, constantly pitching flower-based game mechanics. “What if instead of a chainsaw machine gun, you jump on their backs and pick flowers? Why won’t anyone listen to us? We quit.”
Aside from being very pretty for an iPad title, they’ve created a world that’s genuinely fun to explore. The combat mechanic’s pretty straightforward. It’s tactile and it fits the device well, but it’s not really the core of the game. I had just as much fun wandering around talking to people.
My biggest gameplay qualm was with the last area, Mill Hill, which had some ridiculously tough enemies. So much so that I ran out of buffer items, and just gave up and switched to easy mode. I wonder if that was intentionally to get people to buy IAP, or just a bad progression of difficulty. Or maybe I just suck, but those guys felt impossible to topple without LOTS of items.
Alex the Codesmith
is a busy man this month.
Adam the Artist
I actually found an app all on my own for iOS, which is, like, unheard of. It was in the App Store’s “What’s Hot” section while Outwitters was being featured. The icon intrigued me, I tapped for details, & the screen shots closed the deal. So that’s what that feels like, I thought.
Shellrazer is a war-turtle-riding simulator from the guys that made N+, which Alex and I used to play together. I’m not sure how well this one will work on an iPhone, but on iPad it was perfect for me. You stack some guns on top of your turtle, throw some perks on those guns, and mow down goblins and gun towers and sheep-mounted knights. The difficulty gets pretty nuts towards the end, so paying attention to which guns work best on who and what perks you need becomes really important. I had a blast.
Alex the Codesmith
I’ve been on a PC gaming kick as of late, meaning more than Starcraft 2. Every now and then, especially after a major release or between projects, I tend to go through a lot of games. I usually don’t even come close to beating them. I’ve kind of gotten over the nagging “completionist” in me. If a game offers a decent amount of entertainment for a reasonable amount of time, I’m happy. Maybe it’s a sign of getting older…
In any case, one game I picked up during the Steam Summer Sale was Anno 2070. Very cool city building game with insane amount of depth. The selling point for me was the ability to play in the same ‘world’ with friends, either as separate cities or sharing a city. Provided for some good times.
Another game I’ve sunk a decent amount of hours into was the Arma 2 mod Day Z. It’s in alpha so ‘buggy’ doesn’t really begin to describe the quirkiness of that game. But it’s definitely playable and extremely difficult. The concept of being put on a vast landmass to survive on your own, avoiding zombies, and other players was really compelling. Death in this game is permanent. You start from square one when you die. You could be a month into the game, miles north into the territory and have a bad run in with some zombies, starve to death, or get killed by some bandits (other players) that don’t like the way you looked at them. From a design perspective, the game is fascinating. It’s a multiplayer game where paranoia between players is truly real, and even though there are weapons not everyone is rushing to point X to up their kill/death ratio. Killing another player in this game has a unnerving effect (at least on me). If you manage to kill someone (either by accident, defensively, or just by being a griefer) the consequences are huge. You could have potentially wiped out weeks if not months of another player’s playtime with a single shot (click of the mouse).
And finally, I’m currently pretty into Tower Wars by Supervillain Studios. It recently came out for PC on Steam. I’ve never been a big Tower Defense fan (mostly from fatigue of the game type), but this game was refreshing enough for me to be genuinely interested in the nuances of the tower interactions with the creeps. Having 2v2 and 3v3 co-op head-to-head is kind of what clinched it for me (again). Good times had by all.
Adam the Artist
I’m one of those weirdos that still turns on his Wii once in a while . I couldn’t find a better way to word that. Anyway, the virtual console is a nostalgia factory, so I bought Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG. It’s surprisingly easy to get me to buy old games all over again.
I found another iOS title that hooked me pretty hard, and it’s free so you should check it out. Project 83113 (which is a terrible name, because I have to think really hard to type it) is a bullet hell platformer with swipey slide and jump controls. They take some getting used to, but it’s comfortable as long as you aren’t trying to stand still. It’s a bullet dodging game, so… I don’t think I was supposed to be standing still anyway. Each level has highscore goals and hidden objects (GOD I love hidden objects) so there’s nice replay value to be had. I’m a sucker for a good platformer.
Alex the Codesmith
Alex is playing House Hunter. It’s a very dull and time-consuming game where you try to buy a house in Atlanta.
Adam the Artist
I recently finished an XBLA title I’d been itching to play since GDC, Bastion. Their creative lead gave a talk on atmosphere in games that I really enjoyed. At the end of the game you’re presented with two pretty heavy choices which determine your ending. That’s not unusual, but what I really loved about the way they approached this was that none of the endings is “right”. The game just asks you to consider what you would do, without “gotcha” consequences for choosing wrong. It’s also a fun hack n’ slash with a lot of imagination, so you should pick it up if you haven’t already.
On iOS lately I’m mostly playing the Outwitters beta. And I tried a few bad games that I can’t recommend.
Alex the Codesmith
I actually turned on my Xbox 360! I did it to play Awesomenauts for a couple hours. It’s a 3 vs. 3 side-scrolling DOTA/Team Fortress mash up. Hilarious fun and love the style. Definitely worth checking it out if you’re looking to play a fun multiplayer game with some buddies.
On the iOS front I highly recommend checking out SpellTower if you haven’t already. Do it.
Adam the Artist
Silent Hill Downpour is finally out, and the reviews I’ve seen are split pretty evenly between love and loathing. I’m about 5 hours in, and though it definitely has its share of blemishes (read: haunted police cars), I’d say Vatra gets it. It’s an interesting character-driven journey in the tradition of SH2 (though it feels less mature so far), and it does some clever things to evolve the series gameplay-wise. Opening the town up into more of a sandbox experience was inspired (but all the choke points and dead ends are pretty discouraging for me). I think I’ll always have a soft spot for this series, because these are horror games that at least try to approach things seriously.
On iOS I keep coming back to Beat Sneak Bandit, a stealth/rhythm/puzzle game from Simogo. It’s beautiful, clever, and it won Best Mobile Game at the 2012 Independent Games Festival. I don’t have the best sense of rhythm, but this kind of one-more-try gameplay does a pretty good job of sucking me in.
Alex the Codesmith
I managed to find time to play and ‘finish’ (although I don’t think that’s the right word as I think it encourages multiple replays) Journey. The newest game from thatgamecompany (makers of flOw and Flower). The game is an amazing piece of work. And my experience with it was quite fascinating. They definitely took lessons learned from their previous games and have applied them masterfully here in regards to flow, control, and feel of the game. I recall starting the game out and going through the first few segments by myself. Other than the gorgeous graphics, there wasn’t much else that was keeping me interested and my patience was wearing thin. Then another journeymen’s head popped up over a hillside and then within a few short minutes I understood what TGC was aiming for with this game. They’ve done something really special in terms of making a single player game feel relevant outside the bounds of the game. It’s hard to explain, but once I experienced the feelings and emotions that Journey had me go through with fellow travelers it made me giddy for the future of this platform and the single player ‘experience’. Although, Journey felt much more closely to a work of art than a game to me. In terms of mechanics and story the game is pretty shallow, but what they accomplished with their laser focused premise of Journey I think will stick with me for a while, and I think will serve as an excellent reference for designers who wish to raise the bar in the ‘experience/interaction’ category of game design.
I, sadly, haven’t been doing much exploring on iOS. I’ve been coming back to the usual staple of Disc Drivin’ and Scramble with Friends. I flirted with Draw Something for a bit before letting it go. I appreciate what it’s done and was able to prove. In a marketplace where conventional wisdom tells you that you have to have traditional game mechanics and victory conditions to be successful, Draw Something turned that convention on it’s head and showed us how many people there really are outside our insular ‘gamer circle’ waiting to be entertained.
Adam the Artist
I’ve been dusting off some old games in my library while I wait for Mass Effect 3 and Silent Hill: Downpour (both next month!). Lots of people will watch a movie more than once; I like to play really good games more than once. So I’ve been messing with Bioshock and Devil May Cry 3 & 4, which are old and I don’t think anyone wants to hear about them.
Saw these guys do their Mega Man 2 show recently, and I am in love. Their Castlebandia album is incredible. Stream it. Buy it. Love it.
Alex the Non-Artist
I’ve actually played some games other than Starcraft 2 (hurray!). On a sad note, I tried playing Starcraft 2 a couple days ago after a couple week hiatus and it wasn’t pretty. That game is brutal. I played Spiral Knights with a friend over the past weekend and had a really fun time with it. It has some fun MMO aspects with the auctioning, and persistent overworld, but drops most MMO tropes when you enter a ‘dungeon’ and it becomes a 4-player co-op action hack-n-slash game. It has a fair share of clever puzzles and really challenging boss battles. Coming off my disappoint from Star Wars: The Old Republic, I was really pleased to see a game that didn’t sacrifice playability for the sake of being able to call itself a “true MMO”. I don’t know if it’s sad or awesome that the combat in Spiral Knights was way more fun and engaging than in SWTOR, given that one has the stigma of being called a ‘free-2-play’ game (from an iOS app store perspective) and another a ‘premium high-budget MMO’.
I actually got to play the Diablo 3 beta for a little bit as well. But without any buddies that are also in the beta I have little to no desire to go back. I think I’ve played more Outwitters than any other game over the past several weeks really. With each iteration I’m enjoying it more and more. Some of our testers are getting hundreds of games under their belts, and I’m starting to see play-styles evolve between different players, and with a lot of them being viable I’m extremely excited to see that happen. It’s like the game is coming into it’s own! Still more work to be done on balance though…
Adam the Artist
I just finished Mass Effect 2, and was scratching my head over what I played before that. Then it hit me: Skyward Sword. It’s not often I forget a 20 hour game, but this one never really grabbed me. It had a lot of clever ideas, but I thought it was just okay for a Zelda game. I never knew flying could get so boring.
Mass Effect 2, which I’m incredibly late getting around to, has the best final battle I can ever remember playing in a game. You have all these choices, and if you choose wrong your friends die. It builds a real tension as you make your way through the mission, one that isn’t usually there. No one’s afraid of dying in a game; you just restart at a checkpoint and try again. But I was afraid of choosing wrong and screwing up the story. Story consequences. I like that. I’ll be picking up the third one in March fa sho.
All I’m playing on iOS is the Outwitters beta. I’ve been playing this thing forever, and I still get excited to check my turns. I’m proud we made this.
Alex the Codesmith
It’s around the holidays I tend to get involved in more games than my usual starcraft 2 and battlefield 3 affairs. I think a large portion of my childhood was dedicated to Tribes. So when I heard Tribes:Ascend was coming out I was all over it. There’s currently a beta going on that I’m playing with a few friends.
The game is shaping up to be a really solid tribes game. Despite their design choices for more diverse classes and loadouts the game still feels like a more robust version of Tribes: LT. LT was a mod of previous tribes where loadouts were restricted to light classes only, and as a result the CTF game had a very team-deathmatchy feel to it with a flag thrown in. It had the positive effect of allowing a shrinking community to still have intense close matches, but the game felt more shallow because the pool of players that specialized in certain niche roles were harder to find. I haven’t played in any high level scrims or anything in Tribes Ascend, but from the pubs I have played in, the game does seem to share a certain feel with LT. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I do kind of miss the whole ‘heavy offense’ aspect of the game. It was a secondary objective to keep the enemy base down, and it ultimately led to more flag captures. It was crippling when you lost your generators, and probably a bit too harsh in this mainstream game design climate. But now looking at their design choices, they really are advocating fun pub play on both sides (destroying the enemy base is less crippling, turret placements are easy to destroy with tactical strikes, etc). Although the result is your actions have less of a lasting impact on the game at hand. There were certainly games in the Tribes of old where you spent 15 minutes screaming and crying because the enemy has your base so thoroughly owned you could literally not do anything constructive, so maybe it was for the better. It certainly made competitive play extremely enjoyable though.
Another game on my radar is Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I’ve only played a few hours in, but I’m liking it so far. Although, having played every Assassin’s Creed game before it, I’m starting to sense my interest is waning. And it’s certainly not waning because the game isn’t as good as the previous ones. It’s again, simply a matter of having more engaging games to play in the time I do have to play them. Maybe after Outwitters is done I’ll marathon this one through.
The last ‘new’ game I’m checking out is the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. This thing is massive in every sense of the word. It excels in giving the sense of atmosphere one expects in an epic Star Wars game. But the finer points are lost. Each class has an extensive single player campaign you play through, fully-voice acted Mass Effect 2 style, but the fidelity of it is pretty low compared to a focused, dedicated single player game. It’s not often I play a game to ‘escape’ or immerse myself in a world, but SWTOR can certainly fit the bill when I do have those cravings, despite it’s lackluster gameplay mechanics.
Adam the Artist
I recently retreated to a childhood favorite while I wait for Silent Hill Downpour & Batman. Anyone remember Psi-Ops for the X-Box? It was a really creative third-person shooter, with mind control powers and pyrokinesis, and the power to blow people’s heads up with your mind. Sure, the AI is dumb as bricks, and almost all the boss fights are completed by throwing boxes at people to death. But still, mind-jacking a sniper, making them shoot all their friends, then jumping them off a building was an experience worth reliving. You can download a free, ad-supported version somewhere (couldn’t find a good link), or buy it here.
On iOS I fell in love with Gesundheit! this month. It’s a stylish stealth game about monsters that eat boogers… Despite what that might sound like, it’s well worth your money.
Alex the Codesmith
My current playing habits on iOS, whenever I do have time to play, gravitates towards Touchgrind BMX lately. I’m a huge fan of the old Tony Hawk Pro Skater series back in the day, and illusion labs’ latest entry brings back that spark, and also executes it extremely well on a mobile platform.
It’s that genuine feeling of accomplishment that you actually got better at something rather than the game artificially boosting stats as you progress that I find appealing with these kind of games. Starting out in touchgrind BMX my scores were meager and it looked completely impossible to achieve the scores needed to advance to further levels. But after watching a tutorial or two, I immediately saw what I needed to work on, and through practice my scores starting rising and levels started unlocking! A pure game. Love it.
Adam the Artist
Ms. Splosion Man is pretty tough. It’s a hardcore platformer for X-Box Live Arcade, but I’ll admit it doesn’t have to be as painful as I’m making it. You see, they have optional levels on the world map that glow red, indicating heightened levels of danger & difficulty. Against my better judgment, I play those levels. They also have a pair of shoes hidden in each level, usually taunting me from some hard to reach death trap off the beaten path. Against my better judgment, I go for those too. The result: loud and constant profanity. Still, it scratches my Donkey Kong Country itch. Probably because they added mine cart and barrel sections.
On iOS I’m playing Highborn‘s Chapter 3 expansion. A two hour marathon of it last night, in fact. For whatever reason, I just find the game charming… Even when its sense of humor gets downright stupid.
Alex the Codesmith
Given my current gaming habits it would seem at a glance I don’t intend on playing anything else for the foreseeable future other than Starcraft 2. You’d be right, except that 2 new games are scheduled to be released this year that I’m sure I’ll be playing the crap out of. Those games would be Tribes: Ascend and Battlefield 3. But until then, every other game can wait patiently. Every now and then I explore other games (usually of the co-op variety) almost as ’snacks’ between SC2 sessions. One that stands out recently was Realm of the Mad God. A Co-op MMO RPG Shmup with perma-death as a central feature. Played in a browser. And is fun. Win.
On the iOS front, the stand out game for me recently was one Matt Rix, of Trainyard fame, suggested over twitter a while ago. It’s called Async Corp. A puzzle/match-em game that I found hard to put down. Something about that genre scratches an itch for me. You’re presented with 2 ‘areas’:
You tap on a square in one area and tap on another square in the opposite area to ‘swap’ them. Make a group of 4 or more of the same color and they combine into larger squares. Tap the large squares to ‘ship’ them out (remove them). There’s a few game modes in there, but they generally revolve around “getting as many packets shipped out as possible’. Also the whole vibe of the game was charming. It had a very ‘happy but sinister’ feel to it I couldn’t help but notice. Maybe I’m looking for something that isn’t there. But it’s great a game like that can make you think about it in that way. Reminded me vaguely of Portal because of that.