Parteibuch Aggregator Feed - Items from date 2010-07-24

oddbob: GameCity Nights

oddbob — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:18:16 +0000

So, yesterday myself, Minion and ToreSupra wandered down to GameCity Nights to see what it’s all about.

I was, unfortunately, a bit of a mess by the time I rolled up there. Generally, I don’t travel well anyway as the missus will reassure you but between a week with a distinct lack of sleep, a 6 hour coach journey where the coach turns up incredibly late and then toddling as fast as my little legs can take me to Antenna, guided ably by Mrs Bob on the phone for directions I certainly wasn’t even remotely close to my best. I think a bearded sweaty mess with a backpack would be a fair description.

However, any stresses immediately relieved by stumbling in to cries of “Ooooooh, here he is” from the Minster and immediately being flocked by the lovely organisers to get set up as fast as possible. Which we then did. Min dealt with the PC side of things, I took the Macwanker corner. Because someone had to, really.

Rather than go down to show off my stuff, which to be fair I get plenty of opportunities for, we opted to show off Min’s stuff and some not entirely random selections of the work of RR-ites.

So on display from the Retro Remakes camp during the night were Min’s Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Space Cabbage and Pheonix. Due to framey-use on site, no individual links but here’s Min’s homepage , Stu and Smila’s Ultimate Bruce Lee and Quantasm, TCK’s COBEX, Kuto’s Typhoon 2001 and of course, at some point you have to regale everyone with the story of War Twat whilst blinding random passers by.

And by “on display” I generally mean “indulging in our own personal high score competitions with…” which is what happens when you let us lot loose in a room.

On display from the not-RR camp we got a glance at BlindGirl, a game I’d not had chance to look at yet on XBLIG thanks to life taking over. I really must write something up about it at some point and AVOID short version – it’s a multiplayer Squares2 .

Normally, when I roll up to something like this I’ll end up with a camera full of photos. With GameCity Nights my camera ended up stuck in my pocket being forgotten about because, well, here’s the great thing about GameCity Nights…

It’s highly relaxed and we spent most of the night just chatting. Which, y’know, any right minded person will tell you is far more fun than booth-babing it. Sure, you’re on hand if anyone wants to ask you something but that’s so far from a priority it’s silly. Enjoying yourself there takes absolute priority and for that alone I’d really recommend that if you can drag your arse down there, you do so.

It’s a good night and the gameiness stuff doesn’t take precedent over the social aspects.

Helped along by some seriously good company, one of the most relaxing nights out you could ask for punctuated with the odd bit of fun stuff to do and the panel.

Ah yes, the panel.

It was Doctor Who Adventures night so on hand, Mr James Moran, Charles Cecil and Anwen Aspden compered by One Life Left’s Simon Byron.

To be fair here, I’m more used to places where wot you get some indies in the room together and a level of candidness you can’t really apply once you get further up the mainstream ladder so despite the best efforts of everyone involved to spark it up a bit, for me on message stuff is always going to be a bit bland. At times I felt like I’d wandered into an episode of Dr Who Confidential “we’ve got a wonderful team doing wonderful things and everyone is wonderful etc…” . That said, it was entertaining enough and getting a glimpse at Sumo Digital’s pitch reel for the Adventure Games made it all worth the while.

It was the sort of pitch reel you watch and end up thinking “yup, if *I* was making the decisions, I’d have picked that”. Good stuff, they really had nailed the show down rather beautifully.

A short Q&A followed with some general questions from the audience and the internets but y’know, when most answers are going to be “we can’t really say anything about that” there’s not a lot further you can take that sort of thing. A shame in one way but a not entirely unexpected one at that.

The three of us ducked out for a ciggy and chat outside for a while and wandered back into a Dr Who themed game of Consequences. We didn’t take part as I’m not allowed paper and a pen or MSPaint or anything that I can draw on at events after the Coders Workshop incident s about 5 or 6 years ago involving a kids art package and the drawing of manbits everywhere and no-one wanted to be that person who stood up at the front and instead of reading a story out had to say “and Bob has drawn a cock here”.

The winning entry is here for anyone wondering exactly what madness this entailed. A close second place must surely be the team who managed to have the ending to their story entirely in German and had to swap speakers to read it out to the crowd in a moment of lovely accidental performance art madness.

Then it was back to shifting between the bar and chatter for a while before the three of us had to peg off ah, being a parent is so much fun… into the night. Or in my case, into a long and torturous return journey that saw me land back home at gone 10am the next day. No matter though, a minor suffering to endure for a fine night with some fine people at a fine venue.

If you’re in the locale or y’know, a lunatic like me who fancies a bit of a trek, and there’s a GameCity Nights on – go there. Really. It’s lovely.

Even with the hellish travel, I had a stonkingly fun night and I’d definitely do it all over again.

Off-Brand Games: High Seas Havoc

Off-Brand Games — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:30:00 +0000

_{[Many video games build upon the concepts and mechanics of their forerunners. Off-Brand Games examines those that draw just a little too much... inspiration.]}

There's an art to deception. Have you ever gone to a fitness club on the promise of a free two-week membership only to be given the ol' bait-and-switch? You have to sign up for at least a month in order to get those free weeks, or you have to sit through some inane marketing presentation. All you wanna do is get out of that place as fast as you can, find a Taco Bell or a Wendy's, and cram your gullet with about a billion thingies off the dollar menu.

Consider a video game example -- who thought Brütal Legend would be an RTS? No, we wanted a heavy metal-themed hack-and-slash with hilarious Jack Black one-liners interspersed throughout. I could say something here about assumptions and how people who "assume" make an "ass" out of "u" and "me," but let's be real. When something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you're gonna be pretty miffed when it turns out to be a kangaroo.

Ironically, the whole goal of these "Off-Brand" articles is to potentially discover games that rise above those initial assumptions. Then again, there are times when I don't want to be surprised, as is the case with High Seas Havoc. God, why couldn't it have been just like Sonic the Hedgehog?

Offender: High Seas Havoc
Developed by: Data East
Published by: Data East
Released on: GEN, 1993
Tastes like: Sonic the Hedgehog

Oh, fuck. It's Data East yet again. Ya know, I really ought to do a running tally, see how many rip-offs a single company can crank out. I mean, there have gotta be companies whose revenue stream revolves entirely around IP theft. Whether the games are good or bad, a very damning case starts to build against them after a while. Is that how they want to be remembered?

Maybe Data East just wanted to be a martyr. The company was like an overgrown fangame house, and karma was fast approaching. It couldn't come up with an original idea of its own and chose to burn in a blaze of glory. All for naught, however. Does anybody lament the loss of Data East? Is the world in worse shape? Oh, whatever will we do without another Bad Dudes?

But I'm not being fair. Sometimes, Data East would only steal to get the ball rolling. Like in Finding Forrester, Jamal copies the first paragraph of Forrester's essay in order to find his groove. Ya know, start with a template then let the words pour out. You can often tell the moment when authors switch, though. A.I. was Stanley Kubrick's final gift to the world, but Spielberg mucked it all up with his "Holy shit! Aliens!" finale. A Scooby-Doo ending would have been less jarring!

Anyway, we are introduced to Havoc, a good-natured pirate who finds a young maiden named Bridget washed up on the shore. She holds a map that reveals the location of the magical gem Emeralda and asks you to help hide it from the clutches of the evil Bernardo. She and your sidekick Tide managed to get captured anyway, so you must seek 'em out and prevent Bernardo from acquiring infinite power.

HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

Havoc is supposed to be a seal, but if it weren't for his very obvious flippers, I'd say he was Sonic in pirate garb. He's blue and has got that stupid smirk on his face like he just let one rip and is pretending not to notice. It's not clear what species Bridget is supposed to be, but she's pink and hedgehog-looking just like Amy Rose. And the MacGuffin in this swash-buckling tale is a Chaos Emerald.

If you only play the first level of this game, you'd walk away thinking that this is indeed a high-seas reworking of Sonic's 16-bit escapades. It's Emerald Hill Zone from Sonic 2! There are big slopes and gravity-defying platforms and cliff edges that crumble in the exact same checkerboard fashion. There are springs that send you flying, treasure chests that act like Sonic's item monitors, and even a ten-minute time limit in each level.

There are two major differences, however. One, you have a health bar instead of a ring counter. You collect gemstones that award extra lives for every 100 you find, but you gotta snack on meat sticks to refill your stamina. Two, Havoc is so goddamn slow. There's a boost item just like Sonic's sneaker power-up, but it barely makes a difference in your top speed.

You bounce off enemy's heads, but if you want to attack foes in your line of sight or deal any damage to bosses, you have to push the jump button a second time to perform this weak-ass flipper kick. It's so awkward -- you can't judge the proper attack distance without getting damaged yourself for at least the first twenty minutes of the game. Look at the box art above! Watch the intro cut scene! Captain Feathersword has got himself a cutlass! Do you get to use that in the game, ever, at all? No, you don't.

That's deception número uno.

It's disgusting how many free lives you can score at the outset. You collect crowns worth 50 gems and 1-up dolls out the ying-yang -- I had roughly 30 lives after intentionally killing myself a few times in that very first level! In fact, every time you respawn at a checkpoint, your timer resets to zero! No punishment for failure whatsoever!

Bad guys fall like timber; the first encounter with Bernardo could best be described as pitcher-position prison rape. I'm making this game my bitch and just cruisin' like you know how we do, yeeeeeaaaaah boooooooyeeeeeee!

Deception número dos.

It was around the halfway mark that the difficulty began to rise as sharply as the snowy slopes I was scaling. There are these vanishing blocks that move in a marked direction one space before dropping, and you gotta hop from one to the other as you dodge flying mace balls. That's not the nerve-racking part, though. That comes later when you have to hop up and down on a moving platform with a spinning roulette wheel that dictates where you go. Your progress is left up to chance, so you're bouncing there like a fuckin' chihuahua for five or so minutes, then you get the idea to screw the risks and take a leap of faith from wherever in space you are.

I can't quite put my finger on it -- perhaps around the time I was being chased by Fryguy from Mario 2 -- but at some point the game stopped playing like a Sonic title. There were no more long stretches of ground to sprint across. Everything became about precise platforming and trial-and-error pattern memorization. Bosses turned into Zen Buddhist trials where your every flaw and failing is laid bare before you. Have you disconnected from the world? Have you achieved true enlightenment?

Maybe you should become a vegan. Go hiking in the Catskills. Stop showing up to your job and build a shack out in Mongolia. Maybe become a village shaman. Go on a spirit journey in the Outback. You don't have to go that far if you don't wanna. You can start at home with some self-reflection. Take up jogging. Hey... have you found Jesus yet?

Are you in control? Are you focused? Have you found your center?

It don't fuckin' matter. There is no way you can play this game and not want to visit a crowded space and start ripping out throats, MacGruber style. What happened? At what point did this game demand skills more appropriate for a Cave shooter? Did the lead designer's wife leave him halfway through development and now he was lashing out at the unfortunate children who dared to dream and frolic and prance? This is not a humbling ordeal, it's an emasculating one.

The final level is particularly mind-numbing. Flying crates that spawn out of nowhere come swooping in and smacking you off the airship. They barely let you know they're coming. And poor you, your flipper kick doesn't do shit to help. You may bust a couple here and there, but you'll most likely be tasting wood splinters for the next year. Every move has to be calculated, every obstacle foreseen weeks in advance.

Then you fight Bernardo, the godmodding dick, who along the way learned how to summon meteors and shoot lightning from his ass. Where's my sword? Don't I deserve one? What kind of a pirate am I? This doesn't seem fair! Oh, God, motherfucker went Super Saiyan with the emerald! Why can't I become a Super Saiyan, huh?

I replayed that one level for about four hours! I even left the game on pause to eat dinner, take a shower, and clear my head! I finally beat the bastard, but there was no joy in victory. There is no reason for this game to be so hard. You don't tease players with one thing and then just go in an extreme direction like that! This is how people develop hypertension!

Where's my Sonic clone? Where did it go? That part actually wasn't so bad. Bring it back, you assholes! You wanna make me cry? Do ya? Great! I'm crying now! You are horrible people! Bad, bad, mean, mean, meanies!

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

THE MEGA BLOKS SCALE OF SAME INTERLOCKING STUDS AS LEGOS:

PREVIOUSLY, ON OFF-BRAND GAMES:
00 Introduction
01 Power Blazer
02 Commando: Steel Disaster
03 Snood
04 Midnight Resistance
05 8 Eyes
06 Onimusha Blade Warriors
07 The Krion Conquest
08 Scurge: Hive
09 3-D WorldRunner
10 Alundra
11 Chex Quest
12 Giana Sisters DS
13 Run Saber
14 Crusader of Centy
15 DuLuDuBi Star
16 Fighter's History
17 Robopon
18 The Simpsons Road Rage 
19 Neutopia 
20 Ruff Trigger: The Vanocore Conspiracy
21 Soul of Darkness *Official Review*

SDCC: Rush'N Attack is coming back

SDCC — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:00:00 +0000

First off, an admission: I never realized that the first part of the title was word play. Rush'N = Russian. I get it now!

This upcoming XBLA and PSN release is a remake of a 1980's arcade game where you'd...well, rush and attack, armed only with a knife. I met with Konami to play the latest build of the Vatra-developed game, where I knifed throats and crawled in air ducts, thinking all the while about how stupid I am to have never realized that the game's title was wordplay.

Rush'N Attack: Ex-Patriot was built with the Unreal Engine, and is a 2.5D game set in Russian in the Cold War era. In it you play as an American that was part of an elite military group. But not elite enough. He was out to rescue a prisoner but was caught and thrown in jail. You break out of jail armed only with a knife and some serious neck slitting skill.

When I met with Konami, they told me to Google "systema." It turns out that systema is a Russian martial art that can utilize weapons like knives. The guys at Vatra worked to incorporate actual systema moves into the animations and attacks, and they look pretty cool.

Everything looks really nice, come to think of it. The dark look reminds me of Shadow Complex a bit, and I consider that a compliment. That makes sense, as both were built with the Unreal Engine. The visuals play with light and shadow as you creep into a dark doorway or behind a wall to let guards pass by. You'll then pop out into the light to kill them from behind. Some areas like ducts and shafts are so dark that you'll have to use night vision goggles to see.

What you're doing is a lot like platforming, with some puzzle-ish encounters mixed in with combat. It's up to you on how you attack -- fast and direct, or quiet and stealthy. Both attack types switch things up on you contextually, so you only need to worry about getting and and attacking in time. You do get points for style, though. Sneaking up on a guard, hiding, and then popping out from behind nets you 800 points a kill, but running up and stabbing only gets you 100 points. But, to keep things fair for both types of players, know that you can get your stabby on with multiple enemies, chaining attacks to get a high score in another way.

In fighting you'll mostly use your trusty knife, but you can find temporary use weapons like machine guns and grenades. Note that once you get hooked on the knife play, you'll kind of frown on using guns to make your way through. There's something that's just really cool about hiding in a dark doorway as an enemy passes, and then killing him. Things become even more fun when you unlock button-based combos, which make your knife work look even fancier.

There's three levels, but I won't use the word "only," as Konami says that they're each huge, with a lot of layout to explore. I'm told that there will be six or more hours of play from these three levels. We're looking forward to seeing more of Rush'N Attack: Ex-Patriot before its Fall release.