Gamesugar

August 16, 2012

Review – Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:04 pm

Review Mutant Blobs Attack
Drinkbox Studio’s critically adored Vita launch title has set out to absorb a larger audience with a release on Steam, offering those beyond the handheld set a chance to roll the irritable blob across twenty-four stages while consuming everything from hamburgers to space cattle.

Escaping from a sinister science lab, players allude authorities while finding the means to grow, eventually turning the tables on terrified citizens and soldiers through a campaign that becomes less about escaping humanity in favor of destroying it. However, the blobageddon doesn’t quite involve simply rolling around and devouring increasingly larger items like a rampaging katamari.

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Review – New Super Mario Bros. 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 8:47 am

Review New Super Mario Bros. 2
I’ve been fighting the Koopalings for so long now that I can barely remember what the original fight was about – though I’m pretty sure it had something to do with stolen Yoshi eggs.

Anyway, the kids have once again returned to kidnap the Princess and hold her hostage in a series of castles spread across the familiar territories of the Mushroom Kingdom. And once again, absolutely none of that really matters once you sink your teeth into the meat of the game. Mario’s narrative continues to unfold across the stages that stand between the player and each brief reunion with Princess Peach, each one offering stories well known to gamers and yet still bright with the design artistry expected from Nintendo’s key franchise.

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July 20, 2012

Review – Metal Slug 3

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 6:29 pm

Review Metal Slug 3
SNK masterpiece Metal Slug 3 is a side-scrolling shooter that, despite being twelve years old, possesses an expressive level of detail and animation that most modern 2D games can only hope to match.

Apple’s mobile platform, iOS, features a touchscreen-based interface that, when used as a conventional button-based controller, offers a level of control that makes the Xbox 360’s d-pad seem precise in comparison.

With this veritable Odd Couple now living together in what is known as Metal Slug 3 for the iOS, let’s hop into this Metal Slug and see if it’s even possible to steer the thing.

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July 9, 2012

Review – Resonance

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 9:17 am

Review Resonance
From the atomic bombs of yesteryear to the super colliders of today, modern history has carried one recurring theme: Science is going to kill us all one day.

Resonance is a game that seems to feed off of the worst-case scenario that played through everybody’s head when they first heard about the Large Hadron Collider a few years ago, and the game’s release syncs suspiciously well with the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. It is also a deep, meticulously crafted adventure game.

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July 8, 2012

Review – Quantum Conundrum

Review Quantum Conundrum
Conundrums exist all around us. Just this morning, I puzzled over a way to make coffee without getting out of bed – though maybe that’s more of a daily annoyance than a true conundrum.

The conundrums offered up by Kim Swift and Airtight Games tend to challenge players to navigate rooms of perilous lasers and other hazards in order to activate pressure switches to open the way forward. And the ludicrous scientific adventure that unfolds draws quick comparisons through the gameplay and Swift to Portal, which makes it rather easy to suggest that if you loved Portal, you’re in fine hands here.

There are plenty of similarities to discover whilst visiting the eccentric Professor Fitz Quadwrangle, voiced by Star Trek The Next Generation’s John De Lancie, who offers companionship with a disembodied voice that continually comments on situations and regales players with the history of the Quadwrangle family, as well as his own scientific accomplishments.

Key among the similarities are the aforementioned pressure switches that require the constant manipulation of recurring objects. Conundrums often involve finding the means to cross dangerous environments as well, continually mixing these two challenges to create rooms that do something familiar – find me wandering off to do something else until suddenly realizing the solution and running back to the computer to test my hypothesis.

Whenever a game gets under my skin that much, I figure it must be doing something right.

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July 6, 2012

Review – Gravity Rush

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 2:20 am

Review Gravity Rush
Sony Japan’s effort to leave an early and definitive mark on the Vita begins rather simply, asking players to poke the touchscreen of the hardware in order to nudge an apple. It isn’t long for breaking from the stem and falling to the ground, only to roll off the floating island where the tree has grown, falling to the unseen depths below.

If you enjoy reading into such things, there’s room to suggest that letting that forbidden fruit fall away without taking a bite invites the idea that the player should abandon knowledge, that they should forget everything they know before stepping into this gravity shifting playground – that this experience is unlike any other to come before it.

And I rather like this idea.

It’s certainly the type of bold statement one expects from Sony, and Gravity Rush does indeed fight to turn the familiar upside-down, creating a play space where the often wasted space above one’s head becomes as important as the ground beneath their feet.

But Gravity Rush is also a prisoner of gravity and circumstance, struggling with the structure of that space and occasionally bumping against the ever present walls that contain it, and further burdened by a need to justify the Vita release by making the most of hardware features makes for some hard landings here.

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July 3, 2012

Review – PixelJunk 4am

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 7:03 pm

Review PixelJunk 4am
Though very nearly missing the boat on the latest release from Q-Games, I’ve finally stolen time with the title in recent days, which has proved a curious and intimidating affair.

Setting aside the presence of a very helpful tutorial for a moment, there’s a point at which the player begins their first performance, where music tracks begin to play and the trippy visualizer takes over the television screen, and the terrifying realization that one must find a way to create can feel a bit paralyzing and confusing.

Not unlike a frightened animal, I began flailing my limbs, which armed with a PlayStation Move controller exposed the interactive potential to manipulate the audio. Initially, the experience is similar to prehistoric man striking at objects with a leftover dinner bone to find a marvelous world of sounds all around. As a modern man, armed with said Move controller, I was no less perplexed and fascinated by the possibilities – the great discovery of the potential to create coupled with the terrible burden of making some sense of the opportunity, emerging from the cave with fresh experience for the trouble.

While I’m fashionably late to the party, PixelJunk 4am has picked up a bit of a reputation for being a terribly difficult game to review – fair enough given that there is no scoring system or end goal in the traditional sense. But the actual playing of 4am isn’t nearly so hard to nail down, so maybe that’s a good place to start.

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