Year: 2009

Where’s the Joy in Pad Demos?

Martyn Zachary 3 Comments

Those with a firmer, stronger grip on their joysticks might not have even noticed this development, but personally, I would rather like to know whatever happened to old-fashioned, mouse-powered gameplay demonstrations for first-person shooters? Over the past few years, I’ve found myself increasingly irritated with various PR departments’ keen intent on demonstrating their games on consoles and/or with gamepads only.

The key to successful gameplay exhibition, after all, is authentic exposition. While the generic idea of the trailer is to lure the player in, convince him or her of the game’s meritorious mechanisms, gameplay trailers are not as disconnected from actual gameplay as it would seem on the outset; Think of competitive play, for example, wherein even the most infinitesimal intricacies matter: DPI, polling rate, sensitivity, inversion, crosshairs, macros, bindings, et cetera et cetera. My primary question is, then, why are we not seeing these features in trailers?

A very recent example – one I’m sure most of you have seen by now – can be found in the form of the latest BioShock 2 multiplayer trailer, found below:

The footage above has been clearly recorded with the questionable aid of the gamepad: The first-person camera movement looks imprecise and tardy; most of the third-person action on display, then, consists of arrow-straight movement, sluggish posturing and general standing-about. Two more gameplay video analyses, of Resistance 2 and Singularity, after the jump.

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Canabalt

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

Thanks to RPS for posting this great little flash gem by indie dev Adam Atomic. Canabalt is a fast-paced game featuring a free-runner speeding his way over rooftops. The only control is a single button to make him jump over various obstacles and across gaps. He progressively picks up more and more speed, so there rises a necessity every now and then to deliberately run into some of the non-fatal debris in order to slow him down. It’s the windows that get me every time, though.

Canabalt Canabalt Canabalt

The game is presented in an extremely short and wide aspect ratio, giving more time to see the route ahead but less warning for falling objects. People with very large monitor resolutions can play the even wider HD version of the game. The city depicted in the layers of parallax-scrolling background is futuristic and dystopian: ships fly past and huge robots with searchlights make their way across the industrial landscape. The music is suitably thumping with synths and beats, with quieter, atmospheric interludes.

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Mass Effect Pinnacle Station DLC Released

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

BioWare has released new DLC for Mass Effect, for the 360 and PC. Priced at $5, Pinnacle Station provides a new space station for players with a Spectre character to board and face 13 battle challenges, approximately 2-3 hours of content.

Pinnacle Station Pinnacle Station Bring Down the Sky

What makes this release interesting is the complete lack of a formal announcement from BioWare. The DLC was hinted at for months, leaked on the Swiss Live Marketplace, and then eventually released to the rest of the world with no acknowledgement from the developers. Moreover, the launch was less than smooth, with some users facing problems getting the mission to work 1)http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/26/bioware-looking-into-mass-effect-pinnacle-station-dlc-gli/. Additionally, this DLC pack is not free for the PC, which the first one, Bring Down the Sky was. There is a marked difference in the kind of gameplay offered in Pinnacle Station, being primarily a combat-focused mission with little story. Bring Down the Sky featured a meaty side mission, introducing the previously mentioned but unseen Batarian race. Whether or not this latest pack is worth your hard-earned bucks is most likely down to how much you enjoy the combat in the game 2)http://kotaku.com/5347695/mass-effect-pinnacle-station-micro+review-a-curious-experiment; here’s hoping that this progression (or would that be regression?) in depth doesn’t extend to the next pack, if there will be one.

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Sqr

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

Sqr is a quirky little shooter by experimental developer Retro Anomaly. Utilizing simple but psychedelic graphics in a style reminiscent of Gunroar, the game is a nice little distraction for restless fingers – though confusing at first glance.

Sqr Sqr Sqr

The title of the game refers to the motif of square elements that comprise everything, including numbers for the odd high score screen. you control a tiny green square and are swarmed by larger pink ones in a variety of patterns. The two attacks granted to you are a steady laser and glowing orb. The first attack, activated by the z key, is controlled in the manner of a turret, with the orbiting blue square acting as the pivot. The second attack, on the x key, seems unpredictable and useless at first but with a little practice can be controlled fully (but is still useless). It’s basically fired by a sling motion – that is, hold x, move in the direction you want to fire and then let go of x.

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