Posts Tagged ‘physics’
Frozenbyte’s Trine to hit North American PSN this month
Despite facing a delay at the end of July, Frozenbyte’s Trine will officially make its way onto the North American Playstation Store this October 22nd.
Make note that European PS3 owners have had their hands on side scrolling platformer for almost 2 weeks now so it’s nice to see that Frozenbyte and Nobilis (publisher) are taking the woes of North American gamers into account.
No word on pricing but we’ll let you know as soon as it’s made known.
via Joystiq
Boom Blox Bash Party Game Review–Throw Stuff At Stuff Is More Fun Than It Sounds
Well, congratulate me, folks—I’ve finally managed to lay hands on a Wii, one of those devilishly hard to find little systems with the massive array of games. And what do I manage to get for it first? One of the newest games out for it, Boom Blox Bash Party.
I’m discovering right away that Wii games are significantly harder to discuss than, say, Xbox 360 games because Wii games don’t seem to like things like plot. So I can’t really do a recap on that, and that’s the case with Boom Blox Bash Party. In fact, for a game developed by Steven Spielberg, you’d think it’d have more of an actual plotline to it, but no. Basically, in Boom Blox Bash Party, you throw things. At other things. And repeat until a whole bunch of things have been knocked down or blown up or you’ve run out of chances to throw things at other things. Yeah, I know, simplistic doesn’t even begin to describe it.
But here’s where things get weird. Inside this tiny little framework of a game (throw stuff at stuff, repeat until out of stuff one way or another), they’ve jam-packed it with things to do. You’ll throw things to try and knock down a huge tower. You’ll throw things to try and disassemble a fort made out of what looks like wood blocks. You’ll throw things to destroy a robot or hunt sunken pirate treasure. You’ll throw things to make certain kinds of blocks disappear or explode or spread a kind of virus to other blocks and make THEM disappear. You’ll screw around with turning blocks colors and moving blocks and throwing stuff at blocks and even using a kind of slingshot to shoot other blocks at each other. You’ll play with ramps and drops and chain reactions. Gravity will be both your friend and your enemy. At some points, you will get to work a cannon.
You will search for weak points and the best shot and any of a dozen other things that make me wish I’d taken better notes in my high school physics classes, and I got an A in high school physics!
I found myself absolutely baffled. How is this simplistic little game managing to serve up this much variety and be this downright entertaining besides? It’s utterly beyond my capacity to explain, but one thing was clear—I had a LOT of fun playing this game. In fact, it was hard to stop playing this game long enough to write a review about it. My elbow is still just a bit sore from all the throwing.
There’s a lot to like about this game, whether you want to explore everything it has to offer (completionists be forewarned—this game WILL consume your life if you let it) or you just want some quiet time spent throwing stuff at stuff without a lot of cleanup time or losing your damage deposit afterward. Boom Blox Bash Party is great and unfettered fun, the kind of fun that gaming used to be. It’s definitely not the kind of game you’re used to, and in this market, that’s a HUGE plus.
Tags: Action, action game, Boom Blox, Boom Blox Bash Party, Nintendo, physics, Puzzle, puzzle game, throwing things, Wii
First person fighting to appear in NHL 10
EA is all about making their sports games as realistic as possible and NHL 10 is no exception. The mega developer/publisher has recently announced that NHL 10 will bring an all new element of realism to hockey fights in the form of a first person camera angle.
The NHL 08 fighting was ridiculous, the NHL 09 fighting wasn’t much better, let’s hope that EA got it right this time around.
Other than the fighting, EA lets players know that gameplay tweaks such as glass-banging crowds, and an all new physics engine for the boards. Best of all, EA will introduce enforcers to the franchise, you know, the hockey players who are recruited just to get into fights.
NHL 10 is sure to be a hands down improvement over the previous games when its September 8th release date for the Xbox 360 and PS3 rolls around.
Read (Joystiq)
Alone In The Dark–All About Control, Or A Lack Thereof
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I had to finally dig up a lousy game on the midst of my local video store’s shelves to fill you in on, and you’ll be amazed at just what lousy game I’m talking about. It’s none other than the latest installment of Alone in the Dark, also called Alone in the Dark: Inferno.
Split into episodes like a TV show, Alone in the Dark joins us once again with perennial hero Edward Carnby, who’s had a lot of different incarnations over the years. This time around, he’s plunging through the underground tunnels beneath New York’s central park, chasing down cult activity and trying to prevent nothing less than Satan himself coming to take over the planet. Apparently there’s plenty of weird stuff going on in Central Park, if the game’s website is to be believed. Everything from mutating trees to unusual bird migration patterns is going down in Central Park, so there’s plenty to figure out.
And indeed, starting the game makes it look like it’s going to be a real party, with random things bursting out of the walls and swallowing people for no clear reason. Also for no clear reason, they seem to have a problem with fire, something that’ll come back repeatedly throughout the game. The story is deep, rich and involved, with all sorts of lunacy happening on a regular basis, and a multi-branched plotline partially determined by your own choices. Good voice acting, good sounds, decent graphics–everything that should make a good game is right here.
And then some, really–for instance, there’s even a section where you have to regularly press your right stick to blink and clear your vision. When’s the last time you had to control BLINKING in a game? I can’t remember the last time I actually got to handle my own autonomic functions. Next time maybe I can do breathing, or food digestion.
But there’s one critical flaw in Alone in the Dark: Inferno’s otherwise solid profile–control. I’m not alone on this one; I’ve read several other reviews on this one and just about everyone’s with me that the control on this game is buggier than a New Jersey tenement. Trying to get Edward Carnby to move from place to place is a slow and tedious process that involves lots of camera juggling and just a little bit of sheer blind luck. I couldn’t believe it–even the ORIGINAL Edward Carnby didn’t handle this sluggishly, and that was about twenty years ago! The game also suffers from a lack of intuitive play–at one point, a chunk of the building I was in peeled away, and I went over to investigate, figuring this was the game’s way of showing me where to go next, as is so often done in these kinds of games. Imagine my surprise when, just a minute later, a large chunk of BURNING CEILING fell on my head, killing me. At that point, after I put my jaw back where it should be, I wondered…what was next? Would I go to use the restroom and a giant jack-in-the-box would pop out? Perhaps there would be bananas in my coffee. The world no longer made sense…and that was a problem for me.
Yep, when a game starts to completely divorce itself from things like Being Possible and Making Sense, I’ve got a problem. Especially when I have a hard time moving from point A to point B as it stands–it’s bad enough Edward Carnby moves like he’s wearing concrete thigh-high boots, but it gets worse when the laws of physics suddenly decide they hate me.
All this is a shame, really, as Alone in the Darkwas a wonderfully written, tautly plotted piece that controls like someone’s taken my lovely wireless controller and replaced it with a brick with decals on it. Had they taken a bit more time with it they might well have made a masterwork. But that’s one for the “what might have been” column.
What Is “Next Gen”?
Ask any game developer what sort of feature that the title in question includes, chances are the first thing they mention is the “next gen” graphics, or physics, etc; Of course, it has not taken long for people to start to ask whether features can be next gen or not. After all, all three platforms have been out for over a year. Speaking of which, what about the Wii? Is it truly a “new gen” console? What is “next gen”? What is “new gen”? These questions and more will be answered after the jump.