Review: ‘Joe Danger’ brings the pain
Here’s a rare, unsolicited peek into the seedy world of local newspaper video game coverage — I don’t get much free stuff, and there’s zero institutional support financially, so every game you see discussed here is something I purchased out-of-pocket.
I’m more than happy to do that, of course, but I won’t intentionally purchase something I suspect to be bad.
So when I enthuse wildly about games week in and week out, as I’m about to do with British developer Hello Games’ first title, know that it comes from a sincere place.
“Joe Danger,” released last week exclusively on the PlayStation Network, is a bright, side-scrolling motorcycle action game that draws heavy inspiration from last year’s “Trials HD.”
Like “Trials,” “Joe” is split into dozens of easily digestible levels that require precise handling, a certain amount of patience and a willingness to hammer the restart button over and over again.
Both games become very challenging very quickly, asking you to rotate your avatar just so in mid-air or to pass under certain obstacles at low speed, lest you bounce about and inadvertently clothesline yourself. But where “Trials” became unmanageably, controller-chuckingly difficult about halfway through, “Joe” never feels as grueling.
Thanks to its cheery attitude and the ways it measures your progress, you’re more likely to smile when you flub a trick, land on a strip of spikes or plunge headlong into one of the game’s many shark tanks. And when you finally do nail a tough track, “Joe” is all the more rewarding for it.
Some of the levels can be cleared in a single run, but most pack so many objectives that you’ll be forced to finish them multiple times. Exploration will net you hidden stars and other trinkets scattered across three very separate lanes, a la “Excitebike.” Because you can change lanes only at prescribed switch points, and because the game frequently forbids you from backtracking, you’ll almost certainly miss a few items on your first go.
Fortunately, the game is built with that in mind. If you’ve found a level’s hidden stars but haven’t managed to sustain a trick combo all the way through, for example, you’ll get partial credit — usually enough to advance.
But if you’re a compulsive collector who doesn’t move on until all of a level’s quests are satisfied, be prepared for the long haul.
This is where I collapsed with “Trials.” Though I had unlocked the bulk of that game, I refused to advance to a given stage until I earned a gold medal in the one before it. That meant mastering an incredibly sensitive (and occasionally quirky) physics system and memorizing every ramp, wooden plank and pile of tires.
“Joe” is much more forgiving in that respect — you don’t have to lean halfway back and turbo-tap the gas to scale a nearly vertical rock face, for example — though it’s no slouch in the dexterity department. Every one of your fingers will be assigned to one or two buttons to manage boosting, ducking, jumping, flipping and tricking, and though that feels daunting at first, it becomes second-nature soon enough.
The busy controls also create some of your most memorable spills. As I write this, I’m still stuck on a stage that needs me to simultaneously boost and jump off a ramp (the square and x buttons), stop my momentum and move backward in mid-air (L2), pull off a backflip (left thumbstick) and grab trick (L1) to restore my boost meter, land on both wheels and turbo under a gate.
I can do it slowly if I set my mind to it, but to clear the level in the prescribed time, I have to do it quickly and flawlessly.
I had messed it up 46 consecutive times before I left for work this morning (like “Trials,” “Joe” helpfully keeps count of your screw-ups), landing on my neck or rocketing into a wall, and it was hilarious every time. That’s the distilled essence of a great action game. Even dying is fun.
I’ve spoken here only about the single-player career mode, but “Joe” also packs a suite of online and local multiplayer options, and its sandbox mode features one of the easiest track creators I’ve ever had the joy of using.
You can exchange user-made tracks over the Internet, though the game sadly lacks a marketplace where you can upload or download standout levels. Unless you have friends playing the game online, you’re out of luck.
That’s a relatively minor gripe, though, and among consoles, it’s something only “LittleBigPlanet” has started to figure out. “Joe Danger” is one of the best games available on Sony’s online service, and it should appeal to gamers and Super Dave Osborne fans everywhere.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.
Rectangular review: "PIXEL!"
The latest wave of 8-bit nostalgia comes in a few flavors. There are the pixel-perfect reproductions of what we remember from the late '80s (MEGAMAN 9, the stellar VVVVVV), the loving but snarky send-ups of those same memories (NO MORE HEROES 2), and the glut of micro-budget games that rely on Famicom-era visuals for easy cost-savings.
PIXEL!, the third title in the impressively consistent Arkedo Series on Xbox Live's "Indie Games" service, is all of the above. You control Pixel, a digitized feline composed of a fixed number of white squares, as she moves left to right in pursuit of MEOWCITY, the intermittently maddening final stage.
(Could Pixel be a he? I'm partial to she, but you can be the judge. Dude cats are useless creatures, and everybody knows it. I'll fight dissenters.)
She's a she, dammit.
The game is a gloriously precise 2-D platformer that lasts about two hours. Pixel walks pretty cautiously at first, but by holding the right trigger, you send her into a full-on Mario trot that lengthens and heightens her jumps. You have complete control of her in the air, too, which is pretty important, as you'll spend a sizable chunk of the game airborne. Nearly every choice you make involves how and when to jump on something, be it a load-bearing cloud or stack of blocks or angry, KIRBY-looking tree dude.
Then there are the ladder segments, when Pixel must hop from rung to suspended-from-space rung or face certain death. Thankfully, these are tests more of dexterity than of patience. You'll die plenty, but it'll be your fault, and you'll be a better player for it. Only in a few instances are you forced to leap blind into the great abyss, hoping there's a spring or cloud to catch you below.
You'll be asked occasionally to tug on the left trigger to pull up a magnifying glass. This lets you zoom into certain blocks, a handful of enemies and, in one pretty clever puzzle, yourself, at which point you have a couple seconds to navigate a maze loosely based on the pixel-by-pixel makeup of the item in question. You're generally rewarded with some health to fill your three hearts or with one of 18 "useless relics" — collectibles which, by the game's own admission, exist to artificially lengthen the game. There's no discernible in-game benefit to finding them all, aside from the satisfaction of having discovered some pretty well-hidden secrets. I played each of the game's six stages twice, and I've found only half of the relics.
For the most part, the zooming mechanic is a neat idea that's used often enough to be a feature and sparingly enough not to be a headache.
If you've seen the photo above, you have a pretty good idea of what PIXEL! looks like. Each actual pixel is an exaggerated white block, sometimes joining together in ways so abstract that you'll have to ask yourself what you're seeing. The last enemy you'll encounter, and the most difficult, is supposedly a giant mouse (fuckers), but he looks more like a pig in a sports coat or something out of Dimension X. Certainly that level of abstraction is deliberate, and it's part of the fun.
Also contributing to the charm are a few really good chiptunes and the soft blues that color the backgrounds. But by the time you get to MEOWCITY, those blues can feel pretty static. The other games in the Arkedo canon — JUMP! and SWAP! — make skillful and vibrant use of contrast and neons. To my taste, PIXEL! could have used some more of that.
At 240 Microsoft Points (3 earth bucks), the game is a pretty smart investment. It's not as abusive as JUMP!, and it certainly has more personality than SWAP! If you want a reasonably fleshed-out demonstration of what the Xbox 360's indies can do, this feels like a good place to start.
Played: entire game, about two hours
Platform(s): Xbox Live Arcade
Price: 240 Microsoft Points ($3)
GNILLEY @ Game Jam Sydney: Where Screaming Is Everything
Today's Gameodactyl post was supposed to be about TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM. And even though the game isn't exactly heavy on content, I felt I needed another week to flesh out a good review. Sorry all (especially Rex)!
So I wanted to share with our faithful reader(s) this excellent video from Game Jam Sydney.
(Global Game Jam is an awesome once-a-year event where indie developers present awesome games that they developed in a short amount of time.)
So this "game," if you can call it that, is entitled GNILLEY. The idea started as an experiment involving sound pitches manipulating colors and shades in a game. Eventually, the game (d)evolved into one where angry yelling leads to winning. All enemies go down via yelling. Bosses go down via lots of yelling.
To be fair, there were a few puzzles and tricks worked in where, to get past a barrier, you should only yell at 20% to 30% max yelling capacity.
Also the game uses a bunch of sprites and environments from Zelda. Just to save time as a basic building block I guess.
Anyway, check out the above video, and download the game to play for yourself by clicking here.
This Black Friday, I'm Thankful for Free Indie Games
While everyone else is out there dropping mad dollars on mega deals, and because there's little interesting coming out till after the holidays, I've been checking my indie sources for stuff that's worth playing. Here are two that stole some of my weekday hours this week.
WE WANT YOU
We Want You is a procedurally generated platformer, which means the levels are generated as you go along. Or fall along, in this case. You play an unnamed soldier who's dropped in a war zone. Your goal is to survive. As you fall towards your ultimate destination, a friendly base, time passes. The longer the war lasts, the more dangerous the enemies strewn across the landscape become. At the start they just sit there waiting for you to pass through their crosshairs, but after the first year they start coming after you.
Not looking too healthy.
As you play, headlines from back home appear on the screen, letting you know which generals are involved in scandals and how many men you've killed so far. The game isn't quite as polished as Spelunky, another procedurally generated game, but it's controls are a little more forgiving. You have unlimited mines, which are used to destroy terrain. You can pick up armor and a lot of weapons, though you'll still spend most of the game bleeding on your pistol.
LEVEL UP
Another 2D platformer for the list. Level Up is inspired by UPGRADE COMPLETE, a vertical shooter where everything, from the weapons to the title screen, have to be bought with points earned in the game. Level Up applies that idea to a lesser degree. The main character's attributes, jumping, running, healing, all improve through use.
Yay! Now I heal better.
At times the game feels like simplified Metroidvania. Large parts of the map are only unlocked after you max out your jump skill, and you can learn a double jump from one of the two tribes populate the world, elephant people and square people. Each group sells upgrades for your main attributes. The square people sell the attributes for full price, while the elephant people sell them for cheap if you can pass a test. But I only completed one quest for the elephant people because gems aren't hard to come by and the challenges were pretty tough.
NEWS
Gaming Day at libraries was a big success, though I guess it's not surprising that games are a good way to get boys in the library. In other library news, Sony donated a thousand PS3s and copies of LittleBigPlanet for Game Changers to libraries and community organizations so kids can make content that uses science, engineering and math skills. Game Changers is a competition that's part of Obama's Digital Learning Initiative.
Square Enix thinks the network is the future of home gaming, though, the guy with the download-only system says otherwise.
Nintendo is really popular with the ladies.
And finally, cactuar!
It feels like 1996 again
This week felt a lot like 1996. There's been lots of colored loot, lots of mouse clicking and lots of time spent pouring over skill trees.
BORDERLANDS
My mild fury at having to wait a week for a copy of Borderlands where you can actually aim was tempered a bit by knowing that everybody toiling on the console versions got bug-ridden copies of the game. Sure, my game has crashed a few times, but I haven't lost any specialization points and my phase strike ability worked from the start (well, once I reached the right level).
This skag doesn't like fire very much.
I don't have much to add to what Benji said about the game. It's a sick FPS with simple, solid RPG elements. I play an "invisible ninja chick who wields a shotgun" and various machine guns, and I haven't had this much fun shooting people in the face since Half-Life 2. The randomness of the loot system is a bit annoying, and mediocre guns often have silly level requirements, but I'm willing to look past that.
My biggest problem is that I can't play as much as I'd like. Benji and I are playing together, and we have to stay the same level or the game gets unbalanced pretty quickly. We played for a while when I was only two levels behind him, and I couldn't damage the bandits the game threw at us.
But Borderlands has made me happy, both when I'm alone and when someone's got my back. It's exactly what I expected, and it is good.
TORCHLIGHT
If, while playing Torchlight, you get a sense that you've delved deep underground in search of sweet loot before, don't be alarmed. A small developer called Blizzard made a very similar game in the 90s called Diablo. In fact, some of the people who worked on that worked on Torchlight, which might explain why it's so much fun.
Hanging out with my imp, puppy and golem.
Torchlight plays like Diablo, only with better graphics. Not much else has changed. Scrolls still reveal the identity of mystery drops and take you back to town, minibosses still surround themselves with weaker versions of themselves, and there are plenty of gems to fit onto your stuff. The only additions that are new to me are a pet that holds your stuff and basic spells that every character class can use, including your pet.
There are three character classes available. The destroyer hits things, the vanquisher hits things with arrows, and the alchemist has a marketable profession to fall back on if this dungeon crawling gig doesn't work out. I picked the alchemist because they're basically a cross between a mage and a summoner, and I like to sit back and cast ember lance while while my imps, wolf and golem engage the dungeon denizens. It's been a lot of fun, but it's also been really easy on normal, so I'll probably start over on hard. I'm not sure if I'll pick a new class. I like having minions do a large portion of my work, but the other classes have some pretty cool skills.
There's virtually no story and little quest variety, but if you're playing this kind of game for that, you're doing it wrong. This game begs to be played with the TV on.
WIDGET TD
Take control of towers in WidgetTD.
I also played the demo for a pretty simple tower defense game from Graybox Games called WidgetTD. Like any other tower defense game you build and upgrade defensive structures and hope they're enough to keep wave after wave of attackers under control.
The only mechanic WidgetTD adds to the mix is the ability to take control of any one tower. This brings up a first person cockpit view, and you can aim for the enemies you want. For some towers, this isn't much use, but from the cockpit, your basic gun tower can hit anything on the map. The difficulty seems a bit out of whack though; creeps' hit points ramp up far faster than you can upgrade your towers. Otherwise it's a strong entry for the genre.
NEWS
Here are some of the things we'll be talking about in this week's podcast.
Leigh Alexander talks about Demon's Souls in a Kotaku feature defending hard games. She says hard games aren't necessarily frustrating, and that a good hard game will explain why you fail and offer a road to mastery. But really, I just want to hear more from Rex about Demon's Souls, because everything I've read and heard about the game makes it very hard to not buy a ps3 right now.
David Carlton at malvasia bianca asks why we divide games into genre by their point of view, and not their content, and suggests we define Beatles Rock Band as a non-fiction game, not a rhythm game.
And finally, I feel bad for gamers who paid real money for legitimate copies of Borderlands before the street date, but couldn't play until the online verification servers came online Monday. Someday those servers are going to shut down and the only way to play the game will be with a crack. That's the real problem with licenses.
If you've got something else you want us to talk about, comment here or send me a message @gamegnathus
Wensday? Wendseday?
I cannot spell Wednesday without a spellchecker. I tried to spell it wrong in the title for humorous effect and got it right. The rest of this post will concern what I played this week and will not contain any misspellings. Fingers crossed.
A BOY AND HIS BLOB
Weeeeee!
This is a re-imagining of the original NES title of the same name. You take control of a boy with a pet blob. The boy feeds the blob jelly beans that cause him to transform into ladders, holes, trampolines, etc. Platform puzzling ensues. I played the first couple levels and found the whole thing a delight. The graphics are storybookish (technically a misspelling), and so far there has been no dialogue at all. The effect is quite charming, but the minimalism has left me at a loss for the plot. There's no real explanation of what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. There's a difference between understatement and absence.
The puzzling has been simple so far, but the controls are well done. It's easy to choose your jelly beans, and the blob's reactions to them are intuitive.
BRUTAL LEGEND
It's a commentary on Brutal Legend that I chose to play A Boy and his Blob instead. Tim Schafer is a very funny fellow, and it shines through in this game; the problem I had with it is that there are long sections where I am not in cutscenes. The gameplay isn't bad, it's just not stellar. And what I really want is more Jack Black cracking jokes and wailing on his guitar.
Despite what the demo would lead you to believe, combat isn't really the main thrust of the game. You spend lots of time tooling around the countryside while getting in fights, participating in various car races and engaging in a bizarre RTS game. In any other game I'd probably have been drawn right in, but it's not really what I was looking for from Brutal Legend.
During the RTS sections you move Eddie around to claim fan geysers, which provide you currency for buying more units that then take to the field. You can attack the incoming enemies yourself, so the game gets kind of a DYNASTY WARRIORS vibe. The RTS elements of the game are interesting, but I found it hard to order my squads to do much when I wasn't around. I've played only the first RTS mission, so if Rex or Gamegnathus fared any better, they should post a comment. And you should read it.
For me the mash-up worked against Brutal Legend rather then for it. Sandboxing is all the rage, but spending all my time putzing around the hillsides looking for my next mission undermined the over-the-top feel that drew me to the game.
But one of your moves is called "Facemelter," so let's face it: you're going to play this game.
KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 DAYS
I played a few of the challenges, but they only reinforce the game's weakest aspect: continual repetition. There's no way I'm doing every mission three times, sometimes four. The rule changes aren't drastic enough to make it interesting. Everything else to be said about this game I've said in our delightful podcasts.
I'm blown away by this amazing FINAL FANTASY TACTICS mod. I've been dying to play it, but WoW and work have interfered. Having read through the notes, I can tell you they've addressed the most severe imbalances to FFT's combat system. The items also have all been drastically improved, giving them better balance and, shockingly, even more variety. A must-have for Twinks everywhere. I also should point out that this is perfectly legal to emulate if you own a PlayStation and the original game.
I've Been Playing Lucidity and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!
We here at Gameosaurus have decided to keep the viewing public updated on what we're doing in between podcasts. So, here's what I've been playing.
What I've Been Playing
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A RECKLESS DISREGARD FOR GRAVITY - Do you know anyone who says "you can't judge a book by it's cover"? I hate that person. Covers are all I use to judge nearly all of my purchases, and the practice has served me well. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- Like Day of the Tentacle, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 and Robot Dinosaurs that Shoot Beams When They Roar before it -- demands your attention with a ballsy name most developers don't have the guts to attach to their clearly less classy games.
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! is a first-person base jumping simulator by Dejobaan. You throw yourself off buildings and score points by hugging walls, crashing through point windows, spray painting buildings, waving at or flipping off fans, drinking coffee and landing in the designated landing zone. Controls are a little loose, but I imagine that's on purpose. It's fun in a hectic, too many things are going on kind of way. Plus the music is pretty good and fits with the trippy visuals. It's defiantly worth the $15 they're asking for it on Steam or Direct2Drive.
LUCIDITY - Lucasarts brings this children's story to life. A girl falls asleep and you have to help her get through her dreams safely. The girl walks to the right like she's in a 2D sidescroller while you place stairs, flooring, slingshots and other imaginary platforms that guide her through each dream level. The art is gorgeous, but it would be great if you could hurry the girl up on subsequent playthroughs. There are fireflies strewn throughout the levels, and you have to go through most levels more than once to catch 'em all. You don't need the fireflies to open new levels -- that happens every time you finish a dream -- you need them to open bonus level. The bonus levels are a pain to unlock, but they're worth it.
I picked this up on Steam because I wanted to play with the mouse. I thought it would be easier to place items, but the pointer often got stuck when the camera scrolled up or down, so I switched to a controller and now wish I had picked it up on the Xbox 360. Pick it up for $10 on Steam or 800 points on Xbox Live Marketplace.
Podcast News Preview
If Brutal Legend fails, it will be because EA's marketing department is full of jerks who want to see it fail. How many Monday Night Football watchers are metal-heads who bought 360s for Halo 3, Madden and Guitar Hero: Metallica? I'm betting it's quite a few, but I'm also betting they don't read the gaming press. So for the only chance EA has to reach out to this demographic, they chose to use the same pop-metal musicians that the game trashes in the first 5 minutes to write the commercial's song. No gameplay. No humor. No metal. Good choice EA.
Ars Technica let me know what coats, salves and unguents I should add to the next pair of glasses I get from whatever discount website I order them from.
Also from Ars, they guys who are putting all the cut material from Knights of the Old Republic II are nearly done reinserting all the material into the game. Obsidian only had a year to put the game together, and they started a lot of things they couldn't finish in that timeline. These volunteers have gone back and finished a lot of the material that Obsidian started, about 90 scenes in total. An unfinished version of the game mod can be found here.
If you have any news you want to see discussed, leave a link in the comments or sent it to @gamegnathus.
Exploratory Review: "Spelunky"
As a gamer, you're bred to take chances. There's little penalty for throwing yourself off a cliff just to see what's below. After all, what's one death among the extra lives, automatic saves and endless continues that most games throw at you today, or the save states that make death in older games meaningless. Put enough time into most games and you'll see the end. You might have to adjust the difficulty, but you'll get there.
This is not the case for SPELUNKY, a 2D retro platformer by Derek Yu. Spelunky will kill you. Over and over again. And each time you'll start from a new beginning. And you'll love it.
I want the gold.
At the start of each level, Spelunky generates the map and populates it with area-specific monsters. The first set of caves has cavemen, snakes and bats. The jungle area has piranhas and frogs. The ice area has yetis, and the last set of stages is still a mystery to me, but in my two trips there, I've seen giant mummies and los luchadores. If you die or finish the level, you'll never see one like it again.
Deaths are easy to blame on the game. The first time you break a pot and find gold instead of a spider, you'll probably die. If you open a chest and find an active bomb, you'll probably die. It doesn't seem fair -- the game never warns you of danger -- but the next time you're in that situation, you might survive. It's up to you to use what you've learned: Explore further down the caves or take bigger risks.
You can save the damsel or please Kali. Not both.
Spelunky's casual approach to death makes exploration the most rewarding and dangerous aspect of the game. You start the game with four bombs, four rope and a mostly useless whip. The bombs, ropes and other items found or bought throughout the game help you explore each level. It's possible to run straight for each level's exit, but then you'll miss a lot of the weapons, treasures and damsels strewn around the level.
There are progress points that make seeing the later levels a possibility. If you make it to the end of an area, you meet a digger who will make a shortcut for you if you pay enough money, allowing you to start at later areas.
188 plays. 188 deaths. 0 wins.
I've died nearly 200 times so far on this install. That number creeps to around 300 if count the ones I've racked up in previous versions of the game, which came out of beta recently. I still haven't made it to the end. I've only made it to the fourth set of stages twice, and my visits to that area have not been very long. Los luchadores are a lot meaner than cavemen and lava is not very friendly. But I'll trust that in the next hundred deaths, I'll accomplish something.
But Spelunky makes each death important. No mater how much gear you've found, death isn't as devastating as the loss of a high-level Diablo character in hardcore mode; the feeling is closer to a bad drop in a particularly good run in Tetris. I may quit in a huff after an untimely death, but more often I'm up past my bedtime saying "one more run" to myself.
I make bad life decisions. For other people.
Physics Review: "Trine"
Watch out! The dead have risen and are headed for the kingdom. The good news: A wizard, thief and knight are prepared to stop it. True, they've been fused together by this thing called the Trine, but the wizard, Amadeus, suspects the two things might be linked.
TRINE is a 2-D sidescroller set in a 3-D universe with realistic physics, meaning when a rope is cut, whatever it's holding falls. You switch between characters on the fly, sort of like Trevor Belmont did in CASTLEVANIA III.
Like most sidescrollers, the goal in every level is to make it from the left to the right, and occasionally up. Frozenbyte puts a series of obstacles in your way that can be overcome using the skills your three characters have at their disposal. Walls must be scaled. Lava must be crossed. Skeletons should be dispatched. And experience must be collected.
Amadeus is a conjurer and telekinetic. He makes boxes and platforms appear, then moves them around. His only offensive maneuver is to conjure a box above a skeleton's head and let it fall, which is amusing when it works, but skeletons have a tendency to move.
The thief, Zoya, is the most flexible character. Her grappling hook is the fastest way to solve simple puzzles, and it's more fun than making boxes and platforms. And her arrows can handle most enemies, especially when she starts firing four at a time.
The knight, Pontius, starts off pretty weak but becomes a useful character toward the end, when he picks up a hammer. His preferred method of combat is bludgeoning, which swords aren't great for, but with a hammer he's suddenly bashing through shields and sending out lightning shock-waves. The diving hammer strike is the second most fun you'll have. He also has a shield, which can be pointed in any direction to stop fire or arrows.
The shield keeps Pontius nice and cool.
Trine encourages exploration by tying experience to two things. Half of the experience is earned by destroying skeletons. The other half is earned by finding green potions hidden throughout the levels. For every 50 green potions you earn, each character will level up.
There's a skeletal story structure, but it's extremely basic and serves only to give the characters something to do. But excellent voice acting and elegant narration hold the stages together and make the loading screens painless.
And the 2-D gameplay in a 3-D world works surprisingly well. The backgrounds are finely detailed and littered with objects, but it never becomes hard to differentiate between what's in the background and what's in the character's path.
In co-op, Pontius finds himself at the mercy of Amadeus.
My only frustration with the game is the lack of variety in things to kill. Aside from a few bosses, everything that's trying to kill you is a skeleton. Some of them breathe fire, some have shields and some have bows, but they're all skinless. It didn't make the game any less fun, but a zombie here or there would have livened things up.
It's $30 on the PC, but there will be PSN version soon, and it's probably worth waiting for because it'll probably cost less. To hold you over, Steam or Frozenbyte have the demo.
(Editor's note -- Patrick Klepek at G4 reveals today that Trine will not be out by the end of July, i.e. tomorrow, as Frozenbyte originally promised.
In designer Lauri Hyvärinen's own adorably Engrish breakdown of the situation: "Regarding 6th August release, can't say for sure is that even possible. US and EU releases 'should' be very close to each other. However, I must stress out I don't know for real, as there always can come surprises like yesterday did."
For the full story, click here.)
Fancy review: Blueberry Garden
If taking the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2009 Independent Games Festival and a $5 price point on Steam don't motivate you to pick up a game, I'm not sure what I can say to sell you on Blueberry Garden. But I suppose I can try.
The protagonist is a silent, nameless, bird-beaked, hand-drawn being. I named it Birdy and made it a he, because there aren't enough male protagonists in videogames.
Birdy toils in a white-washed, two-dimensional world splashed with bits of color and littered with the discards of its large, top hat-wearing former (at least, I assume they're former) inhabitants.
Birdy can do some neat things. He can fly, even though he doesn't have wings. He can pick up fruit and escort it to new lands where it decays into seeds and grows into new trees. Or he can eat the fruit, which might turn him blue or shape the ground he stands on.
The fruit also attracts various herbivorous animal life, which then attracts carnivorous animal life. So blueberry garden is a pretty neat world simulator. At least, that's what I thought the first time I played it, because the game never tells you what to do.
Spoilers will follow the strategically placed picture, so beware.
The flying came as a surprise, because Birdy has no jetpack.
Blueberry Garden is actually an end of the world simulator, one where the threat to Birdy-kind is so unintimidating that, in my first playthrough, I didn't realize the world was ending until it was too late to do anything about it.
The puddle of water you notice early in the game. It's easy to dismiss while flying around and eating fruit. As the game goes on, the puddle grows, and you don't think much about it. Then the water level starts rising faster than you can pile up the top hats, bananas and other refuse you keep finding, and you can't keep your feet dry.
So you start over and set Birdy to the task of using his primitive gardening and fruit-based terraforming techniques to save the sad, beautiful world you just watched drown.
Good luck!