Just look at that and tell me the little kid inside you isn’t excited! No, really do tell me. We need more comments. But anyway, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (Episode 1, ugh, does this mean it’s gonna have 3 levels and then make us wait for Episode 2, 3, and the rest…) has a release date! And a new trailer. It’s looking remarkably like the original 2D classics that I grew up with, albeit with a nice 2010-sheen to everything. Click below for release date info and the newest trailer.
It’s coming out on all the major digital download places (for consoles at least) next month. Courtesy of IGN, and because I want to see what a ‘quote’ looks like within a blog post, here’s the info:
The game will be available for download on the iTunes App Store starting Oct. 7, the Wii Shop Channel on Oct. 11 (15th Oct in EMEA territories), the PlayStation Network on Oct. 12 in America (Oct 13th in EMEA territories), and Xbox Live Arcade on Oct. 13 across all territories.
Sonic 4 will be priced at 1500 Wii Points on WiiWare, 1200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live Arcade, and $14.99 / £9.99 / €12.99 / AU$19.95 on the PlayStation Network.
Okay that looks rubbish…add “make quotes look cool” to the list of BcR tweaks…
Fantastic gameplay trailer of a certain casino-themed level below.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
The Trials franchise is surely the most successful game to ever start out life as a Flash browser game. I remember playing the original game on Miniclip back in the day, and I have played every single iteration since. The game’s core concept is simple – you control a trials bike, and must navigate it across a series of increasingly difficult obstacle courses on a 2D pane. It’s the perfect pick-up-and-play game, because it’s easy to get the basics, but insanely difficult to master.
Another rare game in my long list of memories that include my brother, Sam, is Streets of Rage 2. It was the best in a trilogy of side scrolling beat-em-ups on the Sega Mega Drive. (Genesis in America). We would always play as the same 2 characters: I was Axel, and my brother would be Skate. He loved the agility and bombastic acrobatics that the tiny skater dude could pull off. Many of the boss fights would end with Sam leaping onto their necks and pummelling them in the back of the head. I liked Axel’s swinging flaming punch, and his multi-hit special combo. It’s a simple but satisfying game built around stylised hand to hand violence.
