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.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
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.
I’ve played many versions of Mario Kart, first on the Snes at a friend’s house, followed by my own copy of the N64 version. The Nintendo DS edition got a lot of play during the various anime conventions that I attended between 2006 and 2011, where you could LAN it up via Bluetooth with anyone else in the vicinity. But the version I truly have the fondest memories of has to be Mario Kart Wii.
The successor to Goldeneye, Perfect Dark improved every possible aspect of the classic shooter and created an original masterpiece. 4-player multiplayer game modes, with the option of adding 8 extra bots made matches frantic chaos and endless fun. The singleplayer was fantastic at the time, featuring such state-of-the-art features as realtime lighting, blood spatter effects, and fully voice acted cinematic cutscenes. It even let you play the story in local co-op with a mate – player 2 got to be Joanna Dark’s weird-looking blonde sister – the first game I ever encountered with a co-op singleplayer mode.