I never actually played the original StarCraft, and so I’m not that excited about the ridiculously-long-awaited-and-hyped-to-shit sequel, but any follow-up to the game that became a national sport in South Korea is worthy of attention, especially since it’s out on Tuesday. That, and I’m a sucker for Blizzard’s truly masterful CGI animation, of which the newest trailer is mostly made up of.
Blizzard have apparantly banned any reviews of this being made public until the game is officially out. This has been happening a few times recently (APB did it last month). There’s definitely something dodgey about not allowing any reviews to be released before a game comes out. Since this is Blizzard, it’s a damn safe bet the game will be highly polished and is gonna sell by the bucketload, so theres very little risk of them losing much money due to a couple of negative reviews before its launch, but the principle of physically trying to control what critics have to say about a game always makes me a bit suspicious. Blizzard’s justification is due to their BattleNet service not going live until the game is out, so anyone with an early copy who attempts to play the game before then won’t be getting the genuine experience they would if they did have access to all the features of BattleNet (in fact, I don’t think anyone can play the game at all right now, until they flick the big red ‘on’ button). This makes sense to me, but is it naive to wonder why they couldn’t just open up the service a few days before, allowing reviewers and whatnot to try it? It’s pretty common practice to see a heap of reviews for a game out there on all the regular sites a few days (sometimes weeks) before a game comes out, and a lot of people rely on them to decide whether or not to buy a game in the first place.
But then this is Blizzard, and we all know they can do whatever the damn hell they like, so who’s gonna argue? That, and I’m positive StarCraft 2 is still going to be an awesome game. Drool at the lovely CGI 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.
The first horror game I ever played, and I never got beyond the room in the attic where the wolf attacks you. All 5 polygons of the terrifying beast were enough to send me fleeing from the room, leaving my father to deal with it.
Last summer, I collaborated with my mate Mark Vale to create our very first mobile game app. It’s all about pushing buttons as fast as you can. So, a great little time-waster when you’re on the loo, or waiting for your bread to toast. Mark came up with the concept, did all the programming in Unity, and I provided the art and music. There’s only one rule – hit the green light as fast and as many times as you can.
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.
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