Video Games

Mobile Game Review: Papijump [Sunflat, 2008]

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Ricky in Video Games | 3 Comments

papi

Toronto – What goes up, must come down. This is the ridiculously simple concept of the game PapiJump, a free game that can be loaded onto your IPhone, ITouch or Google Android. What is the concept? Theres a ball – it bounces. You have to keep it going up by having it bounce onto platforms above it. if it falls, you die. That is it.
You can move the ball left or right by tilting your device. You can probably never win the game, but you can never beat tetris either..

It might sound easy at first, but it takes discipline and patience to succeed in this game. Any loss of attention will result in death. So if you have an Iphone or something similar (but inferior), go ahead and grab this game, it is guaranteed minutes of fun (at a time).

4.5/5

Heres a keyboard version of the game: http://www.sunflat.net/en/games/papijump.html

and a song.

 

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Review: Fallout 3 [2008, Bethesda Softworks]

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Gary in Video Games | 1 Comment

Toronto – If you had asked me to envision Elder Scrolls: Oblivion’s brother I would have said it can be no more enticing than a disfigured midget orc painted in a horrible color palette. Seriously, who wants to play as elves that look hideous and the other races and NPC that were scrawny walking, oozing pus-bags? Ugliness does not equal realism. I also had to work with a stamina system that depletes for no apparent reasons. Put that factor in and now the games sounds like: ugly old grannies from the first hut of the game beats the shit out of my more ugly convitct while he/she is sprawled unconciously on the ground and every other exchange is so frustratingly dice-based and the game world so immense for no possible practical rationale that I might as well be playing paper D&D. Enter Fallout 3 which, to be fair, wasn’t Bethesda’s game to mess up. Interplay had already screwed up in Fallout 2 a decade ago. Bethesda injected a dose of their experience on the Elder Scroll games. And out of all the warm, composting fecal matter came something definitively pristine and enjoyable. Wow.

screenshot18

And that’s probably as far as you should read this review: it is insanely long. The rest will consist of verbal description of this awesome-ness. First off, Fallout 3 is NOT ugly. Here, you will actually wish to see your character’s Asian/African/Hispanic/Caucasian face. So, character creation for me was a rewarding process which took 45 minutes while the game pretends baby Lone Wanderer is being born. The initial tutorial was a good rump through the ropes of the game with the Wanderer as a toddler. But be forewarned – the VATS system is never officially introduced. I’ll get into this later.
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Review: World of Goo [2D Boy, 2008]

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Gary in Video Games | Leave a comment

Toronto – Goo.

I don’t know if anyone else remembers that there was this website called Orisinal (they’re still up, but no longer pushing out new games). When I first laid eyes on World of Goo, it reminded me of one of those warm and fuzzy flash/shockwave games that I used to play on Orisinal. And so originally, the draw was nostalgia. No longer. The game is so good and simple it’s a wonder why something similar wasn’t done back in the 90s.

To get an idea of what WoG is all about, all you have to do is to remember chemistry classes. Yeah? All those black carbons and red oxygens and white hydrogens. You used to put the plastic balls together so you can see what LSD actually looks like. In WoG, you put them together to build bridges, towers, arc spans, swinging chairs, balloon baskets. Whatever tickles your fancy – as long as the physics is right. The goal of each level is always to collect the gooballs themselves, by reaching a vacuum. So the shape of your contraption adapts to the location of the suction, and also the dangers along the way. In one of the firsts levels, I was shocked to find that my bridge collapsed for no reason. But then I looked and saw that the balloons that hoisted the bridge had been punctured by some spikes – tricky. Another thing that separates WoG from old school favorites like Loadrunner and Scrotched Earth is that an elasticity exists. You’re no longer working with a solid piece. Whatever you build has an organic sway to it. Not only does it add to the atmosphere of working with real, live gooballs with cute blinky eyes, but it features perfectly into the gameplay and the choices you make during your contruction. So now time is sometimes of the essence – you can get there, but you need to be fast enough – before the freaking tower collapses due to a lack of solid fundation. Which leads me to the replay part of the game – in each level an obsessive-compulsive target is given as the ultimate goal. It usually involves sucking up every last gooballs… happy teeth-grinding.

No more. I’m going back to play this thing. Oh, and I won’t be getting this on a Wii – but it seems like the perfect way to get carpal tunnel syndrome…

Impressions: Fable 2 [2008, Lionhead Studios]

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Vik in Video Games | Leave a comment

“So it begins…” Theoden quietly murmured as his feeble army prepared to face Urukai at Helm’s Deep. I thought the same as I approached EB Games, perpared to face the horde of geeks in order to purchase Fable 2 as Oct 21st officially marked the beginning of video game onsalught for the Fall season. In the queue I currently have Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Mirrors Edge all for the Xbox 360 and nothing for the Playstation 3 as once again 2008 has proved to be a dismal year for Sony.

The story of Fable began 4 years ago on the original Xbox. I can’t really remember what made me buy the game as I rarely read video game blogs or zines at the time. It may have just been word of mouth. I do remember I throughly enjoying it as I’ve always been a fan of these medieval hack and slash magic type games but never had the patience to play RPG’s like World of Warcraft. Fable was a perfect fit as it allowed you to do all the cool stuff they have in RPG’s but leveling up, fighting and casting spells was dead easy. Plus I could make your ‘Hero’ belch and fart on demand.

Fast forward to August 2008. Fable 2 has long since been announced, I managed to catch a glimpse of the game play at PAX and I’m itching to get the game in my hot little hands. Lionhead releases Fable 2 Pub Games on Xbox Live on August 13th, a stroke of marketing genius that allowed the player to accumulate gold and in-game unlockables which you could transfer over to your hero when the game was officially released in October.

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