IGDA to Investigate King's "Predatory" Attempt to Trademark the Word "Candy" Posted: 18 Feb 2014 12:09 PM PST
The Trademarking of the word "saga" became an issue last year in regards to Stoic Studio's tactical RPG The Banner Saga, when King claimed it was "confusingly and deceptively similar to [King's] previously used Saga marks." King later backpedaled and stated that it "has not and is not trying to stop Banner Saga from using its name." More recently, the developer of Candyswipe [$2.99 / Free] publicly announced via a blog post that King was actively trying to get his Trademark of "candy swipe" invalidated by purchasing an earlier 2004 Trademark for "candy crusher." This entire King Trademarking saga doesn't seem like it'll be over anytime soon, and I'll be interested to hear what else the IDGA has to say on the matter once they've had their Business and Legal Special Interest Group look into it further. [Joystiq] |
New Details Revealed for 'FTL: Advanced Edition', Though a Release Date is Still Uncertain Posted: 18 Feb 2014 11:49 AM PST
One of the new systems in FTL: Advanced Edition is Hacking, which will allow you to send a hacking drone to a system on an enemy's ship and gain vital information on it as well as affect that system to your benefit. Another new system is Mind Control, which allows you to temporarily turn an enemy into an ally and make them do things like turn on their fellow shipmates or man an enemy weapon. There's also a new Backup Battery which will give you more power when you need it, but only temporarily and at a cost of a cool down period and the use of a new 4th subsystem slot. Finally, there's the previously unannounced new Clone Bay, which is an alternative to the current Medbay. With it, when a crew member dies a clone of them will be generated to replace them, but with lowered skill levels than the original crew member had.
There are even more improvements in FTL: Advanced Edition, like better visuals and the highly-requested Hard mode for the truly masochistic players. This Hard mode will include "More challenging enemy generation, lower scrap rewards, and other small tweaks should help keep the game interesting for anyone who might be bored of Normal" according to Subset's blog post. Unfortunately, the one thing they didn't detail in the post is a specific release date for FTL: Advanced Edition, but they promise that once they do have an idea of when everything will be ready they'll be sure to let everyone know. |
'The King of Chicago' Hits the App Store Posted: 18 Feb 2014 09:29 AM PST We posted about it a couple weeks ago, but the day of The King of Chicago's [$1.99] is upon us. Originally released for ancient computers and given a graphical rework for the Amiga, The King of Chicago is a mob-centric adventure game where players do everything they can to increase the size of their game before ultimately making (or not making) a deadline to be included in the New York crime syndicate. Staying one step ahead of the police, doing lots of gambling, shooting, and of course, bribing government officials are all things you've got to do while keeping your in-game girlfriend happy. Originally released in 1987, The King of Chicago is a bit before when I finally hopped from my NES to PC gaming, so the iOS version will be my first foray into this Cinemaware classic, as it likely will be for many iOS gamers.
Being Chicago born and bred, I think I know a thing or two about becoming King here. While they game might want you to be more of an Al Capone, if you want to be a true king of Chicago I recommend being more of a Dick Portillo. |
'Draw Slasher' Review - A Slashin' Good Time Posted: 18 Feb 2014 09:00 AM PST Hanzo is one angry ninja, as he finds his family kidnapped and village pillaged upon returning from training camp. Most of us would break down and cry, but Hanzo has got the power to cope and the skills to do something about it. Perhaps not the most original story, but considering this is a game called Draw Slasher [$2.99] it will do just fine. As the name implies this is a slasher game where you draw to execute moves. Or rather you swipe, but Swipe Slasher wouldn't be that great of a name. Hanzo can slash in all directions, and the only limitation is his stamina. The more stamina he has the longer slashes you can perform. If you swipe on the top half of the screen he jumps, and dashes. Controlling Hanzo is highly responsive, and you can even queue moves by doing multiple swipes. Mind you if a move is blocked by an enemy the queue is reset.
Draw Slasher is an arcade brawler at heart, and most levels are all about eliminating all enemies. This can at times feel a bit repetitive when you face the ordinary monkeypiratezombiegoon. It gets much more interesting when the barrel monkeys turn up, and even more interesting when grotesque armored Frankensteins enter the fray. Timing, and aiming your slices is quite fun, and the game turns into a blood-filled precision slasher. Almost as if Fruit Ninja started pelting you with severed limbs to slice. From time to time you encounter levels where you have to avoid getting burnt by napalm. These are quite simple, and you just tap to move Hanzo to a safe spot before moving on. To me these levels just feel like filler material, and don't bring anything exciting to the game. The controls are great for slashing away at enemies, but when the game forces precision jumping to avoid incoming projectiles it all turns into a hot mess. This leads to a lot of frustration, and yearning for some virtual buttons instead of swipe controls. There have been different Draw Slasher-games on the App Store since 2009. This version is a port from PS Vita, and it looks and sounds much better than previous iterations. It is always enjoyable to see games transition between platforms, and especially when they return bigger and better to iOS.
With three levels of difficulty, a quite lengthy story mode, challenges, unlockable arcade mode and Game Center achievements there is certainly a lot of content. That being said the gameplay doesn't evolve that much it just gets more intense. The upgrades for Hanzo are limited to health, stamina and a couple of special moves. More cool upgrades, and customization would have given the game more variety, and reason to keep playing after completing the story mode. Draw Slasher is the ninja game for the ninja not keen on being stealthy. Hanzo did not go to the same school as the main character in Mark of the Ninja. In that school Hanzo would have been a dropout only completing the initial killing classes. That's ok though because the action is fun, making this latest iteration of Draw Slasher on iOS a game worth checking out. |
'Escape from Doom' Review - Giving Indy a Run for His Money Posted: 18 Feb 2014 08:00 AM PST What do you suppose ran through the mind of your nameless, faceless, Indiana Jones-wannabe adventurer when he desecrated an ancient Egyptian temple and awoke hundreds of bloodthirsty mummies from their eternal slumber? "I should have parked closer to the temple" would be my guess. His predicament is our gain, as Escape from Doom [$0.99] is a rollicking good time. Escape from Doom takes after Into the Dead [Free] and other first-person endless runners. You swipe or tilt your mobile device of choice to veer around enemies, plunging ever onward into sandstorms, temples, and straightaways clogged with the dead. Scattered among them are vases, and crashing into them rewards you with a bundle of gems or a key, which unlocks treasure chests containing random weapons drawn from your arsenal of available slaying implements. The weapon you receive plays into your odds of survival. Most zombies take several shots with the revolver to go down, while the crossbow skewers a line of three or four--provided you're brave enough to wait to the last possible moment to pull the trigger.
And that's the trick. Running directly into the bandaged arms of a rotting pharaoh is a one-way ticket to the game-over screen, but treasure is scarce and ammo is scarcer, so you constantly need to choose between opening fire or swerving to one side and hoping they only graze you. Glancing blows shake loose a few of the precious stones you've picked up; on the bright side, you live to plunder another vase. Escape from Doom is all about choices. Agonizing over when and where to use that last crossbow bolt or burst of machine-gun fire, and whether to use your last key to grab a weapon or put your faith in luck and reaction time, and which upgrades to bring along and which to leave behind, weight every run with tension. In many instances, the dead will be too thick for you to risk easing your way over to a vase or chest, leaving you armed with only your reflexes and derring-do for the duration of a run. The emphasis on decision-making carries over to every facet of the game. Leveling earns you free weapons and upgrades such as a holster to carry an extra weapon. You level by completing goals, most of which are cumulative, so you can chip away at some or shift your attention to others that must be completed in a single run. If you get stuck or impatient, you can always pay your way forward by trading gems for keys, passing grades on goals, and weapons and perks, making the game as accessible to casual gamers as it is those who prefer to muscle their way to each level-up.
As much as I enjoyed the thrill of fighting and clawing my way to new upgrades, boredom crept in. Escape from Doom's landscapes go from beautiful to dull once you've seen your 33rd stretch of sandy desert, sandy tombs, and sandy sandstorms. I also experienced some frustration when I opened fire close enough to an undead to smell its rancid breath, only for my bullet to occasionally and inexplicably miss its mark. Those shortcomings shouldn't dissuade you from putting on your running shoes and heading off for a little plundering. Escape from Doom has enough depth to keep you raiding tombs for hours, even though you might not want to log those hours all at once. |
'Detective Grimoire' Review - An Entertaining Romp That's Too Light On Detective Work Posted: 18 Feb 2014 07:00 AM PST The recent trend in adventure games has been to take on more of an episodic model, which is great when they finally come to fruition, but often results in an introductory chapter that lacks satisfaction. Detective Grimoire [$3.99], from publisher Armor Games and developer SFB Games, fortunately bucks this trend, offering a solid, self-contained story that also has sequel hooks firmly planted. Although it offers just a single case that can be solved in just a few hours without a lot of effort, the level of polish on both the art and the story help elevate the experience. I also appreciate its more abstract and light-hearted take on things. It helps the game stand out a bit in the current landscape of more serious and realistic entries into the adventure genre. This game is actually the titular character's second outing, with his first case being a flash game released in 2007. It was a pretty straight-forward point and click adventure game that had you solving the case of a murder at a fairground. There are one or two vague references back to that game in this one, but if you've never played it before, you'll be quite fine starting off here. In fact, if you have played that first case, you're probably going to be a bit shocked at how much the developers have stepped things up in terms of production values. The generic, poorly-animated, anime-inspired characters have been swapped out for characters drawn in a unique, abstract style with lots of nice animations. Grunts and giggles have been replaced with some surprisingly good full voice acting, and the gameplay itself has evolved ever-so-slightly from pixel hunting. While the first game was very much an amateur production, Detective Grimoire feels extremely professional and polished.
In this game, you play as Detective Grimoire and must of course solve a murder case. This time, the location is a tourist attraction built in a swamp. The owner has met an untimely fate, and everything points quite squarely at a single suspect, with just one tiny problem: said suspect may or may not exist. As you investigate the swamp for clues, you'll meet with seven different characters who all have some degree of suspiciousness to them. By searching for clues, talking to the different characters, and making some inferences, you'll eventually puzzle out both the identity of the culprit and the mystery behind the attraction itself. The story is fairly engaging, and the characters have, well, character in that Ace Attorney [Free] kind of way, though, much like those games, you'll probably figure out the answers to the big questions well before the protagonist does. The gameplay largely consists of moving from location to location searching for clues by clicking around on the screen, and questioning all of the people you come across. In the manner of Ace Attorney, you can present clues and profiles to people to gather more information. You'll also come across some very light puzzles that feel like the stuff seen in a lot of early DS games. Generally, all you need to do to progress is be thorough in your questioning and make sure you haven't missed clicking on anything in the background. Each character has a challenge associated with them, where you need to present the correct evidence and choose the right answers to uncover some sort of secret they're carrying. Sometimes, the Detective will stop to gather his thoughts and you'll have to play a sort of mad-lib with your clues and sentence fragments. Apart from some items that are easily-missed, there's not a lot of challenge to the game, but it's just engaging enough to keep you playing.
As I mentioned before, it's not a terribly long game, clocking in at a few hours, but the pacing is pretty good and the story is told well enough. Right around the time the killer becomes quite obvious, another interesting mystery is introduced that helps carry the plot through to the end. By the time the credits roll, we've had both major plots resolved, with a few questions left unanswered that could serve as sequel fodder. As is usual with this kind of game, there's not much in the way of replay value, but I think what's here is a pretty good value compared to its peers on the App Store. It's basically like a late-game case from an Ace Attorney game in terms of length and content. It's particularly impressive when you take into account just how good everything looks and sounds. Each of the locations in the game is represented by a gorgeous painted backdrop, often with small touches of animation to help the scene come alive. When you talk to a character, you see a full-body close-up of them and Grimoire, and depending on what they're saying, they'll act out one of several animations. All of the text is fully-voiced, and the quality of the acting is quite good, though it's a bit too obvious in situations when one actor is playing multiple characters. There are also some nice ambient sound effects and a haunting soundtrack that helps establish the mood. The only damper on things is that this is one of those games that completely ignores the mute button on your mobile device. You'll have to manually turn the volume all the way down or use headphones if you don't want to disturb people around you. One of the puzzles involves sound, so I can kind of understand why they did it, but I'm not a fan of games overriding your choice in that regard.
Detective Grimoire has a nice, friendly interface. It's very easy to use and things are laid out nicely. By default, the game will try to highlight important areas of interest, cutting back on some of the pixel hunts, but you have the option to turn this help off and I recommend doing so if you want even a modicum of difficulty. There's no support for Game Center achievements or anything like that, but the game does keep a running percentage of how much you've found. Not all of it is necessary to complete the game, so that serves as an objective beyond actually solving the mystery, if you're so inclined. I like all of the mechanics in this game, and it's really a well-crafted experience. I very much appreciate that the story is self-contained. I wish the game had a bit more bite to it, though. None of the puzzles are challenging in the least, and there are no consequences for making mistakes, leaving the game on the whole feeling a bit more like a visual novel than an actual detective adventure. I feel like everything is in place here to make an absolutely top-shelf adventure game if they opt to make a more elaborate sequel. In this outing, however, Detective Grimoire is going to have to settle for being an enjoyable, though altogether too simple, ride. Check it out if you think you won't mind the lack of challenge. |
'Ferris Mueller's Day Off' Review - An Underwhelming Parody of Sorts Posted: 18 Feb 2014 06:00 AM PST Where would you go if you were a green mule out in the Wild Wild West? Well that's what Mr. Rooney has to figure out, in a game full of the most offbeat puns and unconventional puzzles. Glitch Games, the very same developers of the dark and macabre Forever Lost , have done a complete 180 with intriguing iOS point-and-click style adventure Ferris Mueller's Day Off [$1.99]. Based very loosely on the renowned film of similar namesake, this curious game, which is clearly about a mule and not a young teenager on the brink of adulthood, invites you into a bright, colorful world where mules have humanity and the fellow town residents are largely unaccommodating. Playing in the shoes of Mr. Rooney, you're tasked with the pursuit and retrieval of Ferris the mischievous green mule, who has decided it's in his best interests to take a day off from his usual mule duties. In some kind of bizarre scavenger hunt, you're tasked with the quest to find nine golden carrots, all whilst solving a procession of wacky puzzles. Along the way, you'll meet a zany bunch of crafty individuals, who seem to only be happy to reveal details of the mule's whereabouts when you've likewise offered them something they require.
What impressed me about Ferris Mueller is its strange but interesting approach to its puzzles. Although the game offers a handy hint system, it still involves a fair amount of decrypting and unravelling, especially considering there's usually a link to figure out between the clues and the solutions in some way or another. In one example, I had to work out how the colors of a rainbow related to some rather crude human sounds in order to tap out the most ludicrous tune on a piano. Sound bonkers? That's because it really is. All around the town, there will be various clues either written on scraps of paper, hidden in paintings or graffitied on walls. Sometimes they will be self-explanatory as you meander your way around, and other times it will be a case of figuring out which clues relate to which puzzles. Luckily, the walkthrough-style hint system (accessed by tapping the microscope at the top right of the screen) is there to free up your frustrations a little should you get hopelessly stuck, as it will usually explain where most of the clues are found and the next steps to take to solve the puzzle. Despite this, there's still a great deal of satisfaction and accomplishment when you get your hands on that golden carrot after unlocking another cryptic riddle.
Since the game takes an open-world approach, it's down to you, the player, to tackle each of the puzzles in any order desired. Because of this, it never gets dull and its non-linear approach keeps gameplay altogether refreshing. One of the perks is the handy in-game camera, which allows you to snap photos of everything and anything throughout the game. In a similar fashion to the traditional in-game notebook, you can instead use this mod-con to take snapshots of every clue you come across and access it when you need to cross-reference anything. Though I had a lot of fun interacting with the various oddball characters and managing to coax them from their possessions, the jokes in the game try a little too hard in places. Though I might have let slip the occasional snicker here and there, it just was a bit too peculiar in places and a lot of the time left me trying to truly comprehend the why's and wherefore's of the game.
There are some small references in part to other classic 80s films including fan favorite The Breakfast Club, but it's more a case of blink and you'll miss them. They don't really speak out for the movies in general, other than to note their obvious presence, and at one point there's even a Breaking Bad reference which seems so ludicrously out of place it made no sense whatsoever. I like Walter White, but really? Though I truly enjoyed the brainteasers and the puzzles are well-designed, Ferris Mueller's Day Off is a bit of a tough one to wholly recommend. If you feel the need to enjoy a short open-world adventure, you may well find it entertaining enough to keep you hooked to the very end, but its unsightly graphics and strange comedic attempts are altogether off-putting for the most part. |
'Stubies' Review - A Cute And Chaotic Action-Puzzle Game Posted: 17 Feb 2014 03:00 PM PST Stubies [$0.99] is a deceptive little game. When you first start playing, it's simple. A bit too simple, in fact. In this game, little creatures of different colors will come walking in a straight direction from some point off of the map, and you have to point them in the right direction to find another creature of the same color, at which point they'll be cleared off the board and you'll score some points. Each level has a set amount of points as the goal, and once you reach it, your score and time are tallied and it's off to the next stage. The only way you can lose is if too many of the little Stubies wander off an edge. Each one that drops costs you a star, and if you lose all three of your stars, you fail the stage. Another thing you want to avoid is having two Stubies of different colors pushing against each other. After a short time, they'll turn into solid white objects that will deflect anything that tries to walk into them. It doesn't directly cost you stars, but it can complicate things. The first several stages feature no drops, with a relatively low clear goal, and a manageable flow of Stubies. Even when drops first start showing up, they're not very threatening. The main paths the creatures spawn on are usually well out of the way of the gaps, so unless you make a misguided turn, there won't be any problems. This is obviously the game's way of easing you into the mechanics, and you might be fooled into thinking this is going to be a relatively slow-paced, easy game. It's almost too slow in the beginning. I was getting pretty bored with the game in the first set of stages, called Blue World, and was ready to write the whole thing off, and then suddenly, it started to turn up the heat.
In the next batch of stages after that, Green World, I started enjoying the pacing of the game and its difficulty. See, there are lots of different kinds of Stubies, going beyond their colors. Match two bomb Stubies and they'll disappear in a blast that takes out other nearby Stubies as well as certain types of walls and pillars. Match two multi-colored Stubies and you're sent into a bonus mode where the Stubies are all multi-colored and move faster, allowing you to easily rack up matches. Platform Stubies let you fill in a gap by walking them into it. Along with these different types, there are also lots of enviromental objects, like movable pillars and item boxes that can only be opened up by a Stubie of the same color. At the same time all of these interesting new mechanics started opening up, the traffic flow of the Stubies themselves really started to pick up. They were more numerous, moving more quickly, and coming from different directions. It got harder and harder to keep track of everyone and avoid having them run into each other. The stages became more devilishly designed, with gaps placed directly in the path of the Stubies, and some made up of little more than walkways. To change a Stubie's direction, you have to swipe over it in the direction you want it to go. It's a simple enough gesture, but micro-managing a screenful of them is both difficult and fraught with accidental swipes on the wrong creature. It turns out that Stubies was just getting started cranking the heat up. The third world, Yellow World, introduces a couple of new stage gimmicks and ticks up the pace and density of traffic even more. The game becomes almost ridiculously hard here, a stunning contrast to the early stages. It's not even the final world, either, with the truly crazy Orange World waiting if you can survive the Yellow World. If you're looking for a test of your reflexes and ability to process colors quickly, this game is for you, but it requires a great deal of patience, not just to make it through the early dull stages, but also to put up with a few losses stemming from misfired swipes. There's no way to move past a stage other than by beating it, so if you want to see all 60 of the game's stages, you'll have to persevere.
The game throws you a lifeline, almost literally, in the form of revives. Revives can sometimes be found in item boxes and allow you to come back with a full three stars in the event that you fail. If you have enough revives, you can technically brute force your way through the stages, but they're not common enough that you're going to be stockpiling them by any means. The game does include IAP to buy revives, which might help if you want to try to force your way through a level. I found the game tossed them out often enough via item boxes that I was able to use them now and then when I failed a stage painfully near to the goal, but not much more than that, which seemed fine to me. There's a very difficult and surprisingly complicated game hiding behind the almost child-friendly veneer of the first several stages. Further adding to the contrast are the visuals. It's a bright, colorful game, and the Stubies look pretty adorable. The music is light and bouncy, and the creatures make all kinds of cute little noises as they bump into each other and disappear. Sometimes the little guys will stop and wave, which is adorable, but sometimes frustrating when it messes with your timing. When they reach an edge, they teeter over it for a short time, giving you a brief chance to send them in a different direction. Little animation touches like these go a long way towards establishing the charm of the little Stubies. There's just one problem, and it's unfortunately a pretty sizeable one. It's okay to make a very hard game, and I in fact applaud it most of the time, as long as the progression isn't too severe. If you're doing this, however, it's extremely vital to nail down the controls, because if you don't, the player is going to end up very frustrated when they lose for reasons outside their control. Stubies has some control issues. I think this is partly a result of how many of them end up on-screen sometimes, leading to confusion over which one exactly you are trying to swipe across. Another problem I had was with the tap command to make a Stubie duck into the ground. Sometimes, rather than planting the little guy, it made it speed up, oftening heading straight for its doom via drop or solidification.
These issues aren't common, but they happen often enough when the screen is busy that it's very easy to make a mistake. One mistake in this game can snowball very quickly, leading to a failed stage and some serious aggravation. It's irritating because the game is very fun when it's working the way it should, but it's absolutely terrible having a good run destroyed because the game thought you wanted to speed up rather than duck down, or that you wanted to turn the blue Stubie who was walking above the yellow Stubie you were trying to turn. The farther you go into the game, the more these problems come up. It reached a point where I felt like I was just banging my head against the wall trying to clear stages without failing due to a mistaken command. It's too bad, because I really like the design of Stubies. There are tons of elements to it, but they don't overcomplicate the design. The visual design is sharp and smart, keeping things simple so that individual elements stand out properly. There's a good mix of levels here, and though I wasn't thrilled with the exact way the difficulty curved, I appreciate that there actually was an attempt at one. I also really love that I can play in portrait or landscape. It's upsetting that of all the things to get wrong while getting so much right, it had to be the controls. If the game sounds interesting to you, by all means, it's worth checking out, especially at such a reasonable price with no particularly nasty IAP. Just be aware that the game gets quite frustrating in the long run, and not in a very fun way. |
TA Plays Live: Quit Flapping Around, Let's Play Some Games [Offline!] Posted: 17 Feb 2014 02:00 PM PST Let's actually try to play some good games today, as my iPad and SteelSeries Stratus are charged and ready for random game requests on Twitch. Anyway, if you haven't yet, please follow us as it's the best way to get notified when we're streaming. To tune into the TA Plays Live stream you've got three options:
I usually stream until around 7:00 Eastern, at which point I toss the videos up on YouTube for everyone to see that missed the stream. If you want me to play something, just join the chat and tell me what you'd like to see. Try not to be too pushy though, as it kills the vibe of things when people get really demanding. Check out the stream below, or if you're viewing the site in our app or mobile, please download the Twitch client and mash the link mentioned above. Update: Here's the list of games we played, in order, so you can skip around the video if you want to see one. The video will be up as soon as YouTube does its thing!
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GBA4iOS 2.0 Emulator Coming Wednesday, Allegedly Will Not Require Jailbreak Posted: 17 Feb 2014 01:43 PM PST
First off, it's been redesigned from the ground up for iOS 7 and it has been optimized for iPads as well. An in-app browser makes downloading .ROMs even easier and GBA4iOS has full cheat code support with five different code formats that covers basically every Game Genie and Action Replay code on the planet. They've re-worked .ROM compatibility to allow it to work with any Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, or O.G. Gameboy game, seamlessly, without needing additional emulators installed. Better yet, it has full Dropbox sync capabilities, iOS 7 controller support, and some crazy sounding "event support," where the developer can do things like distribute rare Pokemon and other neat features that are hard to believe that they're included in an emulator. Allegedly it's not going to require jailbreaking to install, but it'll be interesting to see if it requires the same date changing tricks as the current GBA4iOS to install. |
Upcoming 'SwapQuest' Blends 'Pipe Dream' Path Creation with RPG Elements Posted: 17 Feb 2014 12:02 PM PST We're always talking about how much we love when a developer takes a tried and true gameplay mechanic and slaps some RPG elements on top of it. Games like Dungeon Raid or 10000000 are just a couple of examples of the formula working really well. However, I don't think I would have ever thought to take the pipe-fitting puzzle mechanics of Pipe Dream and blend it with an RPG, but that's basically what the upcoming SwapQuest is all about, and it's such a brilliant fit I can't believe I haven't seen it done before. The trailer for SwapQuest pretty much speaks for itself, so give it a look.
If your interest is piqued, there is a ton more information in the game's forum thread, including tons of animated .gifs that show off all the nifty animations and great pixel art in SwapQuest. The character progression sounds really deep too, with two playable characters and five different classes to choose from, not to mention lots of unique character abilities which haven't been divulged yet. There's still quite a bit left to do before SwapQuest is completed, but developer Rebusmind is shooting for a release around May. Keep your eye on this one. |
Fire Up Your Chainsaw and Your Abe Lincoln Beard, 'Second Chance Heroes' is Now Available Posted: 17 Feb 2014 11:04 AM PST This past November, Rocket City Studios unveiled their upcoming action game Second Chance Heroes [Free], and this is just a quick note to let you know that the game is now available worldwide. So what's so great about Second Chance Heroes? Well, it has you playing as various historical characters fighting off "an apocalypse of the absurd." So if you've ever dreamt of playing as a chainsaw-wielding Abe Lincoln or an electrified Nikola Tesla, this is the game for you. Second Chance Heroes is a free to play game, which always comes with a feeling of trepidation, but so far the early impressions in our forums are quite positive. The free to play system seems pretty fair, giving you both Abe Lincoln and Cleopatra as playable characters to start with. Additional characters can be purchased using the premium in-game currency, which is earned through play or available as IAP. There's also more typical f2p stuff like consumable power-ups, continues, and special abilities called Relics which sound awesome. One type of Relic as explained by the developer in our forums is "King Henry's Reinforced Toilet Seat [which] drops a toilet from the sky that sucks all enemies nearby into the toilet and then blows them sky high." Nice.
It'll be interesting to see how the free to play system shakes out long-term, but the concept, visuals and gameplay in Second Chance Heroes are definitely top-notch. It even features online cooperative play so you can band together with your historical figure friends and lay waste to "werewolves, zombies, and sentient cheeseburgers." Be sure to check it out. |
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
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