Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Mr Perkins pointed me in the direction of the newly-released Hero Core, from Daniel Remar who you may know from Ilj from a couple of years back. It’s the sequel to Hero, and I loved it within seconds of starting. A sprawling, non-linear shooter which will recall either old-skool NES or old-skool Ultimate: Play The Game, depending which side of the Atlantic you’re on. If you’re from elsewhere… well, you tell me. Go gets! Trailer follows.
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Positech’s popular hands-off build-and-release strategy game Gratuitous Space Battles have just released an expansion pack. How does it expandier the game’s expansosity? Well, for six dollars you get a whole new race, 2 scenarios and a cent. The aliens in question are the swarm who deploy masses of fleets with smart bombs and focusing-in disruptor beams. All the while looking like the big gold bird out of Mysterious Cities of Gold. And a trailer follows! Yes! No, really.
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No, I don’t mean that in a 1000 Year Reich way. In this season of political fisticuffs, I’ve been meaning to have a proper look at this political simulation where you can play any of 16 political parties, even the fascist ones. As in, most of them, man. I gave it a shot, and bounced off the surface – it’s obviously an intricate game which featured a bit too much clicking for my liking to even get playing. However, it’s clearly a serious beast and if you fancy, you can get a demo from here. There’s also versions for America and Germany. Footage follows of an older version, playing a scenario of the 1992 election. You can “be” Kinnock, which is less fun than “be”ing Goro, I suspect.
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Do you remember 2008? I don’t. It’s a foggy place of my head. I vaguely remember travelling from a beautiful land of green to a towering, black, smoke-ridden edifice, but that may just me getting confused with rewwatching all the Lord of the Rings films. Anyway, according to the record of the internet, back then I wrote about the arena-shooter trippiness of Smiley’s Shooty Adventure. Anyway, news reaches me that Caffine Monster Software are having one of those popular “pay whatever you like sales” to celebrate its second birthday. So instead of the ten dollars, just give some money and it’s yours. You can try the demo other there, or watch the new trailer below…
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This caught Mr Chalupa’s eye, and I thank him for bring it to mine. Super Mario Bros Crossover is – as the name suggests – a bastard-pop mash-up where you play six NES-era characters in the original Super Mario Bros, selecting who you’ll control on each life. Efficiently done, though I’m surprised they didn’t make each character’s life be a single life, forcing you to select other ones. Equally, being very much in the gray area, I suspect you should – er – play it quickly if you want to. Mostly though, being a Brit of a certain age – as in, without period NES experience – I didn’t have a clue who certain characters were, and had to sort of deduce that the brown-smudge was probably the guy from Castlevania. Don’t select him though. He’s rubbish. And don’t select Link because he’s eminently punchable. Play here.

This is totally retro. Armalyte! It’s an official remake of the classic C64 shooter. Being a Spec-chum, I never played it back then, but always looked at its cover-art longingly. Finally playing after all this time, I discover a fairly brutal R-type/Nemesis-esque game, with a perpetual shooty drone following you around and a constantly recharging hyperblasty thing. It’s an efficient remake with updated graphics – though oddly no “classic graphic mode” which I can see. My initial criticism about the demo would be that the enemy bullets actually look a little like power-ups, which caused an embarrassing death early on. It’s also retro in another really odd way. While you can go and get the demo here, you can’t buy it as a digital download. They actually ship the disc to you. Finally, at a price of £16.99, I suspect it’s not exactly going to attract many people who aren’t predisposed to indulge in a little 80s nostalgia. Video and links to other bits of coverage follows…

EDIT: After a rush of requests, they’re planing to actually do a digital-download option for a cheaper price. Will keep you informed.
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Chris W saw this on BoingBoing last week. Hatetris is basically a game of Tetris which deliberately gives you the worst possible piece at any moment. And it really does. I just played now, and consider it a considerable triumph that I managed to get one (count it!) line. Play here. You can watch replays by people who are actually good, which you can get from here, plus the designer notes on it. I’ll be interested to see how well anyone else can do. Well done, creator Sam Hughes. You bast.

Hmm. Looks like Good Old Games has a competitor in the old-classics/no-DRM/low-price market. DotEmu is basically an old-classic/no-DRM/low-price online retailer who has just gone into open Beta. Currently it’s got a limited range, which leans Francophile with the most obvious deals being the Alec-loved Gobliiins Trilogy for 4.90 Euros and the 16-game Silmarils collection. As an encouragement to sign up, during this beta period, people who do so will apparently be able to download Ishar I, Nicky Boom 1, Metal Mutant and Transartica for free. I say “apparently” because at the time of writing, of the four, I can only find a free download link for Ishar I. Though there is the (freeware) Beneath a Steel Sky and – I have no idea – Draskula. Oh – and some webgames, which just lead me to wasting 10 minutes playing Street Fighter 2 CE. ME BLANKA! STRONG! NO FEAR THIGHS OF CHUN-LI. YOU LOOK LIKE A RUGBY PLAYER, LADY.

Oh! Roburky’s gone and done a game, as part of the 205 (Count ‘em!) in Luddum Dare 17. It’s called Isolated, and you play a very nervous Cyclops trying to enter the social world. You interact by (abstractly) asking questions, making statements, and expressing your opinion on the other person. Continue until you’ve pissed everyone off and you have to return to your island, reduced to a nervous, exhausted wreck by the stress of the thing. In other words, a Being John Walker Sim. You can play online or download versions of it. And now, time for some Joy Division.
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Jack de Quidt directs us at Farbs’ (Mr Captain Forever) new project. It’s called Playpen. It’s basically a wiki-isation of a storytelling pixel game. So you explore this pixel-world, clicking on hotspots. If you find yourself inspired, you can click into edit, and add your own pixel art to the design, or other hot-spots. These can link to new locations or just provide a bit of text. I can’t wait to see what results and – as evidenced above – have already contributed to the world. Farbs should feel lucky that I didn’t just do what we used to do on screenshots back in my magazine days and draw an enormous urinating phallus over it. There wasn’t a new screenshot of a much anticipated game which passed through our hands without being emblazoned with some manner of a cock. “Oh no! What are Id thinking? Why have they put a gigantic penis on their latest Quake 3 grab?” we cried. Smartest men in games journalism, us. Er… anyway! Go have a nose around Playpen. It really is delightful.