Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Vera Blanc – Review

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Vera Blanc is a gripping new angle on the Visual Novel genre. With a careless shrug the usual manga art is dropped for a classic gritty detective comic style, and the theme of the game is Film Noir, Murder, Occult and Corruption. This game sinks it’s claws in early and keeps you hooked till the end – then you’ll probably want to replay it to try all the choices you missed the first time.

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Noir Crimefighting Duo

Noir Crimefighting Duo

Choose your own Adventure

Choose your own Adventure

Seamless Minigames

Seamless Minigames

Non-linear Storyline

Non-linear Storyline

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The story is always surprising, and I felt that I was consistently making real choices that significantly effected the outcome of my adventure – this was proved by all kinds of new scenes I saw only on my second playthrough.

As well as the cool art, the fun and mysterious story, and the interesting choices – you also can solve puzzles in the form of minigames to get more clues for your investigation. My initial reaction was *sigh-minigames…* but I was amazed how appropriate the games were to their context in the situation. For example in one game Vera is trying to work out what someone is thinking – and the minigame translates this into a letter guessing game to complete a phrase – so you really do have to think about what might be on their mind to win the minigame.

Overall I would recommend this to everyone who want to lose themselves in an exciting detective mystery for a few days. I can’t wait for the next installment in the Vera Blanc series!

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Revenge of the Titans

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Construct and command your ground defences in a series of increasingly massive battles across the solar system, in this frenetic arcade mash-up of Real Time Strategy and Tower Defence!

Take a visit to R&D to discover the latest technology, then build a network of blaster turrets, rocket launchers and laser cannon, explosives, barricades and shield generators, refineries and reactors, and send forth your own droid army to battle the invading alien forces!

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Now the invasion has landed!

Now the invasion has landed!

Defeat the returning Titan horde

Defeat the returning Titan horde

Epic ground battles

Epic ground battles

Command the counterstrike

Command the counterstrike

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Don’t be fooled by the super slick retro graphics, this is a deep RTS with an amazing amount of gameplay and strategy carefully built up over several generations in the same series. I’m also impressed by the difficulty curve – steep and challenging but also accomodating to slower players through a built in auto-adjustment system. It always feels challenging but beatable on you next go – the perfect addictive balance.

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Gratuitous Space Battles

Friday, July 16th, 2010

GSB is the ultimate space strategy game from UK indie developer Positech Games. It’s a strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of science-fiction games : The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with tons of laser beams and things going ‘zap!’, ‘ka-boom!’ and ‘ka-pow!’. In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways). Try the Demo out here!

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Massive Battles

Massive Battles

Customise Fleets

Customise Fleets

Upgrade to Perfection

Upgrade to Perfection

Conquer the Galaxy

Conquer the Galaxy

Gratuitous Space Battles aims to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into space strategy games. The game is for everyone who has watched big space armadas battle it out on TV and thought to themselves ‘I could have done a much better job as admiral’. This is not a game of real-time arcade twitch reflexes. GSB is about what ships you design, and what you tell them to do. Your individual ship commanders have total autonomy during the chaotic battle that unfolds. This is not a tactical game, it is a strategic one. These gratuitous space battles are not won by plucky heroes with perfect teeth, but by the geeky starship builders who know exactly what ratio of plasma-cannons to engines each ship in the fleet will need.

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Jolly Rover

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Jolly Rover is a charming homage to the good old days of Monkey Island. This Point and Click adventure on the high seas is an Indie game developed by Brawsome, a sparkling new Australian studio. Decent adventure games are quite a rare find these days with the big players forgetting the fun in their scrambling towards 3D content. This one is definitely worth a play, try the Demo here.

Dialog in Adventure Game

Dialog in Adventure Game

Investigate Pirate Towns

Investigate Pirate Towns

Exploring Desert Islands

Exploring Desert Islands

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Story
It be the golden age of pirates! Dogs of the sea! Quite literally.

Our swashbuckling sausage-dog star is Gaius James Rover, son of the famous clown Jolly Rover, who died from a blow to the groin from an improperly loaded joke cannon.

Following the tragically comedic death of his father, young Gaius, who insists on using his middle name James, goes to live with his uncle, a wealthy plantation owner on a small Caribbean island. While practising a particularly tricky juggling move, he accidentally taints a barrel of rum with tobacco, creating a potent and addictive brew which he coins ‘Jolly Rover’, one of the most prized substances in the Caribbean.

Alas, the wealth of Jolly Rover sales only manages to fill the pockets of his uncle, and Gaius longs for action and adventure and, more importantly, the opportunity to start his own circus and follow in the footsteps of his father.

It is not long before the fumbled juggling ball of opportunity raps Gaius smartly on the head yet again. While his uncle is away, a large contract for Jolly Rover arrives from Guy DeSilver, Governor of the notorious Groggy Island, with payment upfront!

In a blinding flurry of optimism, Gaius pools his meagre savings with this advance and charters a ship and crew to take him to Groggy Island. Along the way he meets a colourful band of seafaring cutthroats, scallywags and rogues otherwise known as pirates.

It is here we begin to follow the short and stubby tail of Gaius across three wild and untamed tropical islands, as he attempts to fulfil his dream of starting a circus, hampered only by pirates, villains, voodoo, love and considerable lack of loot.

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Features

  • Over 60 beautifully rendered scenes to explore
  • 25 colourful, fully animated and voiced characters
  • Traditional point and click adventure with simple one-click interface
  • Organic and fully integrated hint and task tracking system
  • Unlockable extras include Captain Bio’s, concept art, music tracks and directors commentary

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