Damn this looks hot. The first game was fantastic. The second game, whilst it hit a bit of a lull in the middle, was still pretty awesome thanks to the last few chapters. The other good news is that Ken Levine is back on board for this one. Can’t wait to check this out.

• There is no collision detection with anything other than the ground. Bridges are simply a mirage. You can also drive off the end of the map. Physics? Pah, take that Newton!
• The box and gameplay description of the game advertise that the player must escape from the police. Lucky for you, there are actually no police in the game. The law is a lie. In fact, there is pretty much zero plot to the game whatsoever.
• In the originally released version, enemy trucks had no AI and, as such, never left the starting position. Praise be that a patch was eventually released which gave life to these lumbering beasts. The patch also gave the great privilege of adding sound effects to the game.
• Text on the player’s HUD doesn’t fit properly.
• The game fails to distinguish between the player starting or finishing when crossing the line, so you may receive a “YOU’RE WINNER” message within a second of starting the game. Rewarding feedback leads to high levels of player engagement, right?

Despite all this, the game still sold 20,000 copies. In fairness, from watching the video, it looks pretty damn entertaining.

I was first introduced to Carcassonne thanks to it being given away free of charge for a limited time on Xbox 360 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Xbox Live. After a few plays and having grown accustomed to the rules (well, most of them) the game really began to grow on me, and I’ve since played the original board game. Within the last few days an iPhone version of the game has been released… and its pretty damn good!

If you’re unfamiliar with Carcassonne, Wikipedia provides a nice summary of how the game is played:

The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it abuts: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities.

After placing the new tile, the placing player may opt to station a follower piece on that tile. The follower can only be placed on the just-placed tile, and must be placed in a specific feature. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature—road, field, city, or cloister—and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by another player’s follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared after the further placement of tiles. For example, two field tiles which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by another terrain tile.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time all features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers in them. The player with the most points wins the game.

The iPhone version of the game offers several modes of play. Normal mode is the original board game, which can be played either locally with up to 5 people (friends over Wi-fi or bluetooth or fairly intelligent AI CPU players) or online with friends or random players. Solitaire mode pits you alone against the game, with the goal of meeting a list of requirements. The original board game included several expansion packs – these aren’t present at the moment but may become available in future, presumably as purchasable downloadable content.

So far I’ve been predominantly playing Normal mode, both with CPU players and friends, and its rather good. Play is turn-based, meaning you can take your go and then exit the app. Push notifications can be enabled to notify you when your friend has made their move. The app is extremely polished, provides an in-game chat room, shows your friend’s current online status and provides an overview of what tiles are remaining. The game board can be zoomed in and out of easily using the usual pinch gestures and controls are easy and unobtrusive. Online games are ranked, assigning the player with an overall skill rating which increases or decreases with each win or loss respectively.

A couple of minor gripes are that the app runs a bit sluggish on an iPhone 3G or earlier (runs fine on 3GS onwards), and it should be easier to switch between games while on the go – at the minute this requires opening the options screen and pausing the game, which isn’t a very appropriately labeled option since it doesn’t pause the game at all, but rather takes you back to the menus. The game also tends to suck your battery a bit if you have it running for a while.

These problems do little to tarnish what is a great version of an addictive and fun casual game, joining Words With Friends as one of the must-have turn-based iPhone games, suitable even for those with a busy lifestyle. The app is currently available for the introductory price of £2.99 ($4.99), but will soon be priced at £5.99 ($9.99) so I recommend picking this up as soon as possible if you want to save some cash. Its well worth it.

Link: Official app site with trailer video

For a highly comprehensive review with tons of screenshots, check out this great post from ackmonduel over at boardgamegeek.com.

But what of butch ladies and girly gentlemen? I can see some offended players in the future. In relation to that, I found some of the comments on the Engadget post hilarious, notably “How’s Lady Gaga supposed to get her game on?” to which someone replied “Natal obviously can’t see her Poker Face silly”.  Genius.

Hit the jump for the video.

via Engadget.

Bring it on! Eurogamer recently published this interesting feature on the current state of 3D TV’s and 3D games.

“Carefully place a dozen arcade classics in a large mixing bowl. Add a dash of awesomesauce, cover the bowl, and allow the ingredients to ferment over three weeks. Uncover in a well ventilated area, then mash until loud and glitchy. Serve over the internet.”

I played through it recently – very crazy, but very cool.  Check it out!

This is an extremely impressive trailer for the upcoming game “DogFighter”, from game developers Dark Water Studios, based in Derry, Northern Ireland (my home town).  There’s no official word yet on what platform the game will be on, but it is looking like it’ll be a hell lot of fun.  I’d love an XBLA release. :)

Image by Damien Lopez

I’m currently making my way through Jesper Juul’s “A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players” and I came across this useful diagram.  It is missing a few entries, but overall its quite handy for reference (and nostalgia).

Reading these journals just makes me want to have some quality time to make a game.

(Thanks to Leila Johnston on Twitter (whose adventure book “Enemy of Chaos” I have just bought today) for tweeting about these journals, otherwise I might never have found them.)

The idea is fairly simple – you take the role of a spider exploring a rather eerie mansion and you must spin webs with the goal of trapping insects for you to feast upon.  Once a certain percentage of the insects in the level are eaten, a portal opens to the next level.  However, it won’t take long before you realise that, as suggested by the title of the game, the manor holds a dark secret.

The game’s controls are simple yet elegant – touch the right side of the spider to move right, touch left of the spider to move left and flick in a particular direction to jump and weave your silk.  Once you connect up a closed shape with your silk lines, it will form a web which insects can get caught in.  Moving around in this game just feels right and really makes the game play very well – its great to finally see a platformer that actually controls this good on a touch screen.

The graphics have a nice hand-drawn style and provide a graceful and polished environment.  The twinkly ambient music furthers this grace and gives the game a very artistic shine throughout.

The game contains 28 levels with various types of bugs which must be trapped in different ways.  It may feel a bit short in length to some, but for me its pretty much the ideal length a mobile game should be and is definitely replayable.  The gameplay can become somewhat repetitive if played for a long period, however since I only tend to play mobile games in short bursts I rarely found the game tiring. Overall, the game is enjoyable and at its low price point of £1.79 (less than a bottle of beer) it is an essential purchase for any iPhone owner. Highly recommended.