REVIEW: Flotilla
Developer: Blendo Games
Publisher: Blendo Games
Platform: Windows (Reviewed), XBLA
Flotilla is a game about capital ship battles in space, with the lighthearted mood and pacing of Shrapnel Games’ Weird Worlds series. Pirate chickens, space pigs, and other oddities spring up in your journey across the galaxy in search of things to fight and spaceship parts to salvage. Developed by the creators of Gravity Bone, Flotilla is a more traditional game in that it imitates the recognizable three-dimensional space combat of Homeworld. While exhibiting some appreciation for the details in maneuvers that would be performed in capital ship battles, the combat’s lack of depth and limited options for ship customization detract from what could be a significant addition to the strategy genre. Instead, Flotilla leaves one wondering when a developer brave enough to combine and tune every exciting, disparate concept in strategy game development will create a a work to revitalize the genre.
REVIEW: Booster Trooper
Developer: DnS Development
Publisher: DnS Development
Platform: Windows
Booster Trooper labels itself as an action indie game that, according to the description, “is the future of multiplayer platform shooters.” Bold claims like these are usually a red flag, but the screenshots and demo video hinted at something appealing, a fast-paced casual multiplayer shooter, something like Worms with the speed and style of Halo Hopefully, as with Worms, this game would have a small but devoted community, which is probably the best one can hope for with a game of this scale. Unfortunately, during not one of the hours I spent online did I once get to play with another human being. I suppose one could then take this review with a grain of salt, since it’s hard to judge the merits of a multiplayer game if you’re only playing against bots, but one could also consider it a primary criticism: Booster Trooper, a multiplayer game that no one else plays.
EVENT: Future of Digital Media, Part Two
The second Future of Digital Media session at G4C2010 was far more downbeat—aside from the third of it that was essentially a long joke. Following in the second half of the day from the first session, this one generated more arguments among the speakers and among the audience, as the speculative nature of the talks elicited a healthy amount of skepticism.
James Paul Gee was the least optimistic of the three speakers. It focused on what he called “black swans.” The term refers to an abnormal trait in swans, which results in the birds being born black instead of white. According to Gee, Black Swans are naturally rare occurrences; they’re also occurrences the likes of which humans are becoming increasingly adept at creating and producing. He uses examples like insurance fraud (for example: buying insurance on a house you knew was already on fire, or about to be burned) and badly regulated financial deals that revolve around highly unlikely occurrences that people bet on (and then create).
EVENT: Future of Digital Media, Part One
While at this year’s Games for Change festival, I attended a series of talks by several speakers on the “Future of Digital Media.” As one might expect, given the broad subject given them, the speakers approached the topic from a variety of angles and perspectives. They disagreed about a great many things, and, while they touched on a number of issues, all of their theories and disagreements made one thing clear: as digital media develops in myriad ways, people will see those developments from unforeseeable points of view and perspectives borrowed from the past. Regardless, the “future” of digital media will be anything but unified, just as the definition and direction of digital media today is a contested, uncertain thing.
The first speaker was Nick Bilton. His talk mostly focused on news related games and news related media (he writes for the Bits Blog at The New York Times). Specifically, he was interested in the ways technology could aid us (or replace us) in certain kinds of news research and production. He discussed the possibility of placing sensors in New York cabs, and using the data collected to write news stories. As he put it, “these stories could be written automatically by sensors.” While his statement was doubtlessly hyperbolic, it brings up the possibility that automated processes and mostly autonomous programs could produce news pieces, written pieces we think of as being the purview of human writers.
ANALYSIS: East India Company
Developer: Nitro Games
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Platform: Windows
Trade in many games still hasn’t progressed further than that of a Drug Wars economy. Drug Wars is a simple trading game requiring the player to buy and sell various drugs in a number of locations, such as the boroughs of New York City. The basic strategy to that game is to buy low and sell high—add fluctuating prices and a few random events, and you’re good to go. It’s quite simple, but the game is still fun to play for a few minutes at a time, especially since it’s available on the TI series of calculators that are still used in high schools all over the country. Best economics lesson I ever had.
A Drug Wars economy is too simple to be played over a long period of time; however, that is exactly the type of economic system that is found in East India Company (EIC), even if some high seas shenanigans have been added to the mix.
EIC is published by Paradox Interactive, a company known for developing historical simulation games. In EIC players have control over their own East India shipping companies during the 1600s and 1700s. They are given the task of trading goods from Europe for the exotic spices and silks from India. Two game modes in EIC allow players to complete that task: Trading and Battle.
REVIEW: Chimes
Developer: SRRN Games
Publisher: SRRN Games
Platform: iPhone
From the title of the game to the description in the App Store, it is clear that Chimes is supposed to be a music game. There is certainly an aural appeal to it: there are five differently colored circles that emit a “chime” when tapped. If you can imagine a diagram explaining echolocation, a chime is a single concentric circle, the diameter of which grows until it disappears off the screen. The chime is also an aural cue: not only does the circle chime when tapped, but it also chimes when it interacts with other objects on screen. This includes other chimes (which is an important mechanic), or dots, which is the other resource the player must manage. The dots correspond to the colors of the circles: red, green, yellow, blue and purple. The main mechanic is to send out chimes from circles to collide with dots of the same color, which clears them off the screen.
EVENT: No Quarter NYU
[00:00] Introductory remarks [bed music made on the Kaossilator]
[03:00] “Clay II” by Club Skull, off The Origins Of… [for Deep Sea]
[06:30] “女人與男人- Women and Men” by Grace Chang 張露, off 百代百年系列 30: 稱心如意 [for Recurse]
[09:25] Robin Arnott
[13:42] Charles Pratt
[21:15] Mark Essen
[24:45] Kunal Gupta
[30:50] Matt Parker
[32:45] “Tuimelaars” by De Kroonluchters, off De Wereld Voorbij [for my gracious interviewees]
[33:25] Nathalie Pozzi & Eric Zimmerman
[45:55] “Play No Games feat Baby C” by Tum Tum, off TumThousand9 [for Eric Zimmerman]
[49:13] “Reflections” by Forced Run, off s/t [for Nidhogg]
[51:37] “Hôpital” by Bill Diakhou, off Nation [for Nathalie Pozzi]
Other things proved decidedly intriguing.
REVIEW – Section 8
Developer: TimeGate Studios
Publisher: SouthPeak Interactive
Platforms: Playstation 3 (played on), XBOX360, Windows
Section 8 feels like a mix between Unreal Tournament and Shadowrun. It’s a team-based multiplayer FPS with loose aiming, acrobatic ostentation, a focus on base capture and defense, and a point system granting access to a bevy of vehicles and impromptu defense structures. On loading up Section 8 for the first time, players are cautioned to try the singleplayer campaign before heading online. Ignore this request. The singleplayer campaign is a mess: somebody who looks a bit too much like the protagonist of Too Human joins a squad of aggravating blue bots in a fight to reclaim missile silos from an army of aggravating red bots. It painstakingly teaches players the difference between various skills and weapons over the course of four hours while failing to prepare them for the peculiarities of online play. One would be better off biting it online for the hour it takes to learn how the game works without a tutorial.
Section 8 is a game about space marines—the kind that can safely drop 5km through a planet’s atmosphere but can’t take more than five pistol shots before dying. I think my most profound disappointment with Halo: ODST was that there wasn’t any actual orbital dropping following the opening cutscene. Parachuting right on top of the enemy in Medal of Honor: Airborne added just enough flavor to distinguish it from the rest of the WWII lot. Most importantly, it added two unique attacks: a landing trooper could kick an enemy for an instant kill, and a trooper on the ground could attempt to cook a grenade and throw it at a descending enemy. In Section 8, each respawn brings a new opportunity for tactical insertion. The spawn screen’s minimap displays known enemies and their turrets, making it possible to drop nearby for rapid destruction.
ANALYSIS – Heavy Rain
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 3
One of the peculiar things about Heavy Rain is the way in which it actively disassociates itself from the videogame medium. David Cage credits himself as its “director” (as opposed to the “Creative Director” more commonly used in Western game studios) and, in an EDGE interview, explicitly states that it is “not a videogame.” Heavy Rain invokes many cinematic tropes and conventions, from the narrative influences of film noir to cinematographic techniques such as the split screen and “handheld” camera. One significant way in which Heavy Rain toes the line between media is its mechanic of switching camera angles.
When used effectively, camera angles can be a way to enhance affective involvement through building suspense, much like in film. Additionally, the camera can create or emphasize focus in order to advance the plot or provide clues to the player. This is particularly significant for a game like Heavy Rain, where the story (i.e. a collection of events) allegedly plays an integral role in the overall play experience. In addition to its more conventional use as cinematic technique, camera angles can impact play by limiting what the player can see at a given time. This restricts what her knowledge of a space and, consequently, how she can play within it. The camera angles take on a kind of agency as they place the player in a state of purgatory, where she is neither fully in control as a player nor entirely constrained to the role of a passive viewer.
REVIEW – Zombie Driver
Developer: Exor Studios
Publisher: Exor Studios
Platform: Windows
Zombie Driver is a fast-paced arcade driving and shooting game that, unsurprisingly, tasks you with running over and shooting hundreds and thousands of zombies. In Zombie Driver, zombies have infested a riverside city, so the titular driver hooks up with some military types. Daring rescues ensue. The unnamed, unseen hero drives an assortment of cars around the city, collecting survivors and using cars and guns to kill any zombies that get in his way. That’s the game’s campaign mode. It’s the only mode Zombie Driver shipped with. Post-release, Exor Studios added a pared down “slaughter mode” to the game. In slaughter mode, there’s only one goal: survive for as long as you can.