From Dust not your thing? Or maybe it’s not at your less than five dollar price point? How about trying on the indie space strategy simulator from Positech Games, Gratuitous Space Battles for a scant $4.99. That’s rings up at a delicious 75% off its normal $19.99 price tag. Tell you what, you got to love those Steam daily deals.
About the Game
Who needs backstory? Who needs resource-gathering? Diplomacy is so last year. Gratuitous Space Battles cuts right to the chase of sci-fi strategy games, and deals with large, completely unjustified space battles between huge opposing space fleets.
Gratuitous Space Battles combines the visual appeal of an RTS, with the addictive unit-placement and design gameplay from tower defense games. In GSB, the player does not control individual ships at all during battle. The ships fight to a pre-determined set of orders and formations given to them by you before the battles.
GSB casts you as supreme space admiral, tasked with the design of individual spaceships, and the composition of your fleet, as well as general orders of engagement. This is not a twitch-based real time arcade game like many an RTS, but a game of careful thought, planning and big-picture strategy. Huge space battles can be won or lost depending on just how cleverly you balanced the needs of defensive shielding and armor against the expensive punch of laser cannons and plasma torpedoes.
GSB also features an innovative multiplayer challenge system. You can upload your ultimate fleet to serve as the enemy to other players, and keep track of how many other players have won and lost against your challenge. That way, you will never run out of cunningly designed enemies to battle against!
4 different unlockable player races
Over 40 different ship hulls
Over 120 spaceship modules
Choice of skirmish vs AI, never-ending survival mode or play against other player’s fleets with the online challenge system
Play with different rules as each battle has different spatial anomalies to deal with.
This is possibly the most amusing turn in the semantic squabble over the edgy word ‘scroll.’ As has been well documented, recently Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax (read douche bags in suits) has, in a Langdell-like maneuver has become litigious over the use of the word. The story is pretty normal so far right? Just another big company picking on a littler one! Well that all changed this morning when Notch threw down the not so proverbial gauntlet. That’s right, he literally challenged Bethesda to a duel over the use of the word scrolls.
Now obviously the individuals won’t be thrusting at one another with swords or counting paces and then turning and firing. No they will, if accepted, be dueling on the honorable and nuetral grounds of id Software’s Quake 3. Three of Mojang’s best warriors vs three of Bethesdas. God I hope this is streamed. Day9, surely you can provide analysis and color?
Will Zenimax agree tot his? Probably not, mostly because I am sure they think they have a legal issue over an intellectual property that they have some sort of absurd valuation on. They are after all, businessmen who traditionally relish in squashing people. I have a feeling Bethesda, who has a much more vested interest in the goodwill of their customer base would greatly prefer this option. Obviously this would be an absolutely fantastic publicity stunt for bothcompanies involved. It really is a shame it is highly unlikely to ever occur.
Hey, Bethesda! Let’s settle this!
I am back, and I am excited.
Marriage has been wonderful so far, and nobody sabotaged my computer while I was gone.
The only negative thing going on at this moment is the Scrolls trademark lawsuit nonsense, and I think I came up with the perfect solution:
Remember that scene in Game of Thrones where Tyrion chose a trial by battle in the Eyrie? Well, let’s do that instead!
I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors. We select one level, you select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.
If we win, you drop the lawsuit.
If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with.
Regardless of the outcome, we could still have a small text somewhere saying our game is not related to your game series in any way, if you wish.
Here is another pack of random indie trailers that I happened across since the last trailer pack cast. There are lots of trailers and clips of games that made the news this last week and quite a few things that are just in there for fun. As mentioned in previous editions, this is more or less just for fun, so grab a soda, pull up a chair, and enjoy.
I have frequently stopped to consider “what if Pokemon were real.” Generally speaking, I had always assumed that it would be pretty bad ass. After looking over Gavin Mackey’s exploration of the Pokemon universe through realism. Generally speaking, some of them are just down right creepy and gross. The Venonat above is one of the exceptions, that is assuming you don’t find an eight pound gnat throwing up on your food and then slurping it up threw a straw particularly disturbing. There are a whole bunch of these pictures, so click ont hrough and check them out!
We do a lot of rummaging around here and we tend to post stories that are pretty specific. But along the way we tend to find numerous amazing things that just aren’t quite right for what we do, or have been so well reported we don’t really feel we can add any value to it. That said, there is still some stuff out there we think you should know about. So why not compile them and give you the links? Why not indeed!
It doesn’t take much raw power to play Nintendo or SNES games on a modern PC; emulators could do it in the 1990s with a mere 25MHz of processing power. But emulating those old consoles accurately—well, that’s another challenge entirely; accurate emulators may need up to 3GHz of power to faithfully recreate aging tech. In this piece we’ll take a look at why accuracy is so important for emulators and why it’s so hard to achieve.
In this episode, high-roller Mark has paid $925 for a locker, and finds it’s mostly filled with junk like cell phone accessories, a propane stove, guitars, and audio equipment. But then he thinks he’s struck gold after discovering an old NES “001″ model.
Here you go! The 17 Best RPG Opening Songs of all time (in my opinion, of course). These are those songs that are so good that you might feel like starting a new game just to hear them. Why 17? Because I started with 10 and just kept adding songs.
While many developers harbor dreams of going indie, for many, it remains just a dream. That’s because financing a business — and then keeping its doors open — can be quite the challenge, say those who have actually made the transition.
But, of the three who Gamasutra interviewed recently — each one at a different stage in that transition — not one regretted making the move.
In an antiquarian hotel room in London’s historic Clerkenwell, Braid creator Jonathan Blow is shaking his shaven head. His laptop has decided it doesn’t want to run The Witness, his new game and he’s copying all the files over to his spare laptop. (If you want to know what it says about Blow that he’s the sort of man who carries a spare laptop… go hire a haruspex.) The game, he tells me, has just over a year to go now, with the appearance and sound likely to change; the 300 puzzles, though, they’ll stay the same. As he copies, I watch the file-names flick by: …theater… trees… rocket launcher… caves… wait, rocket launcher? It turns out Blow was making a very different game after Braid, before the Witness and some of the files are still hanging around in The Witness.
Serious Sam is about to go to places he’s never been before. That’s a heavy statement, considering what the FPS icon has been through in his ten years of existence. He’s seen everything from dinosaurs to gods and has blown up everything in between. So what frontier could Serious Sam explore that he hasn’t already?
While these may not be quite as fashionable as the Penny Arcade sneakers or the more recently popularized diamond armor boots that Brooks wears around constantly, they do seem to have a quality all their own. I mean jeepers creepers look at those sneakers — I am really wishing I had gone with that title at this point. Anyways, these shoes are a pair of Vans which have been custom altered by KyozoKicks. Unfortunately, due to the monolithic task of hand painting these shoes, they are and will likely continue to be, the only pair in existence.
Oh the union of two nerds is truely a wonderful thing. More specifically the union of two nerds who then want to give ‘you’ something to celebrate is a wonderful thing. In this case its a gifty companion code to go with your purchase of Minecraft. So you can buy yourself a copy and give one to your lady or your hubby, or even more likely your bro because your SO don’t understand your weird addiction to all things six sided.
Notch says:
How does it work, you ask?
Well, if you buy a copy of the game (not a gift code), you get a free gift code added to your account. You can see the gift codes you have by going to http://www.minecraft.net/profile/
Tell your spouse/lover/friend/acquaintance/stranger go to http://www.minecraft.net/redeem.jsp and enter the code, and within minutes you’ll both be punching trees and installing texture packs together.
Have a great weekend, everybody!
(ps, we are aware of the typo in the graphics, but it’s too expensive to fix now)
When I first pulled up the game Parasitus: Ninja Zero by Heart Attack Machine for the XBLIG Update I struggled with it a lot. It was difficult to control, and super easy to die. The user interface didn’t make much sense and the demo plopped me into various levels throughout the game. So it was fairly easy to understand when Brooks thought it odd of me to have taken away from it a positive impression. Unfazed by his voice of reason I trudged forward into the full version and played through it for full review purposes of course!
Gameplay
Parasitus: Ninja Zero is a side scrolling action platformer. Though to be honest with you, I say platformer very generously, as that aspect of the game only becomes realized in a handful of instances and are remarkably unsophisticated. Therefore the main theme of the game is obviously set squarely on the action element.
The instructions of the game more or less spoon feeds you abilities. However, just because the game progressively teaches you these moves doesn’t mean they aren’t available to you already. So if you happen to die a third of the way through the first stage, you are more than able to restart the stage and use all the abilities right from the start. This actually acts as a sort of a human associated progression system as you learn you become better at all parts of the game.
The penalty of death in Parasitus is being forced to restart the current stage. The game gives you only a handfull of lives and with the very classic style of combat you tend to use them a lot. The game even on its easiest level is quite difficult and will require some persistence to surmount. That said, the higher difficulties only appear to increase difficulty by raising damage done by enemies as well as their hit points. This really felt a bit unsatisfying but does seem to hold true to the classic style.
There is some semblance of a leveling system within the game. The more enemies you kill the greater your powers become. Upon death, your level is reset to one and you start building it up again. I don’t think I ever made it past the third or fourth level, simply because I did a considerable ammount of dying. That said, the leveling didn’t seem all that important. It was neat when your finishing slash would blast a fire ball across the screen but it never felt necessary. I think this system could have been signifigantly further explored and lead to a much more enriching experience.
With four large stages, the game feels pretty significant. That is assuming of course you don’t simply bypass much of the content. It is quite possible to behave exactly like a ninja and simply flash past many of the enemies and only kill those that are absolutely required. I personally greatly enjoyed this aspect of the game and would have loved further exploration of this as an intended mechanic.
Level designs, structurally speaking, were pretty adequate though intensively linear. There are a few instances where some exploration pays off and there is a few hidden things in the game. For the most part I found these little detours to be worthwhile and fun considering the amount of times I had to run through some of the various scenes.
Parasitus also has a boss encounter at the end of each stage, of which there are four. The actual boss fights are fairly unrewarding. They can more or less be killed with a high degree of cheese by simply abusing the high damage output of one of the abilities. This ability actually becomes the main way to get by many of the more obnoxious enemies and is somewhat easy to abuse. The most rewarding mobs to fight, in my opinion, where the various types of trash mobs. It was much more fun slashing my way through big groups of sluggish zombies.
I really ended up enjoying the mechanics and design of the game at a superficial level. As long as I wasn’t sitting there thinking critically about the game I am having fun, in which case I think the game is a success. I am disappointed by the lack of depth in the level system but ultimately that problem could have been resolved by simply removing it. The linear aspect of the level design is a bit replay value restrictive in that the lack of choice may decrease your mileage.
Audio/Visiual
Visually the game takes on a classic, I’d say Genesis era graphical sensibility. The colors are dark and moody, speaking to a sort of “dystopian Earth consumed in darkness” sort of atmosphere. The creatures, terrain, main character and much of the rest of the graphics use this aesthetic. The down side of this is that it made for some visual muddying during the games fast pace. There were many instances where objects simply melded into the background and objects from the background simply intruded visually on the foreground. While it was great to look at, it made for some complications during game play, specifically where there was any sort of platforming present.
The character sprites are very well detailed and animated. For some reason though, they felt very unnaturally sped up. It was almost as if the developer wanted to convey an unreasonable sense of speed. This visual effect more or less disappears as you progress further into the game and you tend to become more accepting of it, but I can’t help but feel there may have been a better way to convey the same sense of velocity.
The train sequence of the game shows off some of the best of its art.
On the audio front the game shines with only one note worthy complaint. The music is really great, I found myself humming along with it on numerous occasions. The sound effects for the most part were perfect with only one exception. That being the sound the red imps make when taking flight. It sounds like someone blowing on a mic. I would even be willing to make a $1 bet that that is exactly what it is. Fortunately they appear randomly in pretty limited supply, so it is more or less a crisis averted.
Summary
Well guys this is an easy one. If this is your style of game, you should totally pick up Parasitus: Ninja Zero. The game only costs three No Luca No’s and as you and I both know that “game” worth practically nothing. Parasitus is available now on XBLIG and while it does have some flaws but become accustom to it and start pulling off some nice ninja moves, it really starts to get some traction with you.
I got goosebumps already people, GOOSEBUMPS! Is this guy like Vincent Price incarnate or what Anyways the show is supposed to be a fringe science, odd but true, type stories thing. I am an intense hater of docudramas but what the hell, it’s Walter freaking Bishop — no relation to Brooks or Jesse. The show starts August 31st on The Science Channel.
The exciting new release from the half of the team that brought us Super Meat Boy, that half being Edmund McMillen, and Florian Himsl is there too! The game is an zelda-esque roguelike shooter telling the story of a young lad who must escape his mother, whom has gone mental with faith. Sounds pretty light hearted and happy to me.
Additional awesome insues when it is revealed that Danny Baranowsky will be providing the jams. The game will feature randomly generated dungeons, tons of enemies, 14 bosses, and at least one crying child.
The game will be released on Steam for five dollars this september. We contacted Brooks Bishop for his comment regarding the impending release. He had this to say;
