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Indie Watch- Charles Barkley + RPG = love

The Great B-Ball Purge of 2041, a day so painful to some that it is referred to only as the “B-Ballnacht”. Thousands upon thousands of the world’s greatest ballers were massacred in a swath of violence and sports bigotry as the game was outlawed worldwide. The reason: the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful its mere existence threatens the balance of chaos and order. Among the few ballers and fans that survived the basketball genocide was Charles Barkley, the man capable of performing the “Verboten Jam”…

Flash forward 12 years to the post-cyberpocalyptic ruins of Neo New York, 2053. A Chaos Dunk rocks the island of Manhattan, killing 15 million. When the finger is put on the aging Charles Barkley, he must evade the capture of the B-Ball Removal Department, led by former friend and baller Michael Jordan, and disappear into the dangerous underground of the post-cyberpocalypse to clear his name and find out the mysterious truth behind the Chaos Dunk. Joined by allies along the way, including his son Hoopz, Barkley must face the dangers of a life he thought he gave up a long time ago and discover the secrets behind the terrorist organization B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S.

A tale of zaubers, b-balls, and atonement; brave dangers unheard of, face spectacular challenges that even the greatest ballers could not overcome, and maybe… just maybe… redeem basketball once and for all.

From that description, you’d expect a game continuing the internet’s tradition of absurdist humor… and you’d be half right. But what sets aside Barkley’s Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is its entirely deadpan, nearly cliched Japanese RPG delivery. While you’ll be doing things as absurd as searching for “manufacted jamicite,” fighting a surgeon who fufills the wishes of the furry community by turning people into animals, and running away from the anti-B-Ball authorities, you’ll never hear genre-savvy characters remark on the inaneness of the situation. Rather, they take the world entirely seriously, as Barkley comes to terms with the loss of his wife, and Cyberdwarf deals with the intolerance of a society that can’t handle a person with skin made of basketballs. This juxtaposition is quite satisfying, and makes for a far more hilarious experience than most run of the mill internet humor. Add in decent writing, a turn-based battle system that’s better than a lot of commercial releases, tight dungeon design, and excellent music, and you’ve got a game good enough to distract me from Crackdown and Call of Duty 4. Oh, and it’s free.

Download the game here.

Cool Super Mario Bros. Mushroom Bank

Even after 23 years it never gets boring to see merchandise from gamings most loved franchise. How cool is this money bank in the form of a 1UP and Super Mushroom.

Want? Then read on, mushroom lovers.

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Oh la la: Nokia unveils the 7900 Crystal Prism

Sure, we’ve all heard countless stories of Apple’s iPhone. But there are some other companies out there coming out with new handsets too, like the one above, which Nokia unveiled today.

Continue reading “Oh la la: Nokia unveils the 7900 Crystal Prism”

“Project Maestro” is Wii crossed with Microsoft Surface

You can roll in all the big numbers you can think of, but when it comes to technological progress, nothing turns more heads than something that looks really cool. That is why more people took interest in Microsoft Surface, the Apple iPhone and the Nintendo Wii than, well, uh… you see?

While Microsoft Surface is still a bit far from release and will cost more than the war funding, we are left to simply dream of such intuitive interfaces. The latest to roll in this line comes from a comparatively obscure “Cynergy Labs” who unveiled their top-secret weapon, codenamed Project Maestro.

As you will see in the video below, Project Maestro utilizes the Wiimote, Microsoft WPF, third party libraries, custom-built Minority Report-inspired gloves as well as costly hardware like that TV you see. The result is a demonic interface that you can control with your hands. In the air. As the guy in the video at Cynergy’s site says, it’s Microsoft Surface, without the Surface. (Microsoft Surface – Surface = Mircosoft? The mind boggles.)

In the video, you can see the guy demonstrating Maestro by cutting and throwing Mona Lisa around as well as showing his photos, much like Microsoft Surface. The sexy gloves cover only three of his fingers, and allow him to pinch and grab stuff on the screen. He also shows off his encounter with Microsoft, which is cute. I particularly like the half-professional, half-homemade style of the video.

What bothers me is that I can’t see any particularly useful applications of this. It’ll be cool for some games, especially sports titles, racing titles or maybe shooters; that is until your arms ache and you take that gamepad back. Sure, throwing photos around and dissecting Mona Lisa is fun, but it’s not worth the massive price tag. I’m sure you can’t do office work waving your hands in the air. Internet browsing should be okay, but it’ll wear you out and incorrect pointing will have you clicking the wrong button.

In movies it should be good, since you don’t need to reach for the remote to pause, rewind or fast forward – simple hand-movements should do the trick. But then it would really suck if you grab a soda and the sensor thinks you want it to stop playback. But it would be a’ight nonetheless, and the same applies to listening to music. It’ll be pretty cool if we use to it create sounds out of Air Guitar moves.

Got some more ideas for this sweet thing? Post them in the comments and we’ll try to blackmail the guys at Cynergy into implementing them!

Game design and probability- math geeks only!

Or, as Tyler Sigman states in his introduction:

Be warned: this feature is long and contains a lot of things that are suspiciously and unsettlingly math-like. Go check up on BRITNEY SPEARS or PARIS HILTON or AMY WINEHOUSE if you have a shorter attention span. (Take that, Search Engines!)

Okay, so the article is probably not for everyone. But if, like me, you relish busting out excel to figure out optimal talent point placement, have a calculator by your side whenever making a major decision in a game, and spent hours of calculation discovering the most efficient Pokemon team (take that, schoolyard bullies!), this is manna from heaven.

It’s also good to know that, abhorrent as game design can be in the turn-based space, there’s at least one guy who understands the basics (Mr. Sigman worked on Age of Empires DS).

Instead of using a video game as his example, Mr. Sigman turns to a board game he’s designing, which although is perhaps less appropriate to the Gamasutra setting, is useful for the simplicity of calculation that a lack of a computer requires. Check out the article here.

First impressions: Conflict: Denied Ops for PS3/Xbox360

Yesterday I was invited to a plush London bar for a preview of the latest first-person shooter to enter the already crowded shooty genre. After sampling the deliciously free canapés and drinks on offer it was time for the serious business of guns, tanks and explosions, co-op style.

If you didn’t already figure it out, Conflict: Denied Ops is all about team-working with your army buddy. The buddies in question are the stealthy Lang and fast paced action-man, Graves trying to stop a dictatorship from getting hold of nukes.

Gamers can choose to switch between each soldier to get through the game. Lang is equipped with a sniper, while Graves the more trigger-happy of the two carries a machine gun.

Upon playing, the cut-scenes were impressive enough but it was the in-game action I was more eager to witness.

The first level has you trying to liberate a monastery from opposing militia, who like in Call of Duty 4 resemble the present stereotypical image of a terrorist. Also featuring was a face-off with a helicopter and a brief jaunt in a tank blowing up buildings and sniping enemy soldiers.

The option to switch soldiers does provide some element of team-working. At times I was unable to pick out far away soldiers, which was when Lang and his sniper came in handy.

When killed pressing the L2 button would make the soldier I wasn’t taking control of come and replenish my health with a boost of adrenalin.My major gripe with the co-op system was that on occasions my partner kept getting left behind and it was up to me to switch character and move him along with me.

Most of what was on offer was pretty standard war-based shooter fare, interlaced with a bit of co-op. At the moment it’s nothing special. The PS3 version did at times look a bit ps2-ish. Not a great start.

However the Xbox360 version looked much better. It just looked so much more crisp and moved more fluidly than its PS3 counterpart, which was playing alongside it. Even the controls felt smoother.

Pivotal, the developers were keen to point out the new ‘puncture technology- allowing gamers to blow holes in the scenery to create their own passages in the levels. The destruction didn’t seem too different from anything I’d previously seen in Red Faction on the PS2 or indeed the likes of Stranglehold.

Perhaps playing through just one level does not give a true indication of the game. What I can confirm is that Conflict: Denied Ops is a relatively solid shooter for those in love with the genre.

But during this first play provided very little, besides co-op that hasn’t been done by many others.

The game itself will be out on 12th February.