Digitally Downloaded June Edition

Suda’s back... and it’s hellish.

Also in this issue: Reiner Knizia on board games American McGee on Alice Madness Returns Jeff Vogel on RPGs Plenty of the month’s best reviews!

And...

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Recently, I picked up a copy of Defendin’ De Penguin at retail. I wasn’t expecting it to be the greatest game, but for a budget price, I’m always up for a fun little tower defence game.

Editor-in-chief Matt Sainsbury (matts@digitallydownloaded.net)

And I pretty much got what I expected. Defendin’ De Penguin is a basic tower defence game, especially good for the younger ones, but the difficulty can ramp pretty high if you want. It’s charming enough and there’s plenty of towers to play with and a nice variety of maps.

Contributing writers: Owen Sainsbury Domagoj Saric Ryan Sinclair Aidan Broadbent Clark Anderson Jason Micciche Chris Ingram Nick Jewell Arnar Leví

But this isn’t a review of the game. The point is – this game should have been a downloadable game. I can’t for the life of me understand why a publisher and developer would look at this game and decide to sit it next to the likes of LA Noire. Let alone the costs of producing and distributing a retail game, people’s expectations of retail games is much, much higher.

To be fair, if you do want to work with the Wii (or DS), you didn’t have much choice – the download platforms are terrible, but games like Defendin’ De Penguin would have worked just as well on the PSN or Xbox Live. Children and families, as well as tower defence fans also have those consoles.

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But then that raises the question – given how inexpensive it is to distribute games on PSN and XBLA, why is a game like Defendin’ De Penguin even an exclusive in the first place? As decent as it is, it’s still disposable and no one would bat an eyelid at it being cross platform. A port to PSN and XBLA would be reasonable inexpensive and would yield greater returns in the long run – after all one of the great benefits of online shopfronts is the long shelf life.

Of course, both Xbox 360 and PlayStation retail is not immune to this trend either – I don’t mean to single out developers working on Wii games. Publishers may have a better understanding of which format works for each game, but there are still too many games potentially missing out on optimal sales.

In terms of our issue this month – it’s the biggest to date. We’ve expanded out to 56 pages, packed full of reviews and features. I was lucky enough to attend an event held by EA to show off upcoming games Alice Madness Returns and Shadows of the Damned – this issue contains full coverage along with interviews with both Suda 51 and American McGee. Otherwise, happy gaming – the next few months promise to be a lot of fun, and we look forward to seeing you on our website or forums!

Matt Sainsbury Editor-in-chief

Digitally Downloaded is © M,MndM Media. Content may not be republished without written permission.

A Night of Blood and Horror EA, the publisher of the upcoming horror/ action games, Alice Madness Returns and Shadows of the Damned, threw a party to show both games off to the Australian media, and give us a chance to interview the creative minds behind both games....

To get the big question out of the way straight up; both Alice Madness Returns and Shadows of the Damned are brilliant games (read on for full previews), and both represent an EA that is willing to take a chance.

Alice Madness Returns is a sequel ten years in the making. Many gamers would never have had the chance to play the original. While it makes you wonder whether there is any loyalty left in the franchise, this is one sequel that is most welcome – we just hope that it’s not a sign that EA is planning on setting a yearly sequel schedule. That said, our interview with American McGee suggested that he has no plans on oversaturating the market with Alice sequels.

Shadows of the Damned is unashamedly adult. Suda 51 pulled out all stops with this game. It’s dark, brutal and gory. The crimson sprays are gratituous and animated with superb details. And the boss battles… wow are those epic. Suda’s always been known for the bosses, and he’s outdone himself here. The minotaur horsemen who grows to gargauntuan size after taking some punishment will be remembered for a long, long time.

Both games are to be released within a week of one another in Australia. Both very different, but both edgy games, the only answer will be to get both.

Shadows of the Damned Shadows of the Damned is Suda 51’s most complete work to date. Previous games have featured flashes of brilliance (usually around concept and storytelling) amongst some painful execution (usually the gameplay).

From what I played at the EA preview event, Shadows of the Damned still hasn’t got that pesky gameplay thing down, but it’s closer, and the vision and creativity in this game are utterly unmatched.

It really is a descent into hell, for one thing. Previous games with a similar theme, such as Dante’s Inferno, were tame by comparison. Shadows of the Damned becomes progressively more hellish as you move on. By the time you get to the end… Suda’s pushed the limits of good taste and the censors to the limit.

It’s a good thing. By pushing the boundaries, Shadows of the Damned puts you in a position where you have to survive – both the urge to play on, and the game itself. It’s not that the game isn’t welcoming – difficult aiming mechanics aside, this is Suda’s easiest game to play to date.

It’s that the game is a real struggle against overwhelming odds, and just like the protagonist, it’s a trial on the resolve. Bosses are especially intimidating – in true Suda style, they are big, epic battles and one

and all genuine highlights to the games.

The game is let down in some places by a case of ‘nice idea – poor execution.’ Light is crucial to survival, and this means you’ll need to keep lanterns lit, and fireworks lighting up the night sky.

This doesn’t always work – the darkness returns too quickly sometimes, and the constant running back to set up more fireworks is a distracting pull away from figuring out what to do next.

At other times the dark/ light interplay opens up some amazing innovative gameplay. The fact that some puzzles need darkness gives you pause to think.

Another time a boss character (not unlike the stalker-invulnerable Jason Vorhees) runs off with your light supply, dousing it in the process. Relight it, and the Jasonlike will chase you around for a bit before repeating the process. This fight/ flight interplay is one of the tense, exciting moments I’ve ever experienced in a game.

Shadows of the Damned is a linear rollercoaster, but it’s the finest example of grindhouse, and the most interesting representation of hell in a videogame to date.

Suda might not produce the best quality videogames out there, but love them or hate them, they are games that remain in the memory, and with that in mind, this is his most stand out production to date.

An Interview with Suda 51 Suda 51 is a true creative force. Though his English is poor, his articulation through his translator was at all times original and intelligent. This is a man that thinks deeply about his games, and works hard to inject his personal energy into every one of his projects.

His games are not always the best - the No More Heroes franchise is hit-and-miss - but when he misses it’s not for lack of effort. It was genuinely inspirational to hear him talk about his games, and more importantly; how much they mean to him, and the 150 or so people that work at Grasshopper Manufacture.

DD: How do you approach game design?

Suda: Basically I write a story. And when I write my scenario I think of gameflow as well while I write. When I write it’s usually at night time when everyone is asleep, and I imagine people around the world to be asleep and I’m the only one thinking of something new and different, and I’m the only one who knows this strange or weird land. That’s how I imagine and I also try to imagine people around the world playing the game I’m writing at that time.

That’s my creative process.

DD: What are your biggest influences?

Suda: I’d say anything that I’ve seen or felt or experienced. Those are really important to me. That’s my reality, and I think my experience is the most important part in the creative process.

DD: There’s a lot of talk in the press that the Japanese games industry is a difficult one to work in at the moment.

Is that your experience?

Suda: I guess. I think in Japan, especially since March 11, the earthquake; I think we’ve changed a lot. We’ve actually got the mission to create games that would provide some hope or happiness to people who were affected by the earthquake.

We need to be strong and keep on creating the games for the people in the affected areas, and also people around the world.

DD: You don’t develop many sequels.

Is there going to be a sequel to Shadows of the Damned?

Suda: We don’t know yet. It can happen later on, you never know - if a lot of fans around the world love this game, then there’s always a possibility for a sequel.

DD: You’ve experimented with iPhone and small mobile downloadable games – would you like to make more games of that kind?

Suda: Definitely. Actually this project took us three years or so. I think the cycle of producing games needs to be quicker for us. iOS would be really great for us.

So you can probably see games every year from us.

DD: Your games lean heavily on the side of artistic and cinematic. What about a film, would you be interested in working on a film?

Suda: Mabye not now because I’ve heard if you want to make a film it takes a few months, and that’s time I don’t really have. So not now but at the same time yes, if I get enough time, I’m getting to know a lot of movie directors in Japan as well.

If the opportunity is there and the timing is right then sure.

DD: You’ve worked with some other very high profile developers. Will you continue to work with other high profile personalities in the future?

Suda: Sometimes it is necessary for me to collaborate. If the timing and there’s a necessity then sure it’s nice to collaborate with other game designers, but at the same time I would like to help our young creators in Grasshopper Manufacture to come out so I would definitely want to work with them and give them a lot of opportunities.

Alice Madness Returns At the EA preview event I was able to get some substantial play time with Alice Madness Returns. As a huge fan of the original game, I can’t say I’m disappointed with what the sequel is offering at all.

It starts off with a bang. This game is all about recovering memories, and plot kicks off with you following an emanciated cat through some winding, and stunningly-realised streets in the real world. American McGee and his team have done a stunning job of building a fairy tale world where everything looks and feels just slightly off. Characters are detailed and well animated, but all look like they’ve come directly from a Grimm fairytale visualisation.

The art director on the project claims his main inspiration was the pre-cg fantasy films, the likes of the excellent Labyrinth or The Neverending Story, and it works in this game. It truly is a visual wonder.

The gameplay itself walks a fine line between generic platforming and reasonably visceral combat. There’s plenty of double jumping and associated puzzles to contend with, and the fighting itself is set up like a puzzle – each enemy has its own unique blindspots that need to be exploited for an easy win.

In a concession to modern gaming, failing (falling down a pit, for instance) respawns you near by, and there’s a

generous checkpoint system in place.

Experienced platformer fans will fly through this – the degree of difficulty is quite low and certainly not a patch on the likes of Mario Sunshine – but during that fly through, the game is a genuine blast.

See, where everyone but Nintendo has struggled with 3D platformers to get the little things tweaked to perfection, Alice has succeeded. The camera is amongst the best I’ve ever seen for the genre, and the game worlds remain vibrant and original throughout the experience. Not once when I was playing did I think to myself ‘seen this before’ – this Alice is wholly original and while it’s a very different flight of fantasy to a Mario game (there is plenty of gore, for one thing), it’s no less creative.

So yes, Mario and Nintendo finally have a genuine competitor in the platforming space. Alice Madness Returns is going to be a must have.

A chat with American McGee and Ken Wong American McGee is a true industry veteran; making a name for himself in the early days of FPSers. His original Alice game was a breakaway hit some 10 years ago. Now, with his own studio based out of Shanghai, China, he’s looking to new and innovative platforms for gaming, but not before releasing a long overdue sequel to one of the most inventive platformers of all time.

Ken Wong is the artistic driving force behind the new Alice. Originally from the small city of Adelaide, Australia, Wong is making a name for himself with highly creative artistic design and a unique vision.

DD: Why have we had to wait so long wait for this sequel?

American: There’s nothing magic about the timing between the two. Once I left EA I had to go off and become an independent game producer for a while. Ken and I actually actually hooked up at the time and we were working on a Wizard of Oz game, which we subsequently cancelled.

We then moved to Hong Kong and worked on another game together and then had the opportunity to move to Shanghai and started a studio there. It wasn’t until we were a little while later that I looked around and realised we had a studio capable of returning to the franchise and doing something really amazing with it.

So we called up EA, told them what we had in mind and they said “go for it.” So it’s a really just came down to being in the right place at the right time.

DD: Did you always want to come back to the world again?

American: When we finished up the first game we knew there was potential for it there. Much like where we are now there’s the potential there for us to follow this game up. We really want to wait and see how the audience reacts. It’s clear after 10 years that people are still talking about the original game.

So 10 years from now we might be back here talking abut the third game.

DD: What’s changed in terms of what people expect out of a game in that 10 years? What fundamentals have you had to change to make it relevant to a modern audience?

American: You’ll find in many ways it’s a very classic formula that we applied because it’s very much like the first game.

WE’ve got a similar mix of platform, action, the combat, puzzle solving narrative, and we felt that the first game did a really good job of proving the elevements together.

We didn’t want to mess with the formula too much. The same time we had the last 10 years to listen to people talk about the things they loved and some of the things they didn’t like so much. Stuff like combat was a place where a lot of people

said it was one dimensional and it could have gone a little further. So we spent a lot of time making sure the combat this time around has a much deeper experience to it. The concept that enemies are puzzles in themselves that you’ve got to get the combination of rhythm and weapons together to successfully battle against them so there’s some evolution in there.

In many ways this is the ideal version of what the first game would have liked to have been, but at the same time, adding some things in there that are new.

DD: There’s been a lot of pressure on studios given how much money is involved in development now to create games that appeal to a wide audience.

That’s causing some problems because then you’ve got the core gamers who worry about the difficulty level and that kind of thing. How will Alice balance being accessible with giving the core gamers something more?

American: That was an interesting thing about the first game. A lot of people enjoyed the first game half way through and then hit a wall of difficulty and this time around we want to be careful to present something that allow people who are just fans of Alice maybe casual games play through and have a good time but at the same time gave significant challenge to the core gamers that they would enjoy it as well.

We knew we wanted to make things colourful and bold.

We tuned the difficulty levels from easy to hard, that people on the easy level can hack and slash their way through quite quickly, people who are playing on hard need a more strategic approach to how they battle enemies. That was some thingking that went into the combat system and I think we came out with something that would make both camps happy.

We looked at everything from doll houses and handmade jewelry to taxidermied animals.

DD: What about the art style? The game has a really good look.

Ken: Everyone was complimentary about how the first game looked. It was really intimidating for the art team to come to this. We had totally different artists and we knew we had to meet this challenge.

We looked at a couple of different things.

The art style we came up with was very inspired by pre-CG fantasy films, stuff like Dark Crystal and Neverending Story. We liked the dark, tacticle feeling that these films had. So it’s ironic that we are in an entirely CD environment, but we looked at little design cues, little things we could do to emulate that hadncrafted look.

DD: Were you worried this game will be compared to Tim Burton’s film?

American: We started work on this about a year before the Burton film was even announced, and when the film came out I went and saw it, I saw so many things in there that looked like they’d been borrowed from the original Alice game.

I was looking forward to the movie. I was worried as it was about to be released that he was going to do something really, truly fantastic that would overshadow what we’re trying to do with the game, instead what I saw was a really fantastic visuals,

beautiful music, great costume design, but really bad story. We were kind of happy that it fell on its face in that regard because it allows this title to continue to be, in my opinion, the definitive version of the story, and of Alice as a characters.

Ken: Going in we were a little worried, but when we saw the film we realised that is was a different take, and they’d done different things with the characters. I think there is absolutely room for both of these to exist, and I think anyone who has seen the film should also play this game because it’s a different direction.

I think we were a lot bolder and more adventurous where we went. Mabye because we weren’t being watched by Disney, we didn’t have to make it family friendly – we can challenge our audiences a lot more.

DD: What’s next? Have you got any dream projects you’re working on?

American: Absolutely. We’ve just secured venture capital financing and we’re going to use to fund our own independent original IP. And we just announced a collaboration with PopCap to take its existing IP and adapt into the free to play online market.

DD: Do you think the future of the games industry is in that free to play or mobile game market, or do you think there will be a place for the blockbusters like Alice?

American: I think the industry like any other creative expression there’s always lots of room for different. But certainly for us we think there’s a huge future in mobile and online free to play games.

I think whether or not we continue to see big blockbuster console titles, might have some connection to whether or not we’re going to get any more consoles. We’re seven years in to this cycle. And it’s still difficult to see where that hardware market is going to go from here.

Meanwhile you and I are carrying phones around now that are as powerful as the PSOne. The question – are we going to build more consoles to put in the living room or are we going to see more mobile devices that we carry around become the next wave of consoles.

E3 Wrap

So, another E3 has come and gone.

And what a year this one was: great games to look forward to, and no less than two major hardware reveals.

Check out our website, www.digitallydownloaded.net for the full coverage, but in the meantime, here are some of our impressions from the presentations that each of the “big three� - Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo:

SONY I think the conference that Sony put on this year outdid its performance last year by leaps and bounds. To be honest, the 2010 conference should've been called the "PlayStation Move Conference", because that's basically all they talked about. This year, though? There were so many interesting and exciting things being announced that not once did I feel bored or find my attention wandering.

Let's go through the checklist, shall we?

PlayStation exclusive titles? Check. With stuff like Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Resistance 3, Starhawk, the yet-tobe-named downloadable-only Star Trek game prequel and the newly announced Dust 514, I'm pretty sure Sony can hold its own in that department. Add to that all the additional PS3-exclusive add-ons from games like SSX, Need for Speed: The Run, Saints Row the Third and Battlefield 3, among others, and we're going to be waist deep in Sony exclusive material.

Titles that support Move (Sony's answer to motion gaming)? Check. With intriguing original titles like Medieval Move as well as having Move support for games like NBA 2K12 and BioShock Infinite (yes, that's right, BioShock Infinite), Sony is definitely adding interesting and compelling titles to its library all with Move support. And let's not forget about the newly-announced titles such

PlayStation Vita: Incredible

as the exciting Dust 514 or the new Star Trek shooter, both of which look stellar and are supposed to have Move support added in. Sony is pushing its brand of motion gaming more than ever before and, honestly, it's getting me intrigued in what it has to offer.

Titles that will support 3D picture?

Check. Admittedly, this is a venue that a much smaller audience cares for, but Sony is planning on changing that. By announcing a new PlayStation brand 3D display that it will sell for cheap (Resistance 3, an HDMI cable, a pair of 3D glasses and a 24" 3D screen all for $500), it is doing a great job of giving people interested in 3D gaming a chance to try it out for a reasonable price. And let's not forget that the screen will apparently be able to support two-person gaming on the same screen without reducing to splitting the screen in half for each player and I'm sold. Considering the number of titles that Sony is releasing with 3D compatibility, I might very well buy that screen.

The rest of the Sony conference this year was spent mostly talking about the new PS Vita (previously known as the NGP) and, I have to admit, I'm rather impressed with how it looks. A front and back touchscreen, loads of intriguing exclusive titles (including Uncharted: Golden Abyss and a newly planned

BioShock title announced by Ken Levine himself), front- and rear-facing cameras and dual thumbsticks all add together to make a genuinely interesting and compelling portable device that might very well be worth your money. And, considering the respectable price of $250, that's a considerable deal on your hands. It even comes with a 3G connection if you shill out an extra $50. For a portable device that offers so much, that's quite respectable, especially when you consider the Nintendo 3DS runs for the same price.

All in all, the Sony conference was a good showing. I would've preferred a few more PS3 gameplay demos to be shown, but you can't always get what you want. And, considering the amount of footage they showed of games being played on the PS Vita, I can't really complain that much. There was a lot to get excited about and, because of that, I think Sony understood its audience much better than Microsoft did. Microsoft was all about Kinect and social networking and the like, while Sony relied solely on its games and gaming features to carry the conference. Add to that a rather classy apology offered by Jack Tretton regarding the PSN outage, before anything else happened, and I think we really have to respect Sony's presentation this year.

- Nick J

The Tomb Raider reboot isn’t a PlayStation exclusive, but it could well be the most exciting game from the show,

Nintendo

standard controller, closely resembling the classic controller but with a different button layout (as well as additional triggers). The controller can function akin to a DS’ second screen or as the console’s game itself. Interestingly enough, the device also browses the internet and makes video calls with its built-in camera, speakers, and microphone.

Wii U: Invading our homes in 2012

One would be hard-pressed to deny that Nintendo’s 2011 E3 presentation was quite newsworthy.

To kick off the show, Nintendo presented a trailer featuring past Zelda games, eventually leading up to a trailer of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. In addition, Nintendo unveiled a free Four Swords game for the DSiWare service later this year.

Nintendo will also be releasing a gold Wii remote, two soundtracks (one via Club Nintendo), and it announced that a Zelda symphony will be touring this (American) fall in every region.

Immediately bringing out Zelda was a great way to get gamers hyped for the action. A Four Swords title alone would have been phenomenal, but the fact that we’re getting it for free is awe-inspiring.

My only concern is that the game is on DSiWare, a service that has a strict filesize limit of 16MB. Can even Nintendo achieve greatness with such a restriction, or will it break its own rules for the pleasure of gamers?

3DS Releases of Note: Mario Kart 3DS: While it seems to be the same old Mario Kart with 3D, a new mechanic involving a glider was shown.

The game will be out this holiday season.

Super Mario: The first Mario game on a handheld built with 3D in mind. Out by the end of this year.

Luigi’s Mansion 2: A full-fledged sequel

to the original, featuring many more mansions than the original. A release date is not yet known.

Kid Icarus: Uprising: Several unique styles of gameplay, voice acting, and an implied emphasis on story. Like Mario Kart, it will be released this holiday.

StarFox 64 3DS: Multilayer features camera support to show the reactions of your fellow pilots as you fight. The game will be available in September.

Super Smash Bros. 3DS: Not much about this title is known, besides that it will be featured on both the 3DS and Wii 2. No release is currently known.

Though not many new 3DS titles were announced, Luigi’s Mansion is a pleasant surprise. Super Smash Bros. could have used a hype trailer ala E3 2006, but I’m not really complaining. Super Mario 3DS just screams delay, given the level of vagueness surrounding it.

WiiU Reveal: The WiiU's defining aspect is its 6-inch touch screen, built right onto the controller. The device also features a more complex set of buttons than the Wii's

As for the actual console itself, Nintendo is offering improved graphics as the most note-worthy upgrade. There are also promises of an improved online component and backwards compatibility with the Wii remote has been touted. Nintendo went on to state that the WiiU’s controller will not be intended to replace the 3DS. It is meant to compliment the home experience, rather than be its own portable handheld controller.

WiiU Releases of Note: Aliens: Colonial Marines Assassin’s Creed Batman Arkham City Darksiders II Dirt LEGO City Stories Metro Last Light Ninja Gaiden 3 Super Smash Bros.

Tekken Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online Overall: An impressive E3 from Nintendo, definitely living up to the hype for me. Sure, the 3DS situation could be better, but I'm enjoying the more subtle aspects of the conference such as the upcoming Four Swords game and the sheer number of possibilities that the WiiU presents to the gaming world.

- Clark A

Darksiders 2: ABOUT TIME!

Microsoft

Microsoft's pitch of 2011 E3 proved to be a rather interesting affair. Kinect-heavy and hardcore gaming light, it may have changed the approach Microsoft employs in the market. Is the attack on Nintendo heartland worth the effort?

Squeals of delight are sure to emerge from the mouths of Halo fans as Microsoft anchored its E3 presentation with the news that Halo 4 marks the beginning a new trilogy. The game is visually stunning and with gameplay appearing to meet the series high standards with the triple threat in warfare; gameplay over air, water and land. This news is greatly appreciated. What is not, and very puzzling at an event such as this, was the attempt to fleece loyal Microsoft fans with the combat anniversary addition of Halo 1 (due no doubt in part because Halo 4 won't be around until 2012).

No amount of digitally remastering can hide the fact that this could be logically interpreted as a lack of faith in Halo 4, as the marketers feel that the Halo franchise needs a shot in the arm/sales until its release. The other option is that it is simply revenue raising, cashing in on the franchise's popularity. Either way, this is not ideal behaviour in regards to the anchor game, Halo 4, which should be the 'long anticipated big release' in 2012.

As for the digitally remastered game, I personally would rather Microsoft spend its time and money showing off titles that offer something new or innovative. That is what E3 is all about after all.

Halo 4: Microsoft’s great hope

The Kinect attack went all out, presumably in a bid to hone in on Nintendo territory. Its most 'impressive' title was Fun Labs which has the possibility to make home objects come into the virtual world, but some less savory gamers are notoriously odd individuals and some of the avatars/ abuse of this system will test the age appropriateness of this game. The less said of Dance Revolution 2 the better. Hardcore gamer fans may have been disappointed by the large Kinect bias of this event and it is a clear Microsoft policy to pay greater attention to the casual market.

The greatest addition to Xbox Live, and potentially a game changer for Microsoft, will be the link to the Internet and pay TV age with partnerships with pay-television companies and YouTube.

Linking every aspect on a single system is very intelligent, and the partnerships with various pay TV networks will only enhance the process. The interactive options with live TV presents a great deal of potential, although Microsoft doesn't seem entirely sure how to use it, only presenting live sports predictions as a potential use.

A plethora of shooters were showcased.

Mass Effect seems great, all though despite attempting to sell it, open dialogue in a game will be a long way off. Modern Warfare 3, COD will be out November 8 and nothing more needs to be said.

An unexpected diamond in the rough appears the be the use of Microsoft's most innovative design to create Tom

Clancy: Ghost Recon. The option for stealth mode and the customisation of the individual parts is weapons demonstrated show gaming at its artistic, intricate best.

If any game will make use of Kinect, perhaps it it this.

Gears of War 3 was always going to be a massive title and with millions of preorders you could forgive Microsoft for focusing on targets they needed to sell to, but the game looks slick and the obvious respect for the fanbase is something that garners the metaphorical bromance.

Giving a taste of what to expect was a nice touch, much less was the blatant use of celebrity Ice T. Not as startling as the original, this new entity has impressively improved as the game has visuals that will, once more, define the benchmark in first person shooters for the next few years.

The metaphor that a coin features two sides, like that of dark and light, is a metaphor that is overused . Despite utilising this, a strange yet compelling story in relation to a puppy searching through a ruinous Rome speaks volumes about a title that had largely gone under my radar. Not any more, for the first person shooter Ryse was a surprise packet and showed enough in its brief cameo to warrant further investigation.

The overall press conference was a little disappointing. The Kinect push got very repetitive and Tom Clancy/Forza aside did not offer as much as Microsoft seem to think it does. I was genuinely impressed by some of the visuals, but all of these games have been discussed well before E3. There was nothing groundbreaking and very few hardcore games.

In its attempts to go after Nintendo, Microsoft may have forgotten its own niche. This could translate into a long 12 months. Still, it was not all bad. Ryse looks thoroughly interesting, we can wait 17 months for a Halo 4 that looks that good, EA and sports games will benefit greatly from Microsoft's push into kinect, Tomb Raider may have reinvigorated an ailing franchise with an excellent story and Ghost Recon may be the surprise packet of Microsoft E3.

- Owen S

Industry Legend

Reiner Knizia: The art of Board Games His name isn’t well known in the video game industry, but Dr. Reiner Knizia is one of the most lauded board game designers of all time, and he’s starting to make a splash in the world of video games thanks to some very high quality iPad and iPhone games.

Now he’s on the hunt to partner with other publishers to be involved even further in video games, and given his track record, those games would be innovative and exciting indeed. In the meantime, he sat down with Matt Sainsbury to chat about his philosophy behind game design, and the differences and synergies between video games and board games.

Given you have experience with both board game and video game design, what are some of the differences you come across in terms of development for the two?

That’s not an easy question; there is a lot to it. If I look at a board game, then I’m thinking about players sitting around a table and the board or the cards or whatever the engine is simply a platform for the players to engage in an interesting time with each other. They bring themselves much more into the game, but the platform has to be very simple, because somebody has to handle it, but players don’t want to administer the game they want to play the game and concentrate on their actions, and therefore the underlying game needs to be fairly simple.

Whereas if you look at electronic games, then we either have a situation where a player plays in solitaire mode, or that we play through the network. Of course we have a much more intelligent basis for handling the environment or game system so we can put much more stuff in there, but then I don’t have the face to face contact, so that loses a bit of the social interaction.

If we go into the solitaire game then you either work with AI or you could work with what I prefer, which is a system where a player simply copes with the

environment and some random effects, but he or she has some control and influence and tries to optimise this. And again all the handling, accounting, scoring, setting up of the world, and the variation from game to game is easily handled by the system, so you can put much more in there to compensate for the lack of face to face interaction.

Do these differences create challenges when it comes to bringing board games into a digital environment?

As you know, some of my board games have been taken over into video game form and some of them can be taken over straight forward as a one to one transformation. Essentially then you’re playing a game with the AI. Then a big challenge is ‘how big of a screen do we need?’ Because scrolling and zooming in and out is sometimes not so comfortable, so we

ask ‘can I place everything on the screen, and how is the user interface in respect to seeing and handling things?’ That’s one of the challenges, and I think when you choose a game to convert it over to an electronic medium, particually if it’s on a smartphone or small screen, then one of the selection criteria has to be how well can it be displayed.

And then after you’ve taken these selections, then the main challenge is to get the AI right so that it’s interesting to play. You can take a lot of things over, but the new elements to design are really the questions: ‘how do I cope with the small screen, and then how do I play against the AI?’ Given how friendly the iPad and tablets are for board games, do you think the traditional board game industry is coming under threat now?

That’s long been the discussion that with the rising of electronics that this will be in the most the death of the board game and face to face social gaming. It is not in my eyes. I have a wider view about games, and that is that games are one aspect of our leisure activities, and of course the different industries for leisure activities compete for the people’s free time and free money.

People like to travel, people like to read, go to the cinema, watch television, go to sports or play sports or play games – to name a few. I would rather like to have people playing electronic games, because they’re much closer to board games, then doing any of the other leisure activities.

I believe as long as we keep people and recruit people into the gaming environment, we’ve a much better chance for board games.

And then there’s an internal struggle on who has the upper hand, and that will go up and down. I’m actually thinking that these two genres can cross fertilise each other. I am not worried, and I don’t think there will be any adverse effects that one overtakes the other.

Knizia’s most ambitious video game to date is Battle of the Sexes on the Nintendo Wii. Digital Download platforms will be ideal for his games into the future, one gets the feeling.

If you see my website, if you see my business cards and letterheads it always says ‘bringing enjoyment to the people.’ That is a bit too broad as an answer but it’s a starting point.

A long time ago I thought quite hard about what I am actually doing and what is the point of it. The point is not I want to make the greatest innovation.

The point is not I want to make a lot of money. The point is really you need to see it from the end user and who essentially keep games going. And why do these people get a game? Because they get enjoyment, entertainment and a thrill out of it. So it is really this mission, and its reward to be able to really contribute to filfil part of the life of the people. Gaming is a big industry and big entertainment and big leisure activities and it can enrich many people’s lives. So when I look a little deeper what does it mean for me?

I’ve hinted that already. I don’t like games that are very difficult to get into.

Our time today is very fast moving,

You also have to understand that in my eyes playing an electronic game, even with all the networking we have now in the games which we didn’t have 10 or 20 years ago. It’s still a different experience and engagement than if I sit around a table with a glass of wine next to me and some friends and we play a game.

It’s almost two different worlds, and I don’t think I want to substitute one world from the other. They come from a common root but it’s two different needs they satisfy.

When you are developing your own games, what are you looking to achieve and what are some of the principles you’re looking to put into the games?

Samurai: The board game (above) and the iPad port (right)

the attention span is shorter. There are gamers that are willing to go very deep into it, but if you want to reach a wider public, then it’s almost a casual game approach.

I don’t like games that have a very big administrative part. Lots of handling of pieces and lots of handling of scoring.

People are then kept very busy and they might not even notice, but they’re not playing the game, they’re administering the game and that’s much more a challenge on the face to face part in asn electronic game this is done automatically and therefore it’s not such a big deal.

In the end it is really – is the game engaging me, do I get an exciting world, and has it got a high replay value? Where does the replay value come from – do I want to master it, do I want a high score, is it just I enjoy it, it’s distracting me from day to day things and I just come back because it gives me a thrill of enjoyment?

A lot of the great designers come from a mathematics background – including yourself. Is the mathematical or analytical thought process tied into the ability to make a game?

This is a clear no. I don’t think that game design is a science. I think of it as an art.

I have learned for myself that I actually have to avoid having a fixed methodology.

With the sciences you have a fixed process and you can repeat experiments

and they give you the same thing.

I think if I try to do that in game design, then essentially I’m starting at a certain starting point and then I go through my steps, trample along the same path, and then I come out at the same end. Painting it in black and white, if you have a methodology it kills a part of the creativity.

For me it’s become more and more important to find new entry points to game design, this came come from a theme, a character license, new materials from new possibilities they have in here.

From new electronic consoles or media, and these are new hooks and new entry points, also new challenges.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the game, Wer War’s, it comes out in English this year, it’s a hybrid game where there’s an electronic box, but it’s also a face to face game. It’s a fully cooperative game, and the challenge comes out of the electronic box.

Whenever you face something new then you cannot just use your old solution, you have to come up with new solution.

Game design is about taking lots of decisions about how to solve challenges and how to implement certain activities. If you’re forced to develop something new because of new territory then I think you get a much more innovative game, then if you apply a step by step process.

Nevertheless when you say a lot of people have the background in mathematics, obviously it helps to have a good experience in the thinking and the model building. One does not exclude the other.

I’m not saying forget all the systematic approach, forget all the scientific experience. Of course it helps in analysing and playtesting games, and in changing and finetuning games. There is a trade aspect, but there’s also craftsman aspect.

In the future are you looking at branching into other genres of game, aside from the board game and puzzle game?

To say it from a very broad perspective – you probably know I was a mathematician at university and then I was working in the banking industry, and then I managed a big mortgage company, and eventually I decided to develop my own little company.

he idea when I did this was very clearly that I do not want to become a specialist in one little area of the gaming. People say a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less. I deliberately did not want to do that. The thrill and challenge for me is always to look at new areas and to expand into this new territories. That’s why I’ve done a lot of different technology games.

production of the graphics. So there is a limit to the scale that we can design to.

However, I’m only a designer I’m only coming up with the specifications, I’m not a studio with respect to doing the programming or implementation and

Dr. Knizia’s Games and Awards German-bord Knizia started out as a banker with a PHD in mathematics.

Since turning to game design, he’s produced over 500 titles, and won a host of awards. His licenses include: Ben 10, Hot Wheels, Lego, Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Monopoly, Pirates of the Caribbean, Playmobil, the Simpsons, Star Trek and Star Wars, and Toy Story.

His awards include: Australian Game of the Year Award 2010 for Ramses Pyramid. Toy Innovation Award 2010 for tiptoi – Geheimnis der Zahleninsel. Austrian Game Prize 2009, Toy Innovation Award 2009 and Goldenes Schaukelpferd 2009 for Ramses Pyramid.

German Game of the Year 2008 for Keltis.

German Childrens Game of the Year 2008 and German Children Game Prize 2008 for Wer war’s? German Educational Game Award 2008 for Alles Tomate. Austrian Game Prize 2006 for Tal der Abenteuer and Spanish Game of the Year Award 2006 for Lost Cities. Japan Board Game Prize 2005 for Mago Magino. Austrian Game Prize 2004 and Swiss Game Prize 2004 for Einfach Genial and Grand Prix du Jouet 2004 in France for King Arthur.

German Game Prize 2003 for Amun-Re, Austrian Game Prize 2003 for King Arthur, International Gamers Choice Award 2003 for Lord of the Rings – The Confrontation and French Grand Prix du Jouet 2003 for Wapi. German Game of the Year Award 2001 for Literature in Games for Lord of the Rings, Dutch Toy of the Year Award 2001 for the electronic game Monopoly Beurs Editie, and Invitation to the Hall of Fame of the Academy for Adventure Gaming Arts & Design.

Winner of the German Game Prize 2000 with Taj Mahal, also Golden Quill of Essen 2000. Children’s Game of the Year 2000 for Safari in Denmark, Sweden and Finland, and Grand Prix du Jouet 2000 in France for Safari Malin. Gamers Award 2000 for Lost Cities. German Game Prize 1998 for Euphrates & Tigris. Children’s Game of the Year 1998 in Finland for Kurre. Golden Quill of Essen 1994 for the book New Games in Old Rome. German Game Prize 1993 for Modern Art.

An impressive resume, to be sure!

REd

WAS

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Indie Dev Red Wasp is a new start-up developer with some big ambitions. Bringing together some veterans from around the industry, the team is looking to, through a partnership with pen-and-paper RPG publisher Chaosism, bring all the horror of Cthulhu to mobile phone gaming.

Digitally Downloaded sat down to have a chat with the folks at Red Wasp around how it was planning on achieving that.

Why did you decide to set up an indie development company? The team has had a great deal of experience on major projects in the past - what have been some of the highlights, and learning experiences?

We've all done lots of development where an external organisation, i.e. the publisher, gets to call the shots on the game. This can be positive (such as in Savage Moon's case) and it can be negative and mean that you don't get to do things the way you feel they should be done e.g creatively or in marketing your product.

We wanted to be in a position where the final say in all aspects of the game was ours. We also didn't want a deadline hovering over us for the duration of the development - if we feel a feature needs more work, we are now free to give it that time. One of the highlights of working in games is the collaborative nature of it all; creating something that is (hopefully!) greater than the sum of its parts. Getting the first Savage Moon out the door was a highlight since it was, although funded by Sony, the first game we had completed to our own design, rather than as employees creating someone else's ideas.

The continuously changing nature of the industry and tools however, means as a developer, learning new technologies is a constant and timeconsuming element of the business. That can be a negative but the positive is that we now have the space for innovation.

Why choose Call of Cthulhu as the source material for a game? It's a notoriously difficult fantasy to recapture in video game form, so how will you approach this challenge?

Tomas had written a monograph for Chaosium a few years back and had wanted to do more with it since. See http://redwaspdesign.wordpress. com/2011/05/10/i-heart-call-of-cthulhu/.

How closely are you working with Chaosium? How much of an inspiration is the pen and paper RPG for you?

He's a huge fan of Lovecraft's work and the RPG game Call of Cthulhu and so persuaded us (via some dark and horrific rites) to make this game as Red Wasp Design's first outing. There is no doubt this will be a challenge to capture as a video game, plus we're trying to do it on a mobile, which adds further limits.

Our approach is going to be to share the issues raised by the development on the blog, e.g. http://redwaspdesign. wordpress.com/2011/05/16/a-solutiontosanityin-video-games/ and also listen to the feedback we get. But in essence we're aiming to capture the spirit of Call of Cthulhu rather than each and every stat - because a paper game is very different from a video one.

As we talked about above, there are huge differences between the paper and video game worlds. So the aim in the project is to bring to bare on it the expertise of each company at the right points and places.

What are the fundamental differences between pen and paper RPGs and CRPGs? Do those differences create challenges in developing games based on pen and paper RPGs? The biggest issue is that within a game engine you are limited by what the game engine can and can't do. So when playing a paper RPG the imagination of the Keeper and players is the only real limit - rules can be adapted to new situations and random directions handled with relative ease. In a game, the game system has to pre-know all of the options, parameters and choices possible to the player. This has a limiting effect on what can and can't be done in the game. That free-form experience just can't be recreated fully in a game, even if we had a $billion in development money (which we don't!).

However video games also have advantages; they can be single player, they handle all the calculations for you and can give a graphic representation to the game. The challenge is to pick some aspects (e.g. combat, character development) that the game can do well and focus the game around these. In combat for example, both the paper RPG and what we're doing are going to be turn-based, so the essence of the paper game carries right into the video game.

Chaosium have been great, they were really open to the idea right from the start. We've sent them concept art, design documents and the like, to which they give us helpful feedback. We expect that close relationship to continue throughout.

The paper RPG is a key inspiration, it has concepts like sanity that you don't find in other games, concepts that we want to adapt into our game. People who've played the paper RPG will recognise much of the game system. However the game we're developing is different from the paper RPG, so we've kept it streamlined so it works on mobile and newcomers will not feel lost.

Do you think the horror video game genre has changed of the years? How do you see it developing into the future?

It has changed, and is changing lots.

Milestones like Resident Evil were really important in establishing that horror and games could work well together. The whole aspect of narrative in games has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years - Heavy Rain and now LA Noire - as examples of this. We've also seen great games like Dead Space innovate in other areas.

Horror is a natural match for games and we're excited to see how horror games integrate the learning from the likes of Heavy Rain and now LA Noire. We're in a different space, being a smaller title with less than 1 per cent of the budget of these games, so we have to approach the horror in others ways...

Do you plan on revisiting Cthulhu with future games? Are there any other settings or genres of games that you'd like to explore?

Tomas is keen to do more but ultimately it depends on how well the game sells, as we still have bills to pay. However, as Chaosium and others have shown in their expansions of the RPG into other zones - Dark Ages, Cthulhu Invictus, Cthulhu Now/ Delta Green - the scope is huge.

There are also lots of interesting places and scenarios from Lovecraft's own work that is inspiring too so watch this space...

What is your dream game, if you were given an unlimited budget to work with?

Wow. Big question... We've all got lots of ideas of games we'd like to do. Tomas has a number of ideas of games he's wanted to do, including ones set during the Spanish Civil War or a survival horror set also in World War One. Or a game version of Inception would be amazing fun to develop but you'd need that unlimited budget to make it work...

However, Stu would prefer to make smaller games, ideally quirkier games that find their natural home on downloadable services. He's a fan of the Behemoth's games both in terms of style and content.

Viewtiful Joe was a long term favourite of his and partially inspired the art style of Eat Them, along with a healthy dose of Geoff Darrow.

Michael on the other hand would like to create a true survival horror. He says, “The Road is a perfect example of a true survival horror for me, no zombies or an endless supply of shotguns...just the endless anxiety of basic survival mixed with basic human instincts. As an example, imagine combining The Road with Ico, now thats the kind of game I'd like to make and play.�

Keep an eye out for this one. It sounds like a winner

Game Data Nintendo's WiiWare service started in North America on May 12, 2008. There were six WiiWare titles available for download on the WiiWare service's launch, and now there are more than 300 WiiWare games to choose from.

New WiiWare games are usually added to the Wii's Shop Channel each week, and games range in price from just $5, up to $15.

Some of the WiiWare launch titles were original titles not found on other platforms, but one game had been released half a decade earlier for the PC, and that WiiWare game was Defend Your Castle(DYC).

Defend Your Castle was released on May 12, 2008 for the WiiWare service in the United States, and costs 500 Wii Points, which is $5. The game was developed and published by XGen Studios, and received an "Everyone" rating from the ESRB with "Cartoon Violence" listed as the only content for gamers/parents to be aware of.

How many hours have Wii owners spent defending their castles, with 1,114 days of game-play reported as of May 30, 2011?

Let's take a look!

Hours shown are for United States of America Wii owners that report game-play data via the Nintendo Channel. The hours shown are not for all Wii owners that have played Defend Your Castle.

Approx. Number of Players Having Reported Data: Defend Your Castle has about 103,894 Wii owners that have reported data through the Wii's Nintendo Channel, in the United States.

DYC's United States release has made XGen Studios about $519,470 in the last three years, before taxes and profit sharing with Nintendo, based on just the approximate number of players that have reported data and the game's $5 price point.

Average & Total Game-Play Hours:

Review Score Average:

DYC has 525,950 Total Hours of game-play reported, with an average play-time of5 Hours 4 Minutes "Per person"(or console) reporting data for the game.

Defend Your Castle's WiiWare version has a professional review score average of 67.05 per cent, based on 20 reviews on GameRankings.com.

The game's average play-time per session is right about 40 minutes.

Sale Information: Defend Your Castle is not currently listed in the WiiWare's "Popular Titles" section, as of checking around 5:15PM on June 1, 2011.

While Defend Your Castle was originally released on March 13, 2003 for the PC, the WiiWare version seems like it has done pretty well for XGen Studios.

Questions: Have any of you played Defend Your Castle, and if so, what do you think about the game?

Let us know at both www.digitallydownloaded.net and www.coffeewithgames. com

Filtered Thoughts: I have played Defend Your Castle, just not the WiiWare version. I played the PC version on XGen's site, while preparing for this post. I think the concept for DYC is really simple, but I can see how the difficulty could ramp up, and the need to think strategically could increase, pretty quickly in the game.

Scott runs many of these data report cards for Wii Play Time. Be sure to check his site and say hi at www.coffeewithgames.com

Guest Column

The Potato Sack Back in mid-April, Steam had a package of indie games they labelled The Potato Sack. It was a collection of 13 games for $38.72. Some were better known than others, and they covered a handful of genres. Some of the titles will probably look familiar to you, others less so - but here they are:

AAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard for Gravity Basically, this game uses vibrantly colored, geometric shapes to represent buildings, platforms and other buildings and objects as you plummet from the top of a building toward a target somewhere on the ground below. Simple, and did not keep me engaged long.

So let's start with 1...2...3... Kick It! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby).

It is a playable beta, and when it comes out you do get the full game for free.

The premise is pretty simple - you pick an mp3 and it designs a course you fly through. The music generates different shapes, obstacles and point rings to fly through. Incomplete, so hard to recommend.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent was one of the gems of this package. This is a first person survival/ horror title. The graphics lack incredible detail and power, but the sound and atmosphere are spectacular.

The 2nd game I played was called AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAa-

Audiosurf is similar to Kick It! You use your own music selections to 'surf' through a track generated by beats and rhythm. It's more of a fun diversion or experience than a game in my mind, however.

Bit.Trip Beat is an interesting game with a retro look. The paddle you control on the left strikes incoming objects in synchronization with the catch background music beats. It was a fun diversion for me - but my non-gaming daughter absolutely loved it.

Cogs is a puzzle game based on making 'working' machines out of sliding tiles (like those plastic tiles you played with as a kid, with a single available space in it). Fun right at first, somewhat frustrating later on and loses its appeal.

Defense Grid: The Awakening - I've got this for the Xbox 360 as well. Simply put: my favorite tower defense game ever.

Killing Floor resembles of Left for Dead.

Online multiplayer survival against zombie- like enemies. Not as polished as L4D, but fun. Technical issues abound though for many users, including myself initially.

Rush is a fun puzzle game where you control brightly colored blocks that roll in a set direction. You use arrows, escalators and more to redirect them to their destination points. It's actually a lot of fun, despite the odd premise.

Super Meat Boy was a critical hit, and though platformers are not my preferred genre, it is easy to see why this game with precise controls and lots of unlockables was such a hit. Punishingly difficult at times though.

The Ball was a huge disappointment for me. Puzzle elements are solid, combat and controls are rough. I got stuck on environments and had to reload too often.

The Wonderful End of the Word is a wacky game where you start off small, and collect items smaller than you. As you collect, you grow, giving you access to more items to assimilate. It's charming, but not terribly deep either.

Toki Tori is a very good 2D puzzle game with vivid graphics, cute sounds and some clever level design. I beat it in an

afternoon, but it was a fun game.

An interesting collection of games, with a few standouts to warrant the cost, and gave me access to titles I might not have otherwise tried. Overall - I am glad I tried it out.

Nick Herber is a man who loves his games, and has been playing and writing about them for many years.

He maintains his own blog, make sure you check it out: http://chalgyrsgameroom.blogspot.com/

Indie Q & A

On RPGs with Jeff Vogel Jeff Vogel is a veteran of the games industry, having produced many, many independent RPGs since the 1990s. His most recent, Avadon, impressed us when we reviewed it last month, we scored it 4.5/5.

Jeff took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for Digitally Downloaded about being an independent RPG developer, and offer some tips for up-and-comers.

You’ve been involved in RPG development for some time – how would you say the industry approach to computer RPGs has changed over time?

I started my first game in 1994, so the whole industry is completely unrecognizable from where it was when I started.

I mean, my first games were shareware, and the idea of releasing a partial "demo" of a game was foreign and innovative.

I think the main change in attitudes toward RPGs is the same as the change in attitudes towards all games. They are more casual. They are less aimed at the "hardcore" audience, with their limitless patience for stat-building and arcane mechanics. Practically everyone, me included, is aiming for a larger audience.

Of course, this is a great opportunity for young, hungry Indie developers. Underserved niches are our bread and butter.

What have been some of your career highs and lows?

In sixteen years, I've had my good and bad points. Changing things is hard work. Improving takes effort. I confess that there have been times when I slacked off, and I was richly punished for it.

The big low point was releasing Blades of Avernum and Geneforge 3 in adjacent years. Both underperformed, and I was afraid I was going to have to close up shop. Instead, I gritted my teeth, sat down, and started heavily reworking everything for newer audiences. The results were Avernum 4 and Geneforge 4: Rebellion, both of which were big successes for us.

The high point was Exile 3: Ruined world, wayyyy back in 1997. It was exactly the right game at the right time, went crazy, and sold a ton. We'll never catch lightning in a bottle like that again.

What are the chief tenants that you design games towards? What kind of goals do you set out to achieve when working on a game?

I write the sort of game I want to play.

That is my only rule. The thing I want changes from year to year, so my games change from year to year. My own personal tastes are my North Star, the one unambiguous guide that has almost never led me astray.

Playing Avadon: The Black Fortress, you can really tell how enamored of Bioware's output over the last decade.

I freely admit it. But I also put my own spin on the thing.

Are there any games out there that inspire you right now? If so – which and why? Do you look to pen-and-

paper RPGs for ideas as well, and if so, what are your thoughts about how that genre has changed over time?

I think Dragon Age: Origins was a true classic. For all its flaws, it was a real accomplishment. Dang, but I loved that game. I'm also really impressed by Minecraft, though I doubt it'll be as much of an influence.

As for pen and paper RPGs, I hardly ever play them anymore. However, before I wrote Avadon, I played a bunch of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. I have some real problems with how they've evolved that game, but there are some really cool things about it as a tactical wargame. For example, how important positioning is. I think that will be a big influence on me going forward.

Have you considered working with a large developer on a “modern� RPG? What would be your dream project, given a full studio budget and development team?

Not really. Nobody is interested. No big developer has ever tried to recruit me.

There is no shortage of skilled designers in this world.

My dream project would be what I'm doing now, but with a team, a budget, and really sweet production values. Two or three more good writers wouldn't hurt.

Basically, like Avadon or Avernum, but shinier!

How challenging is it to create RPGs as an indie developer? Most indies seem to be developing within a genre where a small amount of raw content is acceptable – such as puzzlers, but RPGs require much larger scale?

What needs to be scaled back for an indie RPG to get out on budget?

Everything is challenging about developing games as an Indie. Writing computer games is difficult on any scale. It takes great effort and concentration to create enough content to fill a whole game.

I tend to do it in an intense six month stretch, after which I collapse for a while.

I'm not sure what you mean by "scaled back," though. Do you mean, "What needs to be less developed than in a AAA fantasy title with a ten million dollar budget? If so, than just about everything needs to be a little less. Sounds. Graphics. Writing. There's only so many hours in a day, after all. Fortunately, there is an upside to everything being written by only one or two people: The expression of one uncompromised personal vision.

Spiderweb Software is an interesting

project. Why did you decide to set up your own publishing business back in 1994? How has that side of the games industry changed over time?

I was in grad school and really tired of it.

I tried writing a shareware fantasy RPG in my spare time. It was called Exile: Escape From the Pit. I released it and, much to my undying surprise, people bought it. I quit grad school pretty much instantly.

As for what has changed since 1994, the answer is everything. Heck, when I started, the world wide web barely existed. The bulk of my sales came from an obscure, long-forgotten online service called AOL.

from you next?

I am going to complete the Avadon trilogy, and I am going to release ground-up rewrites of the first Avernum trilogy. Avernum 1-3 (formerly Exile 1-3) are some of our most enduring, beloved titles, but they have last been updated over a decade ago, and they really need a serious freshening up. They won't even run in the next update of the Macintosh operating system, and they're getting kind of shaky on Windows 7 too. That should cover us for the next four years or so.

What advice would you have for other indie developers, or for people who want to make an RPG of their own?

In the Spiderweb forums, there’s the suggestion that you’re looking to get your products sold through Steam as well – what kind of opportunity do you see for indie RPGs on Steam?

I have huge amounts of advice. Very many words of it. The best advice I can give is to visit my blog: http://jeff-vogel. blogspot.com/. I write about design, marketing, and everything else you can think of.

I would love for my games to be on Steam. The problem is that they are very selective, and I don't think we're flashy or big-budget enough for them. When people ask me if I want to be on Steam, they seem to assume that it's all my choice. So there is some opportunity, if you can get in. Once you're in, it's great.

But for now, here are two bits of advice.

One. Get enough sleep. You might think four hours a night makes you some kind of hacker hot-shot, but you'll start making serious errors. Two. Invest in a decent chair with proper back support. I know, you're young. But you'll miss your back when it's gone.

What are some of your plans for the future, and what games can we expect

The month’s reviews

IN REVIEW Welcome to the digitallydownloaded.net reviews section!

Each month we’ll present some of the most exciting, newest, and classic games available on various download services.

We’ll also score them out of five. By nature, games scores are highly subjective but as a rule of thumb, 1 star is unplayable, 2-3 stars is very niche, poor value or highly flawed in some way, 4 stars is a game anyone should enjoy, and 5 stars is a must have.

We’ll be building out our reviews section in the coming months, so if you have any ideas how we could improve it further, please do email us at matts@digitallydownloaded.net Matt Sainsbury Editor-in-chief

Garshasp: The Monster Slayer Available on: XBLA Indie Games Publisher: Iridium

Garshasp: The Monster Slayer is a really, really unfortunate game. It has so, so much potential, but has been released on a platform that for most people will be completely inappropriate for its gameplay. And as such, it’s probably not going to get the attention it deserves.

In essence it’s a God of War clone on PC. That in itself isn’t such a problem… assuming you have a gamepad of some kind. There are many Steam gamers who don’t have such peripherals. Perhaps they just play some casual games or World of Warcraft on their laptops when away on work trips. Perhaps they never thought to pick up a gamepad because most PC games are now optimised for mouse and keyboard control. I know I don’t have one, and for people like me, Garshasp is heartbreaking. I love everything about it, but I struggle to play it.

See, the God of War formula is built for controllers, and Garshasp simply maps those controls to keyboard keys. There’s the usual WASD for moving around.

E grabs enemies for the brutal instant kills. But then things get weird. Shift rolls around, space jumps. Clicking the mouse wheel down blocks. It’s a system that by default is not built for the kind of smooth, fast paced combat that this genre demands, and with block and roll in such awkward positions, I really struggled to avoid taking damage.

By toying around with the control con-

figuration somewhat a more comfortable setup is possible, but it still never feels quite as natural as picking up a Dual Shock controller and beating down stuff with Kratos.

It’s unfortunate that the controls are so awkward, because in every other way Garshasp is a lot of fun – certainly better than other good God of War clones like Dante’s Inferno. The plot, set in a mythological Persia, isn’t anything like what most people expect from Middle East fantasy (ie Prince of Persia). This is a bloody, dark fantasy, and it’s also quite creative in storytelling given the essential plot point boils down to a quest for revenge. Cut scenes are kept to a snappy pace, so this is

a game that never gives you the opportunity to get bored.

It’s also worth noting that it’s much more authentic than the story of a game like Prince of Persia. Garshasp draws a great deal of inspiration from real Persian mythology. It’s not as accessible to the layperson as a God of War, then (after all, who doesn’t know about the Greek Gods?), but for those in the know, or

These a minor faults though, and hardly gamebreaking in a system that is capable of carrying the entertainment value of the game.

There’s also some boss battles of very impressive scope, that will require the full range of dodging, dicing and slicing skills. Though the game itself is reasonably short, the multiple difficulty levels and some stringent trophy requirements provide some incentive for multiple play throughs.

those keen to find out, Garshasp is a rare opportunity to explore an alternative mythology to what we usually see in video games.

For the gameplay itself, most of it involves being funnelled from arena to arena, fighting hordes of enemies.

There’s little room for wandering off the set route, and a minimal number of secret areas. Thankfully, given the wonky controls, there’s also very few platforming elements, and puzzle sections are kept simple. The over reliance on battle is not necessarily a bad thing though, because it’s very entertaining. Though the enemies that Garshasp fights lack a bit of personality (perhaps because of Western unfamiliarity with Persian mythological beasts), they’re solid enough fodder, and though the central hero is the ugliest man ever to grace video gamedom, he’s well animated and swings his sword handily enough.

The combat is a little less fluid than God of War fans might be expecting, but it’s still brutal, and very familiar in a good way. Basic enemies are downed like a hot knife through butter. Stronger enemies soak up more damage, before they can be finally taken down through a Quick Time Event (QTE). In Garshasp, the time to input the QTE commands is surprisingly short, so you’ll need to be on your game.

There’s two weapons to make use of in Garshasp. This might not sound like much, but as they level up the range of attacks are opened further. By the end of the game there will be more than enough different ways to dispatch enemies to please most people, even if technically speaking the game has less variety than God of War. The only misstep for the combat is a twitchy counter attack mechanism, and the occasional instance where an attack would clearly connect with an enemy, but would not do any damage.

I want to see a PSN or XBLA version of this game – it really, really deserves to be played on a format that this kind of game was custom built for. I feel the only fair way to score this game is to give it two different scores, because it isn’t appropriate for a large number of PC gamers, and as much as I liked everything from the concept through to the presentation of this game, I can’t get past the controls. If you happen to have a gamepad, then really, as God of War clones go, you’re not going to find better on Steam.

- Matt Sainsbury

4/5

But only if you have a controller, otherwise:

2/5

Din’s Curse and expansion, Demon War Available on: PC Publisher: Soldak Entertainment Din’s Curse and its expansion, Demon War, is an indie project with no small amount of ambition and soul. Lofty goals alone almost elevate this game above its roots, but all those ideas rest on a very rickety coding foundation, prone to breaking down and becoming very frustrating.

Essentially, this is a dungeon hack/ lootem-up with some very deep dungeons, and a very dark tone. The setting is as lo-fi as they come – the village bases of operations are filled with miserable, starving individuals. And, by sitting on top of a deathtrap dungeon they can and do fall prey to the nasties that lie beneath.

Beyond the goal of saving the peasants and your soul, there’s not much more to the plot, and even then you’re largely free to do as you see fit. Helping the villagers will earn both experience and reputation points, levelling up both will lead to rewards. Heading into the dungeons will give you swarm of enemies to slaughter – a quick way to earn experience, but if you don’t then heed the regular need to head back into town to feed and save the villagers, your reputation will plummet.

This is probably the biggest strength and greatest weakness of Din’s Curse. Where inferior games, like Dungeon Hunter Alliance are largely static environments, and beyond statistic management of your personal avatar, very linear. Encounters in those games is little more than a series of triggers that go off the deeper you head into the pits. Din’s Curse on the other hand is an environment that’s alive.

People come and go from the village dynamically. In the dungeon, enemies will fight one another as well as yourself, and it’s quite interesting to wander into the

middle of a firefight between two powerful factions. It’s even more fun to walk in at the end of a faction battle, clear off the wounded survivors, then grabbing the mass of loot.

The weakness here is that random element can lead to some funny logic bugs. Quests can be completed before they’re accepted. Villagers will need help moments after you enter a dungeon, requiring some very irritating backtracking. AI gets lost between attacking you, and attacking other AI drones. There is always a risk involved in building games on random systems that things go a little heywire, and Din’s Curse’s random elements create some very grating ‘bugs’.

On a more positive note, the loot system is superb, with plenty of cool things to pick up and sell or trade. There’s shared treasure chests to make juggling multiple characters fun, and there’s some cool social features involved with the ability to export your character as a HTML file or Vbulletin board set of stats to share around.

If you’re able to forgive the occasional random quirk, you are going to be able to get a lot of track out of this game.

There’s also a staggering variety in the way you can develop your characters. Between the base game and the expansion, there

is no fewer than eight base classes, and each of those classes has multiple specialisation options. If you can’t find a character that suits your adventuring spirit with this game, then you never will, and in this regard, Din’s Curse manages to beat just about every other dungeon hack out there.

There’s a huge scale to the game generally speaking. There’s many ways to tweak difficulty, so just about every type of gamer should find a set up that suits them. There’s not a huge range of enemies, but with palette swaps, there’s also plenty of statistical variety within that range.

And visually the game is good looking – certainly on par with the other dungeon hacks out there.

Everything is taken straight out of the Diablo school of art, and though it lacks the same dripping atmosphere Diablo enjoyed, it’s still easy on the eyes. Animation is smooth and frame rate tends to stay high, even when the enemies start to pile up.

If it wasn’t for a few programming bugs, and occasional difficulties with targeting and executing attacks (the delay between tapping the hotkey, and the attack being executed, means you’ll sometimes wonder if the key was tapped at all), Din’s Curse and its expansion

would be far easier to recommend. As it is, I did have my game crash on me, and the constant need to tend to villagers that are more helpless than a sheep hanging around a wolf pack, hurt the overall experience.

It’s still a game that can be recommended to dungeon hack fans, but go in prepared for an indie game. If you have a PS3 as well, I’m still going to suggest you get yourself a copy of Sacred 2 instead.

PC gamers might want to hang out for Diablo 3.

- Matt Sainsbury

3.5/5

Making History 2: The War of the World Available on: PC Download Publisher: Muzzy Lane The origin of Making History II: the War of the World is somewhat unusual. It was designed as an learning mechanism for teachers of modern history and has since evolved both in ideology and intent into the game presented today. This origin marks the game as something a little different from the majority of hardcore strategy games. However, switching goals through development is fraught with danger in games development and whilst this background does give the game a unique soul, it does not guarantee good gameplay. Indeed, it is with fevered hope for the developers sake, this is simply one of its stage of evolution.

The game takes you back to the build up and battles of World War Two. Through a turn based approach to three different scenarios, the player receives dictator level of governmental control of any nation their heart fancies. In this sense, it is exactly the same as ever other grandiose strategy game. However, unlike others

in the genre, it presents a near limitless choice as nations, from the significant to the majorly insignificant.

Making History's gameplay is best summarised through analysis of its parts; namely economic, military and diplomatic. Its economic system, through five major resources, is extremely well organised, clear, and its market system is well designed, responding to the world politics and supply and demand commendably. It is in this that the game fleetingly earns its stripes – the complex nature of using your resources to reach extensive research, military and industry aims is a delicate and enjoyable balance. In this way, the player genuinely feels as though that they have genuinely influenced history, and this is what life could have turned out like, had for example England used its depression time to double its industrial output. It is a pity its other parts do not deserve the same praise.

Its military/battle side is, for a battle

game, appallingly poor. Whilst a lot of extensive options are divided into the typical navy, land and air, it is the interactions of these troops that draw ire.

The mechanics are woeful inadequate, allowing the simple creation of a bunch of the same units (for instance, heavy tanks), which then can be used to exploit any number of broken mechanics (for example, a remarkable indifference to weather and terrain). Furthermore, the AI is not bright and can be regularly led into simple traps.

The games politics are baffling. This probably has something to do with the limited diplomatic options available, where you can only choose four options: military access, trade agreements/ embargoes, espionage and declarations of war. It is very much random and at times ignores basic alliance lines. I wish I was making this up, but at one point, completely unprovoked, the American AI's response to Pearl Harbour was to declare war on England and embargo

Noticed that a tutorial has not been mentioned? That is because there is not one (although its reportedly in the process of being remedied, at least in a text/manual form. An step by step instructional is presumably going to follow). As a result, it is (unless fixed) categorically not for those who are not familiar with the genre. It it perplexing that in a market that is as small and competitive as the Grand Strategy games that this is overlooked.

Still, it is what has been presented, and so we plough on.

with the sound effects well done. This builds onto a clear and concise interface, with all of the major buttons in easy access, to create an aesthetically pleasing game. The music, although not spectacular, is appropriate but definitely does not detract from the experience.

Sadly, this work is mostly undone. In an understatement, the game had a tendency to crash. Not, for instance, should the overeager general attempt to place troops in two countries at the same time, but instead for the rather unforgivable crime of trying to research, trying to get into the diplomacy screen or sneezing. It may have crashed in response for the audacity of crashing.

The graphics of the game, in a board game appearance, are highly enjoyable

At the end of the day, the gameplay needs immediate and severe work, but

France. This diplomatic shortfall and the militaristic impotence combined to mark a frustrating game.

the redeeming aspects of the economy combined with a soul generates a genuine feeling of hope. Indeed, it was with great joy that things like the evolution of biplanes in 1933 to the all metal varieties as well as the tantalizing possibility for finding answers for many of WWII's what ifs? that will stick in the memory moreso then its failings.

- Owen Sainsbury

2.5/5

Sequence Available on: XBLA Indie Games Publisher: Iridium Ever wonder what would happen if Rock Band met Super Puzzle Fighter then got doused with an RPG? Turns out you get Sequence. And if that sounds like way to many things mixed together to be any kind of a cohesive experience, you’d be right... But Sequence just seems to ‘work’. (Maybe it’s magic?)

Make sense? Now, when I heard gems were a part of things I thought this was going to look a lot like Bejeweled, but it turns out that the gems are basically just arrows that tell you which way to press on the directional pad (or the face buttons) in order to ‘strum’ them- no guitar necessary.

When our story starts out, we find that Ky, the player character, has been kidnapped and placed in a strange, vaguely Cthulhu-esque, tower that’s chock full of monsters. He’s got no clue how he got there and his only link to what’s going on is a smarmy female voice named Naia who interacts with him via intercom. Turns out that the tower is a testing ground and Ky has been chosen- in order to make it all the way to the top and escape, he’s got to master spell casting (among other things) and do battle with all manner of nasties.

Here’s where Puzzle Fighter is invokedas you’re hitting the gems, you’re actually fighting monsters. Ky appears on one side of the screen and a creature appears on the other. The center of the playing field houses a wheel that has a pair of sectors (you get more sectors as you play) to which spells can be assigned.

Before I get too deep into this, I have to mention the writing and acting. While being far from top notch, it’s quite good.

The script is snappy, full of pop references, and downright funny at times! It genuinely provides for some laugh out loud moments and is something I totally wasn’t expecting. Also, since you’re just basically just doing the same things over and over, Naia and Ky’s commentary keeps things relatively fresh and enjoyable.

And what are those things you’ll be doing over and over you ask? Fighting monsters in rhythmic fashion, of course.

This is, first and foremost, a rhythm game. That’s where the ‘Rock Band’ portion of things comes in and it’s probably the best way to give you a feel for the mechanics without actually playing the game yourself.

The main play screen revolves around a set of three panels where you have to hit ‘gems’ that scroll down each field. You’ll flip back and forth between all three (mana, defense, and spells) in real time with gems sometimes appearing in all of them at once. As the gems fall, techno/ house music plays that syncs up with them, just like notes in a music gameit’s like a split screen co-op game of RB that’s neither split screen nor co-op.

Hitting gems in the mana (mah-nah. One of the many ‘in-joke’ references in the game) field builds attack power, hitting them in the ‘spell’ field casts attack magic to work down your opponent’s HP- you can also cast healing magic and additional attack spells that you’ll pick up more along the way. The final field is defense- this is the representation for incoming assaults and hitting gems here will block for you. If that sounds overly complicated, it’s not. Later on in the game it can get a little frantic but you can always dial down the difficulty if it’s too ‘pro mode’ for you.

The point of all of this fighting is to collect items that you need to ‘synth’ into other stuff like weapons, spells, and keys. All of which will help you move on and do more rhythm fighting. Synthesizing items costs experience points though and messing up on the mini-game that

you have to play in order to do it mean lost points (though you keep the items) This can, at times, result in a wee bit of the dreaded grinding. Dun, dun, duuuun!!

But not too much.

I have to mention one of the biggest selling points of Sequence here- that’s the music and how it’s worked into the gameplay. It’s mostly good stuff but one word of warning- if you don’t have the sound turned up or are wearing headphones, you probably won’t hear the gem hitting cues. I played later on at night for a bit and had the volume turned down pretty low. As a result, I could just barely hear the soundtrack. It surprisingly turned out to not matter all that much as the music shockingly isn’t really a necessity for strumming the notes... uh... hitting the gems. It’s also almost exclusively techno-type stuff, of which I’m no fan.

Overall, I liked Sequence a lot. It’s got some novel ideas and manages to smush together a load of genres that have very little business knowing each other. Don’t buy it for the graphics and maybe get your own music pumping (depending on your tastes), but definitely give Sequence a spin. If you like puzzle or rhythm games- it’s one of the most original takes on both that I’ve played in years.

- Jason Micciche

3.5/5

Knights in Shining Armor Available on: PC Download Publisher: Fluff Entertainment Knights in Shining Armor (KISA for short), by developer Fluff Entertainment, follows young Prince Rupert as he travels abroad to find a princess to wed. It's meant to be part one of a new ongoing adventure series - but if that's to be, then this kingdom might just need a coup.

I love old school adventure games. In fact, I grew up on titles like Maniac Mansion, The Dig, Monkey Island, and Full Throttle - and those are just a few of my favorites from the glory days of Point & Click but you get the idea. It's an amazing genre for telling super detailed stories and is woefully underrepresented in today's industry. So when I saw Knights in Shining Armor, those classics were the first things that jumped into my noggin. In hindsight, that was maybe a little too grandiose of a thought.

Now don't get me wrong, KISA is a decent adventure game. The main problem here is that it has little to none of the usual conventions of the genre that would make it a really effective adventure game. Most of this amazingly short adventure is spent listening to conversations instead solving puzzles.

Which is an oddity since, while interactions with NPC's are important in this type of game, puzzle solving is just as necessary (if not more so) and KISA has pretty much nuttin' in that realm save one sliding block type deal. Also, when I say “listening to conversations� I mean just that - you're really not interacting and choosing complex conversation branches at all. You're pretty much just listening to people blather on.

So, it's not your standard adventure, but aside from all that there is some good stuff in here that is legitimately enjoyable.

The story has the right roots and seems like it could evolve into a nice little tale if given some time.

The darkly comic storyline has Prince Rupert, in the wake of a long and brutal war, venturing into the territory of his kingdom's former enemy in order to take its princess as his bride. The problem is that when he gets there he offends his guide (he's a bit of a jerk) and then has no clue where it is he's supposed to go. From there he fumbles his way through conversations with the barkeep and a female room renter.

It's actually an enjoyable intro, filled with dry wit and some overall decent writing. It pretty much carries through the entirety of the game too (as short as it is... and it is), which is really good news considering that the rest of the title's makeup leaves something to be desired.

Much like the graphics, the sounds of KISA are inconsistent to say the least.

On the one hand, the soundtrack is light, pleasant, and doesn't get in the way- and Prince Rupert actually sounds good and is voiced well. Some of his lines and smarmy reactions make up the best parts of the game. But on the other hand, the secondary character's voices only range from 'okay' to 'oh boy'. The worst being the young lady that you meet in the bar who sounds like the actress recorded her lines as a voice memo while standing

ten feet from the recorder then emailed it in to the studio. Less of that for the next installment please.

So is KISA worth your time at all? I did a lot of complaining in the space above so I should probably say (and you would probably guess) 'hmm', but there is something here with potential. It's painful to see such a good premise go to waste but it's very hard to excuse so much that's in the negative here. In the end, this is really only for genre diehards who are desperate for a little pointing and clicking.

But I am anxious to see if there's more to this adventure in future installments and if anything is changed or fixed up for the longer quest to come. As it is, maybe Rupert should have just stayed home.

- Jason Micciche

3/5

Dwarfs!?

Available on: PC Download Publisher: Power of Two

Dwarfs!? is an utterly charming, but utterly frustrating little game. It’s an indie release well worth the $10 asking price on Steam, but be aware that, just like the Lemmings that these Dwarves draw inspiration from, the little idiots make for some very painful moments.

To start with, Dwarves!? is a top-down action game where the goal is to dig tunnels. There are two types of peons to control – there’s the miners, that do most of the digging, and the warriors, that do most of the fighting. You’ll have direct control over both, and direct them around by placing arrows on the ground and drawing paths for them to follow. Those paths cost money, but by collecting rare materials and treasure it’s relatively easy to keep the cash flow in the positive (at least, on the low difficulty levels).

Dotted throughout the rocky home of the dwarves is series of caverns – initially hidden under cloaks of darkness.

By directing a miner to the cavern you can unearth a range of ‘interesting’ alternatives. Sometimes it’s a treasure vault. Less pleasant are the resovoirs of water and lava. These kill the poor sap that discovered them, then start to flow towards the home base in the middle of the map. They reach that, it’s game over.

You’ll need to build walls and create holes for the liquid to flow into to stop this problem.

Then there’s the caverns that are filled with goblins and other uglies. This is

where the warriors come in. The more they fight, the more levels they get and the better they are at fighting. It’s not a strategy game or RPG though, so this part of the game is very half-baked, and frankly unnecessary. It’s easy enough just to leave the warriors alone and they’ll get the job done.

You’ll be too busy focusing on the miners, anyway, because they’re dumb little brutes. Without constant nudging, they’re likely to do something catastrophic like break down a dam you’d just built to hold flood water in. The game gives you a warning when something like that is about to happen, but if you’re busy looking after a different area of the map at the time, it’s not long enough.

See, while Dwarfs!? starts easily enough – directing one miner and one warrior around is a snap, more miners are constantly spawned, and it doesn’t take long to have a herd of 20 or more of the buggers. As they spread out to the far reaches of the map, the ant-like tunnels become a chaotic mess, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

Thankfully though, the game controls well, and it is easy to send miners around the map. So with some practice, the frustrating elements are mitigated somewhat.

It’ll still be a bit much like busywork at times, but for the most part, the game is genuinely entertaining.

There’s a lot of love that has gone into

the game, too. The visuals are bright and colourful, and for $10 you’re getting a mass of gameplay. In addition to a standard arcade mode (where you need to try and survive for 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes across four difficulty levels), there’s also some alternative ‘bonus’ play modes and, most importantly, a tower defence game. That in itself is worth the price of admission. In addition to standard tower defence gameplay (and with eight different towers, there’s no skimping on quality there), the game has the amusing twist that you’ll build the mazes yourself.

It’s a cute twist to a quality interpretation of the genre – and that’s just a bonus mode.

It’s not the perfect game, but Dwarfs!? deserves a fair go. Fans of Lemmings will indeed get a lot out of this, but really anyone who enjoys simple arcade action games, and don’t mind a bit of busywork will get a lot out of this game.

- Matt Sainsbury

4/5

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution Available on: PC Publisher: Kot-in-Action Steel Storm’s first episode, released by developer Kot-in-Action late last year, made a decent impact by offering old school isometric shooting for a great price- free. Now that the second release, Burning Retribution, is upon us (complete with retail price) should you climb back into the hovertank?

For those who don’t know, Steel Storm centers around a lone hovertank pilot who’s thrown into battle with a faceless alien horde hell bent on invading the Earth. But honestly, the story’s not all that in-depth and if it sounds like a tale that you’ve heard about a billion times before, well, it’s because you have heard it a billion times before... maybe even a trillion times before. But put all that aside, because there’s an awful lot to like about Steel Storm: Burning Retribution and story isn’t really all that important when there’s shootin’ to be done..

Let’s start with the gameplay. A word of advice, don’t play it with the keyboard and mouse- it’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that this is a twin stick shooter and it needs to be played that way. I played through Burning Retribution with a Razer Onza and it controlled like a dream. Movement is tight, the shooting mechanics are precisemaybe it’s from playing so many twin stick jobs on iOS, but I really appreciated the mechanics here.

Well done all around.

And ‘here’ is a very pretty place by the way. Graphically, Burning Retribution has a really attractive cel shaded look to it. If the term isn’t ringing a bell, think Crackdown; it’s cartoon-like but still has a three-dimensional structure. It’s a sharp style that looks great in all the different areas that the game takes you to. While it doesn’t have the varied locals of the original, Burning Retribution does

take you across an icy landscape and through high tech alien bases chock full of stuff to blast away at.

wasn’t looking at anything all that closely, but some more variation would have been nice.

There are a lot of things to shoot in this game, and I don’t just mean the baddies.

Every level is loaded with structures and equipment to blow to smithereens. Most of this stuff drops something when it goes boom too, so it’s almost got a little Diablo-esque loot grabbing feel at times.

You’ll get weapon upgrades and repair powerups a plenty. But while we’re on the subject of bad guys, I have to mention that a few more enemy designs wouldn’t have hurt things any.

Sound in a game like this is almost always forgettable, and Steel Storm is no different here. The effects are serviceable enough but the music is... meh.

The good news is that it doesn’t really matter much. One oddity is that there’s no speech in the mission intros. You will not be treated to any cheesy acting whatsoever since the cut scenes aren’t cut scenes; they’re just a little bit of text to give you mission parameters and set you in the right direction.

Almost all the enemies in the game are tanks. Some of them are big, some of them are small, but aside from a couple turrets, they’re all tanks. Personally, I would have loved to have been able to bum rush a squad of alien troops or pick away at an airborne craft. It’s not really a big knock, because to be honest the gameplay is so much fun that I really

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution is a great shooter that’s old school, but manages to not feel dated at all. If you like top down blast-a-thon’s, you’ll love it, if you like side-scrollers, you’ll more than likely enjoy it too. Even though it is a little short, Burning Retribution is a good looking, well designed game that I have no trouble recommending.

- Jason Micciche

4/5

Order and Chaos Online Available on: iPad Publisher: Gameloft Order and Chaos Online on the iPad is a stupid idea. The problem isn’t that the game exists in the first place - it conforms to every Gameloft tradition, in that it's an inferior knockoff of a great game.

And in shamelessly copying World of Warcraft's design philosophy, Gameloft has outdone itself and ripped off perhaps the most influential game of all time – that by itself should be a recipe for lots of money.

The problem is, you can’t play this on the go. What has made Gameloft games acceptable in the past has been the fact that, when you're on the train or in an airport, you can whip out a game like Modern Combat, because you're probably not carrying around a PS3 And TV for a short run of Call of Duty. But you can't do that with Order and Chaos - you need to be sitting in a WiFi zone. Considering most modern laptops (even the cheap ones) can run World of Warcraft, it's therefore quite easy for Blizzard's MMO to be as mobile as Order and Chaos. So, rather than forgive Gameloft's effort because it's 'on the go,' let's directly compare it to World of Warcraft, as most people will be able to do.

It fails miserably. Everything that has made World of Warcraft an engaging and almost spiritual experience for so many gamers has had the soul ripped out of it, and while the shell that is left is perfectly playable, Order and Chaos does nothing to give us a game worth playing. To then charge a subscription, when many MMOs better than Order and Chaos have had to go to free-to-play just to keep people on the servers, is an utter slap in the face.

indeed like most Gameloft games, this is like wandering through a hospital - sure it's clean and the barren walls and corridors won't offend anyone, but they're also completely devoid of anything that makes you want to be there.

Order and Chaos controls fairly well.

The interface is reasonably uncluttered for an MMO, and the menus are laid out in a logical fashion. It's possible to do most of the same things you can do in World of Warcraft, including pulling up a virtual keyboard to chat away. Of course, a virtual keyboard doesn't lend itself to a flowing, fast-typing conversation, and Order of Chaos is filled with the same dunces spamming 'flaming' swords and their 'special' guilds as most other MMOs, so conversations aren't very interesting in the first place.

Instead of clicking on NPCs to talk to them, and instead of clicking on enemies to attack them, you tap on them instead.

It works, but like with the chatting, it's less natural than mouse commands.

Gameloft has done the best it can within the limitations of the iPad's hardware though, and in all fairness it is a very playable game, so no complaints there.

And no complaints on the visuals of the game either. Characters and settings are rendered in impressive detail, and the music is technically a high quality. That said, the visuals and music are also as generic and bland as they come - World of Warcraft sans any semblance of creativity (surprise, surprise). This kind of sanitation suits some people, and

You're getting a big game with Order and Chaos. Gameloft has put a lot of effort into building an infrastructure that supports a subscription model, and though it's cheap, it would appear that keeping the world fresh with updates is a priority.

But games like this annoy me. It doesn't take much for a developer to take an established idea and copy wholesale from it, yes, but also try and do something a little different. Gameloft doesn't do that.

It sucks the creativity right out of the industry, and by slapping a low price on it, frightens away others from trying to do something genuinely creative.

This time around, Gameloft has picked a fight on the wrong battlefield. If you have a laptop that's less than three years old, get World of Warcraft (or Lord of the Rings Online, or Guild Wars, or any of the other very good MMOs). For an extra kg or so to carry around, that laptop has vastly better, and more creative MMOs available. If you really do only have an iPad, look at Pocket Legends - it at least doesn't have the gall to charge people a monthly subscription for a middle-range MMO. - Matt Sainsbury

2/5

Starfront Collision HD Available on: iPad Publisher: Gameloft of units quicker than your opponent.

That's not strategy. The only skill that requires is quick tapping.

It makes online play pretty dull, and unless you’re desperate there are plenty of more compelling strategy games with online components available on the iPad. But, the general ease of this game (even on the highest difficulty levels), along with some technically impressive visuals means swarming over the AI enemy is like a good hot chocolate – satisfying without being filling.

I’ve been critical of Gameloft in the past.

I can understand where its games come from, and in producing cut price versions of popular franchises, it has found itself a substantial fanbase. But games like Dungeon Hunter Alliance, Modern Combat: Domination and Order and Chaos are soulless games, and, as much as they’re guilty pleasures, impossible to recommend.

Starfront Collision HD is a little different, though. For whatever reason, and even though it’s as soulless and vanilla as the rest of the Gameloft catalogue, I enjoyed this one. It plays well on the iPad touch screen and it’s in a genre where story doesn’t matter.

The latter is just as well (and a big reason Gameloft's RPG knock-offs fail), because the story and setting of the game itself is typical Gameloft fare – generic to the point where it is utterly painful. At a basic level, Starfront plays like the game it steals from – Starcraft – in having three races find a common reason to beat the living daylights out of one another.

The three races are carbon copies of Starcraft’s Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss too, though no less than five minutes after putting my iPad down to come and review the game, I am so uninterested in these carbon copies that I can’t remember the names Gameloft has come up with for them. It’s just as well there’s a ‘skip’ button for the cut scenes, because

I found myself using it, even on the first play through the game.

But it really is an irrelevant complaint.

Starfront is a game that is all about bringing the action-heavy Starcraft RTS action to the iPad, and it does so in a reasonably balanced fashion. There’s fewer buildings and units to juggle with this game, and it does pull a lot of the complexity out of the formula, but Starfront is at all times accessible, and easy to pick up and play – it’s a game that’s a time filler, not a time consumer.

And Gameloft acknowledges this with this game – better than in other titles from the studio. Missions are kept brief, deathmatch maps are small. There's no need to grind all the way to level 60 to see everything, and there's less than 20 missions to play through. An individual game that runs for more than half an hour is a long one, and even though you'll get your money's worth with the skirmish maps and the like, this is thankfully not a game that outstays its welcome. It works to the game’s benefit, because it hides the shattering lack of depth and strategy in the game.

Moreso than any other RTS I’ve ever played, all Starfront is about is building an elite swarm

Obviously, if you do have either Starcraft game, or a laptop with some other strategy game installed on it, there’s little to no reason to look at Starfront – while it’s technically competent, it’s still an empty game. If you do prefer gaming on the iPad, however, I’m going to do a personal first and admit that this Gameloft game isn’t that bad – certainly I would recommend it over Command and Conquer on this platform.

That said, I’ll restate what I say every other time I review a Gameloft game – the studio is clearly filled with some talented artists and programmers – why can’t it invest in something that’s even slightly original? Gameloft remains far too cynical for me to ever be a real fan.

- Matt Sainsbury

3.5/5

The Wizard from Tarnath Tor Available on: iPad Publisher: Tin Man Games The Apple iPad has helped revive a few of the older styles of games. The platform is perfect for board games, for instance - a genre that otherwise struggles to compete on the major consoles.

Another is gamebooks.

pany the visuals. Tarnath Tor’s fantasy is a dark one, but thankfully the developers haven’t neglected usability - there are three text size settings and three different fonts to make sure the book’s readability remains high for everyone.

Gamebooks were especially popular back in the 80s. Essentially they were Choose Your Own Adventure type books - you'd read a passage and it would provide you with a handful of possible actions. By picking one you'd be directed to jump over to a new page where the story would continue. RPG gamebooks added dice and combat to that formula, and were essentially mini RPGs designed for one person.

In terms of the story, it’s standard pulp fantasy fare - delving into dungeons, slaying one dimensional enemies and looting treasure. This is part and parcel with the gamebook genre, and it’s a lot of fun, but anyone looking for character and personalities is in the wrong place.

Tin Man Games checks all the boxes with style. From the faux-old paper background, to some stunning bits of retro-style gamebook art and a clean page turning animation, this adventure oozes atmosphere. It also helps that there’s a haunting soundtrack to accom-

4/5

The combat, too, is one note - the better the weapon and armour you wear, the more dice you roll to attack and defend.

You want to roll higher than your opponent. Gamebooks were always designed to be simple, and this one fits the type.

Thanks to the stellar production values, Tarnath Tor succeeds.

- Matt Sainsbuury

Minions

Available on: XBLA Indie Games Publisher: Turtle Toss Studios Developed by Turtle Toss Studios – a team of students from the University of Utah’s Entertainment and Engineering program – Minions is a shooter at heart.

The game features an interesting formula that enables the game to be played in a top-down perspective or third-person.

When playing in the top-down perspective the game is a dual-analogue shooter where one stick moves the character and the other fires the weapons in the direction of the stick press. The third-person perspective is standard fare for the genre, with the exception that there is an auto-aim that targets enemies when the onscreen reticule nears an enemy. Both perspectives work, but the top-down perspectives camera is panned too close to the player and makes it difficult to see enemies that aren’t in the immediate vicinity, and the third-person perspective is preferred.

Graphically the game looks like a title from the N64 era of gaming, with mostly solid coloured low-res environments, and the character models look similar to

bubbly nutcrackers. The game is a war game of red vs. blue, with the handful of maps offering varied objectives that range from destroying the enemies base to distracting a heavily armoured tanks fire upon you to give friendly turrets a fighting chance of destroying the tank before it reaches your base. To give the game replay value there is an RPG-lite levelling system that allows the soldiers stats to improve – which is necessary to complete the difficult final levels – from experience gained from defeating enemies and completing levels. Speaking of the difficult final levels, they are a blast to play through and one even features a giant turret that can be used to blast down hundreds of approaching en-

emies and tanks.

While the graphics are a bit bland, the music is the complete opposite. Featuring a mix of techno and hip-hop, the multiple tracks are used to set the mood for each level and we had the music blaring the entire time we were blasting down the hordes of evil red guys. A few one-liner voice overs are quite poor quality, but somehow fit the games odd style perfectly. Overall the soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission.

- Christopher Ingram

3.5/5

Bee Farm Available on: iPhone Publisher: Vivid Games The first thing you’ll notice about Bee Farm is how aesthetically attractive it is.

The graphics are gorgeous; cute bees, comical enemies and bright colours all suggest that this game was developed for a younger generation of gaming enthusiasts. Accompanied by a suitably melodic score, Bee Farm is a game you’ll be playing with a smile on your face.

A gradual introduction to the different aspects of gameplay gives the player a chance to get to grips with how the game works and how to make the most of your bees. There are five bees to unlock the further you progress into the game and each one has its own unique capability, though ultimately their main purpose is to collect and transfer pollen from the flowers to the hives.

To do this, simply place your finger on a bee and draw a line to a flower. Your bee will follow this line and alight on the flower at which point it will start

gathering pollen. At any point after the collection process begins simply draw another line from the bee back to the hive and, as soon as your trusty worker has gathered as much pollen as it can, it will buzz back along it’s predetermined path. The concept is pretty basic so the creators have decided to spice things up by providing you with enemies to dodge.

Carnivorous plants, mini-tornadoes and angry wasps will all attempt to strip your workers of pollen or delay them in their grand quest. Circumnavigate these obstacles by re-charting your paths and your bees should stay safe and productive, industrious to the very end.

one’s cup of tea due to a lack of replayability but if you’re bored and have some spare time, Bee Farm is certainly worth a look.

- Domagoj Saric

3.5/5

All in all, Bee Farm is a fun, cheerful, easy to play game. Not every-

Hard8

Available on: iPhone Publisher: Games on the Down Low Hard8 is not going to be remembered as a ‘killer app’ on the iPhone; it’s an indie puzzle game on a format that has far too many puzzle games. Which is unfortunate, because for those five minute down times, Hard8 is much more fun than it has any right to be.

The basic game plays a bit like the children’s classic board game Connect 4. There is a grid of squares, and across the bottom of the table are blocks, fruit, poker chips of varying value, and dice faces. The goal is to drop additional dice into the playing field to link with other dice to add to a value of eight. Do that, the dice disappear.

Link two ‘fours’ together, and you’ll cause a small explosion, which has the effect of clearing away everything (including the blocks, which are otherwise indestructible), and leaving behind some poker chips for more points.

The game is over if the dice reach the top

of the playing field. The basic gameplay is spread across three gameplay modes – though all three essentially amount to variations on a score attack, so the real differences between them are minor.

Combined with an easy, casual casino visual overlay, music that is best described as ‘lounge,’ and the ability to upload your best scores to Facebook for the world (or, at least your friends) to see mark the game out as distinctly casual, but comfortable in offering what it offers.

- Matt Sainsbury

4/5

Chick Vs. Kittens Available on: iPhone Publisher: GameDigits Building on the tried-and-true formula of the classic tower-defence genre, Chicks vs. Kittens takes it to a whole new level.

Set in a tree with the Mother Bird taking centre stage in her nest, the player must defend the Mother Bird at all costs from a constant barrage of kittens who want nothing more than to sink their teeth into her. Encouraging strategic thinking from the very first stage, this game pushes the limits of fast fingers and even faster decision-making while remaining accessible at all times to all manner of players.

Where this game really comes into its own is in the gameplay itself. The player takes control of the Mother Bird who needs to keep laying eggs to create new chicks which become your defensive units. Each unit has a cost though and the currency of the game is “leaves” which, in practical terms, means the player must constantly collect these precious leaves as they fall off the tree and down the

screen. Once a player chooses to lay an egg their next decision revolves around how best to utilise that chick.

Making the most of the units you have is the key to success and you have many options to choose from, like the Strong Chick, Ninja Chick and Knight Chick just to name a few, which become available as you progress in the game.

score. Chicks vs. Kittens is the perfect game for the iPhone/ iPad, making good use of the touch screen, the beautiful visual display, the cute and calming sounds and music and even the accelerometer in some cases. Play one stage in minutes or sit and play for hours, the game suits all ages and all skill levels.

Better players will fly through the initial stages but will eventually find it difficult to progress while inexperienced gamers will appreciate the mild introduction to tower-defence and strategy gaming while picking their skills up as they work towards the more challenging stages.

- Domagoj Saric

If beating 60 stages wasn’t enough to keep you entertained, there’s also the opportunity to master each stage by collecting the stars and getting the highest score. Compare with other players in the Game Center and challenge yourself time and time again to keep getting a higher

5/5

Dash Race

Available on: iPhone Publisher: Hans-Juergen Richstein Dash Race, despite the name, is not a fast paced racing game. It’s actually one of those pen-and-paper games that people play to while away time on plains, trains and other assorted confined places – much like boxes and noughts and crosses.

Using a grid paper “racing track,” the goal is to navigate twists and turns to reach the end… by taking turns placing little ‘x’es on the board. The rules are pretty simple – if you line up the crosses in a straight line, you can accelerate to cover more space, but to turn, you need to decelerate. If you’re going too fast and don’t give yourself room to turn, you’ll crash, meaning you miss a turn or two.

There’s actually quite a bit of strategy to timing the acceleration and deceleration to hit ideal race curves, and it can be frustrating in the initial stages to work out how the game works. But those initial impressions quickly fade – I’d expect most people to have a hang of the game

within 30 minutes, and from there it’s all good fun.

Up to four people can play, and this can be done via hot-seat, wireless or against the AI. Mind you, the AI is pretty bad and predictable (though there is a sliding difficulty scale), so it’s really a game that has been designed to be played with friends.

And within that context, it works brilliantly. For those downtimes with friends or family the game is enormously addictive, and very competitive. The ability to save the races for upload to Facebook naturally means no one is going to want to lose – and indeed this is one of the game’s smartest features in encouraging social gaming with a device that is easy to carry around.

There are nine tracks in the initial download – and that is plenty for the casual

players. If you really get into the game, there are a couple of extra, premium tracks available for download for a dollar or two, but they’re not necessary (that said, it’s good to support the indie developer if you like the game).

- Matt Sainsbury

4/5

Get Retro

Super Smash Brothers Available on: Virtual Console (Wii) Publisher: Nintendo

Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 sold nearly five million copies worldwide back in its day and even spawned two sequels that both broke various records.

After years of waiting, the title that started the craze was finally made available for download on Nintendo’s Virtual Console service. Does the game still warrant a purchase years after its release or is it appallingly archaic?

The concept of Super Smash Bros. defies the structure of any typical game in the fighting genre. Instead of memorizing huge lists of moves and trying to punch your opponent into unconsciousness, you focus on simply knocking your opponents out of the arena. Whenever you successfully assault your opponent, their damage percentage increases and they’ll suffer from recoil. After being sufficiently thrashed, your foes will be soaring around the stage from the mildest blow. Should they fall off the stage or get knocked off, they lose a life.

Each character has their own set of attacks that are derived from whatever franchise they originate from. Donkey

Kong slams his fists with tremendous force, Samus utilises her charge beam for racking up damage, and Link slashes at his foes with the Master Sword. Aside from this, there are items in the stage with their own individual uses.

The stages themselves are also more influential towards gameplay than the majority of fighting games, for if you encounter an exploding Electrode in the Saffron City stage, you’re going to pay heftily.

All of these unique mechanics combine magnificently and form quite a distinct experience. The roster is a tad petite at only 12 fighters (including unlockable ones) and a more diverse roster would have been nice. A few characters feel slightly unbalanced, but for the most part the game gives off a vibe that anything can happen.

The single player mode lacks lasting value since there is but one main mode. You merely progress through a few rounds and special stages against mostly predetermined opponents until you reach the climactic final battle. Unlocking all four of the bonus characters, getting a hidden stage, and completing the ‘storyline’ with all of them will not demand more time than two days.

Instead, the game’s value is derived from the multiplayer mode. Up to four players can duke it out in battles of skill, luck, and genuine fun.

Super Smash Bros. does nothing particularly spectacular in the graphics de-

partment, looking a smidge more polygonal and unnatural than other Nintendo 64 titles. The stages are fairly impressive however, still capturing the worlds of their characters with about as much depth feasible on the 64. Music-wise, most songs are modified versions of themes from whatever game the corresponding character is from. The soundtrack isn’t massive, nor is it original, but it covers all the bases nicely.

If you’ve got some mates around, Super Smash Bros. serves up a feisty competition. Unfortunately, lone players are likely going to tire of the game rather hastily due the lack of more single player modes. Furthermore, the later releases in the series improve on the formula so drastically it is difficult to go back to the game when it is so primitive in comparison. If you want to take a trip down memory lane, it won’t fail you, but it won’t last long and the latter two titles are recommended more so due to their vast upgrades in mechanics. Still, it’s hard to go wrong at a price of 1000 Wii Points.

- Clark Anderson

3.5/5

Yoshi Available on: Virtual Console (Wii) Publisher: Nintendo AKA Mario & Yoshi When the title of a game is as vague as “Yoshi”, it’s tough to speculate what you’re getting into. Players take control of Mario and flip panels with the intention of using eggshells to form baby Yoshis. Yoshi was originally released for the NES after its successor was launched, so the game went largely ignored.

Thanks to Nintendo’s Virtual Console, though, gamers can now experience one of the definitive classic puzzle games on the service.

As stated earlier, your goal is to hatch baby Yoshis by connecting eggshells together, but the gameplay is deeper than simply that. Famous enemies from the Mario series such as Goombas and Boos descend from the sky and land on one of four tiles. To clear them, you simply match up two of the same species and they will disappear. Should even one of your columns be filled with foes, the game is over. While you could simply make small Yoshis to your heart’s content, the authentic challenge is to stack up mass quantities of enemies inside the eggs to rake in the points (thus making new Yoshis of ridiculous proportions).

There’s an astounding sense of accomplishment to be derived from giving birth to the largest Yoshi possible at a blazingfast pace.

All of this is performed by controlling either Mario or Luigi to flip panels around. It is trickier than flipping around

and navigating blocks in a game like Tetris, but it manages to feel fair and you instantly develop a sense of how to control the enemies. Some will immediately criticize the level of repetition (which is a questionable complaint considering this is a puzzler), but the game actually has two modes.

The main game is based on racking up a score, whilst the other focuses on progressing through levels by clearing the stage entirely of enemies. The additional two-player mode in which opponents rival to survive and earn a good score also contributes to the title’s longevity.

Musically, Yoshi is far from outstanding, but the ability to choose one of three tunes before beginning a play session certainly elevates the experience. The soundtrack could have been more expansive, however, considering how late it was released in the lifespan of its original system. The tunes are never ghastly enough to warrant turning down the volume,

but there’s even an option to turn off melodies and use only sound effects if such a concept floats your boat. Graphically, the game sticks to the basics, but few would dispute that the heart of a puzzle game is its gameplay.

Yoshi is not the best puzzle game available on the Virtual Console, but when you take its price of 500 Wii Points into account, the deal seems much sweeter.

The game will appeal to puzzle aficionados and newcomers alike with its adjustable difficulty and sheer accessibility. To this day, Yoshi is overshadowed by classics like Tetris and Dr. Mario, but you can rest assured that it rivals them in quality.

- Clark Anderson

4/5

3DS eShop

It has finally launched! The 3DS eShop is the online shopping portal for all digital games that you can buy and play on the Nintendo 3DS. That means DSiWare, Virtual Console games (at the moment Game Boy and Game Boy Color, but who knows what else in the future) and 3DSWare games.

You’ll be able to download and play 3D remakes of classic games as well.

With the launch (in Australia, at least) game three Virtual Console games (one more made available soon after), a single 3D classic remake (Excitebike, which is for now a free game), and a 3D Pokedex utility. And, of course, the 200+ DSiWare games already available.

Wo, what did we think of the new download portal, and the games that it launched with? Read on!

3DS eShop Review The good news? It is indeed better than the DSiWare digital shop. That's damning it by faint praise I know, but the eShop is indeed faster and cleaner than Nintendo's previous effort.

It's also better featured. Bringing the service in line with the Wii's WiiWare, the eShop features videos, basic user reviews, and some improved search functions.

When you first boot the service up, you're presented with a nice series of chunky icons. It's visually pleasing, and cycling through the icons does present at a glance the more exciting software available for download. The "new content" is prominent - I expect people will not struggle to keep up to date with what's going on.

On the downside (and this is a massive downside), getting to the content is still a pain. Getting to the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D trailer, for instance, requires three icons to be tapped on - it's buried away under one too many menus.

Similarly, aside from a 'highlights' menu of DSiWare, the rest is buried away and has to be searched for by platform and genre. The lack of a simple menu isn't present to jump to the various categories of software (DSiWare, 3DSWare, Virtual Console), surprised me greatly. All up, finding games, especially those that aren't new or "hot" is cumbersome.

Once you found the software you were looking for, paying and downloading it is a snap. Games have real price values now, rather than "Nintendo points," which is a good thing - it provides a better sense of the value of the software.

The download animation is really enjoyable and slick (the little shopping bag is

my favourite icon of all time), and, like the service itself, faster than previous Nintendo online shops.

But it still doesn't allow download in background. After being spoiled with that seamless experience on the PlayStation Network (for PS3 at any rate), this was a backwards approach.

Of course, an online shopping service is only as good as its content, and for those who skipped the DSi, there is a mass of quality DSiWare there for download.

Now we just wait and see if Nintendo can properly support the service going forward.

So, while Nintendo has done a good job of improving the service, it has still yet to meet the standards of Microsoft, Sony or even Apple when it comes to offering a seamless, convenient and easy shopping experience.

Oh, and as a subnote: In Australia, the price of Super Mario Land is $6.50. I can get a mass of PlayStation games on the PS3/ PSP for less than that. I'm sorry Nintendo, but $6.50 is way, way overpriced. And as a second subnote - watch out DSiWare owners; there are some nasty surprises waiting for you when you transfer your DSiWare to the 3DS.

3.5/5

Tennis Is Tennis a good start for the new download shop? In short, yes. Though it’s a primitive game of tennis, we can forgive Tennis for that – it is a primitive game.

It’s just a primitive game that plays remarkably well.

You’ll be in playing this game in no time.

There’s no tutorial to work through, no create-a-character, no career mode to set up. From the starting screen, you’ve got an option of single player, two player (which I wasn’t able to test… even if it works), and the option to turn the music off. That’s it.

From there you’ve got the choice of four difficulty levels, and then you’re away and playing. In the game, there’s a shot button, and a lob button. You can control the little character with either the circle pad (which incidentally makes the game easier to control than the original version), or the much less comfortable D-pad if you want to get traditional.

Each of the four difficulty levels feature

Because the 3DS can play DSiWare games, it’s possible to download and play a little game called Alpha Bounce.

It’s a Breakout clone, but with a huge range of RPG-style items to unlock, a massive number of levels to play, and a cool visual style.

Thanks to the launch of the 3DS Virtual Console and Alleyway, it’s also possible to download and play a Breakout clone with a tiny range of levels, boring gameplay and very little replay value.

While Super Mario Land, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and even Tennis have a timeless quality that means the games are still good fun despite being primitive, Alleyway is simply too outdated. The on-screen ball moves too slowly, meaning for the most part you’re sitting around watching things happen.

Hitting the last couple of bricks is a real pain – where a game like Alpha Bounce features a laser that helps remove the last few blocks, in Alleyway you have to keep bouncing the ball until it finally hits the spot.

the same AI, just sped up to increase the difficulty. The game itself controls nicely – shot direction and power is decided by a combination of movement and timing, and because it’s all-to-easy to hit the ball out of the court, there’s a definite level of skill involved in mastering this game. It helps that characters and the ball animate smoothly, although the physics are, unsurprisingly, not there at all.

The only time it becomes difficult to play is in assessing where lobs will land.

Modern tennis games typically use an icon on the court to give you an idea of where a lob is going. Here, you don’t have that luxury. It does mean you’ll lose some points cheaply, but the AI doesn’t spam the lob either, so it’s not too frustrating.

One of the great ironies of the game is that the ‘hardest’ difficulty mode, Level 4, is actually the closest to a modern tennis game, and therefore the most comfortable and ‘easiest’ to play by modern standards. Level 1 especially is too

plodding and slow to be much fun.

The only real downside to playing this game as a single player experience (because that’s what you’ll be doing here) is the AI is about as complex as you could expect for a Game Boy game. Once you figure out the holes in the AI’s defence, winning the game is a case of doing the same thing over and over again. When it gets that clockwork, it’s probably time to move to the next game.

All said, it’s still a fun game of tennis, and it looks better on the 3DS’ screen than I expected. Are you going to be playing it for hours on end? No. Are you going to keep coming back to it for short bursts for months or even years? Probably. It is a genuine classic.

- Matt S

3.5/5

Alleyway

Incidentally, that’s quite challenging, given the ball always deflects off on an angle with Alleyway. It’s impossible to line up a straight shot, and furthermore, the number of available angles to hit the ball at is quite small.

Despite that, this is not a difficult game.

It’s hardly a challenge to keep the generously-sized paddle underneath the ball’s trajectory, and even at the fastest pace, you’ve got plenty of time to prepare.

Being successful is merely a question of perseverance.

Of course, there’s not much to expect in terms of the visual style of Alleyway, but it is functional, with different colour blocks being worth different points. The sound, on the other hand, is truly grating.

Aside from the bonus stages (which have an incredibly irritating soundtrack), the only time you’ll hear anything is when the ball hits something. Walls and blocks make different noises depending on their colour, and the game soon becomes a cacophony of horrible, cheap grating noise.

This is the kind of game that comes free on cheap mobile phones now. I can see a small number of people preferring this to Alpha Bounce, because it’s a simple and uncomplicated game. But those people probably don’t have 3DS consoles, let alone use the eShop. For the rest of us it’s better to stick with the more involving and interesting game.

- Matt Sainsbury

1.5/5

Zelda: Link’s Awakening It brings great joy to be able to download and play the second best Zelda game of all time. Link’s Awakening is a true highlight for the series, cramming a hell of a lot of invention, dungeon hacking and an entire new world to explore into a single Game Boy Color cartridge (or in this case, tiny download file). This is the game that kicks off the 3DS Virtual Console experience, and actually manages to be the closest to an ‘everyone must have this’ title on the console to date.

The quest starts off with Link in bed.

That’s not unusual for this series of course, but this bed is in a different world entirely. There’s no Zelda. There’s no Hyrule. This is an inescapable island, and rather than take on Ganon, here Link needs to find some musical instruments and wake the Wind Fish.

dungeon. There’s a little in the way of side quests and hidden bonuses to track down, but for the most part this is a very linear game. Most of the puzzles are straightforward and similar in style to other Zelda games, but there’s enough in there to get you thinking as well.

It’s helped by some very cheerful remixes of Zelda music and vibrant visuals. As a Game Boy Color game, Link’s Awakening pushed the console to its limits.

Sprites are chunky and well animated.

Colours and aesthetics are pleasant. It’s a good thing Nintendo decided to release this version on to the Virtual Console, rather than the original black and white Game Boy version, because the visuals do help make the game engaging.

What’s astounding though is the sheer quantity of content. There are no fewer than eight dungeons in the main game.

There are multiple environments, two towns to visit and a host of friendly and angry characters to meet. Though the game can fly by (the story pacing is a bit off for a series that is renouned for being epic), it’s immensely enjoyable to fly through it.

- Matt S

There’s nothing in the game that a Zelda fan hasn’t already experienced – this one follows the same formula: go to a dungeon, get a new item, use said item to defeat the boss, move to the next

5/5

Super Mario Land Super Mario Land was, with Tetris, the first game I ever owned. And I literally played both to death. It didn’t really surprise me that, despite having not played it in 15 years or so, giving the game a whirl again was a very familiar experience. I still knew where all the little secrets were, and though I was a bit rusty, I still played through the game with minimal fuss.

When I finished the final boss, the recorded time was 40 minutes. Yes, this game is that short. There was no save option back in the day, so the game was necessarily quick. There are just four game worlds broken up into 12 stages.

Despite this brevity, there’s a lot of variety in the levels. Mario delves into Egyptian tombs, rock caverns and across watery, fish filled oceans. He even takes to the sky and the deep sea thanks to an airplane and submarine level.

And it all fairness, you get two games in the one package. Finish the regular game to start the ‘hard mode’; same levels, more enemies. There’s some challenge to

be had playing this game, and lives are in relative short supply, so for most people, the 40 minute run time won’t be a big problem. And thanks to the 3DS emulation there’s now a save game option, which makes Super Mario Land even more friendly for pick up and play.

there’s a fire flower for shooting missiles, the mushroom still makes the hero grow big, and the star still renders him invincible. There’s not as many abilities as modern Mario games offer, but as a stripped-back-to-basics approach, Super Mario Land is still very playable.

All these years later and Mario still controls well, too. Though the 3DS’ D-Pad isn’t quite as well suited to the game as the original Game Boy, and the clicky nature of the buttons means running and jumping at the same time is a bit of a pain, it’s still quite possible to master the art of the pixel perfect jump.

All of Mario’s usual abilities are there –

The enemies are an unusual bunch by Mario standards, and new players to the game might be a big put off by how many ways this game breaks with canon (there’s no Bowser in sight!), but Super Mario Land still looks good, still sounds good and still plays really well.

- Matt Sainsbury

3.5/5

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