Canabalt will satisfy your monkey-urge to poke something.

FLY MY PRETTY!!!

Canabalt, a one-button-wonder ingeniously created by Semi Secret Software has just been recently released for the iPhone.

Canabalt has a very simple objective; the world is over-run by aliens (oh come on, aliens? they look more like Franken-lobster thingies to me) and you have to run for your life, on top of buildings as frickin’ fast as you can (to where? well I don’t really know, ha ha), or else, you get to be the rotten egg, well, maybe fried, or scrambled, well one way or another the aliens are gonna cook you, isn’t THAT what they do?

Canabalt is a side scroller game with ONE, that’s right, ONE frickin’ button. That’s all you need to push, not 3, not 2, but ONE frickin’ button for all you monkeys out there who like to poke things with one finger, now put that lame muscle to use and get some high score. That one button will make your character jump, holding that button longer makes him jump higher. Canabalt measures the distance you’ve covered right before you FATALLY TRIPPED on a cardboard box,  jump too soon and fell before landing on the next building (yeah, how’s that for thrilling), or slamming straight into an alien who was apparently sleeping (in the middle of a world-wide chaotic extraterrestrial invasion) and just woke up on one of the buildings you were running on (now that’s a wow). Canabalt is your genuine beat-that-high-score-game everyone seems to have brought back into the gaming industry since the old days where “SAVE” wasn’t invented yet.

Canabalt is wonderful, thrilling, sytlish, nostalgic, and worth it. With one button to use, what have you got to lose?

Oh yeah, just needed to clarify one thing, that “sleeping alien” I was talking about, ws apparently a missile, ha ha, I’m seeing things, especially when running for my life.

Canabalt gets 5 (nothing special I can think of folks) out of five.

Play the game online here!

This is an outrage. MINIGORE EPISODE 2 REJECTED AGAIN

This is getting old. ANOTHER REJECT? Chillingo’s getting worse, even I’m not rejected 2 times in a row (wait…well, forget it).

Chillingo’s giving out 99 beta test versions to people right now. I guess this is to prove that their “unfortunate” binary crash crap that happened YET AGAIN in Apple’s App Developer Screening is just some unlucky happening. Oh come on Chillingo. I really can’t wait another friggin’ month for a friggin’ update.

This video of course does not make me happy:

IT MAKES ME MORE IMPATIENT. I want MINIGORE 2 NOW. I want. I want.

Don’t hold us up Chillingo. Don’t be that girlfriend who stops right before we’re done, capiche? Good.

Now go get ‘em tiger, make Apple want you.

BLADES OF FURY: The game that’s (waaay) better than its title. (iPhone)

Great Game, Bad Name.

Gameloft continues to wow us with the release of Blades of Fury for the iPhone. I’ll start off by saying I have been enjoying fighting games only recently. I have always been a first person fanatic but playing with Tekken: Dark Resurrection for the Sony PSP, I have successfully been converted to a button smashing martial arts nut (ooooh! title cameo!) Blades of Fury interested me completely when I first saw it’s teaser (especially how they explicitly showed Elwyn’s assets, now THAT interested me) Blades of Fury is the first fighting game I have seen in the iPhone platform, and surely after experiencing Modern Combat: Sandstorm I was expecting so much from it.

Let’s say it out loud now before anything else: truthfully, Blades of Fury is a FRIGGIN’ RIP-OFF! (Sigh, we’ve seen this kind of stuff before, it’s called; Soul Calibur) BUT again, it manages to exhibit the iPhone’s mysterious power (ooooh mysterious!).

Blades of Fury is basically and surprisingly what you’d normally expect from a typical fighting game; less story, more action. Its story is very different from the past fighting games that I’ve played where all the characters are destined to fight amongst each other in a big tournament. Blades of Fury, however, revolves around the story of a Mystical Magic Armor the wields it’s wearer invincible. This armor is given to a character named Arthur (yeah I bet it’s another cameo of King Arthur) and different characters challenge Arthur to a duel in order to take claim of the suit. So basically you’ll now assume that the stories of the different characters are encounter-based and they would fight anyone who get’s in their way, typical but good enough.

Love the art.

Graphics are astonishing (wow new adjective people!!) 3-D model rendering is honestly impressive. Polygons barely show in the fighting part itself. Textures are beautiful and movement is bewilderingly (new adjective again!!) smooth. What I found breath-taking were the different arena environments, from either roasting your marshmallow in hell or flying high up the skies on a giant (moving, and I really mean moving in real time) dragon! What I found amazing was the arena called ‘Babylon’ as it really showed a beautiful lake with a gigantic waterfall at the back, and during the fighting, it manages to smoothly process the waterfalls and it looks incredibly stunning (I think this is also the reason why I keep losing fights in this arena). In-game art is beautifully painted especially the different characters. The interface is wonderful and fast with just a few options to choose before kicking some butt. Speaking of butts, I believe it is also important to discuss CHICK RENDERING as it is always the pinnacle of any fighting game.

Would you look at that? Isn't it amazing? (The environment I mean)

WHAT IS CHICK RENDERING?

CHICK RENDERING first and foremost is the effectiveness of a virtual girl to possess lusciousness and babe-lisciousness. Bad polygon rendering or texture filling can greatly deteriorate the over-all seductiveness of a half-naked martial arts master chick with the exception of old games (Yeah Sony Playstation 1 Lara Croft, I was referring to you hot honey-bun) Blades of Fury manages to maintain the integrity of the women’s wondrous grooves and trenches giving them, surprisingly an attractive lusciousness which we, as professional gamers, can continually appreciate (yeah that’s the way to say it!). Light physics aren’t too obvious in the game but it seems that an innovative creation of character textures amazingly produces an illusion of depth and size, making it more possible for movement processing to be faster, and making it more possible for us to see these wonderful battle vixens wrestle each other in what seems like their night outfits. For an iPhone game, I personally would like to shake the hands of the visual developers for creating wonderfully attractive characters that really ARE the very spirit of these kinds of games. (Though I haven’t really confirmed if Boob-physics engines are present) Cheers Gameloft, cheers!

NOW LOOK AT THAT. Bravo Gameloft, bravo.

The most important thing to discuss now are the controls of the game, which personally, I think, manages to effectively stay in the level of sufficiently responsive virtual fighting. The virtual button layout proves Gameloft as a company who understands the difficulties of on-screen buttons and manages to successfully create a ‘cooperative’ button system. The directional pad is effectively situated on the left side of the screen. The D-pad is effective since it needs only one touch to move in any of the eight directions compared to your usual combination of two sides to move towards it’s middle direction (example: east and south combined would be, say it with me everybody; south-east) Maybe it’s good to rethink the typical console controller with the effectiveness of this eight-button directional pad. What surprised me the most was the very good button placing for the actions. The right edge of the screen is utilized with 2 circles for low and high sword slashes respectively, and one button for magic attacks. A small button is situated in the very small place between the 2 slash buttons and surprisingly it seems effective as a ‘guard’ button. For some reason, action controls seem to be very accurate, I rarely press buttons I don’t intend to press and it seems that character responsiveness is very sensitive to my command input. The only thing I didn’t like was crouching and jumping which required me to hold the guard button while I press up or down, but over all, it seems to work well  Gameloft did it again with its control system, way to go Gameloft.

"YOU'RE UGLY FACE SAYS IT ALL!" - The game's got great one-liners.

The game play is innovative enough to sacrifice some parts of a typical fighting game but still effectively communicates the authenticity of the game genre. Blades of Fury took out the “kicking button” of characters and instead embedded the kicking ability inside certain combos (yeah Gameloft, I would abhors you if your chicks were dumb enough to not use their legs- uhm I mean in combat, he he). The typical increasing ‘power gauge’ when hit or when you successfully hit your opponent is there giving you the ability to perform different levels of magic attacks depending on the length of ‘charge’ they do while holding the magic button. Combos are easy to do and for an iPhone game, each character has a good number of combos to perform strategically. Characters have different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, but somehow, moves are recycled by other characters. The usual ‘unlock new characters and costumes (usually just a cheesy way of saying color change)’ tasks are still implemented in the game if you play certain characters in the story mode. Arcade and Survival mode is included in the game and opponent difficulty can be set. Honesty I think opponents are more challenging as difficulty increases, it seems that Gameloft has created a batch of intelligent AI’s, good for people who want to really get themselves immersed in the game. Oh yeah, another surprise is that armor CAN be broken, he he, watcha gonna do with THAT knowledge? He he.

Well I'd like to break HER armor, well, at least what's left of it.

Blades of Fury is a wonderful rip-off of Soul Calibur from other consoles. It’s amazing to see a fighting game working flawlessly on the iPhone and it is also somehow surprisingly replayable at times. Battle graphics are wonderful especially the collision physics and character renderings. If you want to see what the iPhone can do, or you want a fairly intense iPhone fighting game with astoundingly smooth and stunning graphics without caring about originality (I hope you make your own original fighting game concept SOON Gameloft) then Blades of Fury is for you.

Blades of Fury (you had to give it THAT title) gets “3 and a half” half-naked video game chicks

Out of five.

Best Equation EVER: H.A.L.O. + iPhone = N.O.V.A

And I though the WOWNESS time ended with the announcement of Blades of Fury, again, GAMELOFT (Yeah Gameloft, I’m starting to Love you now) aces it’s next target: H.A.L.O. for the frickin’ iPhone. That’s a first for handhelds. Learn Sony. Learn Nintendo.

N.O.V.A, another ambitious FPS, is expected to be released by the end of this year. Watch this preview, you just have to:

Well, there you go. As Francis from Left 4 Dead would say, “Merry Christmas” bit-cheese!

WTF!! Apple REJECTS Minigore Episode 2???

Yeah, that's right, tell 'em John!

After 4 weeks (WTF. 4 Weeks?!) of wating, Apple REJECTS episode 2. I repeat, APPLE FRICKIN’ REJECTS EPISODE 2. WTF Apple. What the Funk.

Mountain Sheep already submitted a ‘better’ episode 2 last September 9, with more updates, and they mean MORE updates.

I’ve got yo’ back Mountain Sheep! Minigore Episode 2′s going to be phenomenal, and you Apple, make it happen.

(image created by gino afable)

Modern Combat: Sandstorm (iPhone) is faster than your grandpa.

The advent of mobile first-person-shooter games is here!  Just recently, Gameloft has just released an iPhone dream (singing: to dream!!! The impossible dreeeaaam!), and what was thought to be impossible is now reality! Did it live up to a pocket gamer’s expectations? Did it manage to remedy a hardcore gamer’s mobile frustrations? Or is it just another failed attempt to defy the laws of the iPhone’s unknown capabilities? Gameloft’s Modern Combat: Sandstorm is pretty much what we WANT it to be, but just a little-tiny-winy-bit less.

Doesn't that look amazing?

What separates Modern Combat: Sandstorm (MCS) from other ambitious iPhone shooters is that it’s framerate is unbelievably fast. The look speed seems to defy the limitations of the iPhone’s internal processors thus it gives an incredibly fast and surprisingly chopless look speed. The animation seems to be as smooth as silk but it does TRY SO HARD TO LAG and it manages to do so around every other YEAR (bad exageration). To be honest, MCS gives us a wonderful environment even if it recycles a lot of sprites (graphic elements) around the maps but it does place them strategically so that you’ll efficiently ‘forget’ they existed right before you see them again, giving almost every map a “refreshing” feel. Enemy animations are good, at last they didn’t use cheap animated GIF’s (Good boy Gameloft, good boy). The firing animations are very very intense for an iPhone game; there is this sense of recoil whenever you shoot, and the gun sound effects aren’t cheap, unlike those game audio developers who create gun sounds by saying “BUJSSSSHH” kissing the microphone, (yuck, it feels like the spit hits me every time I fire!) Explosions, usually created by making “flat smoking sprites” and combining multiple sprites to create an effect that gives the illusion that the smoke has volume, are wonderful as they don’t tend to be as “flat” like other girls, I mean, games. All these Graphic factors combined, you get a wonderfully stitched environment that takes you to the front-lines of  war espionage wherever you go.

That would be a "YES". This is going to run SMOOTHLY in your iPods and iPhones

But wait! Don’t think you got away Gameloft! We’re not yet done here, we’re gonna talk about your frickin’ issues now, and let me tell you, these issues aren’t small, you seem to have overseen BASIC videogame components and gamers expect a FRIGGIN’ UPDATE soon! To start off, enemy animations are weird sometimes, I fire my gun accidentaly at them but just like typical girlfriends, they wouldn’t even flinch! Talk about insensitive!  (Update request no. 1: make enemies less girly) MOVEMENT (yes MOVEMENT) is what I friggin’ hate the most Gameloft! The look speed is great but the movement speed sucks like hell! C’mon Gameloft, it’s supposed to be an ‘intense’ first person shooter, and moving around literally feels like a friggin’ walk in the park! (Update request no. 2: make MOVEMENT speed LESS GIRLY).  SAVING is non-existent in this game. Once you exit the game, as far as you’ve reached in a mission, it’s back to the starting point for you, even though there are “CHECKPOINTS” in the game.   Gameloft, didn’t you realize that you made a game for a platform that is FREQUENTLY interrupted by texts and calls? And to think, missions are generally 15-20 minutes long, it seems that the worst enemy here is not the guy that fires at you but the dreaded “UNEXPECTED INCOMING CALL”!! (Update request no. 3: Gameloft, save the game by putting ‘SAVE’ in it. ) There IS this one thing that I don’t quite get though; normal view cannot kill enemies that are too far (even if you already have a clear aim of the enemy. Switching to ‘IRONSIGHT’ is needed in order to successfully kill the enemy (this is practically the zoom capability found in your usual FPS games) is this suppose to add to the challenge Gameloft? Or is this a friggin’ oversight?

Modern Combat: Sandstorm, even with these issues present, got something right; controls. It offers three different control schemes and all seem to work great for game. It offers you an option to have your left thumb control movement with a virtual analog stick and lets your right ‘drag’ the screen for aiming. Another scheme is almost the same but this time your left analogue stick can be dragged around the screen (great for my issues concerning left movement boundaries) and the last control scheme gives you the option to use (get ready Sony PSP) TWO ANALOG STICKS! (Though there is a bad side to this, since movement seems to be TOO FRIGGIN’ LAZY for the left maneuver stick, it seems lazy for the right aiming stick too. One issue I had with the controls is the fire button especially dragging the screen around to aim makes me accidentally ‘fire’ which all in all disrupts my ambition to be as stealthy as a ninja with an AK-47 (Update request no. 4: movable control icons please).

You can tell HE'S having fun.

One last downer for MCS is that it lacks the happiest part about first- person shooters; ad-hoc and online multiplayer support. Although MCS’ campaign mode is so immersive that it practically makes missions impossible to beat if you just pointlessly “Rambo” around the map, just Imagine bringing DEATH MATCH everywhere you go (FACT: rumors say that MCS is powerful enough to handle the “de_dust” map of Counter Strike, that would be great! I just hope they fix the grandpa speed problem by then) Mindless killing is what gives shooter games life (Ha ha, nice play of words there don’t you think?) Or at the very least, have they made a “skirmish”-like free-for-all mode where there is no mission objective except kill as much bots (player AI) in a given amount of time, would make MCS installed permanently in my iPod Touch. (Update Request no. 5: PLEASE ADD A SKIRMISH MODE! PLEASE)

Well that's a first. (Filipino Inside Joke)

All in all, Modern Combat: Sandstorm is an unbelievably intense first person shooter for the iPhone, or for any handheld for that matter, especially surprising that I think it surpasses Grandpa “Medal of Honor Heroes” for the PSP. Visually stunning graphics, well orchestrated music, and intense and fast gameplay, Modern Combat: Sandstorm is an awesome display of the iPhone’s hidden power. Modern Combat: Sandstorm gets 4 slow grandpas,

Out of five.

And you ask yourself, “Can my iPhone really play THIS??” Gameloft says, “Hell Yeah.”

A fighting game for the iPhone?

And I honestly thought it would never happen.

Come to think of it, GRAPHIC GAMING GREATNESS is already out there for the iPhone; Real Racing (Heck Yeah), and Modern Combat: Sandstorm (Heck Yeah Number Two) is already topping the charts.

Blades of Fury (I thought it was Blades of Glory? Balls of Fury? oh I know I know, BALLS OF GLORY! Whatup?!), another Gameloft Masterpiece, is said to be released for the iPhone and iPod Touch sometime this month. Wow, two game  releases this month? First Modern Combat; Sandstorm, and now Blades of Fury? What’s next?

Honestly, Gameloft, maybe you should've thought of a better title, but I'm excited on how this game will turn out. WOW ME GAMELOFT.

Blades of Fury makes me wanna shout, “Tekken 6! TEKKEN 6!”

Now THIS is frickin’ly wonderful news!!!

GRAND THEFT AUTO CHINA TOWN WARS (the IRONICALLY GIGANTIC SMASH HIT originally released for the Nintendo DS) IS… wait for it, wait for it…

COMING TO THE iPHONE!!!! (This fall! Hallelujah!)

Can you imagine how fun it's going to be!

it's gonna be so much better than that loser sandbox title "GangStar" released earlier for the iPhone. Frickin' game keeps crashing.

I CAN'T WAIT!!!

Love at fur’st sight: Minigore (iPhone)

OMG! Walking TV Sets!

“I swear there’s no end to the bullets!!” is what you’ll be hearing when you start playing this Mountain Goat survival shooter game; Minigore. You play as a cube-shaped character named John Gore, seemingly lost in a dark forest trying to prevent Black-munching Furries (and no, it ain’t a racist joke, people) from eating you alive but thank goodness, you are armed with a bottomless machine gun- whut?? (for those of you who don’t get it, it’s a machine gun that never runs out of ammo- I told you “bottomless” drinks sound wrong). John Gore is faced with four kinds of enemies, three Furry sizes; small, medium, and horrifyingly large, and a small flaming Fury that runs so fast, it seems like it badly needed to go to the toilet. The medium sized furries (which honestly look like upset, walking and chomping television sets) split up to smaller ones when shot so be careful when you face that creepily slow-moving giant furry as it splits up into medium and small furries, much like Russian Ceramic dolls, only in this case, they’re frickin’ly ugly-fied. Soon enough as you kill more and more furries, more simultaneous waves keep coming and it starts to seem less and less possible to keep them all away, but don’t worry, John Gore’s got a secret weapon; furries drop four -leaf clovers, collect just enough and he will transform as “Were-Cow!” (-kidding, I invented that name) actually, he just transforms into a huge flaming minotaur giving you the ability to trample on all the furries for a limited amount of time, AND, get this, while you abuse the minotaur power in that short moment trampling on all the furries, you get to enjoy sweet banjo (yes, you heard me right, BANJO) music which soooo adds to the drama (I FEEL POWERFUL! AND HILL-BILLY LIKE!), isn’t that amazing?!

Beware of the WERE-COW! Moooooo!!!

The objective of the game is attractively simple, shoot everything around you and survive for as long as you can, you’ve got 2 lives, one chance to be bitten, and the other is your final life. The highscore system is implemented and honestly, I did not find this essential at first. The art style is wonderfully appealing as it utilizes a storybook illustration feel to the environment and simple 3D engine renderings for the characters (cuteness and ballistics always go great with each other don’t you think?) And the action movie inspired background music orchestra is really awesome, really forcing you to get in the mood of furry-hunting. Controls are good, using a very good combination of two touch sensitive virtual analog sticks (YES SONY PSP, TWO ANALOG STICKS ARE FRICKIN’ BETTER THAN ONE) the left one for maneuvering around the map and the right one for looking around and auto firing at the same time (YES SONY PSP, I SAY IT AGAIN: TWO ANALOG STICKS ARE FRICKIN’ BETTER THAN ONE). The only problem with iPhone games is that the thumb always gets in the way when trying to look at the entire screen since the screen is also where your supposed “buttons” are inconveniently placed. Using the left analog stick sometimes prevents you from continuing running left at times of panic when your left thumb accidentally slides off the touch screen. Maybe future installments of the title can include more options for different control schemes and methods, like say, make use of the iPhone’s accelerometer perhaps?

look Sony; TWO FRICKIN' ANALOG STICKS.

Minigore for me is love at ‘fur-st’ sight (see the pun there? Huh? huh? Ha ha), it IS an incredibly mindless survival shooter (wait, aren’t all those games mindless?!) but hey, this simple game is pretty intense for its size. I like games that make me panic visually and interactively (you know, the kind of games that make you scream like a frickin’ girl; Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and… Text Twist! My Vocbulary isn’t enough!!!! Nooo!!!), Minigore does it perfectly!

Hurry kids, dinner's getting away!

At the moment, Minigore feels repetetive if you’ve played with it for some time, but future updates ARE promised already and new stuff will be around soon. So if you wanna scream like a little girl and see cuteness with a sub machinegun that doesn’t need reloading, then Minigore is the game for you!

Minigore for the iPhone and soon to be ported to the Sony PSP (Two analog sticks Sony; TWO!) gets four screaming little girls and a screaming man-

-out of five.

Lemonade Tycoon. Old School Cool School.

Are you saying that my Lemonade tastes like alcohol?! Trust me kid, that ain't alcohol...muhahaha! (evil luaghs)

I guess you should forget my first post. In truth, I haven’t decided yet on what I’m going to do with this frickin’ blog. I’d write about anything more or less. Maybe I’ll just write about my weird and very recent fascination with the game “Lemonade Tycoon”. Released at around 2002, Lemonade Tycoon made its way to be one of the best strategy games of the century. The whole point of the game is profit and making an empire of lamonadisciousy-ness (yeah I made that word). Miraculously, I never play games like this, (meaning low-ass graphic girly-ness) but they managed to port th whole thing into the iphone and ipod touch so I downloaded it for some reason and now I can’t stop playing it. I realize that this game proves not only to be addictive but educational in all aspects as well. The very basic knowledge of business (all those hard-ass crap in economics they call profit and revenue, and all those shiz) are found in this incredibly compact game. It allows you first and foremost to get ready for the business day coming ahead by making a simple lemonade recipe using lemons, sugar, and ice, setting the price of each cup you sell, and buying supplies just enough to last you the day ahead. Simple? No duh, but here comes the tricky part, it’s not always that the customers like your recipe, and your price, they might even complain on your serving time and just be bithced-up about how slow your business is. This is where the heart of the game lies–in investing to improve different aspects of the game. Soon enough you’ll get to have stuff like juicers to speed up your lemonading, and soon enough you’ll be located in different, more congested areas where you’ll need to device a new strategy to get more profit at the most efficient preparation. And hey, you get to hire that CHEAP-ASS-CLOWN named “Simon the Lemon” (wtf) soon (I don’t know how a frickin’ clown will help your sales but hey, he’s worth a try, but personally, I don’t see the connection, clown/lemonade? wtf.)

For those Nostalgic Types, Lemonade Tycoon is a good game to play again after all these realistically immersed games today. I’d personally recommend Lemonade Tycoon to the kiddies, our future business-people, they might learn a thing or two. But dear parents, just tell them not to hire a clown named “Simon the Lemon”, personally, it ain’t funny.

Lemonade Tycoon gets 4 Roasted Nuts, and a kicked one, out of 5. (more on my rating rules soon)

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