Mustaine.com » Games

Trials HD, best XBLA game of 2009 (so far)

Tom — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:16:50 +0000

Yup, best XBLA game of 2009, no kidding. Trials HD is one of those games that every game developer secretly wishes that they made. It’s one of those obvious things that you kick yourself for not thinking of.

Excitebike + Modern Physics + Xbox360 rendering power = Fantastic.

They do just about everything right in this game.
-Tight responsive controls, easy to learn, hard to master
-Physics are seamlessly integrated and play to the core of the experience.
-Lots of variety in the levels, additional minigames, huge replayability. Well worth the $15.
-In game track editor with sharing of tracks (!) (Excitebike again)
-Great visuals with lots of special effects
-80s hair-metal music and 80s style screaming really help (for me at least!)
-Demos with playback
-Really slick way of comparing singleplayer races against your friends, integrated into singleplayer.

Check it out over at Xbox.com

The trailer does a pretty good job of showing the game off. Check it.

Avault Podcast Interview

Tom — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:27:17 +0000

The folks over at the Avault podcast had me on last week. Episode #39. We talked a bit about the iPhone platform, the upcoming DOOM Resurrection content update, app store pricing, game complexity, and FPS aiming on consoles. Good stuff, worth a listen if you’re into any of those topics.

DOOM Resurrection

Tom — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:16:25 +0000

Very excited! We recently announced our new iPhone game DOOM Resurrection! It’s been in top secret development for so long, it’s great to finally tell the world about this game.

Check out the video below!

iPhone 3.0. Yes, yes yes, YES!

Tom — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:15:58 +0000

Every single thing about the iPhone 3.0 update is music to my ears.

3G teathering: Thank you! I’ve had this functionality on every PDA since my HP iPaq, and have definitely been missing it on the iPhone.

Bluetooth Audio: Brilliant. Now, cars just need to get caught up and allow bluetooth devices to sync to the radio for stereo music output. Say goodbye to your 3.5mm headphone cables in your car.

Voice memo: YES.

Peer-to-peer wifi and bluetooth: This is by far one of the most important updates. The types of applications that will spawn from this feature is nearly limitless. Nintendo DS style pick up and play for games, sharing files, sharing contacts, local social networks, this is going to be amazing.

Control preipherals: Another game changer update. Having access to the port on the iPhone, or the ability to use bluetooth to control other devices is going to continute to enable the iPhone as the mega-universal device.

Turn by turn directions: Say goodbye standalone GPS devices.

Push notifications for apps: This is super important. That said, I do hope that Apple doesn’t cave into the pressures of “allowing apps to run in the background.” 3rd party apps running in the background is just a bad idea, this was one of the primary failure points of Windows Mobile devices in my opinion. Some 3rd party app running in the background is eating cycles or memory, your phone stops working right.

Access to iPod music library: I’m interested in seeing just how much access we can get here. If we can grab song data we might be able to use that data to make music games with your own music. Also huge!

Subscriptions, additional content from inside apps: Some of the best news for game developers. This is huge.

Cut & paste: Good. So many people complained about this for so long, I’ve really only found myself needing this two or three times. It wasn’t a deal killer for me, but obviously for the iPhone haters it’s a good point to latch onto.

Great stuff. I can’t wait to get the update. Go Apple!

For the full update skinny, check out the summary over at Gizmodo.

Video games and the Apocalypse?

Tom — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:03:38 +0000

Thank you The Onion (aka: The best news source.)

Fieldrunners

Tom — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:55:59 +0000

Been playing Fieldrunners like crazy on the iPhone recently. This is by far the best tower defense title I’ve played, and most definitely the best one on the iPhone.

Highly recommended.

Mirror’s Edge is great!

Tom — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:55:55 +0000

Mirror’s Edge is by far one of the best games I’ve played this year. As a level designer, I would often spend hours running around my levels, trying to make those impossible jumps helping to ensure that end users would not be able to cheat my creations. Many times I felt like there could easily be an entire game based in that kind of play, but we often spent more time removing jumping puzzles from our maps than adding them.

I see a lot of complaints about the art style, which really perplexes me. Most games that use the Unreal engine focus on gritty realism, almost to the point of being too much, with ME, it’s a breath of fresh air to see something bright, colorful, and different. Personally, I love the in-game art style, feels like something new. That said, about the only complaint I do have about the game is the cinematic art style, gah, a poorly done anime look with jerky South Park’esque movements and lipsynching. Good thing I could care less about the story (skip!)(skip!)(skip!)

Either way, ME is a solid mix of traditional FPS gameplay mixed with Tong Hawk and Tomb Raider. It’s a real treat to see a new idea like this make it onto the shelves, I just hope the sales hold up this holiday against the other big boys like Gears2, CoD5, Fable2, etc. At least selling well enough to encourage EA to keep building new IP, and of course, a ME sequel.