Frequent readers may know that one of my favourite pastimes is zombies, particularly the viewing of movies where zombies are contained therein.
This great viral short shows off numerous ways of handling the impending onslaught with a stiff upper lip, whilst also advertising PC/360 zombie survival ‘em up Left 4 Dead 2.
Going for the clever humour of Shaun of the Dead rather than the ultra-stylised comic violence of Zombieland, this video shows that us Brits will always have time for a spot of tea…as long as there’s milk.
Want to start swinging your frying pan down in the bayous of Louisiana? The demo for PC owners is available on Steam, whilst clever pre-ordering 360 folk should be getting their Left 4 Dead 2 demo fix right about…now.
How’s that for a cheap check up? To celebrate the integration of achievements though the Plus+ service, budding surgeons can now enjoy the anime antics of ng:moco’s Dr. Awesome, for free!
The iPhone game is classic arcade gaming a la ‘Qix,’ where you have to regain control of an area by sectioning off pieces of the playfield, tilting your device and dodging foreign viruses. Cure 75% of the vaguely body-shaped mass, and you move onto the next patient!
Features like the comic cut-scenes between Dr. Awesome and his surly nurse, and the fact that each poorly patient is a name from your contacts list with a real-time 24 hours to be cured, level it above average iGaming fare.
Do something good today. Save a friend’s life, if only for points.
One of my favourite games ever has to be boxing game Punch Out! on the NES. The experience of taking Little Mac from no-mark fighter to title bout pugilist made for a smash hit back in the ’80s.
The tactics of dodging, weaving and exploiting openings and weaknesses in your brilliantly caricatured opponents made Punch Out one of the best titles to capture the sport…until you meet the unremittingly tough pre-tattooed visage of Mike Tyson and he punches your face off.
Even though the latest boxing sims take more processing grunt to handle realistic sweat than it took to run Punch Out, the gameplay stands the test of time and Glu’s Super K.O. Boxing 2 on the iPhone captures that early arcade spirit perfectly.
The quest for the title of heavyweight champ remains the premise, as you control ‘The K.O. Kid’ against 12 brilliantly stylised opponents in the ring, with animation and gameplay that looks fresh but is steeped in classic twitch gaming.
Circuit is the main gameplay mode which sees you face off against each fearsome fighter in three round bouts, starting off in the lower brackets before working up to the big time.
The controls are fairly simplistic with a left and right dodge as well as a block on the left virtual stick, whilst the right handles high and low blows as well as a power punch that builds after successful connections.
Combinations can be figured out with a little deft finger work, giving you an advantage over those tougher challengers. An alternative control mode requires actually tapping on the opponent to specify high or low attacks, but this obscures the screen to the point of being impractical.
Your first foes are fairly easy with burly hillbilly Big Gip, matador El Bulli and faux-rapper 15 Cent (the jokes are that broad…) proving to have that classic ‘Glass Joe’ glass jaw, but before long every punch counts as the enemies become faster and punish every misstep.
Fighters like Dynamo (pretty much identical to his electrically-charged namesake from The Running Man) and man mountain Shogun require judicious use of blocking, as well as second guessing their moves. Luckily the fluid animation and gorgeous graphics mean each fighter has their fair share of ‘tells’ that can be exploited for a quick KO.
Adding notches to your win tally soon unlocks Challenge Mode, offering up tricky situations like knocking out opponents without taking a single hit, and Versus Mode which lets you hone your skills against previously fallen foes.
Those not well versed in Nintendo’s Punch Out series will find this an enjoyable Rocky-style romp whilst others with longer memories of the SNES or even the recent Wii reboot might find it overstepping the line past an homage into ‘half-inching’ territory, but either way Super K.O. Boxing 2 is a brilliant example of a mobile game with depth, longevity, production values and most importantly a sense of humour that puts many games on dedicated handhelds to shame.
Available now on the App Store for £2.99 as well as on old-school mobiles, Super K.O. Boxing 2 is definitely a fighter in its prime.
Okay, not strictly mobile phones related, but the second great love in my life after HSDPA speeds and megapixels is video games…first person shooters in particular. So the opportunity to sample the latest iteration of the Battlefield franchise is something that I just HAD to share!
Battlefield 1943 takes the fight to the 360 and Playstation 3, offering three areas torn from the World War II history books and conflict for up to 24 players. The maps might prove familiar to Battlefield veterans as they are the most popular ones from the 1942 PC original, buffed up to a next-gen sheen thanks to the Frostbite engine.
Another thing this new engine (first seen in Battlefield : Bad Company) allows for is destructible landscapes, with fully-controllable boats, tanks and airplanes able to chew up the scenery with bombs and shells.
The Pacific theatre is the setting, with the US Marine Corps pitched against the Imperial Japanese Navy. Featuring only three classes of soldier, little by way of ‘levelling up’ and a single mode (the power struggle of capturing five bases in Conquest) 1943 might seem lean in comparison to other multiplayer shooters, but with a unique download-only distribution model and a low price of £9.99 / 1200 Microsoft Points on the PSN and XBox Live respectively, it is online competition distilled into its purest form.
The controls are very familiar to anyone that has previously answered the Call of Duty, with the left shoulder button giving an iron sight view, the right shoulder to pop off rounds and clicking in the stick to run. Despite no way of customising the loadout, it is quick and painless to gather familiarity with the sniper, infantry and middle distance rifleman. The draw distance is amazing, allowing patient shooters able to score long range shots with ease.
Vehicles are still present and correct, with sea, air and land all easily traversed thanks to jackable transport dotted around the huge maps. Driving takes a bit of getting used to, bucking the traditional right stick for acceleration and breaking setup for the left shoulder buttons, and planes proving just as tough to fly without practice as ever!
Anyone wanting a further aeronautical fix can now play on the special fourth ‘Coral Sea’ map, unlocked after avid fans racked up 43,000,000 kills in record time on the 360. This map offers pure dogfighting, with an aerial take on warfare proving hilarious and challenging in equal measure.
The tactical elements of calling in bombing raids, repairing friendly vehicles and anti-air guns also add an anarchic element to proceedings if your team does not work together as a well-oiled machine. The only negative I can level at 1943 is that the battles can get a little repetitive once players get into the routine of starting out on a particular map. The mad scramble to gain ground in the first five minutes does become a little mechanical. However, the constant mixing of players on respective teams between rounds manages to keep things fresh.
Bringing this title into 2009 with voice chat, group formation and co-ordination of attacks adds another layer to the classic ebb and flow of Battlefield combat, and the low price makes it an impulse purchase that you won’t regret. DICE have managed to parcel the best elements of online multiplayer into a tight and cohesive package, and is sure to appeal to Battlefield purists and new recruits alike.
Check out some promotional explosions and gunfire below!
Well, we (and most of the web) were right. The www.coming-on-iPhone site that previously housed an exciting GTA-style car chase video has just been unveiled as Gang$tar: West Coast Hustle from Gameloft.
A fully realised open world is at your disposal, with all manner of running, driving, shooting and fisticuffs coming to iPhone touchscreens by the end of the summer.
The day-glo HUD and bright environment reminds us very much of Vice City’s neon charms and we’ve spotted a radio in one screenshot, suggesting that there will be a rich musical accompaniment to your path of destruction.
Our only concern would be one of the need for precise controls, as there is nothing worse than sweaty fingertips to blow a bank job getaway! Gang$tar iPhone looks to have the familiar virtual joypad and button setup for the on-foot sections, switching to a steering wheel and brake/accelerator when moving on four wheels. Clever, but a decent input method can make or break a game, so we hope Gang$tar survives the switch to 3D intact.
We’ll have to wait until we get our hands on it to see if West Coast Hustle can fulfill our (purely virtual) criminal tendencies on the move!
Nokia have dropped their plans to add the N-Gage gaming service to the N73 and N93 phones.
Even though the N73 is the world’s most sold smartphone; Nokia have sold over 20 million of them worldwide. The phone’s limited computing power holds it back from N-Gage compatibility and with Ovi, Nokia’s online gaming service opening its digital doors in May, packing in the N73 is a necessary measure.
Nokia will be rolling out the N-Gage for newer handsets and N73 owners who are after N-Gage gaming capabilities should upgrade to a new handset.
What better time to upgrade to that Nokia N97 you’ve had your eye on.
By Peter RosscloseAuthor: Peter RossName: Peter Ross Email: peter.ross@trafficbroker.co.uk Site:http://www.omio.com About: Raised by wolves, in the darkest of woods, Pete eventually left the pack. He emerged into the world blinking and half-feral with one true dream: to write about mobile phones on the Omio blog.See Authors Posts (82)
Everyone’s favourite sociopathic killer is coming to an iPhone near you. Hopefully the game will let you do everything that happens in the show: examine crime scenes, eviscerate serial killer and speak with a creepy monotone.
Quite how the game play will work is a mystery to me. Does Dexter chop off different parts of his victim according to your touch screen gestures? If it’s anything as bloody as the TV show, you certainly wouldn’t want to play it on public, bus journeys are annoying enough without having to glimpse graphic violence on a fellow passenger’s iPhone.
By Peter RosscloseAuthor: Peter RossName: Peter Ross Email: peter.ross@trafficbroker.co.uk Site:http://www.omio.com About: Raised by wolves, in the darkest of woods, Pete eventually left the pack. He emerged into the world blinking and half-feral with one true dream: to write about mobile phones on the Omio blog.See Authors Posts (82)
Metal Gear Solid Touch will be available from the App store from March the 19th. Surely this is one of the most anticipated games since Super Monkey Ball. As you can see from the screen shots however, the game is a first person shooter a world apart from the 3rd person stealth game that made MGS so popular. Although it is still part of the popular franchise, many MGS fans may be disappointed as it really just a standard shoot-em-up but with MGS characters and locations. Here’s what MGS fans would ideally want to see on an iPhone:
The Blackjack Card Counter may be the latest down loadable iPhone app but that’s hasn’t stopped it being controversial.
Shuffle analysis and card counting techniques have been around for as long as there have been casinos but what is illegal is using technology to assist you.
The card counter technology lets the user illegally up their chances of beating the house in a game of Blackjack by predicting when a winning hand will come up.
The software was developed by Webtopia, an Australian development company based in Cairns.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board were first warned about the new app from Californian gambling regulators and have since issue a memo to all casinos in the state.
However, the app first came to the attention of casinos when croupiers in India spotted someone using the software.
So, if you fancy your chances at the gaming tables, there’s a YouTube video detailing how the app works.
ICS Mobile, the pioneers in ad-funded mobile applications, are releasing their location-based iTag Live game on the iPhone next week.
iTag lets you use the iPhone’s GPS to find opponents, your camera to tag them and conference calls to chat to your team mates. Up to eight people can play at once and the game is 3G and Wi-Fi enabled – this is tag but not as we know it.
The game’s developer has uploaded a whole load of Youtube tutorials showing iPhone users how to play the game. If you’re still a little unclear as to how it works, pay a visit to the iTag Nation website; it’s fast becoming the focal point for the game’s growing community of followers.
The game is set to be free to download but, as is usually the case with these things, there’s the option of upgrading to a premium paid service.
We can look forward to Facebook integration, personal team rankings, “accelerometer activated grenade throws”, and game formats including a “free for all” mode.
