The first thing that strikes you is the beautiful and stylish old school graphics. The screen, curved like an old cathode ray tube, reminded me of Fallout which I’ve been playing a lot. The colours are bright day glow neons and there are plenty of fast moving sprites to confuse you. Throw in a funky soundtrack by High Frequency Bandwidth and SideScroller really does scream arcade classic.

There’s not too much to think about in a game like this; it’s really down to reactions rather than major strategy. You’ve three choices of weapons, standard guns, lasers and then bombs with the usual sort of upgrades to improve the weapons, extra life and a temporary shield. Flicking between the weapons is as quick as pushing a button but you have to cycle through them which can be awkward if you are using lasers but need guns. Occasionally you need the other weapons, but I found it far easier to concentrate on using the machine guns and making sure you get all the power ups.

Level design is pretty nice but not going to win any awards. Carrying over from other PixelJunk games there are liquids in various parts of the game. These take the form of water, fire, acids, and some others. All bar one do damage to you in different ways. Since they are liquids, they tend to flow up or down following gravity and the level layout as you’d expect. Fire erupts, water drains down and so forth. The most important is water since this can help heal the ship from damage you’ve taken. Thing is, it actually took me a while to realize what these various things did. Since the game is so fast paced I spent a few levels rushing through the water as I thought I might take damage from it.

I tried the initial three different difficulty levels and even the easiest was very hard. The fourth difficulty level is called Brutal and if you really want to go that way you’ll need to finish the game on hard level first. While playing there are a large amount of check points and even if you run out of lives you can continue indefinitely. Down side of that is, if you run out of lives and restart at a check point you’ve lost any weapon upgrades you had. Now a trick I used was to just push as fast as possible through to those check points, I skipped killing a lot of things just to get there.

By the time I managed to clear the first stage I had practically destroyed my teeth in stress. The game is challenging, but for me a lot of that was more due to zoning out while staring at the screen. There’s so much going on and with the neon colour palette it can make it pretty hard to keep track of all the bullets flying around. Combine in the little collectibles and sometimes you fly straight into a bullet just because you think it’s supposed to be collected.

PixelJunk SideScroller is pretty great fun for the price. Just don’t expect to fly through in one go. Here watch a highlight video of my attempt at a level and laugh!

Pixel Junk SideScroller is available now from the PSN Store.

Meet Hardboiled

The basic gameplay in Rocketbirds centres around Hardboiled Chicken and his guns. Starting off with just a pistol, you find alternate weapons as you progress through the game. Hardboiled certainly knows how these things work, and he can take out a gaggle of penguins quite easily from across the screen. The gunplay and movement reminded me of vintage side scrollers such as Rolling Thunder, and I liked the way you could duck in and out of cover at certain points, giving the game the air of a Naked Gun shootout, at times.

As you progress through the first few levels, Rocketbirds begins to introduce various puzzle elements, which initially just involve shifting crates around, but soon gain a new dimension with the introduction of brain bugs. These little critters can be thrown around the environment, and will instantly take control of any enemies that they pop nearby, producing a lovely green glow as they do so. This is one of the cleverest aspects of the game, as you can then use the soldier to your advantage, either to open new paths, or to take out his compatriots, clearing the way for Hardboiled to progress.

Viva la Revolution

Moving through the game, more enemies are introduced, and your revolutionary fight sees you teaming up with other birds, in order to take down the penguin oppressors. Shooting penguins initially seems quite poor sport, especially considering the mess they make as their feathery corpses are juggled in the air, in a low rent Devil May Cry style. However, thanks to the beautifully rendered cut scenes, and accompanying music, which tell the background story of Hardboiled Chicken and the rise of Il Putski, I soon learned to hate the penguins as much as my avian brothers did.

Mixing it up

The combination of puzzles, music and combat in Rocketbirds works very well together, and a change of pace is also on offer with a number of flying levels, which play out a little like Mini Squadron.

Whilst some shooting sections did prove to be a sticking point for a while, as I struggled to do battle with the limited movements on offer, I found that there were enough checkpoints on offer  to prevent frustration setting in.

Single player and co-op

As well as the single player campaign, which clocks in at around four to five hours, there is also a local co-op (or coop) mode, that allows two players to tackle ten chapters as the Budgie commandos. This co-op campaign take place across the same levels as the single player mode, but the puzzles are reworked to ensure that the budgies must work together in order to progress. Having completed the game, I feel that special credit must be given to Ratloop Asia for offering one of the best closing credit sequences in recent memory. It is really nice to see a developer doing something simple, but effective, that continues to engage the player right to the end of the game.

In summary

Whilst not overly long, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken still strikes me as good value for money, given the five hour single player campaign and additional co-op adventure. Heck, some of the big budget ‘games of the year’ won’t clock in at much longer than that. Some of the puzzles are very neatly worked, and it is nearly impossible to get tired of mind controlling penguin soldiers. Whilst the combat system is not perfect, and the puzzles are sometimes a little easier than they could be, the whole game is presented with such style and panache that these small flaws are easy to overlook. Given that the music is so integral to the game experience though, I wonder if the soundtrack could have perhaps been bundled with the game? To my mind this would have made what is already a decent package into something that extra bit special. Oh well, I can always like to NWR on YouTube, I suppose…..

Problem is, the game opened with an disturbing sequence in which our hero’s girlfriend was kidnapped by a man who was very obviously intent on rape. I covered my issues with this in a post back in February, On Games and Rape Culture. At the EA showcase last week, I had the chance to ask creative director Jeff Agala what the hell they were thinking when they opened a game with a rape scene.

“When we saw those comments [about the rape story], it didn’t come off the way we wanted it to come off. We wanted to give Shank motivation – what would motivate someone to kill a thousand people? Murder kinda doesn’t just… it was a hard thing” he told us. “Marianne Krawczyk the writer, she wrote our story. She wrote God of War as well so she has a tendency to do very violent [storylines]. It’s funny ’cause it connected to males. It’s a very male-oriented plot. She’s really good at writing that kind of story.”

Agala told me that on seeing her work, they ran the storyline past the other women in the company. “We believe in our artists. We gave her hard boundaries and this is what she came up with.” Still, the reaction from the community was such that the team decided never to go down that route again. “We have a responsibility to the public and the reality is that we didn’t want to be that part of the media. We cut that out of the game. It was a pretty easy decision. It wasn’t even part of Shank 2.”

I took a look at Shank 2 during the showcase. As with Shank, it’s a solid platform beat-’em-up. In this sequel, they’ve given Shank a female friend, who leads a rebellion against the corrupt militia that are taking over Shank’s town. You can also use her for online and local co-op play.

Rather than my describing features to you, here’s a gameplay video. Apologies for the banal commentary. You can mute it if you like. You won’t miss anything.

Shank 2 will be out on XBLA, PS3 and PC some time in 2012.

The Citadel

The Under Siege single player campaign starts off in the suitably wintery landscape of ‘The North’, and follows a small group of rebel soldiers in their battle against the oppressive regime of The Citadel. Starting with only two types of units under your control, soldiers and archers, the five chapters of the game take you across a variety of environments, including swampy lowlands and ancient temples. As you progress, you get to level up your units, using cash or in-game experience, and you can add to your unit types, as you free comrades and adopt allies along your journey.

During the first few minutes of gameplay, Under Siege slowly introduces you to its action orientated take on RTS, but before the end of the first mission, you realise that this game will not be a walk in the park. With no requirement to build or collect resources, the game boils down to finding solid strategies which you can use to take out the wide variety of enemy unit types that are thrown your way, often having to change things around on the fly. Whilst the enemies encountered are not overly blessed with intelligence, what they lack in cunning is usually made up for in terms of sheer numbers. During one Chapter 2 mission, I had to kill a total of 277 enemy units with my little 10 man team (admittedly not all at once).

Mission types are varied, and range from escorting VIPs to protecting villages and taking down large enemy bosses. Fog of war is used in some maps, but I preferred the levels without it, as the fog would often leave me surrounded by enemies on four sides, with no prior warning, and a limited field of vision. On this note, I did find the camera a little frustrating, as I would have liked to be able to zoom out further, in order to get a wider view of the battlefield. The default ‘zoomed out’ view is still too close to the action, in my opinion, and the ‘zoomed in’ view, whilst looking pretty, is not terribly functional.

Progress in Under Siege can be slow at times, with the high difficulty level resulting in the replay of many sections of the game, either through outright failure, or by losing too many units during battle. With the levelling up process requiring you to keep at least one member of a unit alive, and limited resources with which to upgrade between rounds, cumulative narrow victories may seriously hamper your chances to progress through the game. The flip side to this high difficulty level is the strong sense of achievement that you get when you finally nail a particularly tough section.

>Controlling the action

The controls in Under Siege have understandably been kept simple, and are generally pretty intuitive. Squads can be assigned to the D-Pad and sent into battle with the click of a button. Each unit type also has two special abilities that can be activated with the triangle and circle buttons when needed, such as healing, taunts, flaming arrows, slowing darts and protection spells. The game offers support for the Playstation Move controller, which works pretty well, but I actually found the Dualshock method just as responsive, and more comfortable to use during longer sessions.

Visually, Under Siege makes a very good impression, with a nice range of environments and units types and some neat visual effects. The cut scenes that punctuate the action feature Manga style representations of the main characters, and fit well with the rest of the game. I have to confess that I didn’t read a lot of the story as it was told, but the visual style did appeal to me, along with the overall steam punk feel to the game.

Multiplayer

Under Siege offers a multiplayer mode alongside the single player campaign, which matches two players into a lobby in order to battle on a series of stand alone maps. A ticker tape display on the main menu updates the number of players online, and unfortunately player numbers do seem quite low at the moment. Thankfully there is also support for local multiplayer, and there are a small selection of maps which can be tackled in co-op, either locally or online.

Map Designer

A very interesting addition to the game is the map designer, which is actually the full design engine that was used to produce the levels of the main game. Landscapes can be terraformed with relative ease, and there are a huge range of environmental and man-made features that can be added. Checkpoints, mission goals and enemy types are all definable, and it is even possible to build cut scenes to fit in with the action.

Whilst the designer is initially quite intimidating, it does get easier as you spend some time tinkering, and it provides Under Siege with a great USP. Unfortunately, as it stands, the levels that you create cannot be shared with other players. According to the official Under Siege forums, map sharing will be added in Patch  1.03, but this has not yet received an official release date. It is a real shame that this feature was not available at launch, but its arrival could certainly breathe new life into the game, and may eventually help build a strong sense of community.

In Summary

Under Siege is an accessible take on the RTS genre, that fits the format of a downloadable game well. It is visually appealing, and the controls are a good fit for the PS3, using either the Dualshock or Move control methods. Whilst the game is fun to play, there are some niggling aspects which slightly spoil the party, and the difficulty level is definitely set a notch or two higher than I would have liked. Hopefully some of these niggles will be addressed in upcoming patches, and it will be particularly interesting to see the impact that the introduction of map sharing has on the Under Siege community. If this feature is a success it could seriously extend the lifespan of the game, as the playing community continues to drive it forward.

Eric Chahi, Naughty Dog’s Lead Game Designer Richard Lemarchand and thatgamecompany’s Robin Hunicke will all be presenting their games at this year’s Gamecity 6 videogames festival which takes place in Nottingham between 25th – 29th Oct 2011. Eric will be talking about his game From Dust and Richard Lemarchand will be introducing fans to Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and talking about the first 2 games in the series. Robin Hunickle will be hosting, what could very well turn out to be the highlight of the festival, a late night large-scale projection of Journey. We will let you know as soon as tickets for the festival are released.

Criterion Games and EA have officially announced the existence of Burnout Crash. The game, which will be coming to PSN and Xbox Live Arcade this autumn, is a top down affair where you have to cause as much damage as possible. According to the Criterion Games blog, Burnout Crash was:

Inspired by pinball, retro music and game shows. Our gameplay is real simple. Drive into an intersection, cause a massive pile-up and blow up everything in sight! With 3 game modes, each of which requiring different strategies and tactics, you’ve got plenty of ways to try and get a high score and top your Crashwall amongst your friends.

Burnout Crash will also work with Kinect, but annoyingly, Criterion didn’t reveal how this will work.

4 guys are currently raising money for Child’s Play by playing as much Halo as possible without a break. They are trying to get through as many of the 70 levels contained within the 6 Halo games released to date. You can see how they are getting on right now on their Haloathon website.

You can now download a 2 level PC demo for Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 videogame. This demo features Harry battling Voldemort’s Death Eaters on the rooftops at Hogwarts and Hermione fighting with Fenrir.

SNK’s King of Fighters game is now available for the iPhone/iPod touch, priced at a hefty $7.99. Does anyone play fighting games on their phone?

Codemasters have just released the first game play trailer for their upcoming F1 2011 game. Sit back, relax and enjoy some gorgeous F1 action. Don’t forget the British Grand Prix takes place this Sunday from 1pm:

If you’ve read our recent “You Don’t Want To Work In The Game Industry” post you’ll understand why so many developers are creating games on their own or with their friends. Take a look at the TIGForums and you’ll see that there is a large and supportive community of developers working away on lots of great Indie games.

Earlier on this week I chatted to two indie developers Dugan Jackson and Rudolf Kremers about how they got into Indie development and their current PlayStation Network theme “A is for Astronaut.” Long time Average Gamer readers may recognise Dugan’s name as he used to be one of the regular contributors to the site and has previously worked on Operation Vietnam (DS) and Gravity Crash (PSN).

How did you both end up being indie developers?

DJ: I originally come from a traditional art and film background, but have worked in the games industry for well over a decade. It’s a long time since I practised with tools like DPaint and Shoot’Em-Up Construction Kit (a.k.a. SEUCK) on the Amiga, but they were great in starting me making games. After making `RockBoshers` recently I setup a small indie company Tikipod Ltd through which I collaborate with other indies as well release my own projects.

RK: I am a games industry veteran and a SciFi fan for life. After working on anything from Harry Potter to Avatar the Last Airbender I started my indie (games) company Omni Systems Limited, which acts as a publisher for SciFi ABCs. Among other things Omni has done the successful indie game Eufloria with Alex May and is currently working on various games and comics and other creative projects. The themes fit perfectly in our philosophy :-)

So why are you making themes then?

RK: The idea is that the theme is not linked to some corporate brand, but is purely meant to help fund other indie projects. The theme itself is very high quality, and is not meant to sell another project. Because of this we can purely focus on the theme itself and hopefully as a result the series will become popular with people who like dynamic themes.

Tell us about A is for Astronaut

RK: “A is for Astronaut” is a the first in a series of dynamic themes for Playstation Network. The series is modelled on old ABC posters and is some ways an ode to Science Fiction. The plan is to dedicate a theme to each letter in the alphabet, in a SciFi context.

DJ: Old paperback book cover art is another influence, like ones by Chris Foss for example. Classic sci-fi films are of course another big influence. We also wanted to make themes that you can have playing in full HD on your TV for a long time, with lots of subtle variations going on.

What was the biggest challenge in making this theme?

DJ: The themes have a limitation in file-size and processor power available to them because they run within the PS3 menu system. It’s quite small which meant it was a real challenge trying to pack in as much as we did and not make the theme fall over. Oh and the small rocks casting shadows onto the rings of dust, that was a lot more painful to do than it might look.

How did the PSN downtime affect you? Was the theme put on hold for a while?

DJ: Yes, we were all ready and due to submit just before that happened. So we had to wait until things were up and running again, then it was a couple of days after that that we went live – as Sony had to clear their backlog in order understandably.

Are you working on any new themes?

RK: Of course! There are too many to list, and we don’t want to give away too much but if you think of classic scenes form SciFi books and films the chances are that something like that will find a way into the series. Dugan is probably going to do an epic space battle next, which is rather exciting.

DJ: Yes for the next one I`m torn between that idea and another involving satellites. We shall see which wins out.

What’s next?

RK: We are working on various projects, including a SciFi exploration game called StarLit, with David Parsons of Gravity Crash fame. StarLit is actually spiritually connected to “A is for Astronaut” as it has a similar protagonist.

DJ: We also hope to have our themes available in world wide, as currently it’s only available in Europe and Australasia.

What are your favourite biscuits? Do you have different biscuits for different stages of development?

DJ: I believe that’s an industry standard yes, but also an industry secret!

RK: We need our biscuit secrets to stay enigmatic!

Thanks for your time.

You can follow the progress of one of Dugan’s other projects Aqua Kitty (working title) on the TIGforums.

Update 28th Oct 2011: A is for Astronaut will be available on the US PSN Store from the 1st Nov 2011.

Biggest story of the day was obviously the Call of Duty: Elite announcement that you’ve doubtless already seen here on The Average Gamer ;) What you may have missed was the Wall Street Journal publishing it a full 14 hours before the internal online and print embargo that the rest of us were given. Cue this cathartic rant by MCV’s Ben Parfitt:

Of course, if the press really wanted rid of this practice we’d refuse to cover any games or information protected by an NDAs. Perhaps if Activision had told us all that WSJ was getting special treatment a few of us might have torn up the agreement and left the Elite event right there and then.
But who’s going to do that? Gotta get dem clickety-clicks, innit.
– Ben Parfitt, OPINION: Who’s the more foolish?

And because I’m a shameless self-promoter, I shall point out that this is just another ugly side to the gaming press’s dependency on PRs for content that I talked about in my personal blog last week.

That’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? …Who advertises on games websites? Games companies. Who provides the content? Games companies. Everybody knows this.
– Debbie Timmins, Am I Destroying Games Journalism?

In other news:

The Official PlayStation blog announced that the PlayStation Network will be fully functional again by the end of the week. It’s not quite the previously-reported May 31st but it’ll do.

This beautifully strange live-action Portal video has been making the rounds:

RockStar and/or Xbox announced an L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass which gives you all forthcoming LA Noire downloadable content but at half the individual price.

GTA.net have released an amazing map of Liberty City made in Google Streetview.

And finally, Falmouth-based café Loading has created a fabulous Resident-Evil-inspired cocktail.

[hat tips to Joe Barron and Sinan Kubba]

The advantage with these cards is that you can avoid entering your credit/debit card details into your PSN account. You can also save yourself some money when you shop around for these cards. If you have a look at the lists of prices below you will see many of the cards cost less than the value they redeem for in the PlayStation Store. There are also some US links towards the bottom of this post.

PSN card – £20:

• £17.99 – GameGears.co.uk
• £18.79 – MyMemory.co.uk
• £19.85 – SimplyGames.com
• £19.99 – Gamestation.co.uk
• £21.50 – Amazon.co.uk
• £24.39 – Play.com

PSN card – £25:

• £19.99 – 7DayShop.com
• £21.99 – MyMemory.co.uk
• £23.55 – XboxLiveUK76.com
• £23.86 – Shopto.net
• £24.85 – TheHut.co.uk
• £24.85 – Zavii.co.uk
• £25.00 – Game.co.uk
• £25.00 – Tesco.co.uk [Option to collect in-store]
• £25.00 – HMV.co.uk
• £30.99- Amazon.co.uk

PSN card – £35:

• £32.55 – XboxLiveUK76.com
• £32.86 – Shopto.net [Instant digital code*]
• £33.85 – Shopto.net
• £34.85 – TheHut.co.uk
• £34.85 – Zavii.co.uk
• £35.00 – Game.co.uk
• £35.00 – Currys.co.uk
• £35.00 – Tesco.co.uk [Option to collect in-store]
• £35.00 – HMV.co.uk

PSN card – £50:

• £47.99 – GameGears.co.uk
• £48.02 – Amazon.co.uk
• £48.85 – Shopto.net
• £48.85 – SimplyGames.com [15/05 - Out of stock]
• £49.99 – GameStation.co.uk [15/05 - Out of stock]
• £50.00 – Play.com

*With the instant digital code, you pay for the item as usual and then you get a code to redeem (i.e. type into) in the PlayStation Store. In Shopto.net’s case, codes appear in the codes tab of the “my account” section of their website.

If you have a Xbox 360 then you can remove your credit card details online from Xbox LIVE and/or check out the best deals for 12-month Xbox LIVE gold memberships.

For our visitors from the US, here are some links for you:

PSN card – $20:

• $19.99 – PCGamesSupply.com [Instant digital code]
• $20.00 – Amazon.com [Instant digital code]
• $20.00 – BestBuy.com

PSN card – $50:

• $46.00 – Meijer.com
• $46.49 – Amazon.com
• $49.99 – PCGamesSupply.com [Instant digital code]
• $50.00 – Amazon.com [Instant digital code]
• $50.00 – BestBuy.com
• $50.77 – VPGames.com

Update 20th May 2011: Updated prices and removed out of stock notes. Added XboxLiveUK76.com deals. Thanks to yukicore for telling me about this site.

It’s an interesting take on the genre for a console. This game is much lighter on the resource-mining and base-building than your typical RTS, choosing instead to focus on combat tactics. You’ll find that it’s impossible to zerg the maps; the typical campaign mode pits you as a small elite team against overwhelming odds. That’s not to say that the whole game is like this however – even though it’s a PSN-only title, Under Siege will ship with a fully-featured level editor with a hefty logic system and the ability to add your own cutscenes.

The dev team themselves are hoping that people will branch out from RTS and create all sorts of things, as with Little Big Planet. “What we expect is to create a new community for RTS-style maps and levels on the console” producer Filipe Pina told us in an interview. “You don’t know what people will do with your stuff and I think that’s really interesting and exciting. It’s for us to just sit and see and play the games made with our engine from other users.”

One of the most frustrating things about playing an RTS on a console is the lack of a mouse cursor and proper controls to select different units. By providing PlayStation Move support, Seed Studios have given us a handy alternative control method. It’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the interface, with button combos to select certain unit types and the D-pad to assign custom battle groups. You can read more about the game in my Under Siege hands-on preview and check out our 2-part interview with Filipe Pina.

Under Siege will be available from the European PSN store on 27th April for £11.99 and €14.99.

I’m pretty sure you can guess the storyline, but if not, here goes. You are a survivor of a virus that turns the population into zombies. As with any good zombie flick, you are miraculously immune to the virus. Oh, and you also know how to use lots of weapons. The story comes at you via stylish comic book graphics between levels, maybe a bit cliché but it suits the game perfectly.

There are only 10 levels of gameplay; most seem to be around 15 to 20 minutes long. While this might seem short, do remember this is a PSN game and there are the different difficulty levels. I’m still fighting along in normal mode, however even on this level I still die often enough. Since people seem to be going after Platinum trophies right now, it will come as good news that Dead Nation features one. You will need to complete the whole game a couple of times on different difficulty levels, as well as commit zombie genocide!

Isometric 3D did seem a strange choice in this day and age, a bit Diabloish. Once you start playing however, you’ll see it works very well. The environment is very well rendered and there is actually strategy that you can use. See, zombies love to go beat up anything making noise, so shoot a car with an alarm and watch them run to beat it up. Keep shooting it, and boom! there go the zombies.

The game itself is very easy to pick up and play. The controls are simple, left thumb stick to target, right to move. Weapons are selected with the left D-pad; the issue I find is that when in a tight corner being mauled to death I have a habit of selecting the wrong weapon. For some reason it always seems to be the launcher and I end up blowing myself to hell and back.

With regards to the weapons, there’s quite a selection from the stock rifle, to blade throwers and electroshock cannons. Also you can collect distraction items, like flares, grenades, mines and so on. These are very handy for clearing large areas of zombies. Personally, I tend to just use the rifle, SMG (for mass slaughter of weak zombies), grenades and occasionally the launcher.

I would strongly suggest buying all the improvements to the normal rifle first. How do you do that? Well while killing zombies you gain money and there are hidden boxes scattered around the levels. You can also open the trunks of cars to find more goodies.

This brings us nicely to armour. It’s important to look around for the hidden boxes, as this is where you’ll get the different types of armour from. Trust me; you will definitely need it to survive being overrun by zombies. I’ve been mainly trying to keep the Endurance, Strength and Agility attributes balanced, but your preferences may vary.

So where does that leave us? With a game that I keep coming back to, swearing at, and trying again. I’ve yet to try the co-op, or online but I can see how these would only enhance the game further. At $14.99 in the US and £9.99 in the UK, it’s definitely worth buying. Throw in the latest additions of voice chat and check point saving – what are you waiting for? Go get Dead Nation right now.

Screenshots