I just came across http://www.spritestitch.com – A video game inspired craft weblog. I’m not very good with arts and crafts myself, but some of this stuff makes me want to take up stitching:

Or baking:

Or to pursue knitting more seriously:

Go, check out the site at http://www.spritestitch.com!

Well finally I am back home and playing with Windows 7 again, instead of Vista [cold shiver...] anyway back to gaming goodness and still Windows 7 does not disappoint.

So lets get to it… I will start with the games that don’t work (since it is a smaller list)…

No One Lives Forever, Discworld Noir, Thief, Thief II, Thief: Deadly Shadows (it worked but has some graphical Issues).

Now for the ones that did work…

Steam Games.

Grand Theft Auto IV, Saint’s Row 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Dragon Age: Origin, Beyond Good & Evil, Call of Juarez, Far Cry 2, Flock, Braid, Portal, Overlord, Overlord II, Psychonauts, Defence Grid: The Awakening.

Direct 2 Drive Games.

Red Alert 3: Uprising, Mirror’s Edge, Crysis Warhead.

Disc Games.

X3: Reunion, No One Lives Forever 2.

Other Games.

Mr. Robot, Neighbours from Hell 1 & 2, Sam & Max Season 2, Tales of Monkey Island.

Well that’s it for now, still loads more to try see you again…

Link to review

Sam and Max return for another season of 5 new episodes of madness for you to solve!

Keeping in line with Season 1, the game follows the ‘don’t fix what aint broke’ concept of things and continues with the same puzzling point an click adventure game that made the first season a hit.

There’s 5 more episodes for you to get your troublesome crime fighting duo back into the swing off things filled with classic Sam and Max humour to keep the fans going or even those on the same level of humour entertained. Those used to the series can expect plenty of familiar faces and even those more familiar with Season one will recognise plenty of ‘friends’ to encounter.

Much like the first, puzzling game play will be broken up with an occasional mini game of sorts, including driving down the streets looking for the new ‘Torture Me Elmer’ to run over.

Unfortunately, the game is more of the same. Which in some ways is great. Others not.

For some the game play will become rather monotonous fast and will shortly become bored with having to talk to all the characters and click around on all the objects in places for clues. I found playing I with a friend a lot more easier as I found them playing it got me more involved when it came to just helping out, and as I wasn’t the key player, I could zone in and zone out when needed. However, this isn’t really how the games intended to be played.
Reduced: 90% of original size [ 799 x 449 ] – Click to view full image

Majority of arcade games are used for killing time, or classics. Usually, played when bored, waiting or to allow a download to continue without you being bored out of your skull. Either way, there very jump in jump out orientated. Sam and Max is far from it, its big and definitely will keep you going, but to which extent is really up to the gamer and your tastes, at points, I’d happily just watch an episode or two rather than sit through 5 episodes of long, repetitive and tiresome gaming, still only one for the big fans of Sam and Max.

5

Link to review

This are some of the coolest gaming related stuff i’ve seen.

See if you can name all of them. No cheating. It’s not that hard.

Thanks to Kotaku.

What do you mean, you haven’t seen Annex’d episode 4 yet? It’s got some pretty talented people behind it… in fact, do yourself a favor and go back and watch ‘em all. I celebrate their entire catalog.

Today, we’re going to talk about the Tales of Monkey Island. Yahtzee recently did a video about it where he gave it the usual slamming, but I’m going to stick up for it just a bit.

Tales of Monkey Island has currently released two out of five new monkey island “episodes” that will tell one complete story over the course of the series. I’ve played through the first one and about two thirds (I think) through the second, and I have to say I find them quite enjoyable.

I hear some people weren’t comfortable with the idea of moving Guybrush around with the mouse and then using that same mouse to click on things. … ‘kay? I don’t know what the problem is with this one. Sure, occasionally you’ll get hung up on a doorway or whatever, but it’s not like Resident Evil where there’s a zombie chewing on your face if you don’t move quickly enough. It’s an adventure game! It doesn’t need absolutely perfect controls. I found them completely functional. The camera also did a much better job of showing which areas are accessible than Escape From Monkey Island, the last 3D game in the series.

While we’re talking about controls, they got rid of the verbs and completely streamlined everything. Guybrush can click on objects to interact with them. He’ll do whatever the appropriate action is, you don’t need to decide whether he needs to “push”, “open”, or “use” a door, he just does it. The inventory is also made much simpler, and this might be the only time I’ll say this, but here simple isn’t a bad thing. Previous games had you lugging around around thirty different thingamajigs, some of which you would use once and then just hang onto indefinitely, and others where you’d need to keep them for multiple uses.

The graphics and environments are decent but not great. They get the job done. Again, nobody expects Monkey Island to be completely cutting edge. It’s true that the minor character models are pretty boring, but Guybrush and the other main characters are surprisingly expressive.

How’s the writing? Better than Monkey Island 4. Like all the games, it’s filled with witty references to all the other games, and often to other unrelated LucasArts games. The story is pretty good so far too. It feels like the game is trying to walk that line between honoring the past games and still telling a new story.

I look forward to the next three games. In fact, this game makes me somewhat interested in some of the other games released by Telltale, such as the Sam and Max games. Perhaps I’ll give those a shot some day.

Oh and because every article written about Monkey Island needs to include at least one dorky reference… that’s the second biggest monkey head I’ve ever seen.

The Siege of Spinner Cay

by Shadow Wave

© 2009 Ben Cadwallader

• SPOILER WARNING: Contains Chapter 1 Spoilers

Chapter 2 of the episodic Tales Of Monkey Island PC point ‘n click game takes a small downhill tumble but remains very enjoyable.

Guybrush Threepwoods newest epic adventure continues exactly where chapter 1 left you hanging, and this time Guybrush is forced to travel to Spinner Cay, the islands of the Mer-people (think mermaids), to repair his ship’s now damaged mast.

This leads him to bump into his love, Elaine and maybe a few other old friends as well. Upon meeting Elaine, Guybrush is given the task of finding the 3 golden relics that need to be used to find La Esponge Grande, which is needed to save the Caribbean from the Pox of Lechuck.

• Monkey Island Siege of Spinner Cay

Guybrush’s quest to find the 3 relics in Chapter 2 is much simpler, easier and less confusing compared to episode 1. With less areas to explore, less people to talk to, and a few copy and paste areas I think most people will figure out what needs to be done pretty quickly.

You can explore the Mer-people city, Spinner Cay, which has a grand total of 3 inhabitants to talk to and not many places to explore. There are a few very small islands, most which serve no purpose (yet?).

Lots of exploring to do

Most of your time will be spent exploring another jungle filled island.

This jungle though, looks extremely similar to the jungle you had to explore in chapter 1 but without all the ‘choose the right path’ puzzles. This does make trekking through the jungle a bit more pleasant as you will remember how to get around much easier.

I found the humour to be much more hilarious this time around compared to Chapter 1, with lots of witty remarks which seemed to tie in better, and there are A LOT of funny moments that only fans of the earlier games will appreciate.

I think the main let down in this chapter is that the islands do not change essentially during the whole game (with an exception for a brief moment at the end). In chapter 1, the town of Flotsam Island had new characters appear when you were through various sections of the game and the island slowly changed due to the Pox spreading over the island. It gave you a sense of progression and while Chapter 2 does do this to some degree, it just doesn’t pull it off as well.

I also can see a potential problem with the re-use of character models. Your ship mate, Mr Windslow looks very similar to a pirate on the island, who also looks very similar to the reporter from Chapter 1.

I just hope that this trend doesn’t continue.

The presentation, controls, and hint system are just the same as chapter 1 and I doubt they will be changing at all. Sadly it would have been really nice in this chapter to have some water effects since Guybrush is dealing with water people.

There are many times there should have been some kind of splash and there was nothing and it just looks a little too wrong. We’ve been having splashing effects since the Super Nintendo and it would have been nice to have even just a little something to actually demonstrate fluidity in the fluid….

I might sound like I’m full of criticism and have no love for this chapter of Tales of Monkey Island, but I did enjoy it a lot. It has great humour, the puzzles are fun, the story starts to come together, and overall it was a good game. It’s just that when compared to Chapter 1 it falls short.

Would OXCGN Steal this for the 360?

Steal it? Maybe

© 2009 Ben Cadwallader

Please share us around

Wie schon seit längerem bekannt ist, haben sich die Mitarbeiter von Telltale Games im Geheimen mit der Entwicklung von einem neuen, episodischen Teil von Monkey Island gewerkelt, und am 7. Juli kommt die erste Folge. Nimmt man alle Episode vom Umfang her zusammen, hat man etwas, das man hochtrabend als Monkey Island 5 bezeichnen könnte, die Entwickler nennen ihr Werk einfach Tales of Monkey Island. Wer sich jetzt fragt, wieso Lucas Arts nicht dafür verantwortlich ist, dem sei gesagt, dass sich Telltale schon vor längerer Zeit mit den beiden Staffeln zum hierzulande ein wenig unbekannteren Sam & Max seine Lorbeeren verdient hat. Einige Mitarbeiter von Telltale Games waren früher übrigens selbst bei Lucas Arts, man kennt sich also untereinander und ich als Fan bin froh über dieses Projekt, auf jeden Fall begeistert es mich mehr als das HD-Remake von Secret of Monkey Island.

Wie schon bei dem Episodengame Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, gibt es auch eine WiiWare-Version von Tales of Monkey Island, aber auch hier schlägt der Preishammer wieder zu: 5 Episoden für je 1.000 WiiPoints, also für 50 Euro! Zum Vergleich kostet die Staffel auf dem PC nur 35 $, also ca. 26-27€, das ist knapp die Hälfte. Außerdem haben die Wii-Besitzer keine Chance etwas vorzubestellen, das heißt für sie a) kein Vorbesteller-Forum, b) keine Gratis-Sammler-DVD des Games 2010 und c) keine Gratis-Episode eines weiteren Telltale-Spiels. Die Welt der Episodengames ist hart und ungerecht. Wer also einen recht aktuellen PC hat, und bei PayPal registriert ist, oder eine Kreditkarte hat, der sollte am besten noch bis zum 6. Juli 2009 zuschlagen und sich alle Vorteile sichern.

Zur Story wurde leider noch nicht viel bekannt gegeben, nur dass Guybrush durch ein Missgeschick sämtliche Freibeuter der Karibik in Voodoo-Zombies verwandelt hat, also segelt er los um den Schwamm La Esponja Grande um Rat zu fragen. Immerhin wurden ein Plot mit vielen Wendungen und einem überraschenden Finale versprochen. (ich denke bei letzterem stark an Monkey Island 2 ) Wie zu erwarten war kommen neben Guybrush auch wieder seine Frau Elaine, die Voodoo-Lady und natürlich Threepwoods Nemesis LeChuck vor, wie man auch dem Trailer entnehmen kann. Ob auch klassische Charaktere wie Wally, Stan, die Gemüse-Kannibalen, Otis, Carla, Meathook, Herman Toothrot oder der Plapperschädel Murray auftauchen werden, ist und bleibt ein Geheimnis. Ich für meinen Teil freue mich trotzdem auf das Release und werde dann im Juli die Segel setzen. Achja, und falls ihr so wie ich auch noch Fans von Wallace und Gromit seid, da hat Telltale auch etwas für euch.

Und jetzt viel Spaß mit dem offiziellen Trailer!

Nach meinem Geburtstag ordentlich mit Geld versehen bin ich Heute in den MediMax gestampft um mir Okami für die Wii zu kaufen. Doch was erblickten meine trüben Augen? Sam und Max! Da ich ein wahnsinniger Fan der früheren Lucas Arts Adventures bin und auch damals Sam und Max nicht an mir vorbeigezogen ist, habe ich mich spontan für den Nachfolger “Sam & Max – Season One” entschieden.
Nebenbei war das Spiel auf 30€ reduziert und die schrullige Kassiererin hat nur 23€ verlangt.

Das erste was mir beim Spielstart aufgefallen war, war der eingedeutschte Titel Saison eins – schrecklich. Das zweite Manko, was aber meinen persönlichen Geschmack anspricht, war die 3D-Grafik. Seit Monkey Island 4 bekomme ich eine mittelschwere Krise, wenn ich ein 3D-Adventure sehe.
Bei dem jetzigen Spiel gefällt es mir auch nicht, aber da muss ich durch.

Wenn jemand ein schönes 2D-Adventure der Neuzeit kennt, sollte er sich umgehend bei mir melden.

Aber erstmal allgemein zu Sam und Max:
Die beiden bilden ein Polizeiteam, welches mit absurden Methoden noch absurdere Fälle löst. Sam ist ein Hund im blauen Anzug mit passendem Hut, welcher wesentlich mehr Gehirn besitzt als sein Kumpel Max, und so der Kopf des Duos ist.
Sein Begleiter Max ist ein kleiner, weißer Hase mit fiesem Grinsen, der seine Angelegenheiten am liebsten mit wahnsinnig viel Gewalt regelt, was ein Grund sein dürfte, warum er, im Gegensatz zu Sam, keine Waffe mit sich rum tragen darf.

Das neue Spiel gleicht einer Fernsehserie, darum auch der Beiname “Season One”. Hier gilt es 6 Fälle zu lösen, die man frei auswählen kann und nicht gezwungener masen “chronologisch” vorgehen muss.

Der erste Fall beginnt damit eine Ratte mit selbstgemachten Schweizerkäse zu beschwichtigen, da diese das Bürotelefon geklaut hat. Danach folgt der erste Fall: ein Terrorist treibt sein Unwesen in Bosco’s Laden.
Mehr möchte ich auch nicht vorweg nehmen.

Das Spiel ist, HALLELUJA, ein Point-Click Adventure, was mit der Wii-Remote auch Spaß macht. Die Steuerung hat mir fast Tränen in die Augen getrieben, es war fabelhaft. In dem Spiel lenkst du Sam, Max läuft dir treu ergeben hinterher, lässt sich aber wegen seiner Konzentrationsfähigkeit, die vergleichbar mit einer Tasse Yackbutter ist, leicht ablenken und spielt so an allem rum, was in der Gegend rumsteht. Nettes Gimmik.

Ansonsten gilt es, wie in jedem guten Adventure, jedes Objekt zu untersuchen, jede Tür zu öffnen und mit jeder Person über alles zu reden. Nicht weil es die Story vorranbringt, sondern weil es einfach riesen Spaß macht, die ironischen Fragen von Sam und die zynischen Nebenkommentare von Max zu hören. Geld wird eingetrieben, in dem man anderer Leute Auto zerstört, die anhält und dann eine Geldstrafe verhängt, weil ja das Auto kaputt ist.

Ich liebe diese Sinnlos-Logik. Ich liebe dieses Spiel.
Ein wirklich gutes Adventure, welches wirklich zu empfehlen ist. Besonders gut hat mit die Synchro der Charaktere gefallen, die Stimmen passen perfekt und sind auch sicherlich den Meisten bekannt (Mauzi aus Pokemon, Ned Flenders aus Simpsons, Rufus aus Final Fantasy VII, diverse Stimmen aus WoW und Onepiece……).

Zwar fehlt die Scumm-Technik (oh du 2D-Grafik), aber wer über seinen Schatten springen kann, den erwartet ein skurriles und witziges Abenteuer, dass sich nicht zu verstecken brauch.

“Sam & Max Season One”
von Telltale Games und Adventure Company

Platform: PC und Nintendo Wii
USK: Ab 12 Jahren
Gerne: Point ‘n’ Click Adventure
Preis (auf Amazon):25,95€ für Wii

Today Nick posted his review of Fable II’s second downloadable expansion, See the Future. He wasn’t exactly impressed.

The criticisms largely echo mine in reviewing the first add-on, Knothole Island, and it’s an overall shame to again see Lionhead botch its DLC. Costumes and potions will only get your game so far, you know.

You got all excited for nothing, pup

It’s also unfortunate that my predictions of See the Future being more worthwhile turned out wrong–that’s what I get for speculation, I suppose.

News for Thursday: Sony loses cash, a lack of funding shutters another development studio and Telltale Games sells a lot of Strong Bad. It’s all very money-oriented today.

The House of PlayStation might have expectantly lost money, but they're selling many more of these than before

Sony posted a $1 billion loss for the end of the previous financial year ending March 31, 2009; however the company’s operating losses have been cut in half during the same fiscal period. This isn’t anything new considering the global economic issues still plaguing businesses everywhere, but Sony has in the past especially received flak for the high production costs associated with the PlayStation 3.

Now it seems the company has improved the methods of producing their next-gen console to subsequently reduce monetary expenditures and perform better at market in spite of a weakened Yen and slower PlayStation 2 sales.

However, Sony accomplished much more in terms of sales figures: over the last year the company saw a 10-percent increase in sales of PS3 units and a doubling of software sales for the console. Despite the retail successes Sony expects to lose another $1.25 billion over the course of the next fiscal year.

That price drop doesn’t sound too promising, does it?

If only Factor 5 could've used the Force, financially

In some very sad news (as reported by 1UP,) development studio Factor 5, best-known for their series of Rogue Squadron titles, has closed its San Rafael studio. It appears that after financial problems resulting from the bankruptcy of Brash Entertainment last year–with whom Factor 5 was crafting a Superman title–the long-running development studio could no longer afford to keep going.

On a personal note, the Rogue Squadron series for both the Nintendo 64 and GameCube meant a lot to this then-young Star Wars fan. They weren’t just geek indulgences, but truly amazing games for their respective generations and showed what great work Factor 5 was capable of. In the end the company likely felt pigeonholed into the role of “awesome Star Wars game people.” As such they tried to expand their horizons with Lair, which ended up to be a commercial and critical mess.  The complications with Brash seemed to only make matters worse.

Now, they’re gone. We sincerely wish those affected the best of luck in their future endeavors.

Max is certainly enthusiastic about Telltale's success

On the happy side of videogame development, Telltale Games announced that they reached 1,000,000 to-date sales of downloadable episodes for their Sam & Max and Strong Bad games. Congratulations to the independent studio, as it’s quite an impressive milestone to reach for a smaller and more-focused method of creating games.

That’s not meant to sound condescending; it’s a testament to Telltale’s ability to craft humorous titles people truly want to play. I’ll admit I’ve yet to check out any of their episodic games, but now seems like the right time to do so considering the company’s 5-year anniversary sale currently happening on Steam.

Plus, it’s been so long since I’ve watched anything Homestar Runner-related that I might as well get back into the swing of things.

Oh, is it another day already? Well then it’s time for your Down Write Daily. As the title indicates, this is our (ideally) daily write up of, uh, stuff. If you’re a big fan of dumb things, cool news, and sweet-ass pictures of editors and/or celebrities then this is probably the best possible place to be.

If you’ve got anything you’d like to submit for a daily consideration (trust me, if you e-mail me stuff it’ll probably get pimped here. I’m a sucker for those electronic mails) then hit me at DownWriteFierce [at] Gmail [dot] com.

Until you can come up with something cooler than I can dig up on the Intertron, check out the three things that stuck out most to me today. Please?

Pyramid Scheming is the now-five-years-old Telltale Games. The team is celebrating their fifth anniversary by roping you into a promotional plot that is sure to sell more of their fantastic adventure games.  Sam and Max’s developer offers up a buck for every bonus code coupon that you fire off to your friends, so if you’re in the market for some cheap games and store credit then put on your party hat and pimp some games to your buds.

Commander Shephard friggin’ loves Facebook. Some wily forumite over at the Penny Arcade boards concocted a hilarious homage to Mass Effect’s main man in the form of a personal profile. The faux-profile (fauxfile?) is full of gnarly innuendo and brilliant nods to the deepest, darkest secrets of Urdnot Wrex’s dino-balls. Only chatty, hardcore players could possibly get all of the clever jokes spread throughout the profile, so dig deep into your Galactic Codex if you aren’t already crying tears of joy. [Thanks loads to The Grind via Twitter]

The Geniuses at GameSpy deserve a medal for this one. Videogame Industry: The Movie has been brilliantly casted, complete with Whoopi Goldberg taking on the role of former Newsweeker, N’Gai Croal, and Andy Dick portraying someone outside his normal realm of intolerable idiocy, Will Wright. Perhaps the most egregious flaw in the cast is that Elijah Wood is slated to play the role of God of War-designer, David Jaffe, rather than his birth-right role, PC Gamer’s Evan Lahti.

From Telltale:

In the spring of 2004, Dan Connors and Kevin Bruner left LucasArts with a vision for a brand new type of interactive entertainment, and founded Telltale Games.

Five years later, Telltale has over 70 employees. In the time other developers take to create one game, we’ve put out more than twenty, featuring characters you know and love — Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit, and Bone. We’ve created games that are funny, creative, and have great stories. And since they’re episodic, you can actually finish them, and look forward to the next episode!

To show their appreciation for all of their fans, Telltale is offering all of their episodic content for just $5 an episode until June 17, 2009. To redeem this simply enter this coupon code upon online checkout at http://www.telltalegames.com/store/.

YOUR COUPON CODE: GSH-JZR-AC2-EM9

I don’t really like point and click adventure games.

Spending ten minutes looking for the frying pan to combine with the fish bowl is not my idea of fun.  This is partly down to psychology, I think quite differently to the way lots of people do.  Give me a Maths puzzle and I can solve it, but if you compare my method with that of other people it will be very different.  This means that I often don’t understand what a puzzle game is expecting me to do.  Oh I admire the games, insult arm wrestling in one of the Monkey Island demos was a lot of fun and I do understand the thrill of solving a problem, but the games just tend to annoy me.

I wasn’t expecting anything different from this demo, but I wanted to have a go.  I really like Wallace and Gromit, especially the original three episodes, and if a game can carry across a similar feeling I would have a lot of fun.  Sadly this isn’t that Wallace and Gromit.

I found very little of the humour funny, it’s obviously trying to follow the same theme and there are elements of the series and films in the game but it doesn’t pull it off.  No surprise really since it’s a very particular kind of humour.  Wallace is not voiced by the brilliant Peter Sallis, although the voice actor does a reasonable job of copying the voice.  It’s apparently voiced by Aardman’s official stand-in, and you can tell as some lines are almost spot on.  This is more of a personal gripe, I dislike the entire Futurama episode ‘A Tale of Two Santas‘ simply because Santa and the Robot Devil are not voiced by John Goodman and Dan Castellaneta respectively, the latter being one of my favourite characters.

The music is overbearing, it changes styles for whoever you are standing near, military for the Army officer, garden party music for the Flower growing neighbour, whilst this is a good touch, the overall quality of the music is poor and gets in the way.  The menu screen music is meant to be similar to the amazing Television programmes theme, but the moments that sound the same are few and far between, most of it sounds quite poor.

But enough ranting, time to give a little information about how the demo plays out.

Apart from the music the menu system is nice and simple, no reams of graphics settings to tweak but it does let you choose the most important aspect, the resolution.  The game starts of in Wallace and Gromit’s living room for a quick tutorial.  You control Wallace directly, using the mouse to interact with objects.  White corners appear around everything you can interact with and it has some pretty generous borders so there is no searching for that one pixel you need to click.  It’s pretty simple and finishes quickly giving you the basic information you need to work the game.

The visuals are reasonable, sharp, but without any real depth.  It fits the plasticine style well, but just doesn’t have an impact, they are just the means to an end.  Wallace’s mouth animations are pretty good, but less attention has been given to the supporting characters.

Now the demo moves on to a proper section of the game.  I found the movement slightly off-putting, and sometimes the screen transitions didn’t quite work properly.  The first person I chatted to was this stereotypical ex-army officer, he wittered on for ages about some conspiracy theory regarding a snail.  I then went off to interact with some of the objects before finally working on the problem at hand.  I won’t go into the specifics of how to solve this section as it’s pretty easy to grasp the logical steps you need to complete.  There were several objects I was interacting with that seemed to have a purpose, but the game moved on without me working out what they were for.  Whether they were just there as red herrings or because they unlock some kind of bonus I don’t know.  On to the next section.

This was where the demo really picked up.  Compared to the dull previous section it was a shining light of what this game may accomplish, too bad the pretext for the scene change was so poor.  Wallace is picked up by a huge queen bee and Gromit gives chase in the van.  This is where your control switches to Gromit.  There were only a few things to interact with, but I found it quite fun working out the order in which things needed to be done.  This section also featured the only part of the demo that made me chuckle.  So that Gromit can help Wallace you push a button labelled ‘Autopilot’.  In typical Wallace and Gromit style a device pops up from the back with arms to take over steering, the main section featuring a cap and goggles.  This is the sort of humour I like Wallace and Gromit for.Now Gromit can climb out of the van to get a hold of Wallace.  This part was very tightly controlled, but there was still room for error, it was still possible to lose your way.  This resulted in a fun section, with an urgent feeling.  If the full game is more like this then there is hope.  I rescue Wallace but the Queen Bee is still giving chase.

That’s where the demo ends.  A small series of clips shows you what will happen in the four episodic games that are being released.

If you like point and click adventure games then this might be worth a go.  It’s made by the same people behind the recent Sam and Max remake and the Strongbad series.  I haven’t played Sam and Max but from what I have heard about it this seems quite similar.  If you liked that and like Wallace and Gromit then I can see you enjoying this, or if you just like point and click adventures in general, although you may find this less of a challenge than say the Monkey Island series.  If you are not sure yourself why not have a go at the demo, it’s available from various places listed here or through Steam.

I didn’t enjoy it myself, so I won’t be buying the full games.

The whole series is currently on a pre-order offer, 25% off the four episodes and two games (one from each of TellTale Games’ other series) free.  Ice Station Santa and Dangeresque 3:  The Criminal Projective.  Again you can either get them through their site (dollars only) or through Steam.

For the price of a movie ticket ($8-15), WonderCon is definitely worth checking out this weekend. Part film fanfest with cast/crew screenings, part kitsch-o-rama with toy novelties, comics and tees, action-packed with aliens, creatures and celebrity mentoring everywhere.  

Best of Show Guide/Sa 2.28  
- 10-7 Booth 644, Steve Purcell, Sam & Max, Booth 1412 Adam West, Batman
- 10-7 Booth 1307 Carrie Fisher, Star Wars, Booth 1408 Mark Hamill, Star Wars
- 10-7 Rm 254/6, Children’s Film Festival, Rm 226, Anime Film Festival
- 11:00 Rm 204/6, Go From Fan to Creator
- 11:30 Esplanade, Warner Bros. Watchmen cast & crew screening
- 11:30 Rm 103, Street Fighter IV with Capcom Crew
- 11:30 Rm 236/8, Comic Book Heaven Live:  Freaky Ways to Shoot a Space Monster 
- 12:30 Rm 103, Michael Chabon & Matt Fraction
- 12:30 Rm 236/8, R2D2 Droid Building Basics
- 12:30 Esplanade, Astro Boy
- 1:00   Esplanade, Pandorum cast & crew screening
- 1:30   Esplanade, Alien Trespass cast & crew screening 
              with Eric McCormack, Will & Grace, Dan Lauria, Wonder Years
- 2:00  Rm 104, EA’s Dante’s Inferno
- 2:00  Rm 214, Portfolio Reviews with Troy Alders, Art Director, Lucas Licensing
- 2:00  Esplanade, Star Trek cast & crew screening
- 2:30  Rm 236/8, Japanese Superheroes
- 2:45  Esplanade, Focus Features 9 cast & crew screening with Elijah Wood, LOTR
- 3:00  Booth 452, Skee Ball with Martin Starr, Superbad
- 3:00  Rm 103, Spectacular Spiderman cast & crew screening
- 3:30  Rm 236/8, Party Like Its 1979 
- 3:30  Esplanade, Pixar’s Up cast & crew screening with Director Pete Docter
- 4:30  Esplanade, Terminator Salvation cast & crew screening
- 5:00  Rm 103, Crackle’s Angel of Death screening with Ed Brubaker, Zoe Bell
- 5:00  Rm 204/6, How a Comic Is Made
- 5:00  Rm 220, Comics Podcasting
- 5:30  Rm 236/8, Video Game Design
- 5:30  Esplanade, Star Wars
- 6:00 Rm 104, Nintendo
- 6:00 Rm 204/6, PT Creative Work/shop 
- 8:30 Esplanade, WonderCon Masquerade

Best of Show Guide/Su 3.1

- 10-5 Booth 1412 Adam West, Batman
- 10-5 Booth 1307 Carrie Fisher, Star Wars, Booth 1408 Mark Hamill, Star Wars
- 11-5  Rm 254/6, Children’s Film Festival, Rm 226, Anime Film Festival
- 11:30 Rm 204/6, Drawing Star Wars
- 11:30 Rm 232/4, Comics for Kids
- 12:00 Rm 103, X- Men 
- 12:00 Rm 104, Super Capers cast & crew screening with Adam West, Batman
- 1:00   Rm 220, Emily the Strange 
- 1:00  Esplanade, Chuck cast & crew screening
- 2:00  Rm 214, Portfolio Reviews with Troy Alders, Art Director, Lucas Licensing 
- 2:00  Esplanade, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles cast & crew screening
- 2:30   Rm 204/6, Copyrights 
- 2:45   Esplanade, Harper’s Island cast & crew screening 
- 3:00  Rm 104, Cartoon Network’s League of Super Evil cast & crew screening
- 3:30  Rm 103, Starship Smackdown
- 4:00  Rm 220, Godzilla 
- 4:00  Rm 232/4, WonderCon Talkback
- 4:00  Esplanade, Buffy the Musical screening

Link to review

Sam and Max, the freelance police return in 6 new episodes of justice and wit in the new addition to the Sam and Max franchise ‘Season 1/Save the World’ Americas most loved crime fighting dog and mentally disturbed Rabbit are back for more.

Originally out for PC, the Xbox 360 Arcade gets a taste of this pairs, unique way of solving the wildest of crimes.

Gameplay takes a lot from the original Sam and Max point and click games only with a very minimalist HUD system. Most objects in an area will be intractable or clickable to either reveal part of the clues to solving the levels objectives or the object comes with some comedic response from Sam or Max.

Keeping to true point and click games you’ll also have interactivity with NPC’s in the game, almost all play a role in your progression through the levels and you’ll have to always exhaust all your conversation choices to get what your after from the character.

Also sticking to familiar point and click game traits is the not so much difficulty, but the way you have to think about playing the game, items you pick up will always be used somehow in the level, but it can only be you to figure out how to use it correctly, some require using a combination of items you find along your travels and chats and some involve a sharp eye and some general sense to work out how to progress the story.

The graphics keep with the cartoon style of the original comic and continue throughout with new and well created settings. What’s really great is how the backgrounds and other set pieces which you may not be able to interact with still keep with the cartoons sense of humour with examples or signs and other items littered around the game.

Fans will be pleased that original voice actors return to deliver the true Sam and Max experience, lets admit, it wouldn’t be right without them!

The game has just 6 episodes, replay able but don’t change on each retry for obvious reasons. Each episode can take up to an hour or two hours to complete, however its suitable that you finish each episode in each sitting as I frequently returned to playing the game after a day or so to not have the foggiest as to what my objective is or what I’m trying to achieve, a lack of objective screens are to fault here as well as a lot of tasks requiring you to have to back track or move backwards and forwards between characters and buildings making things harder to follow aswell as needlessly time consuming.

A well made return for the much loved Sam and Max. Although not something that might be suitable for everyone, people who aren’t already fans of the cartoon or on the same level of humour that Sam and Max contain may not really get the full experience from playing the game.

Season 2 and 3 are on their way.

7.0

Quizzes are fun, aren’t they? From “The People Versus” to that one Chris Serle used to do in the early 1990s, quiz based entertainment is top of the shop. So much so in fact that we decided to run our own “Entrance exam” for Naviety Succeeds readers to see just how well they fitted the target reader demographic I just made up in my head. If you haven’t had chance to try the quiz yet then look away now and click here. Well…look first to find the link, obviously. Sigh.

So, the search for the King or Queen of Naivety Succeeds was on. But who came top? Find out after we go through the all important answers.

1. Which of my favourite movies ran a British TV campaign featuring Jonathan Ross being menaced by green hands?

Answer: Evil Dead 2. Ross (a huge fan of the original flick) and director Sam Raimi sit in the cinema watching the film, which the latter says will…ah, why don’t you just watch the ads instead…

2. Flint Paper is the neighbour of which duo?

A: Sam and Max. The Freelance Police officers (well…dog and bunny rabbit) created by Steve Purcell and made famous by the 1993 LucasArts adventure game “Sam And Max Hit The Road”. Flint is mostly unseen until season two of Telltale Games’ Sam and Max revival, both sets of which are incredibly worth downloading from here.

3. Which two members of Belle and Sebastian claimed the controversial (with Steps) Brits Best Newcomer award in 1999?

A: Richard Colburn and Mick Cooke who received it claiming to be Belle and Sebastian themselves. The rest of the band were busy recording what would become the largely awful “Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant”.

4. What was the gift with the very first issue of Viz?

A: An ice cream. Well, a lino print of one to be exact. A future issue gave away a free balloon – helpfully stapled to the page.

5. Complete the pattern: 29, 21, 24, 41 (potentially 42), 20, 11, 12, __

A: 1 (Being the number of stories each Doctor Who featured in. The potentially changed number is due to Shada being only half complete in Tom Baker’s case due to strike action.)

6. What connects Joe Dallesandro, Alain Delon, Richard Davalos and an unknown boy soldier?

A: All feature on the front covers for The Smiths‘ four studio albums

7. On Saturday Night Fry, what is the shared name of all but one members of the public met by the Fat Man On A Bicycle (quiver, quiver, wobble, wobble)?

A: Hugh Laurie. After a dressing down he later changes this to Valdemar Janacek.

8. What’s a Hidden Mickey?

A: An image of Mickey Mouse’s head and ears in silhouette snuck into various Disney products. Read more about it here.

9. Where would you give Stylish Confetti to the Heavily-Armed Clown in order to attain the Idol of Many Hands?

A: Governor Elaine Marley’s mansion on Melee Island to be precise. I’d accept Monkey Island though being as it’s a scene in the first game in the series “The Secret Of Monkey Island”, just given a lick of paint and available here.

10. Which comedy troupe has had all of its members featured on the CBBC channel links with Ed and Oucho?

A: We Are Klang

11. What first name do the news vendor and comic reading kid share in Watchmen?

A: Bernard. Or Bernie. But none of the other Nolan sisters.

12. Who specifically was hanging with Howard Marks?

A: “You, Me and The Guy From Sparks” (Hanging With Howard Marks from Super Furry Animals debut LP “Fuzzy Logic”, 1996)

13. Put the following into the correct order: History, Diversity, Nature, Health

A: Diversity, Nature, History, Health (All are series one Wonder Showzen episode titles in transmission order)

14. Name three acts Ken Worthington (pictured right) represents.

A: According to WINTA, John Shuttleworth, Janet Le Roe, Sammy Martini, Julie Satan, Charlie Wigwam, Alan the Opera Singer

15. Is it OK to let Bob from the office down the hall in?

A: Well, you can if you want but he *is* a zombie and will eat your brains. (“Re: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton)

Congratulations to Apollo 9 Whiskeydrink (actual name) who got a stunning 9/15 right, with kudos to everyone else who took the time to have a go at a really rather silly bit of quizzing.

Tomorrow: yodelling Rimsky-Korsakov while riding on a motorized pogo-stick then reciting the seven times-tables while standing on a hammock and balancing a piano. Hey. It’s a living…

Do you remember games like Kings Quest, Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and Leisure Suit Larry? Did you spend hours at a time sitting at your computer trying to figure out how to solve the next puzzle in Gabriel Knight, The Seventh Guest or The Adventures of Willy Beamish? For me, these and more were an integral part of my childhood and still bring back warm memories of hours spent in front of the computer. As I grew up, the adventure game genre evolved from pure text adventures, to 16 color games with text prompts to huge multimedia productions with professional casts. I remember the first time I saw King’s Quest 5 on CD-ROM at CompUSA and knew I needed to spend 500 dollars on a single speed CD-ROM drive! I have played them all and have always enjoyed the well crafted story that played out on the computer screen. Unfortunately, as time went by, budgets sky rocketed and the world became less enthralled with plot driven games and more with shoot ‘em up style action. While companies such as The Adventure Company still released adventures, they were always missing the brilliant story-lines put out by Sierra, LucasArts, Trilobyte, and Westwood Studios. Everyone claimed that the adventure game genre had died.

Well, the times they are a changing. Recently, widely known publishers started to re-release the classic adventure games of the past. For the first time ever, I can play the original Monkey Island game on the XBox 360 or PC via the Steam network. Rather then just port the original (which is still there to play), they updated all the graphics and recorded all the dialogue and music professionally. It is quite an amazing experience and shows a lot of care went into the release. Other classics from the LucasArts archives are also being re-released: The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Loom. I still remember paying around $90 when Loom first came out, ouch!

Companies are not just intent on re-releasing the classics but continuing their legacy. TellTale Games has released two seasons of Sam and Max games which are very much in character with the original game. They are now releasing a series of Monkey Island games as well which have been well received by critics so far. It is my hope that someone will start releasing and updating the Sierra game library so a new audiences can experience the thrill of working side by side with Laura Bow, King Graham, and the rest of the Sierra family.

For now though, I revel in the idea of playing Monkey Island on the big screen in 1080p with crisp audio. Same great story and game play, just updated for today’s technical standards. Can Grim Fandango or Gabriel Knight be too far away? One can only wait and hope current sales reflect a growing interest in the genre again.

Every once in a while I will wax nostalgic and talk about one of my favorite games of the past in this blog. Do you have a favorite or want to share some of your gaming memories of yesteryear?