Archive for the ‘Indie’ Category

Bah, too much hate going around lately. But like an every-so-often intoxicated Robbie Williams once said, “Let love be your energy.” Nothing better to loosen up with the recently released soundtrack to whats easily the best original side-scrolling 2D beat ‘em up since the days of Guardian Heroes and Mischief Makers. Yes friends, Noitu Love 2’s got the groovy beats to keep this mangy mofo from vindicating through extreme hyper-ventilation. And I don’t even need no stinkin’ paper bag.

.. Anywho! Scroll all the way down to find the appropriate link. Stick these in your AudioSurf playlist, and let the good times roll.

Trackmania Nations Forever is the newly released edition to the popular free-downloadable racer from Nadeo Studios, known greatly for it’s immense customization and gravity-defying driving sensation, with more than enough sickening loops to make F-Zero turn awkwardly and blush. If you’ve got 500 megs of bandwidth to spare, you should go right ahead and download this. Efforts to not do so will encourage irrationally, unexplained exchanges between your house pet and self. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we?

LINKS:
- Filefront
- GamersHell
- Worthplaying
- ComputerGames.ro
- Internode

Incidentally, those with Trackmania United should check out for the equally free Forever add-on here. FYI, that’ll cut you about 900 megs.

Not many people know this, but I’m secretly married to Joakim Sandberg. Married to his work, that is! This dude knows how to churn quality stuff out, especially since Noitu Love and Chalk acting as perfect examples to rub your erotic unmentionables with all over like some slimy tentacle beast. Which brings us to Mr. Sandberg’s next project, the highly-anticipated Noitu Love 2: Devolution. Currently, a 10 MB demo is ready to be downloaded from his site, but the full game should be rolling eventually, albeit for a price. That’s right, you’ll have to pay for this pixelated beauty of a master emerald, but that didn’t exactly stop anyone from paying for AudioSurf, did it now? No, I don’t think so.

The best way to describe Noitu’s second iteration? Imagine the slick sprite work that high-profile developers like Treasure are known for, melded with the beat ‘em up majesty that is Gunstar Heroes (Yet another Treasure reference!), and you’re not too far off. I could throw a few more titillating tidbits, but really, where’s the fun in being a spoil sport? Gentlemen, start your modems!

Indepedent gaming, what else is there to say that I haven’t already mentioned numerous times over? Be it on the message boards, discussing it over with my fellow employees at my game testing job, or even my own non-indulging dad - indie games are fast becoming the bread and butter to my forever search for the next “fix”. Yet, for however much time I learned about it, I feel like I don’t nearly know enough to fully appreciate it enough, or how it even works (Yes, I think that makes perfect sense). Which is what I love about places like IndieGames and TIGSource. Want to know more about indie gaming? When in doubt, pull em’ out. Even your age-old PC will get a fair work out without having to kneel over. Much.

Which brings me to IndieGames’ latest feature. Forget the numerical order in which these games are placed, because honestly, they all have something to offer if you’re so ever inclined to bother checking (and asking for a look won’t charge anything more than what you’re already paying on browsing bills). No, what amazes me most is that there are more than 100 games in these lists alone, from all sorts of well-known genres. Shooters, RPGs, Platformers, Arcade… Adventure! Holy Dental Floss for Monkeys, Batman! It’s like there’s a party on my harddrive, and everyone’s invited. Consider whatever free time you had lying around to be quickly turned into a magical fun bus ride.

Back when Computer Gaming World (now collectively known as the official Games For Windows magazine) was still available in India, I remember coming across an article compiled by the staff on what type of games they’d like to see in the future. Most of them sounded like the stuff you’d expect in a B-Grade movie, but that’s never really stopped developers from implementing such “concepts” in today’s games, now has it? Which is why when I saw Italian-based Molleindustria and their recent religion-poking Flash game, Faith Fighter… well, take a look at the screenie above. Yes, that is supposed to be Muhammad.

Okay, so it’s not terribly deep. Nor does it even warrant any real replay value, save for wanting to see how much of a bar-brawler Jesus really was. Not to mention it is a Flash game. But look! It’s Ganesha! Attacking gigantic deities while riding on a mouse! That must hold a tad of potent value. Still, some people may just prefer Bible Fight when it comes to these sort of things. That Eve chick sure was feisty. Or so they say.

Back in 2007, Penny Arcade released their “We’re Right” Awards, stating the best writing, soundtrack and new game mechanic awards. Predictably, the winner for all of them was Portal – something that we and many other gamers agreed on back then.

However despite this, it is in my opinion that at the very least, I have made a grave error. Portal’s story, despite being an amazing adventure with a compelling story and some of the best characters around (not to mention being responsible for spawning quite a few internet memes) was NOT the best story of 2007. It was NOT the best writing of the year, surprisingly.

So you may ask, what pray tell was the best story of 2007? What game could be better than GLaDOS or those incredibly cute turrets that let out the innocent “Whyyyyy?” whenever you toppled them over? Was it Bioshock? Andrew Ryan and Rapture were awesome after all. Was it maybe C&C 3? If those were your guesses, then I’m afraid your dead wrong. Hit the jump to find out just which game managed to trump GLaDOS and was an even bigger lie than the cake.

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Mix in the speedy loop-dee-loops of F-Zero, the block-matching of Tetris Attack, and the psychedelic funkorama that is Frequency. Do all that, and have it done on whichever song you’d like. Invisible Handlebar’s AudioSurf is like that (well, close enough) and more. In fact, I’ve already laid down the defenses on this one. It’s all I played yesterday from my day off work, and I’m stilling playing it now knowing I’ll have to get ready in a few hours. But no! Every second wasted is every second not being put into trying some other mega-repetitive J-Pop track with it, and seeing what happens. Which is why I’ll have to resort to a quick quote from the developer’s home page and condense enough effort for this blog post to go and play more AudioSurf. It’s all descriptive and shit, assuredly.

In Audiosurf, you race down a futuristic and colorful highway. The highway, the traffic patterns, and the scenery are all synchronized to the music you have chosen from your own collection. You earn points for clustering together cars of the same color on the highway, and can compete with others on the internet for the high score on your favorite songs. Audiosurf builds a highway for any music CD, MP3, iTunes M4A, WMA, or OGG song you choose, so the experience that you have is totally up to you.

Great. Mission accomplished. Now that you know what’s the whole deal, here comes the part where I hastily drop a download link and scamper off for another play session. Starting here.

Gah, me and my big fat motor. Oh well, February is just around the corner. I think I’ll be able to handle not having to murder any first-borns before then. I’ve been practicing!