Late last night, the second chapter of Infinite Interactive’s PuzzleQuest landed on the App Store as a free update to those who bought the original edition, and is now available as a Chapter 1&2 package at the same price. That reminded me that there were a number of games that I’d either recommended earlier or hadn’t written about yet that’d since seen free Lite versions released, or had dropped to free downloads.
Since I don’t normally do straight up “buyer’s guides”, let this be a quick update to catalog all some of the best games you should be trying risk-free. Full descriptions are after the jump, and let us know what Lite/free gems you’ve stumbled upon lately yourself via the comments. (more…)
Fortuitously spotted trying to search for an image for the last post: Joe Bates’ Unreal Tournament 3Mushroom Kingdom sidescrolling deathmatch mod is at least half a year old, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it and I only spy one post on it from my last year of RSS feed archives, so let’s give it another round of love.
Mr_Staypuft sends in this post riffing on of the current #backflicks meme of describing a film from the end to the beginning, hoping to start a games version at #backgames.
The cream of ‘puft’s current crop:
Doom:
A space marine brings demons to life, locking colour-coded doors behind him before falling asleep, as his colleagues close a portal to hell.
Katamari Damacy:
A prince must hide the stars, by rolling them across the earth’s surface, until they break into small everyday objects.
Deus Ex:
JC Denton overthrows one of 3 new world orders, travels the globe, then waits for terrorists to rebuild the statue of liberty.
Pacman:
Pacman fills mazes with dots, pausing only to regurgitate fruit & ghosts.
He adds that he’s not quite sure where the meme started, but I’m fairly confident it grew out of this self-linking weekend Reddit thread entitled, “If you watch the movie ‘Jaws’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.”
Officially now joining the Offworld ranks of most promising iPhone publishers alongside ngmoco and Flashbang is Illusion Labs. After storming the charts with the more traditional Labyrinth and cult fave fingerboarder Touch Grind, they’re hitting back with upstart Swedish developer ReadyFireAim‘s Sway.
Designed in collaboration with fellow Swedish design studio Picky and illustrator Amelie ‘Krawatt‘ Jacobsson, Sway looks very promisingly like underdog GBA/DS Donkey Kong title King of Swing by way of LittleBigPlanet‘s ragdoll felt and corrugated cardboard aesthetic, and rests itself on a dual-thumbed grip-and-flip mechanic to move throughout its free-form levels.
There is, of course, no precise release date as yet, but, according to the YouTube comments, the game was submitted to Apple just under a week ago, and should appear in the very near future.
Sway [ReadyFireAim, via PocketGamer, who’re reporting that it might actually be quite good]
If you were following last week’s hints you won’t be surprised: this morning’s Virtual Console update has brought the U.S. debut of downloadable Commodore 64 games, each at $5 a pop. In this first outing, Nintendo has most notably released The Last Ninja, still counted amongst the top games for the C64 that have stood the test of time.
Also included are Archer MacLean’s International Karate, and Pole Position-esque two-player racer Pit Stop II, from Epyx’s Dennis ‘Impossible Mission‘ Caswell and Stephen Landrum, programmer on classic titles like Summer Games.
I honestly thought I’d need to see Space Invaders Extreme 2 in motion before I could truly grasp its new Bingo Fever gimmick. Curiously, now I have seen Space Invaders Extreme 2 in motion and I’m still completely in the dark as to what really happened.
Fast thoughts? I’m really not sure how I’m going to dig on this announcer’s more insistent and invasive play-by-play. Everything else: as wonderful as ever.
In other new toy goings-on, Medicom is obviously no stranger to the games love, from the Metal Gear Kubricks as below, to those for Grand Theft Auto (GTAIII and Vice City), to their Be@rbrick line, which frequently guest stars games icons.
I’ve mentioned the Be@rbrick duo designed by French artist Rolito for Sony’s Patapon before, but according to a new graphic blurb on ‘luciferjackass’s Taiwanese toy blog, its 18th series will include new Be@rs featuring.. Tetris?
Presumably — given some of the patterened ‘bricks in the past — it’ll be a simple falling-brick motif, but your guess is as good as mine.
Konami’s Metal Gear series continues to be one of the few franchises that really ‘gets’ the toy culture underground, and, according to some information gleaned from the slithering underbelly of Japan’s hobbyist-magazine-scanners, there’s lots more on the way.
First up, the “ultra detail”: a limited “Cold War version” Naked Snake flying dual colors on front and back, and a new line up of Ultra Detail Figures including MGS4‘s Old Snake in the ‘ready’ pose, Vamp, and Raiden, and The Boss and ‘Tiger Camo’ Naked Snake from MGS3.
Then the “not so detailed”: a new lineup of Kubricks from Metal Gears old and new, with MGS‘s Liquid Snake, MGS2‘s Solidus Snake and Iroquois Pliskin, and MGS4‘s PMC Soldier, Liquid Ocelot, and Old Snake in his full Octocamo regalia.
