What is a day without spikes? Brazilian indie game Mr Bree: Returning Home is mostly about a pig repeatedly falling onto spikes and spikes repeatedly falling onto a pig. As with other spike-themed platformers, it’s rather tricky and, as the trailer shows, it has a resemblance to the fiendish Super Meat Boy, except with a pig instead of a sentient meat-chunk. Let’s be honest, there is precious little difference between the two. The game is currently in beta and shall be out on PC and Mac this winter, hopefully preceded by a demo. I’ve played a little already, enough to confirm my understanding that abattoirs are unpleasant and pointy metal things are my least favourite acquaintance.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that WoW’s pandas look quite good in motion, but, well, they do. You can see them frolicking in their Asia-themed themepark world below in the Mists of Pandaria trailer. Cute hot air balloons, too.

These Panda types will apparently be a neutral race, with players deciding between alliance and horde once they get past the starting stuff. The pandaren starting area is, also, on the back of a giant turtle. Hmm.

I love Cortex Command. It’s one of my favourite indies ever. The current build of this brain-defending, bunker-building, robot-deploying, side-scrolling tactical digging and shooting game means that it has a tonne of interesting scenarios you can set up and play, but currently the campaign (which I’d jumped into to take a look at) is a bit completely broken. Cortex Command has been out in “work in progress” beta form for about 47 years, but there’s been a bit of progress of late, and so I’m hoping we’ll see that campaign built upon soon. Nevertheless, for those of you who’ve not played this yet – and you really should have done by now – there’s a free (and sadly harshly limited) demo on the site.

A warning: this one of those games that takes some getting used to before you see the real magic of it, and I suspect the demo isn’t long enough to get all that across. The quirky mannequin clunkiness of the character is the whole point: it’s an absurd slapstick physics robot battle toolbox, and it has a bit of a modding scene now to make things even more ridiculous. I’ve posted what is now quite an old gameplay trailer below, but I think it gets the point across.

I am definitely not going to recommend getting the full game unless you’ve played the demo, as it’s definitely an acquired taste. It can be fiddly, and really takes some time to get into the pace of it. But when you’ve got a great scenario ticking over properly, and robots get smacked all over the place, and you are managing on crisis after the next, it’s hilarious.

I plan to play a bit more and perhaps write some more thoughts later in the week. Join me?

In The Adventures of Tintin: The Game, you will play as Tintin, the intrepid reporter and hero of the action-packed movie The Adventures of Tintin…..Did i say ‘Tintin’ enough there?

To coincide with the release of Peter Jackson’s upcoming animated Tintin movie, Ubisoft have been working on a video game adaptation of the same titled The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn – The Game that’s available now.

The game much like the movie will be loosely based on a bunch of Tintin comics such as The Crab with Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure and will offer players a “unique blend of platforming, exploration and puzzle-solving”. Kind of like Uncharted without the awesome.

In addition to the campaign, players can enjoy a stand-alone co-operative mode that’ll take place in Captain Haddock’s dream world as well as a Challenge mode where they’ll embark upon a bunch of challenges against the clock.

Sonic CD bridges the gap between his oldest adventures and his new digital exploits.

Back in August, we received the squeal-inducing news that Sega was readying a port of the classic Sonic CD for downloadable markets on home consoles and mobile. And by mobile, that meant it was coming to the App Store. But, this isn’t shaping up to be just a mere port. Instead, Sega has enlisted the work of Christian Whitehead, a gifted software programmer who basically created his own game engine from scratch that was capable of running Sonic CD (among many other things, I’m sure) on multiple platforms with all sorts of optimizations and enhancements.

There’s a lot to look forward to in Need For Speed: The Run. They’ve got Porsches, an interesting plot, and, oh, did we forget to mention a completely digital Christina Hendricks? That’s a lot of polygons. But doesn’t it feel like something’s missing?

Electronic Arts, the game’s producers, are going to let the (mostly) guys who play these action racing games gawk at a digitized version of Christine Hendricks — famous for being the busty redhead from Mad Men and the busty redhead from Drive. We only have one photo of Hendricks in the game, but it’s hard to ignore her uncanny valley is a little less uncanny.

If that’s the case, it’ll be a first video games, which has a strange habit of giving women completely unworkable anatomy. (Ahem, Lara Croft.)

But more importantly than seeing a fake version of Hendricks, you’ll get to hear the real thing as she whispers commands into your earhole. Get ready for the sexiest gaming voiceover since Betty White appeared on Hollywood Squares.

Impressive Grand Theft Auto IV mods are nothing new, but this one—which turns the fictional Liberty City into a very real, very beautiful New York City—is really impressive.

OK, so here’s what it does: First up, it replaces advertising and store signs with ones you’d actually find in the Big Apple. But it also greatly improves the game’s visuals in just about every respect.

The mod’s creator, Gionight, says that it’s “just a beast visually” and yet doesn’t “eat much resources at the same time”.

If you’ve got GTAIV on PC, you can download it from the link below.

Gionights’s Best ENB Final

In the Warco, you control a journalist filming and traveling through war zones.

The game itself — the title of which is actually short for “war correspondent” — follows the story of journalist Jesse DeMarco. Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story. The scenarios range from intense bursts of action to quieter moments as you discuss the events of the day with fellow journalists in a hotel. Though the main mechanic will be filming the action, Warco is also very much about choice.

Tribes: Ascend is a new generation of the online multiplayer shooter, incorporating classic Tribes elements such as fast-paced jetpack enabled combat, skiing, and vehicles, combined with teamwork and strategy.

Somehow, this is the first official in-game footage of Hitman: Subtitle which has been released to the hungry eyes of the public. Feast, feast!

As Adam worried in his preview t’other week, old 47 doesn’t appear to be quite so silent an assassin as he once was, but it’s good to see he’s still playing fancy dress in between punching people and shooting people and throwing people and choking people.

Well, that was far too short. Also, is 47 Batman now?
Read the rest of this entry »