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Having never met this publisher I was excited to see what they’d be offering. I only heard about them from the press release of Iron Chef America strangely. The company doesn’t seem to stick to one type of game, but a variety that appeals to all sorts of audiences.
Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ
For the shooter lover, here’s an interesting mix up for a game. Take one Little Red Riding Hood, give her guns, attitude, and a whole field of zombies to frag and you have Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ.
Your basic goal is to kill the zombies and get to grandma’s house. The game uses the touch screen to display Red as well as move her around, this can also be achieved by using the D-pad. Top screen play is filled with the enemies you’ll need to attack along with barrels that need to be shot up to gain whatever is inside. Your basic gun is adequate, but the real fun I found came with the flame thrower. You’re not able to use it indefinitely, but the times you are, it’s time to get the marshmallows out for a roast.
While playing it’s hard to not notice zombie brains being splattered as a round pierces through them. The animations for other events such as Red firing look just as great as well. With a unique concept of a game, it’s clear the art direction had a bit of fun when hitting the drawing board.
It’s quite nice seeing a unique idea come to fruition and Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ is looking to be one that is value for the money. For those looking around for a top up shooter with left/right hand support, this might be a good option at $20.
Editor’s Note - I was told the game features a metal soundtrack, but due to the extreme noise at PAX I was unable to make out much of the music.
If you’ve ever read Highlights for Children as a child and enjoyed the Hidden Pictures section of the publication, you may enjoy Cate West: The Vanishing File. The game is based around users finding missing objects in different scenes.
While looking around the room you can zoom into the room to get a closer look at an object, but not too close. Both zoom and look around functions are performed via the D-pad. When you’re searching for whatever the lost object is, tapping randomly doesn’t help your case and in some cases such as Quick Play, you are penalized for doing so.
If you don’t possess an eagle eye when searching for lost objects, there’s always the find the differences mode. In this you’ll be shown the same image except something will not match. It’s your job to find out what the inconsistencies are and fix them.
Those worrying about longevity of the title may think they have concern with only 15 stages. This however is helped by the fact it’ll be extremely difficult to memorize the locations of items due to randomization of location. If you’re searching for a fun game to play in short bursts, this might suit you provided you are one of those people who never have any missing socks.
Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine (Wii)
When talking to the demonstrator about Iron Chef America Wii, they were telling me some of the details into the making of the game. One interesting fact was that Alton Brown recorded over 2,500 lines of dialog for the game. With talent that put that much effort into the game be rewarded with something they’d be proud to put their name on?
Iron Chef America could be considered a Cooking Mama knock-off, but that wouldn’t be fair to the game. Yes, you’re cooking things up and it just happens to be in a different setting. The difference here I felt was the effort involved. I was able to perform cutting and mixing moves much easier with the motions on the screen. Although at one point the game wasn’t as responsive due to the angle I was at, but that could be chalked up to user error or the positioning of the sensor bar. Besides simply cooking the food, you’re able to plate each item on the dish. This leads to being judged on presentation and seems to reward cleaner, simpler plates. Scoring high might be something to strive for regularly, but with achievement type items in the game, being precise might help you to obtain a few.
The way it was presented looked great for the platform. A few oddities such as the hair on the characters not being accurate seemed to be there, but I assume that’s due to a bit of creative freedom. It seemed the characters are more or less cartoon representations. I couldn’t hear the voices but the movements of utensils was fluid and appropriate. Cut scenes will also appear in the game, but I was not shown any while playing.
Overall this is something I’m looking forward to, especially after hearing what Alton Brown did for the game. This coupled with the fact it was a delight to try out while at PAX will make the wait for it annoying.
I am a huge fan of Taipei (Pocket PC) which is a form of Mahjong solitaire. So when I was offered a spot on the couch Destineer had setup at PAX to try out WordJong Party I set my rump down quickly and eagerly waited my turn to play.
Mahjong in any form is about tiles. What you do with said tiles depends on the variation. In WordJong Party the goal is to make words out of the piles of letter tiles the game has pre-stacked on your screen. You get points depending on how complex or what letters you use for each word. If you can’t seem to form a word with what letters you’re provided with on the screen, shaking the Wii Remote lands more letter tiles onto your piles. As for the words, although the AI is prohibited from forming words like "sex," the player is not.
Although you can play single player, I found it much more enjoyable when playing against other wordsmiths sitting next to me. This is probably due to the fact that other players can cause chaos amongst the playing ground of others. The one that I found most annoying was a sort of fog that covers your tiles. Instead of sitting there helplessly you’ll be able to perform motions with the Wii Remote that get rid of the problem quicker.
I am wanting to play this with my friends when this releases. When my time was over with Destineer I found myself right back on their couch playing the game.
Generally the way most DS games have you play is the way you’d expect, right side up with the touch screen on the bottom, though some require you to turn the handheld on its side. Animal Boxing brings a unique never been implemented feature in that players are to flip the DS upside down and play with the touch screen on top.
In Animal Boxing you take the roll of boxer trying to compete and beat other boxers at their game. Using the touch screen to perform punches seems simple enough. At first I found myself tapping the bottom screen out of habit and I wasn’t the only one. Shortly after realizing that it was doing no good I returned to the top screen and knocked out all the opponents one right after the other. Being able to simply touch and draw which types of punches really seemed to work well. The dodging also was easy to perform and bailed me out of a few brutal punches from the other player. Super moves are in the game and show up on the touch screen as sort of a chili pepper. Tap it and you get a short animation of your character powering up and getting ready to hammer hard.
Although I didn’t play the computer, I was told that each character you battle against will need a strategy to beat them. With approximately 50 characters to box, this could take awhile to go through the list and become victorious.
The demonstrator told me that some of the testers had clocked in at 20 hours of gaming to complete all the matches and belt levels in the game. I can’t imagine going through that much of the game, but what I did play and what I can see playing through does interest me.
Overall
I’d say with a variety of projects my first impression of Destineer is that of a positive nature. They’re not sticking to publishing one genre so they can get many games out, but without being shovelware. I also noted that the majority of the games were for Nintendo systems. I’m looking forward to seeing how many more games they’ll be publishing in the future.
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