Survive The Road: A Lesson On The Journey

Time was when I would regularly go to the cinema. Once a fortnight, on a Monday during the 11th hour of the day, right after ... sigh, after signing on for Job Seeker's Allowance. I'd have the screen to myself, every week. Just perfect as far as I'm concerned. And The Road is exactly the kind of film I'd go to see - boring TV advert not-with-standing. But I've not gone to see it. Never read the book. Might do one of them though after playing Survive the Road.

Alice is (still) Dead 2

Continuing the extra-surreal adventures of Alice is Dead, the next episode has finally been released. It's a clever little (very little at ten or fifteen minutes if you get stuck) point-and-click starring the White Rabbit as a furry, big-eared hitman who must escape from the Queen of Heart's own maximum security prison.

The atmosphere is dark genius and the addition of voice recordings and general graphical improvement over the first episode gives it an extra polish. However the puzzles are somewhat overly easy and the inter-screen navigation is confusing at times. It wasn't until I (lazily, yes) checked a video walkthrough that I realised there was a whole other room that I was missing - not part of the cell, after that.

Find the original here.

Good To See You, Holmes: 211b Baker Street

Finally a half-decent Sherlock Holmes game has been released. After a parade of simply embarrassing Z-rate point-and-clicks we are gifted with 221B (as in Baker Street, the residence of the great detective). 221B is a web-based flash game tied in with the new movie that appeared in cinemas today.

221B has a great range of mini-games and professional shine (it should do considering how much Warner Bros. must have spent on it) with everything from video chapter introductions and photoshop-ed 'documents' to top-down chase scenes and crime-scene Photosynths through real-English witness questioning.

The game appears to be (not having seen the film) a fully fledged prequel story to the events of the film, with the brilliant duo investigating the growing numbers of deaths of London socialite girls and the strange and mysterious events which are connected with them. It is fairly standard stuff but well told through a multitude of lettes, telegrams, newspapers and specially recorded videos.

I'm The (Stephen) King of the Castle! - Discordia

To my great shame and regret I have never read Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. There they sat on the rotating display of short horror and sci-fi books in my secondary school's library and for all those years I never once picked them up. (The same thing happened with Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and other staples of modern graphic novel culture).

Run to the (pix)hiiiiills! Run for high sco-or-ores!

Or: An Ode to Running Games

There is a growing sub-genre of game. Is it is a sub-genre of the first-person shooter or of platformers? I guess that depends upon the specific example but in general we can call them runners. A few examples? Most well known would by Mirror's Edge by DICE which was the first - and so far only - mainstream game to be based almost entirely around running (or more accurately motion). In the land of free indie developments there are the much-loved Fancy Pants Adventures by Brad Borne (who EA tapped to produce Mirror's Edge 2D) and AdamAtomic's recently released Canabalt.

Any game involves movement from A to B but in most cases this is just a transition between two moments of action. Where these games excel is the impetus - demanded or implied - to just keep moving. The physicality and the sheer velocity are intoxicating. In the case of Canabalt or Dino Run's forced movement, the action is especially nail biting - if only you had time to lift your fingers from the keyboard to bite them. Or maybe you just bite one hand... whatever.

Can we expect to see more of these games? I certainly hope so - Mirror's Edge in particular brought a whole new set of toys to a genre that has been growing tired and stale. If developers and publishers have any sense, they will be working on implementing free-running into their own products.

The variety allowed by the third dimension, greater level design and extended game experiences means mainstream games could be the place where running, jumping, sliding and all that really makes an impact. With flash games perhaps it is just a limited imagination but I can only see people retreading the same exact mechanics with different coats of paint. Please someone prove me wrong.

Are there any other motion-centric games you thing I should have included? Is there anything you have particular enjoyed?

The Wheels on the Bot Go Whhiirrrrr

A pleasent little adventure story has appeared in my field of view. Little Wheel, by One Click Dog, is short but sweet. Simple but expressive art and fun little jazz music tops of an enjoyable experience. Just don't go looking for any 'game' challenge.