Tuesday, September 29, 2009

My Brute

My Brute is web based game. The basic idea of it is to create your own brute and fight against other brutes.

Some of the game features are:
  • easy to register, no email address needed
  • a plentiful brute types to choose with different hair styles, hair color, skin color, eye color, clothing, armor and gender. Those can be chosen randomly
  • you can name your own brute using names between 3 and 32 characters long. You can chose a simple name, your real name like this one or a more wacky name like this one
  • a brute has four attributes: health, speed, agility and strength
  • a brute can have up to 26 weapons and 3 pets. A brute has also 28 skills to learn
  • for each win a brute gains experience 2 points; for each lost fight a brute gains 1 experience point
  • when a brute upgrades to a new level, receives a weapon, a pet, a skill or improvement of one of the attributes
My brute, is a simple game and was created more like for casual gamers. One reason for that is that you don't actually fight, but you watch your brute fighting. But it's funny 'though.

Below you can watch a video on how a fight between two brutes looks like:


Monday, September 28, 2009

Prequel to Last Express

Last week I was surfing on the internet to find if there is a sequel to Last Express. I found an unfinished screenplay of a prequel to The Last Express. The story, written by Jordan Mechner, the father of The Last Express game, is set in 1904. The game was supposed to be an adventure of Robert Cath and his friend, Tyler Whitney.

On his blog you can find out why he abandoned the screenplay. Jordan Mechner also generously posted the fragment that he wrote. Enjoy it!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

The Last Express

Developer: Smoking Car Productions
Release year: 1997
Genre: Adventure, first person point and click

Hi, I’m Robert Cath, a young (and good looking, I might add) American. My friend Tyler Whitney asked me to join him on the Orient Express departing the Gare de l'Est, Paris, 24 July for Constantinople. This is great because I am chased by the police because they think that I’m involved into a murder. But they’re wrong.




I arrived kinda late at the station but I managed to get onboard the train helped by a beautiful girl who took me with her bike. Well, believe it or not, I found Tyler dead in his compartment. Of course I had to get rid of the body, not necessarily that someone could actually find him, but I don’t really like worms. Anyway, I have to find the murderer. Now, I don’t know about you, but this I call it life.



At the beginning I didn’t know where the dining car, smoking car or any other car was, not even the bathroom, or who the passengers are. But in time I managed to learn the position of different parts of the train. During the journey I met passengers of all kind of nationalities: English, French, German, Turk, Austrians and Russians. I’m not telling you about all the passengers although each of them is very interesting, but the Turk intrigued me. He has 4 wives and any time I try to enter in their compartments (for a chit chat nothing else, I swear) the bastard comes out and yells something to me. I don’t understand exactly what but I think that is the equivalent of f… off. To bad I only speak English, French, German and Russian. Well, with Russian I have to work because I don’t understand their writing.




If you think that this ‘game’, as you call it, is all about me finding the murderer, you’re wrong. I will meet a girl, a beautiful and talented violinist. She’s kinda tough person but with my charm I know I can tame the shrew.

The game is also about the international intrigue and World War I. You may wonder how the heck I know about the war. Well I don't. But you know. And if you know, I know. Got it? Me neither... Anyway, I don’t give a sh.. about the war, I got my own problems.

They told me that you see us like some semi-animated characters. They applied on us an effect called rotoscoping (which was invented by Max Fleischer), to give the impression of the Art Nouveau cartoons from my era.

Too bad I can’t hear any music in my head or outside. I’m not Ally Macbeal or something. I not even know who she is. But you do. You do hear music. In the game, not in your head. And you will love it. Oh, I forgot. I will hear music in the train but you’ll have to find out for yourself what it is about.




You know what I like to do the most? Eavesdropping. Nobody minds if I listen to their conversation, not even if I stay right in front of their table in the dining car. This is a bit strange, but I can’t complain. The main problem is I can’t be at the right place anytime and I might loose some clues. But I’m smart enough and I don’t need all of them. Damn, great looking and smart! During the night, most of the passengers are sleeping, even the conductors. Then I get a little bored and if I don’t find anything else interesting to do I go to sleep.



I don’t know if I should tell you this but during the journey there will be several people that will try to kill me. Don’t worry, if something goes wrong you can rewind the game and play the scene again. And this system helps you see what you didn't see before.

Well, that’s it for me, I have to go, hoping that someone will want to play this game soon, because I can't re-live those experiences by myself. One more thing, I don’t understand why one of the conductor is that stupid. I mean I want to sneak into one compartment and he doesn’t allow me, but I do something to trick him, just watch the following movie:



----------
System requirements:

  • Windows 95
  • 60MHz Pentium or faster
  • 8MB RAM Required; 16MB RAM Recommended
  • 35MB hard disk space
  • 4X CD-ROM drive or faster
  • SVGA monitor/Local Bus or PCI Video, 640 x 480, 16-bit
  • Sound Blaster 16 or 100% Sound Blaster compatible 16-bit sound card


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Bomberman back this winter

Hudson Entertainment, the North American publishing division of Hudson Soft, will release Bomberman Live: Battlefest the sequel to successful Bomberman Live.

The game will have new features accordingly:
  • can be played online by 8 gamers that can choose from a variety of new teams
  • new arenas like a shape-shifting MultiMaze or Pirate Ship crashing through the waves
  • ability to use an avatar for your character
  • players will have the ability to customize their Bomberman by using new costumes
  • new power-ups like rocket bomb, cluster bomb and laser bomb
  • new modes like Capture the flag, Capture the Crown, Bankroll and VIP

Bomberman Live: Battlefest will be released on Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 video game console this winter

Lucidity announced by Lucas Arts

Lucas Arts, the creators of The Monkey Island saga, announced development of a new very addictive game, called Lucidity. The hero of this game is Sofi, a young girl which has the humanly desire to explore new worlds. The players must keep her out of danger by using puzzle pieces to create a path trough gorgeous dreamscapes that leads Sofi to safety place.

Lucidity will be released on Xbox LIVE Arcade and PC platforms on October 7th 2009.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Broken Sword 2.5 - patch and additional languages

Mind Factory released an official patch for Broken Sword 2.5 related to some bugs and new subtitles.

The game now supports English, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Croatian, Portuguese and Russian languages.

You can download the game and patch from their site:

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Secret Of Monkey Island

Developer: Lucas Arts
Release year: 1990
Genre: Adventure, third person point and click





I love adventure games. I have never played a game from Monkey Island series. I never had the opportunity until this year when I got THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND - THE COMPLETE SAGA DVD.



It was kind of scary, you can understand that. I mean we are in 2009, and I want to play a game from 1990. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't born in a virtual 3D world, the first video games I have played were games created for video consoles like Mario, then I played games like Prince of Persia (the one from 1989)... you got the idea. But still, it is not that easy to play such an old game. Or at least that was what I thought. Although the DVD contained enhanced version of the game I chose to play the original EGA version in 16 colors and PC speaker sound.

You are playing the role of Guybrush Threepwood whose intentions are clear from the beginning of the game when he arrives on the Caribbean island of Mêlée: "My name is Guybrush Threepwood, and I want to be a pirate". For that he has to resolve three challenges to prove himself. Along the way he meets beautiful Governor Elaine Marley who is abducted by the ghost pirate LeChuck. Guybrush gathers a crew and goes to find her.

The game graphics are great, even more then great. I couldn't believe my eyes. With only 16 colors and 320x240 resolution, the characters, the places are very well drawn. Just look at the picture where the light from the windows is lighting the street in the night. The animations are great too, and sometimes I can see a bit of realism in the game, for instance the light from the windows in the town are turning on and off randomly.

Dialogs are well written, adorned with jokes, some of them being quite unusual like the one from the forest with the disks which looked like a technical error, or that pirate which advertise Loom game. The game interface uses 12 verbs written on the bottom part of the screen. The items from your inventory are also written on the screen. Using these you can create actions like 'Use x on y' or 'Talk to Z'. The CD-ROM version from 1992 contained graphical inventory items.


The game contains interesting puzzles that are quite logical. I don't remember to get stuck in the game just because I missed an object. Puzzles vary from opening a safe, finding a path through a forest to well known pirate sword-swear fighting.


I enjoyed playing The secret of the Monkey Island. I think I had a dumb smile on my face while playing like my little sister has it when she plays Zuma online. Although The secret of the Monkey Island is an old game it still hasn't lost it's charm.


System requirements:
  • MS-DOS 5.0 or higher
  • 386/33 DX (486 recommended)
  • 1 Mb EMS required (2 Mb EMS recommended)
  • 256 color VGA/MCGA
  • SoundBlaster and 100% compatibles, Adlib, Roland MT 32
  • Mouse 
You will probably go: "what the heck ?". I tell you, without a mouse you were doomed :P.  Ok,  if you really want to play the original game you should use some dos emulators, like DOSBox. I use it on XP SP2