Remember that old awesome board game we used to call Chess back in the day? Yeah, that old game that’s been around for some-odd centuries or what-have-you. Or maybe you stuck to your guns in the simpler red and black checkers game, and that’s cool, too. But we wouldn’t want you to miss out on the upcoming Battle vs Chess, SouthPeak’s upcoming chess game using 3D models and beastly war ravaging pieces taking chess to a whole new level. It’s only going to be able for just about every platform ever except for that newfangled iPad doohickey, too.

(more…)

Dementium 2 had a fantastic marketing campaign set up at one time. Six months ago, there were posters flying around the internet, creepy pictures, like the one on the cover of the box, piquing people’s interest, and plenty of hotlinking to one of the creepiest sites probably ever made for video game marketing purposes. Then it was delayed. Then it was delayed again. Hype died down for some reason, possibly as people learned that Dementium 2 was actually on the DS, a platform not particularly known for its horror collection of games. And in fact it is that question that crops up when thinking about Dementium 2. Can a horror game exist on a handheld system? Can it do what horror games set out to do on a 2.5 inch screen?

(more…)

Earlier this year, Spawn Kill gave away a few posters that may have featured the most effed up image in gaming history. It was a proud moment for us, and I’m sure Southpeak Games’ art department found similar pride when designing the layout. At PAX East this year, I was given the chance to sit down with the actual game behind the poster, and while it did not stir within me such ghastly images as its forerunning images, I still found what little I played to be interesting and creepy as hell.

The basic rundown of Dementium II is that players take the role of a patient named William Redmoor who thinks he’s killed his own wife and child. He wanders the halls of the Bright Dawn Treatment Center for the criminally insane flitting in and out of alternate states of reality. His nemesis is the villainously named Doctor, and possibly his own mind given his recent brain surgery mishaps. If nothing, please visit the official website because it’s possibly one of the best for video game promotion that I’ve ever seen.

When I sat down with the game for the first time, I had no knowledge of any of this. I come to the series fresh. After a brief explanation of what to do, I jumped excitedly into the game. It plays like Metroid Prime Hunters in that its a first person “shooter” on the DS. For anyone who hasn’t played an FPS on the DS, it’s a difficult process to explain. Players watch the top screen while manipulating the bottom for visual direction. The left trigger is used to fire or slash one’s weapon. Surprisingly, this method of control works amazingly well. It’s perhaps not as precise as its older brothers and sisters on consoles and PC, but it gets the job done with virtually no frustration.

At the start of Dementium II, William is gifted a shank. It slashes, and that’s about it. I could quickly surmise that I would not be a fan of the melee combat in the game, and this opinion never softened. I don’t necessarily blame the game however, as much as I do the gaming developer community’s inability to properly convey melee combat in a first person mode. It’s never been done right in my experience, and who knows if it ever will be? William wakes up and begins his trek through the creepy halls of Bright Dawn. As he does so, his vision shifts from seeing a normal hospital into this dark, nethery realm of monsters and flesh crawling surprises. The first enemy I encountered after picking up my shank were humanoid-like creatures with large, vertical mouths in their chests, mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth and licking tongues. I stabbed them. I stabbed them until I could no more. As I journeyed on, the scene shifted and where once scaly monsters stood, now I had hospital guards armed with electroprods instead. They were stabbed also. I wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way of my truthseeking, and it didn’t take much time in this particular hospital to realize that things just weren’t quite right anyway.

The pinnacle of the entire experience came down to a boss fight. Suddenly I found myself trapped in a room with a thing that was all teeth and sharp feet (which you can see briefly in the video below at about the 50 second mark). To describe it adequately might even be beyond my enhanced vocabulary. It reminded me of a short, stout tyrannosaurus rex with no eyes and double the fangs, and it could walk on the ceiling. I had seen it previously in my wanderings, in passing, and had merely assumed it to be some enemy much later in the game, possibly towards the end when I would inevitably be armed with bazookas and plate mail. Alas this was not so, and as I looked down at my meager shank, a mental whimper escaped my ears, and shortly after, I died.

Overall, I liked what I played as brief as it was. I would have loved to try out the ranged weaponry selection as I think the game will play better with guns. I also would have enjoyed a few more puzzles here and there, but I expect the main game will make up for that. The trailers and screens show off a good amount of flashlight exploration and the like. Nevertheless, based on a preliminary playthrough of the game, I’m intrigued by both the game and the atmosphere and I’m looking forward to the April 20th release date so I can test out what’s under the hood for real.

If you’ve played Unsolved Crimes for DS, then Crime Scene will instantly feel familiar. So familiar, in fact, that at first I thought they were developed by the same team. Basically, you play as a rookie investigator and must use your evidence collecting and analytical skills to help solve various cases from murders to terrorist attacks.

The gameplay is a point-and-click at heart, but the spin here is a huge focus on evidence-based mini games, for lack of a better term. In other words, you must dust for fingerprints, swab for blood and compare ballistics information to identify what gun shot which bullet, and so on. Although some of these games can be a little silly (you use a laser to destroy unwanted cells in your microscope, for example), overall the entire process is engaging and fun. That is, when the controls work.

And as Hamlet says, “Aye, there’s the rub,” The first major problem Crime Scene has is the fact that there really isn’t a tutorial level to get you used to the controls. For example, the menu system isn’t completely intuitive, and you may find yourself fumbling a bit. But that could be forgiven. The real issue is that you aren’t given any chance to practice with the various evidence collection mini games before you’re thrust into the real world, so to speak. You’re shoved into the deep end and you have to figure things out as you go along. This would be fine, except for the fact that you are penalized very severely every time you get something wrong. This is made worse by the fact that the only instructions you’re given for the various steps of say, taking a blood swab, are given during the timed interval when you’re supposed to be doing those steps. Meaning 1) you can’t possibly read all the instructions in the given time and 2) you will “fail” because you’re spending time trying to see what you have to do in order to succeed. Add to the fact that the controls aren’t as responsive as they could be and you may find yourself with a Game Over before you’ve even begun (I know I did). Certainly, this is not the most encouraging way to introduce the player to the game.

Once you’ve managed to figure out what you need to do, you would think that things would move more smoothly. Sadly, this isn’t true. Try as you may, the game won’t always read your stylus gestures correctly, so you will often find yourself failing the swab test, for example, because you “aren’t swabbing in the right area” even when you’ve been rubbing your stylus right over the blood spot. Each time you make a mistake, you lose credibility (a blue thermometer-like meter). When it drops all the way, your game is over, and you have to start over from your last save. Thankfully, the game does auto save at key points, but you still want to make sure you save often, otherwise you’ll have to re-do a lot of (what then becomes) tedious data collection and analysis, not to mention tons of dialogue to weed through (there’s no “skip” option).

By far the most vicious offender is the tweezers, which command you to follow a certain path with your stylus a certain number of times in order successfully pick up the item. The problem is, these gestures are only recognized about 10% of the time, and if the game thinks you’ve picked up your stylus, you drop the tweezers and have to start again. Add to the fact that you might have to repeat the same pattern 9 or 10 times before the meter expires, and you’ll often find yourself ready to throw your DS across the room and give up. No, I’ve decided the scalpel is actually worse since whenever you try to use it to cut something, following the prompt, it either tells you the area can’t be cut or for some reason takes the scalpel away from you and you have to start over in a never ending cycle.

Magnifying the problem is the control design: rather than sticking to a primarily stylus-only control system, you have to use the L and/or R buttons while using your stylus to perform various maneuvers. In principle, this seems fine, but in practice, it’s awful. It’s very uncomfortable to hold the DS that way, especially for long-stretches and for extended periods. I know my hands were really hurting after only the first case.

When everything is working smoothly, however, the game is enjoyable. It’s an interesting take on the genre, especially since the mini-games don’t feel tacked on the way they did in Unsolved Crimes, and it’s exciting to see the pieces of the puzzle reveal themselves. You really do feel like you’re the one solving the case, instead of being lead through it step by step the way you are in many other games of this nature. I also like that you will occasionally find dead ends such as clues that you can’t identify in the database, or clues that end up being a false lead, which force you to rethink the situation. You’ll also often have to revisit the scenes to look at things in a new light and discover new clues that may help crack the case. I also liked that you must build your case in order to apply for a warrant by selecting the best evidence to include in your file. This was just another way the game made you feel like you were really the one solving this case rather than just hanging along for the ride.

Crime Scene does have other flaws, but these seem minor in comparison to the huge control issue. For example, the translation isn’t always the best (I believe this was a Spanish-language game originally), and sometimes you might struggle to figure out how the game wants you to respond. Also, you aren’t able to fully explore the scenes the way you can in other games of this genre, and you can only zoom in to look at something more closely when the game allows you to. Still, these are negligible and don’t harm the gameplay in the same way that the unforgiving controls do.

The pattern of the gameplay is basically as such: you’ll be briefed on a case, comb the scenes, collect evidence, analyze the evidence, and then build your case. You’ll often have to revisit the scene and may get new suspects to interview, but that is generally the way the game goes. Your evidence collection tools are basically a swab for blood and other fluids, a duster and tape for fingerprints and footprints, a scalpel, as well as a reagent spray and UV light to discover hidden blood and fluids, plus tweezers to collect small evidence or bullets. Back at the station, you analyze this info using a scanner, camera, microscope and computer database. So you may scan in the fingerprint you collected at the scene and then compare it to the various fingerprints in the system to try and find a match. Many of the tests do mimic real life evidence analysis and this is where the game is truly in its element, especially since the analysis tools work much better than the collection ones do, control-wise.

The sad thing about Crime Scene is it may have earned as high as a 7/10 if the controls weren’t so brutally unforgiving. I honestly don’t know how the game got past testing, as broken as the controls can be most times. And the reality is the fix could have been as simple as removing the “fail” state from the data collection process and making it so you only lose credibility for misinterpreting the evidence. As it is, however, I can’t recommend this game, because the controls really do break it. You will undoubtedly find sections that you cannot get past because the game will not read your tweezer’s movements, or unfairly think you’re rubbing the swab in the wrong area. Save yourself the aggravation and look elsewhere for your CSI needs.

Doin It RIGHT: - CSI aspect is different and can be great fun when controls are working well. - The game makes you feel like you’re truly the one in control of the investigation.	Doin It RONG: - Penalties for failing (often due to poor controls) are severe, even in your first case. - Frustrating controls make the game unplayable too much of the time.
FINAL SCORE: 4 / 10

The wait is over, and that which you are hungering for has arrived (on DS at least): Fast Food Panic is now available for Nintendo’s handheld, with the Wii version to follow on January 19.

While similar, the two games are not identical. Each will feature its own set of recipes, mini games, and tasks. While the handheld version is obviously more of a solo experience, the Wii game is aimed at bringing the whole family together with a variety of fun, competitive mini games. In addition to competitive mini games (such as racing to fill orders fastest), the Wii game also offers the ability to play the entire story mode in co-op.

Fast Food Panic is available now for the DS and ships January 19, 2026 for Wii, both versions are selling for $29.99.

12►

[Source: SouthPeak Games]

Are you going crazy over the wait for Dementium II, the sequel to the cult DS horror game set in an insane asylum? If so, you may want to take advantage of this great pre-order offer: the first 1000 people to email a copy of their pre-order receipt to DementiumII@southpeakgames.com will win a signed poster by creators Jools Watsham and Gregg Hargrove at Renegade Kid featuring the game’s awesome box art.

Some rules: you have to order from an authorized retailer (Sorry, kids, I don’t think ebay counts here), and you must not have participated in the Halloween poster event. You must be a resident of the US or Canada, and even if you want to show your immense love for the franchise and buy a dozen games, you can only get one poster per household. However, even if you pre-ordered Dementium II months ago, you can still participate, as long as you have your receipt and fall under the previous rules.

While you wait for your snazzy new poster to arrive, you can check out the new teaser site over at http://www.dementium.com, which will be updated regularly over the next days and weeks. The game hits store shelves in February for Nintendo DS.

[Source: SouthPeak Games]

Trine is heading to retail shelves, which is awesome, because it’s a really fantastic game that you should buy. In other PC gaming news, the Stardock storefront, Impulse, has gone to Phase IV, which is extremely exciting news for everyone, as it’s somewhat more navigable now. In addition to this stuff, there’s some pretty hot sales going on at Steam and Direct 2 Drive, so get in on that cheap action.

Check out how slow PC gaming news was today, after the jump.

(more…)