Rezzed

Rezzed: another short round-up

Despite myself, AJ, Dylan and Spann managing to rabbit on for a good hour and a half when we met at Rezzed to record the first Arcadian Rhythms podcast, there’s a lot we didn’t manage to cover. I thought I’d share some short notes from my other experiences at the show in order to afford a little coverage to some of the titles we didn’t get to talk about, and perhaps to kick off some further discussion.

So without further ado, videogames! In no particular order beyond the order which I played them / remembered to write them down.

POP Methodology Experiment One: Sadly I could not even get this avant garde indie title to start. Did anyone else have more luck? Should I be allowed to use computers / write about games when I cannot even start a game at a trade show?

Gets to the Exit: Some Spanish chaps with an iPad appeared next to me when they saw me writing things in a notepad, and showed me this modern spin on Lemmings. Rather than using abilities with your characters you move the environment around to help your guys get to the exit. It’s good fun though I imagine it could feel a bit cramped on a smaller device. Still, it feels like a while since anyone did anything interesting with the Lemmings core concept and this lends itself well to the touchscreen interface.

Battlefield 3: I played a bit of multiplayer. It’s good! Who knew.

Serious Sam 3: I died rather a lot when I tried to play this, so I guess I suck at old school FPS games now. Well that’s fine with me, because in all honesty I find Painkiller kinda boring. Anyway, the level being demoed at Rezzed was an odd choice in that there weren’t that many enemies compared with the hordes one would expect from an SS game. Presumably it was intended to ease people in gently, but aren’t the Sam games about never being eased in gently?

CyberCandy: Hey, they sell Pretzel Flips! Sweet. I’ve not seen those since I was 17.

BariBiriBall: This indie multiplayer title is good for a laugh. You go head to head with one another and try to grab a ball and dunk it into the water on your opponent’s side of the map. You can repeatedly jump through the air and execute attacks to knock the ball from an opponent’s hand, but each jump or attack depletes one of the five  orbs floating around your character – you recharge them by staying on the ground. AR had quite a lot of fun with BariBiriBall, though I imagine its charms wouldn’t last more than a few sessions, as ultimately the range of play seems limited.

Guacamelee: The art in this title was absolutely gorgeous – a lot of style and charm with excellent animation – but the actual gameplay is all pretty much what we’ve seen before in a hundred action platformers.

Antichamber: Antichamber has you wandering about a series of different puzzle rooms, trying to work out how to get through them. Some rooms had me totally beat, but the menu screen was an interactive hub of sorts from which you could travel to other parts of the maze, allowing you to move on elsewhere while you figure stuff out. A lot of puzzle games would benefit from that. I wasn’t sure of the overall objective of the game but there were some cool tricks involved with the puzzles I solved. This was probably the most obviously inventive (and fiendishly confusing) game at Rezzed.

Dark Scavenger: A fun Flash-based game; a sort of very simple point and click on objects adventure affair coupled with simple crafting and trad-JRPG style combat. I’m not sure where it might go from there as despite combining three types of play it doesn’t do very much with them.

Dwindling Worlds: Appallingly, I could not figure this one out either. It has something to do with changing colours to certain sequences but I couldn’t figure out the correct interaction to get the combination I wanted. I saw other people getting rather further with it so maybe I’m just too clumsy to balance two colours using a mouse.

Strike Suit Zero: A game which sees you zooming about space in a fighter jet that transforms into a mech? Hell, I’m sold. I truthfully really enjoyed this, though the mission on display was a tough one – I’m not sure if anyone completed it at Rezzed, as I saw the failure screen a lot whilst walking by. I guess that’s what you get when you stick an escort mission on a show demo. But hey… it’s a space sim! Escort missions in those can be fun, right?

Sadly, I missed out on Warmage, DayZ (I particularly regret this given all I’ve heard and seen about it since), End of Nations, Shootmania Storm, The Missing Ink and what my notes describe as “that top down shooty game”. Good job no one pays me for this.

So… who else has run into any of these titles? Got any thoughts on them you’d care to share? Anything else you have a burning desire to share about Rezzed? Out with it!


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6 responses to “Rezzed: another short round-up”

  1. badgercommander Avatar
    badgercommander

    We did talk about POP Methodology didn't we? It was the one we had no idea what was going on in it. Potter loved that one.

    1. ShaunCG Avatar

      Oops. We may have done – it's a while since I last listened back through the podcast!

  2. mwm474 Avatar

    I'm looking forward to Shootmania. It'll be like Battlefield 3 (dx 11 shooter), but without all that Battlefield 3 shittiness (mod support). And it's for PC and it's fairly priced.

    Strike Suit Zero, also, looks interesting. Any reason to chant "YOU dig giant robots/ I dig giant robots/ WE dig giant robots/ CHICKS dig giant robots" is reason enough.

      1. mwm474 Avatar

        Yes. Exactly like that, but with friends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8cCyNp9fNo

    1. ShaunCG Avatar

      My favourite thing about Strike Suit Zero was changing into the mech and letting rip with the machine gun. It's got that buzzsaw movie-minigun sound and sprays bullets out in a wide spread – great as flak for knocking out missiles and it frankly just feels cool.