Greed Corp Review

Beginning with what seems like a fairly cluttered tutorial display and a smattering of unfamiliar units, Greed Corp can seem daunting to even the most hardened strategist. Love it or hate it, this is something of a theme with the game - seeking to challenge you and keep you working hard at every available opportunity. This will put many off at first, but a little patience reveals it's apparent difficulty to also be one of it's strongest features; refusing to spoon-feed you and allowing you to progressively learn through failure.


The well considered and detailed art design effectively deceived me into thinking this game would be a simple affair. The steampunk-esque character and mechanical design is noteworthy for it's ability to flesh-out the wider narrative as well as being wonderfully reminiscent of both Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa and the classic Advance Wars titles. These design sensibilities tie Greed Corp to the Mistbound universe - the setting for a whole series a of planned titles from W! Games that will span genres whilst retaining the common settings, factions and characters. It is precisely this element that makes Greed Corp such a fascinating game, as it's key mechanics provide insight into the universe-at-large, providing the perfect starting point from which Mistbound can be built.


After only a few minutes of play it becomes clear that your success within Greed Corp relies upon your ability to maintain balance between protecting your own resources and destroying those belonging to your enemies. As you harvest the land, so it eventually falls away and disappears into the mist, taking any units or structures along with it. The board - handily divided into hexagonal portions- must be tenuously controlled at all times, being careful not to mine so much that you dig yourself into oblivion. Finding and maintaining this balance makes for a far more considered, yet dynamic strategy game than, say, the equally charming, but altogether simpler, Commanders: Attack of The Genos.


The mechanics hide a subtle, yet poignant commentary on the futility of war - as factions constantly duke it out only to find they have expelled untold amounts of lives and resources in the process and the victor is left with little more than a crumbling, empty tile to deem as their turf. The game's potential and poignancy opens up even further when participating in multi-faction wars and simply surviving starts to become a viable tactic. It's not a sure win - you never can predict when the AI, or your friends for that matter, will form a coalition to try and wipe your army-cum-hippie commune off the planet- but focusing on self preservation can greatly assist a victory and you get to watch on, grinning as your foolish enemies starve themselves in a race to the top.


At it's heart, Greed Corp is a considered and thoughtful strategy game that has a pacing and structure that sits it comfortably next to tabletop style affairs such as Carcassonne and Catan as opposed to the balls-out real time titles such as Command and Conquer. The game is characterised by a focus on careful placement and considered execution and reminds me of just why it is that I love turn-based strategy. Intensely difficult, but massively rewarding, Greed Corp has me suitably hooked on the Mistbound universe. If you too are intrigued, check out the Mistbound Website and stay tuned for the next installment - a top-down shooter that will hopefully be more Porco Rosso than Ikaruga.

Greed Corp is available now on both PSN and XBOX Live Arcade and will available on Steam in around 6 to 8 weeks.

Not such a slow news day

At least in the world of Street Fighter. Yes, I know, there's lots of hype for Super. Yes, I realise that I post a lot about it. But this is some news that's not just hype.

CapcomEuro tweeted the European pre-order bonus.



What do I want? I want a Kato outfit. For real, not for Fei Long.


Capcom have also detailed their UK business plan for the release of SSF4, and it includes a reason to actually go and see Iron Man 2. There will be a trailer for Super! Hopefully it will be as good as the Mass Effect 2 one which came before Avatar. There will be 30-second television adverts in 'programs which appeal to the fanbase' [which means I'll never see it because I don't watch E4].

Link lolz

Link lolz. Lolz that involve Link. You know, that Zelda kid?







Kudos to Nafunk on the vids. I probably nicked the comic from Gamovr. It was a long time ago, I forget. ......slow news day.

Yakuza 3 demo impressions

Like any kid who ploughed hours into decking sailors as Ryo Hazuki, the dream of a brand-new Shenmue game is always in the back of my mind. Whilst Sega keep cock-teasing the prospect of finding more sailors and actually getting to smack the shit out of Lan Di, they are more than happy to provide us with another Yakuza game. Quite how this franchise is more bankable than Shenmue is beyond me, seeing as they share almost identical elements, but the Yakuza series has so far reached 5 iterations in Japan and shows no signs of stopping.


The only reason that I am remotely interested in Yakuza 3 is due to it's similarities with Shenmue and this, you see, is the problem. My longing for another Shenmue game clouds my judgement to the extent that I am willing to settle for what is essentially, a poor man's GTA, sans the auto and plus some virtua fighting. I may be judging a mere demo a little too harshly, but it's like I've had some sort of awakening. Imagine if Zach Morris settled for Jessie Spanno. Sure, they get on, they've known eachother long enough and she's far from ugly, I mean we all saw Showgirls, right? But Zach is meant to nail Kelly Kapowski goddammit! And I want my slice of all-American pussy! Never settle for second best.

Simply put, Yakuza 3 lacks the heart of the Shenmue games. This is easily attributed to the lack of involvement from Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki, now in a somewhat diminished capacity at Sega. It breaks my heart to know that a genius such as Suzuki is now relegated to throw-away arcade-only titles, whilst twats like Peter Molyneux are given free reign to make nonce simulators and faggy cockney zelda knock-offs.

Yakuza 3 is a seemingly linear affair, albeit one with many amusing distractions. Whilst Shenmue itself always received attention for it's wonderful distractions -toy collecting, arcade games and forklift driving- it was the simple things that made it the unique experience that I still hold dear. Worrying about upsetting Ine-san by coming home late, finding clues around your family home, taking in the beautiful scenery or feeling like you'd done a day's hard work, rewarding yourself with an hour at the arcade. These were the elements that made Shenmue such an incredible game. It was a game full of more than just distractions - they were elements of a life that you chose to lead. Maybe it's asking a lot of Yakuza 3 to match it but until it does, my money will be remaining firmly in pocket and my memories will be remaining with Hazuki-san.

A force like no other

I knew I was doing this for a reason!
Best part is, for those that have met me, it does actually look a fair bit like me...
whether that is actually the best part or quite worrying is up to you. I am, however, an eternal optimist.

For more awesome comics head on over to Urf

For all my Resi 5 heads...

Here's how to unlock the 'Classic' camera in the new DLC - Lost in Nightmares:

" Talk to the front door a couple of times until it says "?" instead of investigate. "

Via Kotaku

Usually I would have Tweeted this, but I know those who I'm putting this up for don't have Twitter. So here's how to pay me back - get on motherfucking Twitter and follow us! What, you're too cool? Oh, but you have Facebook? Because you're so fucking interesting that people want to look at pictures of your ugly ass, but you're above Twitter somehow? You make me sick.

Nah, I love you really. Follow us on Twitter now. Thanks.



Oh, and here's a link to our Twitter

Super Street What?

Smack the Pony's ladies saw the future. That future was Girlie Fighter 3.

Also, racing:

Sally Phillips has the cheekiest grin ever. Win.

Yes, I have a Street Fighter boner. Wannafightaboutit?

Okay, so as many of you may know the new copy of Famitsu has been released and confirms the inclusion of the Third Strike characters Makoto, Dudley and Ibuki (they're awesomeness is in descending order).

So here are some pics I've been sitting on and slept too late to be able to get up before some of the others (I did promise).



So far so awesome, Dudders looks cool as all hell and Makoto (other than the weird shape on the red top) will no doubt become the bain of many of your existences when I pick her up as a secondary character.



Ibuki never ever appealed to me, but hopefully some of you can give her a go and thrash me with her until I respect her. Dudley clearly can't be searching for Gill to get his car back, so this time his story is that he is searching for a rose, which I think fits him perfectly and doesn't make the English look in any way fey.




Do any of you plan on picking up any of these new characters?

I'm a flowchart Gen 4 lyfe but will be dabbling with Makoto and Adon (take that you Fagat users). However, with Gen able to ultimate spider you until you die I'll play the others as request.

I also have something special to do with what will be the next announcement from Capcom that I promise will make it to you first. Finally here is a bonus boner for The Faux Bot

"The perfect fit"

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that this video was created overnight just for my amusement. If you listened to yesterday's podcast you would have heard The Prof and therightbullets raging hard about Leona Lewis' inclusion in the Final Fantasy XIII marketing. They almost popped blood vessels over her song 'destroying' an otherwise awesome trailer. What will they make of her face, words and body getting all up close with the game? She's even gotten to play the game before either of those guys! To be fair though I bet she's always sitting around playing JRPG's, I heard she's well into Demon's Souls too.

The Split-Screen Podcast: Episode 6

Today I had a headache and very little food. We all swore quite a bit and got angry. This is also the longest podcast we've ever done..... I think. This one isn't for the feint-hearted. For the brave among you, please join us as we tackle the terrors of DLC, sentimentality and rebellious Ice Cream Vans. You've been warned.

DOWNLOAD

STREAM

ZANGIEF!

ZANGIEF!!!

hype.get();

Finally, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger has been given a UK release date. In only one month (19-03-10) we can finally get our hands on it, just after the sequel has been announced for home consoles (but we will no doubt have to wait extra huge amount of time for that).



This is the collectors edition, which is all kinds of extra awesome. The 2 hour DVD describing character specifics and tactics is a great bonus. Add on to that a book of the art, including (for the otaku among you) the following two and you can haz win.


As an extra bonus, if you pre-order from Amazon, Play or HMV you can pick this package up for the same price as the standard edition. You better be quick though, they are limited in number.

Neo Empire get huge credit for brightening my day.


[EDIT] Here's an old trailer/review for anyone that's not actually seen it.

*spoiler alert* IGN gave it 9.4/10 *spoiler over*

Exclusive! Sega All-Stars Racing character announcment!

Unless you're some sort of moronic fucktard, with a finger jammed right up your stinky bum-hole, rather than right on the pulse -where it should be- then you'll know that the most anticipated release of the decade is almost upon us. That's right, Sega All-Stars Racing is nearly here and just about every videogame blog worth their salt is talking about what exclusive characters will be appearing in the console-specific versions. The whole Interent erupted when jaded PS3 owners found out that XBOX owners would get the chance to play as Banjo-Kazooie. Sega has promptly responded by announcing the PS3 exclusive character and we here at Split-Screen are proud to be the first to reveal it.

Come the 26th of February, PS3 owners will exclusively be able to race as none other than Hollywood bad-boy, MICKEY ROURKE!


The star was more than happy to be part of the game and went on record as saying "It is truly a god-damn motherfucking shit of an honour. Cunts."

You heard it here first!

Happy Valentines Day

Via Skull Swap

Dear Julia Segal, If you continue to post funny games-related stuff, we will be forced to continue re-blogging it. Yours sincerely,

Split-Screen

Guile going to jail.

Via Skull Swap

TrueAchievements

Does anyone have an account here http://www.trueachievements.com/ ? It's a neat site I came across a few days ago and while its not what I first thought (I'll explain) it's still pretty interesting. Basically it claims to give you a more accurate Gamerscore, explained here:

"We believe the harder an achievement is to obtain, the more points should be received.

We've decided that an achievement's difficulty can be accurately approximated by using a formula based on how many people have that achievement compared to how many people own the game. We also understand the phrase 'accurately approximated' is a contradiction in terms but are refusing to remove it on the grounds that it sounds impressive.

From there we multiply the original points given to the achievement by our difficulty score and end up with the TrueAchievement score".

Sounds interesting, yes? What I originally thought this site had done was given more realistic scores to every game, for example all 5 achievements in Avatar: The Burning Earth should have a total value of, say, 25 points rather than 1000 points due to ease and N+ would have a total of say 600 rather than 200 because of its difficulty. This of course was a foolish mistake as this would involve every game and every achievement being assessed individually with way too much room for debate^^.


What their formula does is reward completion of games and having difficult to obtain achievements. This is good, but unfortunately means those avatar achievement points are still worth the full 1000. Still, It's fairer than the current system.

This should be the part of the post I share my 'TrueAchievementScore ratio' and challenge you to go find yours. And it would be if I could get it to work -_-* . Apparently my privacy settings are on and this is preventing a scan... They are not on, and hammering the 'request update' button is having little effect. Rest assured the moment it works I'll post it up here and you can all go cry as my awesomeness dwarfs you. Or not, whatever, I don't care...


EDIT: My ratio is 1.43^^.

Andrew Ryan reckons Bioshock 2 is shit

I received an interesting email this morning from none other than Mr. Andrew Ryan himself. Being the shining exponent of games journalism that we are, Mr. Ryan thought it fitting to air his grievances with Bioshock 2 through us. I am honoured to be the vessel in this instance and so, without further ado, I give you Mr. Andrew Ryan.


"Yeah, so I noticed that Bioshock 2 came out today. It was right there in Tescos and I was all like 'what the fuck!?' cos I didn't even know it was coming out! How the fuck could they make a Bioshock game without me!? I mean, they could have given me a rad mecha suit or made me into some sort of even bigger daddy or something.

Anyway, the game, even though I haven't played it, is probably total shit. For one, I'm not in it. Secondly, nobody even asked for a fucking multiplayer or dual-wielding. It's cunts like those over at 2K that made me want to build Rapture in the first place. No respect for quality, just a desire to bleed every licence dry until the real fans become bitter and leave and only the fuckwitts who never got it in the first place remain. They've asked me to be in Bioshock 3 - which is going to be like a Kart Racer style game with loads of 'neat-o Adam power-ups'. I told them to fuck right off though, cos I'm too cool for that.

Smell ya later.


Ryanzzz

Satanic Rock Band Ritual

Me and justtherightbullets have been playing Rock Band's career mode as a 2-piece for what feels like over a year now. Whilst it has been a long and arduous journey, we have always felt satisfied with our progression. Lately, however, we began to stagnate. Our fans and star count remained at a steady middle ground and our band, it seemed was destined for mediocrity. This was our future, until......WE TOOK THE DARK LORD SATAN INTO OUR EMPTY HEARTS! THE DARK MASTER FILLED US WITH RAGE AND AWESOME SHREDDING POWER - THE LIKES OF WHICH HAVE NEVER BEEN HARNESSED BY MORTALS!!!! Try For Cannon is now totally thrash as fuck! If you don't believe me, just check out our star count.

DARK LORD WE PRAISE YOU! REIGN IN BLOOD! SCREAMING BLOODY DEATH!! BRWWARRRGGHHHH!

Summoning the Dark Lord is a lot easier than you would think. All it takes is several pints of blood, a willing vessel (or an unconscious one at least) and an open and willing heart. We are now well on our way to our 1 million fans achievement, thank you Dark Lord.

Only red horse rainbows can save us

It's official - vidya gamez (tm) make the world a better place.

Recently released onto the XBLA is the OngBigGame initiative's Chime.



Why is this making the world better? At 400MSP its cheap and will provide hours of relief with its beautifully relaxed soundtrack and tetris-like gameplay. That will make your world a better place, but also, and here is the kicker - over 60% of the cost goes directly to charity. That is, more specifically, most of the cost goes to the Save the Children and Starlight Children's foundations.

I've now had hands on with this game, think of it as a weird hybrid of DJ Hero and Tetris - it includes tracks donated by Orbital, Moby and Philip Glass, all of which work perfectly when certain blocks and shapes add in new depth to the song and it suddenly blossoms and becomes beautiful. The aim of the game is to 'remix' the song that's playing by covering the grid - getting 100% coverage in the time limit also then shoots you off to a bonus round. I can see myself suddenly dropping Peggle and playing this instead, more so if more artists decide to add to it and release more grids/songs for a small charitable fee (I don't know if this is possible, but I hope so). And a lot of you know how much I like Peggle (despite losing to Old Scratch all the time).




Plus points:

It's fun

It's addictive

It gives money to people worse off than yourself

Minus points:

None as of yet


If you have 400 points burning a hole in your pocket and want a couple of hours of fun, then I heartily recommend it. Download the demo, give it a go, see if you don't get addicted too.

Fallout: New Vegas (cock) teaser

I know that the majority of us here are avid fans of Fallout 3 - I, myself, have sank at least 140 hours into that particular abyss and I've still got objectives left to complete. Like most other fans, I always want more, so the announcement of Fallout: New Vegas last year - a game that would supposedly follow in the footsteps of Fallout 3 without being a sequel per say- was enough to get my rod hard.

Today, Bethesda released this short teaser trailer, one that is heavily reminiscent of the teaser for Fallout 3 (you know, the awesome one that pans out from the bus radio). That trailer for Fallout 3 perfectly captured, and consequently set, the tone for the whole game. This new trailer, assuming it's meant to do the same, leaves me a little bemused at the tone for New Vegas. This should have me going crazy with anticipation, but I really don't give a shit. Maybe I'm getting old. What do you all make of it? The trailer, that is. Not my mood.