August 21st, 2009

Or is it?There was a time when it was acceptable for a game’s sprites and animations to be crude, its fonts illegible, and its puzzles and plot absurd. That was the best anyone could do at the time, and now these games are looked back on as charming, but also as products of a bygone era: something lost in the wake of big budgets, polygons, and bump-mapping. Enter: Zombie Cow Studios with Ben There, Dan That!, a free comedic adventure game designed in the classic Lucas Arts style that gamers have grown to miss.

The British stars of Ben There, Dan That! are its own creators, Ben Ward and Dan Marshall. In the real world, Dan handles the coding, the art, and co-writes along with Ben. Within the game, Ben does almost all the heavy lifting while Dan keeps him company, offers funny asides, and stands by for when such erudite tasks as flipping light switches need managing. The latter of which, admittedly, is infrequent; in this particular adventure, Ben and Dan visit a number of parallel realities, most of which are well-lit. What these realities lack in their demand for light fixture manipulation, they make up for in such anomalies as an ever-displaced London skyline, soccer hooligans, zombies, and tolerance for wanton murder.
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May 28th, 2009

Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon PC coverBroken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon is the third entry in Revolution Software’s adventure game series. The Sleeping Dragon was released for the PC, Xbox and Playstation 2 (EU/JP) in 2003 and it marked the franchise’s first venture into 3D as opposed to using 2D sprites.

Though the same whimsical spirit familiar to players of the previous entries of the Broken Sword series is present in The Sleeping Dragon, certain gameplay aspects differ greatly when played on PC, mostly due to the fact that it was designed with gamepads in mind. This is not a 2D point-and-click game as the previously-featured Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror is. Rather, players control the 3D incarnations of George Stobbart and Nico Collard using arrow keys for movement and WASD to interact with other characters and the environment; the mouse doesn’t even come into play. Regardless of this deviation from convention, Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon has just as much of what fans have come to love from the series in the way of interesting puzzles, quirky characters, humorous dialogue and a great cast of voice actors. Except Beatrice; she’s fired.
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PseudoKnightMichael JT Smith
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June 2nd, 2008