This is probably just my tinfoil hat talking, but GameStop doing this feels like an intentional slight against Stardock’s Impulse service. Anyone who buys Demigod at retail will shortly have their eyeballs on a competitor’s store, as the game requires Impulse activation. Customers bringing the game home and attempting to activate could have hit a brick wall and been left with half a game. This would have no doubt sullied their attitude toward the service. Fortunately, Stardock was on the ball and that didn’t happen; the game’s release was moved up a day.

After what was probably the cruelest April Fool’s joke to come from the games industry just a few weeks ago, Microids has officially announced – fo’ reals this time – plans to develop Syberia 3. It seems Sony could impede their ability to turn a profit, however.

Please forgive the GameSpotness, but they got the interview. Ugh. Anyway, lots of interesting info in here. Particularly a video that I hadn’t seen elsewhere, kind of a tech demo from inside Rage. Also, word of some as-of-yet-unannounced games that will debut at E3. So far we know about Wolfenstein, Doom 4, Rage, and Quake Live (still technically in BETA). Could it be Quake V?

This game looks like great fun. I’m surprised to see another PC/PSN game, we don’t see many of those. I think the last one was Everyday Shooter. Trine’s from the same developer that made Shadowgrounds, so here’s hoping its multiplayer isn’t local-only too.

The video is of an interview with two developers of a Nintendo DS application called KORG DS-10. It’s a full-blown synthesizer for your DS that allows you to create entire songs that you can output to external mixers and even save to the flash cart. As I am a huge fan of 8-bit music and especially music that is generated using GameBoy systems (pornophonique, anyone?), this application is quite relevant to my interests! I have read in a couple of places that this will be coming to the States at some point, but in the video they are unsure. I don’t know who to believe, but I’ll import it if I have to. I’m pretty sure it’s coming out in July.

This weeks’ episode is 40 minutes of a dinner meeting between Mark MacDonald (Editor: EGM), Erik Wolpaw (Writer: Portal), Dylan Cuthbert (President: Q Games) and Jonathan Mak (Creator: Everyday Shooter). This video is utterly fascinating. If you’ve never thought of game designers as artists, or of games as art, and these discussions don’t make you think twice about your stance, I can’t help you. The designers give insights into their varrying creative processes, talk of their past projects and even their gaming habits and what it’s like to play a game as a designer. Please, do yourself a favor and give this a watch. Also, feel free to comment with your thoughts and if I should keep posting things like this or not.

This is a list of all of the cheap games we’ve featured in the blog. Every game is under $10 — many are even free! Here they are in order of price (low to high):

You’ll forgive me if I refer to Geometry Wars more than a few times. It’s just the most convenient point of reference that I have on hand. Anyway, in Everyday Shooter, like in Geometry Wars you will be navigating your way through a 2D board while avoiding shapes of all colors, shapes and sizes that are swarming around and toward you. Unlike in Geometry Wars, however, your objective is not to destroy as many enemies as possible, as quickly as possible. Rather, you’ll be attempting to set off a chain of explosions that will take out as many enemies as you can. By creating chains you will cause your fallen enemies to “drop” you points that you’ll then have to pick up manually. Bigger chains will net you larger point rewards, so take your time on setting them off.

Every time you destroy an enemy a note, a riff is played. This gives you the feeling that you’re contributing to the overall song. If you’ve ever played Rez on PS2 or Xbox Live Arcade (another Q Entertainment game!) you’re familiar with this concept. You even distort the music in fancy ways when you die; it sounds good! Each level you play presents a different method of setting off chain explosions, so most of the time you’ll be forced to mow through enemies that stand between you and your catalyst. So don’t let me dissuade you from shooting everything in sight; this can be equally if not more rewarding, and you’ll still earn a bunch of points by accident.

Perhaps my absolute favorite aspect of Everyday Shooter (besides the music, of course) is that it’s a Shmup that actually rewards you for the points you earn. With your first 200 points you’ll earn an extra life. After that, you’ll have to double your points for each additional life. Point rewards are more abundant as the level progresses as well as from level to level, though, so you never have too much of a wait between carrots. Points don’t stop being useful once you’re outside of a game, though. Everyday Shooter also has a rather sizable unlocks menu in which you can spend accrued points to increase the amount of lives you start with, or even extra levels. There are also some fun looking unlocks that I don’t understand yet; I have been unlocking extra lives as much as possible because each time you hit Game Over, you have to start from the first level again. This is my only small quibble with the game, but you quickly get over it because the earlier levels can be passed with increasing ease as you familiarize yourself with them. No big.

Everyday Shooter is, I believe, available exclusively on Steam for $9.99. I haven’t seen it anywhere else, but I’ll update this post if I do. There is also no demo available yet, but I hope that this write-up was enough to convince you that this game deserves to have money thrown at it.