Flingo is Live!

Our first Miniclip game is now live. Flingo is the follow up to Fruba Frenzy which went really well earlier in the year for Uncle Tobys Rollups.

Rather than wait for a client to brief us for a game we wanted to do we just built one exactly how we want it. We forgot what it was like to have complete creative control on a project.

It's our most beautiful game yet with everyone at Soap putting in lots of overtime.

There's even a full level editor which looks like a CAD program. I just sketched mine on paper for fear of breaking it. Creating a level for a game like this is quite complicated.

Every Mortal Kombat Fatality

Remember when MK was cool? I do and now after watching this it seems so lame

At least they had some fun wirth it though. Note: this is 10 minutes you'll neve rget back

Below is the 2005 edition of the game and the fatalaties get a little better.

God of War 2

Wholly shit this game looks awesome. This is why your Wii might gather some dust.

PS3 Launch in Australia

This is a lesson to all marketers about how to launch a product. Or maybe a lesson in not how to do it. This was a photo taken hours before the midnight release of the PS3 at Pitt St Mall. Right in the centre of Sydney its the shopping area for these type of events.

Compare this with the image below from the Xbox launch.

With about 1,000+ people, there wasn't enough room to swing a Wiiremote

You can view my full analysis of the PS3 Midnight Launch vs Xbox360 Midnight Launch here.

Castle Crashers

The guys that made Alien Homindoid have a new game for Xbox Live Arcade (which means a $10 game) and it looks killer. It's also multiplayer on live so that multiplies the killer by 4

Wii

We got a Nintendo Wii over the break (a white one although I'd prefer the black ones) and I've been playing it the last few days. I actually played if for 13 hrs the first day ( i know as it keeps track of your game times)

We've got an error with the system that is comes up and says "System files are corrupt, please consult the manual" but sadly there’s nothing in the manual about this and from a few Google searches we may have to return the system. Which in turn means my 184 top score in bowling will be wiped.

The Wii is lots of fun to play but after fishing, bowling and other fun games I just wanted to shoot the shit out of something in Gears of War.

The more I played the Wii the more I realized can't Microsoft just release a remote type controller with motion sensing abilities? It'd be a lot harder for Nintendo to make the Wii play in HD or play DVD's but easy for Xbox to get a motion sensitive controller?

Also the Red Steel game for Wii is shitastic. I had more fun in the fishing game that playing that.

The Wii must be doing good business as I had to go to 3 stores to complete the set. Myers was the only ones with a Wii box in stock. But no games or controllers. EB games had some games and a plain remote and Game Wizards had the Wii Play bundle set.

No one has any nun chucks left though which is weird as you'd think there would be as many nun chucks as remotes? If not less.

Oh and you really do have to keep a firm grip on te remotes. I've almost tossed the remote a few times by accident.

XBOX360 HD

We had out XBOX 360 cable set to non HD for about a month and didnt realise!! We flicked it over yesterday as Gears of War was looking blurry and then all stood around looking alike idiots :)

Gears of War is probably one of the best examples of next gen gaming there is. It just makes you want to buy an XBOX 360, a large HDTV and a massive speaker system.

Ashes Clashes Classic Catch

We've just finished this game for Roadshow Entertainment to promote their new Ashes DVD called AshesClashes.com.au. That's Ashes, not Ash's which would be the DVD of all my fights I had in highschool. Running for a total of 5 minutes :)

This is one of the best games we've made at Soap. It's original, addicitive and fun to play. It's also hard to master. Bogan Surf, Pingball and Date Movie Game are the only other games I feel stand up to this one and only the Date Movie game can call it self original.

Fight Night 3: The Punch

We love this game in our office. We have a league which I ruled for almost 3 weeks but now I'm bottom of the ladder!

This was my sucker punch to David but I lost to a controversial decision after being knocked out instantly with a Haymaker twice. My 4 knockdowns I gave Dave meant nothing!

Loco Roco on the PSP

I finally got around to playing Loco Roco on the PSP. If you own a PSP then this is a must have! It's only $49.95 too which is a bargain.

The art direction and sound design are perfect. You can't fault it. I didn't even realise there was the mini games and the Loco Roco house game. You find yourself singing along like a stoned chipmunk.

The music is one of the best features. If you split your character into the little Loco Rocos the music changes slightly to have a choir element to it. Bring them back together and your Loco Roco just sings alone. So subtle and seemless.

As you progress through levels you pick up little items. These items are used in a seperate puzzle game called Loco Rocos House. This mini game is like Mouse Trap. You assemble your pieces and try to get your Loco Rocos to pick up even more hidden items in the house. You can spend hours adjusting wheels, cogs, and ladders to get them where you want.

One thing the game does well is bring vector artwork back into gaming. It look stunning and maybe peopel will see the beauty in flat colour again.

Limbo Game = WOW

I have no idea what platform this game Limbo is on (It would be awesome as a PSP game) but it looks like Tim Burton meets Loco Roco with a little bit of Another world thrown in.

Make sure to check the site as the teaser animation is fantastic.

If you are a Digg person you can Digg it here and read the thread about it.

Dead Rising's Questionable Theme Pack

We've started played Dead Rising on the office XBOX360 and it's a pretty cool game. For me I love zombie games but hate managing resources. Luckily Dead Rising is the Zombie game for people who just love to kill stuff. Push a lawnmover into a crowd of zombies and you get the effect you are looking for! None of this evade the zombies until you find a bullet clip with 6 bullets. Just pick up a bunch of CD's from the music store and start throwing!

I checked on Xbox for info on Dead Rising and found you coudl get theme packs. And below was the first of five on offer. Sad to say the least that XBOX are pushing this type opf content. You'd have to be a pretty sad gamer to want that.

Earth Wallpapers is going off

In less than a week Ive had my Earthwallpapers.org site stats skyrocket.

Check the Google and Del.icio.us stats. 30,000 results for the site which returned just 1 when I checked on Thursday. And 124 Del.isio.us adds whcih is amazing.

The whote site took about 4 hrs todo and the wallpapers a combined total of about 6. And now it's an easy process to add new wallpapers and keep the content fresh.

The only problem I have no is that the wallpapers are dominating my Flickr accoutn in terms of views with one photo racking up 30,100 views in 4 days.

Xbox 360 games

There's 2 games for Xbox 360 which are looking pretty awesome.

Dead Rising which makes Zombie games fun again (just kill everything) and

Gears of War which looks like Ghost Recon with more firepower.

Both look liek great titles and with no revolutionary gameplay but a new twist on classic gaming.

Portal

Wholly shit this is cool. Probably the best thing to come to 1st person shooters in a while.

XBOX360 Gamer Tag

We finally got our office XBOX360. This was after game wizards stuffed us around ofr 3 weeks. Losers in a half shell those guys are,

Ive played 2 Fight Night games online and lost both so our stats in that game are looking pretty shit. I should have learnt the controls first :)

Logo Blaster

Chris created this Logo Blaster Game for Soap in his R&D time between projects.

It's amazing having such a talented bunch of people working with you as you are constantly suprised and inspired by your team.

We're looking at expanding this engine for a 2 player game, adding a scoring system, more weapons, a screensaver and a few other things.

Flash Content on PSP

Firmware 2.7 is out and you can play flash conent in the browser. Yay. Only Flash but that's still a big step.

Worms on PSP

I'm excited about the release of Worms on PSP. This would be a great multiplayer game. I was excited about Midway Arcade Treasures until I saw the rating. I woudl have loved to play Rampage or Guantlet multiplayer but from what I've read the entires package is a pile of shit. Oh well I guess the Namco collection looks a little more promising.

GTA: PSP delayed

GTA for PSP has been delayed by 2 weeks in Australia. Lame

PSP Update

I was lucky enough to receive 7 PSP games from a friend who reviews games for a living. So my PSP worries are over. I'm currently trying toget past the first boss in MediEvil which is great and trying to fisnihg one race in WipeOut Pure without crashing and dying. I think I'll buy GTA: Vice City Stories while I still have a $10 off voucher.

The problem I found with having the white PSP is it gets dirty easily. Easspecialy when grubby fingered friends use the analogue controller!!!! Yeah I'm looking at you Brad :)

I'm still waiting for my 1GB memory stick and need ot buy a screen protector aswell (very paranoid right now)

Oh and surfing the web while kinda slow is actually OK. This site actually come up alright if you choose to have the content reshuffled. To bad the URL is a pain inteh ass to type in on the PSP. Thanks again Jason for fising the WIFI settings for me.