iGame Radio

ETA: A quick note that I forgot to add. This is an Intel only game…which seems strange for an arcade shooter that is trying to target a wider audience.

Awem Studios has announced the availability of Star Defender 4 for the Mac. The last in the Star Defender series, Star Defender 4 is an arcade-style side-scrolling shooter set in space during a war.

Enter the ravaging struggle between insects and humans and make sure not a single alien escapes its part of free lead. Star Defender 4 has 8 extra large and unique missions, each with a devastating Boss. Featuring 100 levels of most explosive action with tons of upgradable weapons, many different foes and a set of cool bonuses, Star Defender 4 is a game that you will enjoy for a long time.

You can download a demo of the game; the full game is $19.95.

Freeverse, in partnership with developer Strange Flavour, has released Warpack: Grunts for the iPhone/iPod Touch. A squad-based game that promises addictive gameplay and extensive content, Warpack: Grunts can be downloaded for the meager price of $0.99.

Players control a squad of four soldiers as they seek to complete 40 levels of explosive missions, from grenade-bombing the enemy, sniping the main antagonist Evil Dude, to commandeering tanks and helicopters. With four difficulty modes, online highscores for campaigns, and unlockable levels, Warpack: Grunts is chock full of fun for everyone! Taking advantage of the newest iPhone OS 3.0, Grunts will also feature iPod library access for a personalized and unique game experience.

At PAX last year I had a great interview with Chris Priestly, community coordinator for Bioware, about Dragon Age: Origins. I had just seen a trailer for it, and was excited and enthused about the idea of the game coming to the Mac, as many of Bioware’s games have done. So was Chris.

Apparently, not any more.

I found this snippet on the Bioware DA:O forums today, which doesn’t sound so excited or positive towards the idea of a Mac version of the game at all. In fact, the first response to the poster is typical of the responses received by anyone who asks about a Mac release now on these forums.

I did a review of the requests for a Mac version, or more information about whether a Mac version would be forthcoming, on these forums. Starting around PAX time last year, the responses from Chris and other forum moderators were relatively positive. They love the Mac community, the possibility of a Mac version existed, but there was nothing firm, and first and foremost DA:O was a PC game (read: Windows). Basically what you heard in my podcast with Chris.

Over time, as more requests came in, the responses from both moderators and other forum members became more negative. Worse, discussions were being shut down with the explanation that they were no longer about DA:O (yet, I found other discussions that had nothing to do with DA:O that weren’t shut down).

This is very disappointing. You’d think that, with more interest in a Mac version, Bioware would see more benefit in bringing DA:O to the Mac. Certainly I don’t expect them to commit at this time. But if they still love their Mac community, and are still interested in a Mac version, these forum responses are not the way to support that.

Torque 3D has released their third beta, announcing among other things limited Mac support.

• Basic Lighting
• TerrainBlock
• Water
• ScatterSky
• CloudLayer
• Toolbox
• pureLIGHT

GarageGames stated in their developer blog post that they have more to do before the Mac and Windows side of Torque 3D have the same level of support. “We’ve still got a ways to go to fully catch up on the Mac / OSX side,” said Brett Seyler, “but we’re moving quickly. Full feature and stability parity with Windows is our goal for Beta 4.”

GarageGames is offering Torque 3D at a $100 discount through June 30. After that the discount will be reduced to $50. So pick it up now while you still have the chance to pick it up cheap, and you might still have the opportunity to have a say in what does and doesn’t get into the final product for the Mac.

Reported by numerous sources yesterday, including Shacknews, id Software has been acquired by Bethesda owner ZeniMax. The details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but ZeniMax has stated that id Software will continue to operate as a studio under the direction of John Carmack. All the principals at id Software have signed long-term employment contracts as well. Bethesda will publish all future id Software games, except for the upcoming releases that are already committed to other publishers, such as RAGE.

In an interview with Kotaku, John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead discussed the changing circumstances with Activision and other studios that caused them to make this deal. Carmack stated that many publishers didn’t like id Software working with partner companies in the development cycle. They wanted to see the development work done internally. “That’s why we already started to staff up to do Doom 4 internally,” Carmack said. “So things were already moving in that direction.”

One question that hasn’t been addressed yet is who would own the id Software IP. Do principles within id Software still own it, or does ZeniMax? A purchase of the company like this points to the latter. If so, let us hope that there are no issues with the relationship between them. We would not want to see a repeat of the issues that happened between Microsoft and Bungie with the Halo IP.

ETA: I misread the press release. Call of Duty Deluxe Edition is for both PPC and Intel Macs. This is just the first time that it is available to Intel Macs. I originally posted it incorrectly.

Aspyr Media announced today the release in digital form of Call of Duty Deluxe Edition. Featuring the combination of the original Call of Duty and the expansion, Call of Duty: United Offensive, CoD Deluxe Edition is available as a digital download from Game Agent.

In the war that changed the world, no one fought alone. Experience the cinematic intensity of World War II¹s epic battles including D-Day, the Russian Charge at Stalingrad and the Battle for Berlin.

I’m worried about Aspyr’s continued support of Mac gaming, actually. They’ve been a big supporter of Mac games, porting a large number of PC games over to the Mac over the years. In 2007, they released eleven games, I think (half of which were Sims 2 expansions), whereas in 2008 that number dipped to something like three. This year, they’ve announced two retail releases of deluxe editions of games that were already released several years ago and one expansion release, Guitar Hero: World Tour. But Guitar Hero: WT won’t be released until this summer. The last game released for the Mac was Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in October of last year. That means eight or more months between releases.

Reviewing the site, there is no indication from their calendar or anywhere else that they are planning on a release for the Mac anytime soon (I guess Guitar Hero: WT doesn’t merit the space). They mostly focus now on PC, DS, and Xbox 360 games. I suppose I shouldn’t blame them so much…they just had some layoffs in late 2008. Ya gotta make decisions. I wish them luck.

Tale of Tales has announced their next project…“Fatale”, a vignette based on the tale of Salomé, specifically Oscar Wilde’s interpretative play. Salomé, the stepdaughter of King Herod, demanded the head of John the Baptist as recompense for dancing for her stepfather. Because, you know, every woman needs to get a head every once in a while.

Oh, come on, you knew that joke was coming!

Inspired also by 19th century paintings, “Fatale” (working title) will be similar to their 2008 piece The Graveyard: an explorable painting or an interactive vignette more than a
goal-oriented quest. “Fatale” is scheduled to be released on October 5th 2009, the 78th anniversary of the first public performance of Salomé in English. The play had been banned from the British stage for almost 50 years because of its depiction of biblical figures.

Tale of Tales is also bringing back previous collaborators for the project, including Laura Raines Smith for animation, Gerry De Mol for music, and Jarboe and Kris
Force for soundscape and voice acting. But the individual doing character design and modeling is being kept secret for now. They only say that this person is an “extremely talented and very well known game artist”.

Trying out a plugin for WordPress that provides functionality for twitter. It’s called Twitter Tools, and it seems to hit the point that I need, providing tweets in the sidebar, and also tweeting twitter whenever I make a blog post. Which is precisely what I wanted. We’ll see how it goes.

Reflexive Entertainment has announced the release of their latest endeavor…Sprouts Adventure. I’m going to gather from the title that it is a type of adventure game, but some of the description gives the impression that it is also part god game. The video that you find on the site doesn’t really show exactly what you do.

In fact, the description in the PR made me think that I was going to be basically maintaining the community of Sprouts and keeping them entertained.

While building structures and assisting with the Sprouts’ community progress is important, the Sprouts, like any other creatures, need a bit of care. They do require sleep and food but they also need to be curious and motivated if they are to become a successful community. They need plenty of play time to recharge themselves in order to be as productive as possible.

But what do the Sprouts do for fun? From kicking around mushroom balls, to flying kites, fishing and more, the Sprouts can do tons of things to keep them entertained! You will have to help them discover all of awesome things they can do!

I’m not sure that quite lends itself to the kind of conflict one needs in a game to keep one interested enough to keep going. “Please keep us entertained!” “Here, Sprout, here’s an iPhone. Go play.” I mean, problem solved, right?

But the artwork is cute (I’ve been using that word a lot lately…I need to see a game where the artwork is gruesome…) and the game looks like it might be fun. I’m downloading it right now to find out more about it.

A few days ago I received a press release for a game by Alawar Entertainment called Mr Bilbo: Four Corners of the World. I am sure that, just like you, the first thought that came into my mind was, “Oh, another Lord of the Rings game.”

Uh, well, no.

You see, the game is a restaurant sim, and “Mr. Bilbo” is an endearing hamster who is trying to win his love by running each restaurant that he encounters to perfection across the world. In fact, if you look at the game page, the name of the game is just “Bilbo: The Four Corners of the World”.

Now, I’m sure that the game is quite fun. The screens look well made, the art cute, and I’m sure that the developers put a lot of time into the game. But am I the only one who thinks that the publisher is intentionally trying to ride the coattails of LotR fame? Sad to say, but I won’t be surprised to hear rumors of a lawsuit or settlement sometime soon.