brave [little] meme

If you’re into social “MMO” type games, the iPhone or iPod Touch are about as good a platform as you’ll find for your genre. Unfortunately, the kind of social games the App Store is awash with tend to be poorly-concealed clones of old staples like iMob, iMafia, iKnights, Vampires, Zombies and so on - barely more than re-skinnings of bug ridden leveling games based on barely more than HTML layouts.

My Brute is not one of those games. As a well executed iPhone adaptation of the popular Flash arena fighting game, My Brute brings with it a level of polish and adorability not commonly found in many of its peers.

The concept is simple: You start a martial arts dojo, choose your main fighting style, and create between one and three fighters, or ‘brutes.’ Then you pit these against others and watch them fight with an ever increasing variety of weapons and perks. You only get six fights a day per brute though, so choose wisely! 

The novel thing about My Brute is that there is no actual fighting involved - the skill is in choosing the right opponents based on your own statistics, then sit back and watch the fight play out. The more you win, the better your fighter gets.

This simple premise is greatly enhanced by the game’s social aspect, which entails recruiting pupils into your dojo as well as finding a master for yourself. Interestingly, both the master and pupil gain greatly from this union, encouraging more widespread use of the social networking features. 

The game’s social side runs on top of the increasingly popular Feint social gaming platform, which requires no upfront registration and provides gamers with lobbies, chat, and the ability to find each other. If you’re a Facebook or Twitter user, you can also log in with your existing credentials.

In a nutshell, the ability to maintain a dojo full of deeply customisable - yet always adorable - little fighters and compete against your friends for the most powerful dojo makes My Brute well worth the £2.99 (UK App Store) price of admission. 

Give it a try, and if you’re looking for a dojo, our Angry Kitteh Dojo will welcome you with open arms - just enter the master code IFDIGHFE and you’re good to go.

My Brute for the iPhone and iPod Touch can be found here [iTunes link].

I’m not sure what’s wrong with the interwebs today, but I couldn’t help detecting a higher and usual fail ratio in the ebb and flow of today’s news inanity. I will therefore take up the role of grumpy old man, and list them here for your perusal.

HipHopGamer finds a way to use the term “Killzone” to boost views to a completely pointless article which can be summed up with the words “Brink is Pretty.” Note to bloggers: provide a source and context for your article, and use actual grammar if at all possible.

Ars Technica fails to remember that games are meant to be fun, and gives the rather enjoyable Prototype (Xbox360, PC, PS3) an abysmal review on the grounds that you play a morally dubious character. I hadn’t realised a moral choice component had become a necessary part of all new game releases.

Wired graces us with an utterly inane article on buyer’s remorse, listing gems along the lines of  ”Sucks to be you is you have an iPhone 3G because the 3GS is now out, so you should have waited.” Boggles the mind.

Finally, a perfect example that you just can’t trust any one source anymore. Here’s a report on how analysts say the iPhone’s just not ready for the enterprise, and here’s another saying the exact opposite. 

Oh, what fun.

This year’s E3 holds many a promise. Secret Microsoft demos, unexplained early starts hinting at groundbreaking announcements (or possibly an expectation of bad time keeping), leaks galore for some of our favourite gaming franchises and a massive, towering pile of garbage.

With so much going on, it’s important for the clued-up gentleman gamer to have at hand the latest sources of information, so as not to appear misinformed at the next gaming-related chat over brandy and cigars at the Gentlemen’s Club.

You might therefore want to keep an eye on TeamXbox, who will be twittering E3, as well as 1up’s liveblog and twitter feed here. Either way, you’re sure to be a hit when next talking to the ladies about the latest developments in gaming entertainment.

Let’s face it, Peggle (iTunes link) is somewhat of a gaming phenomenon. Over the last year PopCap Games’ colourful hybrid of Puzzle Bobble and Pachinko has managed to find a home on just about every mainstream entertainment device from the Xbox 360 to the Nintendo DS, leaving a trail of addicts in its wake.

No multi-platform assault would be complete without a presence on Apple’s iconic iPhone however, and it’s just on that device that I too, as a latecomer to the game, finally succumbed to its charms.

The premise is the same as always: Fire a ball from a cannon at the top of the screen and try to hit as many orange pegs as you can in as few shots as possible. Run out of your assigned 10 balls and it’s game over, but a multitude of power-ups and bonuses can help you avoid that fate.

In short, a simple game with a simple premise, exactly the kind of thing that lends itself ideally to the iPhone’s form factor and control scheme: you can touch the screen to aim your cannon, touch a ‘wheel’ on the side of the screen for ultra-fine aiming, or double-tab the screen for even finer aiming resolution. With that level of control, even the pickiest of Peggle Masters won’t have reason to complain - even left and right-handedness can be configured.

The things about Peggle is its sheer joyful presentation. From the music to the colors, to the festive fireworks announcing your victory, the game’s overall feel just screams‘one more level.’ It’s exactly that pervasive charm that had me lose track of the three hours I spent perfecting the game’s latter levels, oblivious of my wife’s departure to bed or the fact that it had gotten dark outside.

Those three lost hours accounted for just over two-thirds of the time that it took me to complete the game’s Adventure mode, which while not a lot in terms of overall game time certainly justifies the £2.99 price of admission. That’s not all however. The game also offers a fiendish array of individual Challenge modes, as well as a Duel mode allowing two players to face-off for the highest score by taking turns on the ball. Overall, the game’s modes and its inherent re-playability raise it more than a few notches above the myriad one-shot games populating the App Store.

Peggle’s iPhone implementation is not completely flawless however. During the game’s most visually intensive moments - usually on victory sequences - the colorful visuals seem to struggle a little. This is by no means a show stopper, and in no way affects the actual gameplay. 

Take it from an avid iPhone gamer and newly-certified Peggle Master: I highly recommend this game - it’s pretty much guaranteed to keep you busy for hours on end.

Sony are dicks. Even the most hardcore fanboy secretly admits that their favourite electronics company is prone to acting like a bunch of douche bags. ATRAC? MiniDisc? UMD? How much money has Sony made their faithful consumers waste in the name of hopeless, self-serving proprietary formats? You get my point.

Unfortunately, Sony’s latest trademark dick move is one which will affect an entire generation of nostalgic movie buffs. By buying up the publishing rights to Ghostbusters: The Video Game and subsequently announcing said game as a PS2/PS3 exclusive, Sony have at least temporarily denied the film’s massive gamer fanbase their long awaited thrills.

I say temporarily because if there is one thing Sony likes more than dead-end formats it’s money, and they must therefore surely realise that the already completed Xbox 360 version of the game will earn them more on store shelves than if buried in a safe at Sony HQ. The exclusive will therefore likely be nothing more than a timed exclusive.

Still, I guess one can’t be too harsh towards the PlayStation maker: with its latest war cry in the console wars being “Dominance! *(in three-to-five-years)” they could be forgiven for trying to get three extra people to buy their laughably overpriced console. As an avid gamer and child of the 80’s however, I can’t help but wish they’d chosen a less meaningful franchise to exploit for their stunt.