Feature
Touchin’ Roulette: It’s only a model
by J Nash (November 22nd, 2010 at 12:30 pm)
JOHN F KENNEDY: Hello and welcome to Touchin’ Roulette, the exciting mystery match where a plucky contestant chooses a theme then tries to pick six consecutive decent games in that vein without landing on something fatally unendurable. I’m John F Kennedy, and joining me in the commentary box is Lee Harvey Oswald. Great to have you here today, Lee, really super.
LEE HARVEY OSWALD: All right, don’t lose your head.
JOHN F KENNEDY: Boh! You’re playing your hand well, but don’t tippit.
OSWALD: Boh!
JFK: Oh, we have fun.
OSWALD: Who’s today’s contestant, Jack?
JFK: It’s J Nash, Lee.
OSWALD: Wasn’t he killed in the last Touchin’ Roulette, Jack?
JFK: Maybe he’s a double.
OSWALD: I don’t think so, because you can tell by the shirt.
JFK: Well, while J Nash performs his pre-match ritual of trying to remember where the match is taking place, let’s remind the folks at home of the rules of Touchin’ Roulette.
OSWALD: J Nash searches the hideous iTunes Shop for a word or phrase in the exclusive category of Free Games and, using his skill and judgment, has to choose six titles from the full results.
JFK: Skill and judgment you say?
OSWALD: That’s right, Jack, because of course the search results are shown as nothing more informative than a game’s name and icon. If J Nash can play six games in a row without hitting a rubbish one, nobody needs to be shot.
JFK: Well, nobody really needs to be shot, of course.
OSWALD: Present company excepted.
JFK: Boh! And vice versa.
OSWALD: Boh!
JFK: Dearie dearie. It’s a merry old job. I whistle all the way into work.
OSWALD: No, that’s the breeze through your calvarium.
JFK: Boh!
OSWALD: Let’s also remind the readers of the wild card in the contest. We happen to know from using 33 seemingly innocuous government employees to steam open J Nash’s post —
JFK: — all of whom died within the next 50 years —
OSWALD: — and from microphones concealed in the hats of tramps —
JFK: No occlusion there, it’s just if you look for tramps you find J Nash.
OSWALD: From these sources, we happen to know that J Nash can’t stand official movie tie-ins where the tilt calibration is so wonky that you can’t even get past that bit.
JFK: Well, let’s hope that type of game doesn’t come up today.
OSWALD: What are the odds?
JFK: Pf, what are the odds of you and a bullet being in the same place at the same time?
OSWALD: Propelling or receiving?
JFK: Boh!
OSWALD: Boh!
JFK: It looks like J Nash is ready — he’s opened his umbrella, which means the theme is… Yes, that’s official, it’s snipers.
OSWALD: Well, it is all over now.
JFK: All right, know when to stop.
SUPER SNIPER 2 (DEMO)
Game: Super Sniper 2. Publisher: Coresoft. Price: £1.79/€2,39/$2.99. Play the demo (full version is in-game unlock).
OSWALD: Ooo, it’s a bit of a rough start. This is an exceptionally thin demo; just one go of one level that doesn’t even have the grace to save your high score, and there are ads. Tsk.
JFK: Ach, and look at that jingoism. A tragically common element of the sniper genre — terrorists attacking the F Colony — particularly willy-waving here as all the “good” buildings fly F Colonial flags, your score’s represented by those comically official “threat alerts” and your time’s indicated by the number of panicking civilians not yet killed.
OSWALD: Populist politicisation, Jack. Shooting someone’s head off is not what it was in our day.
JFK: Commie.
OSWALD: Let’s be fair though, this doesn’t directly affect the game. And there’s more to Super Sniper 2 than at first appears. For one thing, you’re in a helicopter swaying in front of 3D buildings rather than the usual bloke at ground level examining a static landscape. The perspective’s a bit shoddy, especially when you zoom in and can see all the action is 2D pasted on the front of the tower blocks, but it’s a welcome novelty.
JFK: I wish I’d had a helicopter swaying around.
OSWALD: And those waving flags are in fact quite a clever touch; you have more buildings to sweep than time allows, but the shooters lurk only in the disloyal flats.
JFK: The popgunnery itself?
OSWALD: Serviceable. Tilt is certainly more fun than touch.
JFK: Can you blast the civs?
OSWALD: It hadn’t occurred to me to try.
JFK: Oh, go on.
OSWALD: No. So, not exactly the best promo for quite an expensive game, but a reasonably inventive mini-shooting gallery. We’ll let J Nash off with this one.
JFK: Bah, you can’t kill the civs.
OSWALD: We’re on the air here.
JFK: Stupid civs.
DISTANT ASSASSIN
Game: Distant Assassin. Publisher: Redbot. Free (with ads). Play the game.
OSWALD: A considerably stronger prod this time from J Nash.
JFK: Yes indeed, Lee, because you can shoot the civs.
OSWALD: Are you always like this before lunch?
JFK: Only if M Monroe’s away on location, ha ho. Distant Assassin is a much simpler shooting gallery: you just have to pick out the character in the milling crowds.
OSWALD: And for every successful kill, the crowds thicken and mill more rapidly.
JFK: But not unfairly so; they tend to jog in strips, so you can plan ahead instead of having to chase a randomly darting crim.
OSWALD: This one’s unqualified fun. There’s a slight bug in that the bullet always hits your crosshair even if you’ve moved it after the bang of firing, but such ballistic bendiness fits in with the cartoony peppercorning.
JFK: As indeed does the clumsily edited sample of Yosemite Sam for a hit.
OSWALD: I’m less fond of the slight bug where the park bench glitches into scribbly pixels on level two, and not fond at all of the way “Resume” seems to mean “Start again.”
JFK: But it’s all over fairly quickly anyway because you can only shoot three civs (boo). I think J Nash has chosen wisely here.
OSWALD: We haven’t really seen much of J Nash in this Touchin’ Roulette, have we?
JFK: Maybe he was never here.
OSWALD: Spook.
JFK: Oh no, there he is, behind that stick.
ICS SNIPER
Game: ICS Sniper. Publisher: Kdan. Free. Play the game.
OSWALD: Now this one’s a bit of a flashback to Gamebox 35′s iSniper games.
JFK: That’s partly right, Lee. We have the same rudimentary presentation of static backgrounds and wobbly sprites, but in a fairly neat twist the soldiers here only attack you after an exclamation mark flashes above their head, first green, then orange, then red.
OSWALD: “Hello, I’m pretty sure that… Nyehh… Yes, no, yes; I’m now convinced that the bloke standing roughly twelve feet away carrying a huge gun is connected with the way everyone keeps energetically redistributing bits of anatomy and falling over.”
JFK: This gives it a bit of life as you spray bullets around gaily slaughtering the camp while watching out for the occasional raised suspicion.
OSWALD: I also like the unusual recoil action. Every time you fire your gun position resets to the bottom right of the screen and gradually slides back to the centre if you don’t take over.
JFK: One of two or nineteen oddities is that the timed “Challenge” game, where you have to survive for a minute or so, ends after three levels. You can only see the Park level, where the shootblokes swiftly react (and more than one at a time) when Practising, which doesn’t count towards the score.
OSWALD: Er.
JFK: There’s also a spectacular bug where you have Look (ie, zoom) and Fire buttons, but any non-Fire tap auto-zooms.
OSWALD: Um.
JFK: It’s a bit rubbish, really, isn’t it?
OSWALD: Too rubbish?
JFK: Sssssfffff — not quite rubbish enough. J Nash slips through.
OSWALD: He can certainly count himself lucky it wasn’t an official movie tie-in with tilt calibration so wonky you can’t even get past that bit.
SHOOTER (DEMO)
Game: Shooter. Publisher: Paramount. Price: 59p/€0,79/99¢. Buy the game or play the demo.
CASTRO, THE MAFIA, LBJ, THE SECRET SERVICE, JACKIE KENNEDY, INTERNATIONAL FINANCIERS, THE DRIVER, THE CIA, DR WHO, SIR WILLIAM GULL, ETC ETC: Bang!
J NASH: Oh no! (Dies.)
OSWALD: That about wraps up another group effort edition of Touchin’ Roulette. What’s today’s contestant’s final score, Jack?
JFK: J Nash scored 3 out of a possible 6, Lee.
OSWALD: Three? I counted four, possibly seven.
JFK: Boh! Say, Lee, my chair’s stuck.
OSWALD: Try moving it back and to the left.
JFK: Boh! Say, Lee, that’s an exotic lunch you have there. Are you some kind of Cuban wrap?
OSWALD: No, I’m just a pasty.
JFK: Boh!
OSWALD: Boh!
BOTH: Bohh!
JFK: We’ll see you next time on Touchin’ Roulette!
OSWALD: Stay tuned for Perceval & Bellingham’s Compensation Culture.
Wonderful. It’s like having Amiga Power back all over again. Or something.