Will Porter | 5/14 | Hookshot Inc.

Hybrid: The Scribblenauts developer locks and loads…

by Will Porter on Jun 21, 2012 • No Comments

It’s hard to say exactly what words Scribblenauts developer 5^th Cell tapped into their celestial game generator to create Hybrid. At first you’d assume they summoned Unreal Tournament and Tribes, then watched them fight before deciding against throwing a tiger into the mix. That doesn’t fit though.

XBLA

Trials Evolution: Go back to Track Central. Now.

by Will Porter on Jun 20, 2012 • No Comments

Have you played Trials: Evolution recently? Holy crap. It’s amazing.

I, like many others, gorged myself on Trials Evolution goodness, reached a level of frustration that felt like the wrong edge of sanity and consequently trotted off to pastures new. The Trials Evolution community, meanwhile, they didn’t go anywhere. Apart from space and beyond.

News

Penny Arcade Adventures 3: Just like the old days!

by Will Porter on Jun 19, 2012 • 1 Comment

The trailer for the next On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is direct in its approach. After a collage of 16 bit roleplay niceness it beams out these fateful words: ‘Return to the days of your youth’.

I didn’t have that youth, but I guess that hasn’t stopped me pretending to have had it for the best part of twenty years.

Must Plays / XBLIG

Apple Jack 2 released: All pandas MUST die

by Will Porter on Jun 18, 2012 • 1 Comment

Apple Jack is at the end of his tether. Stuck in a dull, dreary office cubicle he gazes out of the window recalling his past platforming glories in a lush pastoral world – replete with pandas and giant rotational saws.

He’s had enough. He takes off his trousers. He bears his sweet orange pippin behind to his colleagues. HE’S BACK.

PC / XBLA

Walter, Blossom Minds and Continue Magazine…

by Will Porter on Jun 15, 2012 • No Comments

Hookshot isn’t the only extraordinarily exciting new game-musing outlet that’s been knocking around this year. The creators of Continue aren’t as visually striking, or frankly as sexy, as the Hookshot quartet – but their online magazine remains rather lovely.

Web

Wreck-It Ralph’s Fix-It Felix becomes a reality

by Will Porter on Jun 14, 2012 • 1 Comment

If you’ve ever played a video-game, and I’m guessing that you have, then you need to watch the Wreck-It Ralph movie trailer. It looks to be the film where Tron and Monsters Inc collide, and where a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style maze of legal contracts have allowed character cameos from gaming’s great and good.

What’s more, Disney have now opened the gates on a playable version of Fix-it Felix – the very retro cabinet that Ralph escapes from.

iOS

Quizball, ball, ball. Footie, footie, footie!

by Will Porter on Jun 13, 2012 • 1 Comment

A longstanding issue I’ve had with my masculinity is that my wife knows more about football than me.

She’ll, for example, loudly decry the decision to play some famous footballer from the Bundesliga out of position and then demand to know my opinion. Sometimes she’ll deliberately ‘forget’ the name of a player and put on a dizzy blonde act, just so she can hear me make an excuse about me not wearing my glasses - only for her to magically say ‘Nicklas Bendtner!’ a second later.

iOS

Catapult King: It’s Angry Birds, just in three dimensions!

by Will Porter on Jun 12, 2012 • 1 Comment

Will launching projectiles at physics objects ever get old? Probably not. After all, who doesn’t like destroying things? It’s what we’re bred for. We start off knocking over piles of toy bricks, graduate to Jenga and then move onto concentrating on the world in general.

Fred Dibnah is our king.

Web

You Don’t Know Jack on Facebook is both Dis and Dat

by Will Porter on Jun 11, 2012 • No Comments

You Don’t Know Jack was the game I dazzled people with at parties over cans of Hooch. It was the greatest use of a CD-Rom that the late nineties could provide. The audible hubbub of an on-air studio, the marvellous Paul Kaye, roughly a bazillion questions and genuine hilarity.

iOS

Whither The Simpsons: Tapped Out?

by Will Porter on Jun 8, 2012 • 2 Comments

There's been a story trapped in the mainframe of Hookshot Inc for three months. My unpublished thoughts on EA's yellow-skinned answer to Farmville - The Simpsons Tapped Out. I wished it well. Then, however, it was whipped away from the App Store.

XBLA

E3 2012 – Wreckateer: Angry Birds and Kinect TOGETHER AT LAST

by Will Porter on Jun 7, 2012 • 1 Comment

Wreckateer couldn’t be more Angry Birds if it were Finnish, and somewhat over-exposed. Part of the relatively meagre download offerings from this year’s E3, it expects you to direct various ballistae at crumbling walls using the power of gesture alone. It’s like playing Crossbows and Catapults with an air guitar.

Features

E3 2012 so far: What about us?

by Will Porter on Jun 6, 2012 • No Comments

E3 isn’t built for people like me, but perhaps it never was. It’s designed to sell the big games, when increasingly I play the small ones. Then it deliberately picks the loud bits of those big games, when I prefer the quiet.

I’ve never felt such a strong disconnect with the show. I think that it’s because it no longer reflects the way I feel about games, or the way I play them.