Pursuit Across Europe

PACE or Pursuit Across Europe is a beautifully crafted driving game from BMW. I didn’t notice which car, as I was too busy gunning the engine and pressing the cursor keys down much too hard for my trusty little Vaio keyboard, but we can come back to that.

The point is I couldn’t take my eyes off the road.

The game is well thought through in terms of strategy, gameplay and the simplicity of the controls - but the really clever bit are the delicious graphics which look like monochrome watercolour backgrounds:

The car is relatively forgiving, so you don’t feel like a clump straightaway which gives you time to get the hang of things. There are several locations, as the name suggests, but I was never sure whether I was the pursuer of the pursued…the other cars would catch me but then wait for me round the next bend. Either they’d all toasted themselves on a corner, or they were having a v8 laugh at my expense.

However, I will be back to race to Paris, (keyboard permitting).

Quick links 13-6-07

A very simple and brilliant take on the humble crossword puzzle:

http://militantplatypus.com/games/gamepage.php?game=crossword

The Secrets of Advergaming

Good piece from Business Week: The Secrets of Advergaming

Sears games

Another retailer enters the fray:http://sears-games.com

Funny piece on advertising

…from Charlie Brooker at The Guardian:

My favourite advert at the moment is for Calgon. A kindly looking handyman is sitting behind a washing machine and a box of Calgon, addressing me directly. “You’ve heard about Calgon, but why should you use it?” he asks. It’s true. I have indeed heard of Calgon, but don’t know why I should use it. It is as if he has looked into my soul. This guy understands me better than many of my closest friends, and I’ve only known him four seconds.

Better still, he follows his ice-breaking question with a straightforward answer. Apparently Calgon stops your washing machine turning into a crumbling chalk sculpture. “Calgon protection,” he says, patting the box. The advert ends with a good old-fashioned jingle - a small choir singing: “Washing machines live longer with Calgon!” It couldn’t be simpler.

Now obviously, I’m never going to buy Calgon; popping a Calgon tablet “in every wash” might make the washer “live” longer, but a) it sounds like too much trouble to go to on behalf of a machine and b) I could probably spend the money I’d saved on not buying Calgon on getting a new machine when the old one finally dies of limescale cancer - and I bet new washing machines are thrillingly advanced these days, with wi-fi iPod connections and sat nav and everything.

But I appreciate the ad’s straight-talking nature. It’s refreshingly unsophisticated, and unlike almost every other advert on television, not glaringly over-pleased with itself.

Click on the article to read the rest…

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A book about casual games

I think this is the first one there has been - it’s called Creating Casual Games for Profit & Fun. I still think a better title would have been “Casual Game Development”.

Marketing to Kids

Datamonitor have just released a guide entitled: Marketing to Kids - How to be Effective and Responsible. A snip at $5,695.

Bubbletanks

Just a cool little game:
http://www.armorgames.com/games/bubbletanks.html

Intel Road Warriors

This is the 2nd game I’ve seen from Intel and I have to humbly suggest that’s it’s possibly even worse than the first one. The name got me a bit revved up but when the game starts I’m just baffled at what I’m meant to be doing. I’ve metaphorically stalled on the start line, lost my map, dropped the keys down a grate and now I’m being lapped. All this IMHO of course.

Paradise Lost (and best left that way)

This is, unfortunately, an example of what can go wrong with advergames. If horror movies are your thang, then the film being promoted here - called Paradise Lost (UK) or Touristas (elsewhere) - might be right up your dark alley. It’s a proper gore-fest and even gets a 3.5/5 from www.bloody-disgusting.com. Not bad.

But the game is really hard work and by the end of the 3rd level (each involving some amateur surgery) I was ready to self-disembowel. The problem is not the idea itself, which drew a bloodthirsty chuckle, but the gameplay which is very frustrating and quickly becomes repetitive.

There’s also a slight disconnect with the competition - ‘win 2 round the world tickets’. A week in the Brazilian jungle would have done it for me.

Or they could have sponsored ‘The Donor Show’ - plenty of free publicity and a timely head on collision between art and real life.