Toronto Thumbs

Highlight
The Immoral Ms. Conduct

We’re incredibly lucky here in Toronto to have such a vibrant game development community. One of the most interesting things to come out of that was an incubation session designed to get more females into the game-making field. We here at Toronto Thumbs have covered the Difference Engine before; but one game in particular stuck out because of its unconventional medium and subject matter.

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Posted in Awesome, Indie | No Comments »

Preview
Jagged Alliance: Back In Action

While it pains my X-COM-worshipping bones to admit it, the days of the turn-based strategy game may well be truly over. Sure, some standouts might still remain (cases in point: the intriguing Xenonauts and Dead State), but the sign of the times is glowing in massive neon letters: speed it up. That’s not to say some games haven’t taken the “speed it up” mantra and run with it to an exciting hybrid of turn-based and real-time game-play; Flotilla and Frozen Synapse are two solid examples which have done just that – with excellent results. Still, these are new
properties; can an established, classic turn-based franchise make the leap to a modern hybrid style?

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Posted in PC, Previews, Videos | 1 Comment »

Review
Choplifter HD

“Take a look at me now!”

Who remembers playing Choplifter when they were young? The simple premise of flying behind enemy lines to rescue trapped soldiers and hostages was a neat idea and fun to play. Now, inXile brings us Choplifter HD, a modern reimagining of the Apple 2E classic for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Does the game have any lift? Or does it come crashing down?

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Posted in PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360 | 1 Comment »

News Bytes
Stuff From Lately

It has been a few weeks since the calendar turned and 2012 looks to be just as exciting as 2011 – if not more. The webs of the internet yield some juicy flies from time to time; best to pull them off and look at them before the web sags too much, right?

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Posted in News Bytes | 1 Comment »

Review
Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic

At any given time, there will be at least one person playing a Cooking Mama title on their DS while riding the subway; this is a scientific law*. And why not? Cooking Mama is, essentially, a mini-game based cookbook, taking recipes and teaching them using a gaming interface. Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic is the latest in the addictive series and is the first of the bunch made specifically for the 3DS – but it is not necessarily the greatest. Let’s take a look at why Cooking Mama 4 is not as tasty as it could have been.

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Posted in 3DS, Reviews | No Comments »

GameON Finance
Interview With Nathan Vella

Ricky Lima recently came back from an event called GameON Finance, a business-oriented forum for the games industry hosted by Interactive Ontario. Here, he attended various talks and spoke to a number of people. One of those people was Nathan Vella, president of Capybara Games (Critter Crunch, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP).

Creativity and business don’t normally see eye to eye. They are like two roommates who tolerate each other because they need each other to pay the rent. Creativity would like to have its friends come over to hang out; maybe crash on its couch after a loud night of Smash Brothers. On the other hand, business lays in his bed trying to sleep because he has to be up in the morning. No matter what, business and creativity will be linked together forever in this industry because one can not live with the other. There is no project that doesn’t need some kind of business model and there is no business that doesn’t need creative and innovative thinking.

This past week Interactive Ontario hosted a conference on game financing. There were multiple panels about how to make money or find investment within the game industry. It was very intriguing to hear but a lot of the opinions were of business people. I wanted to get a different perspective on the days ideas so I chatted with Nathan Vella (president of Capybara Games) about his views on the business side of games.

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Posted in News Bytes | No Comments »

CES
Some Questions

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go to CES 2012. However, we did have a chance to chat with Elliott Chun (from Future Shop) whose initials are the same as the beginning of CES. We think that’s better because it’s more efficient – fewer letters and all…

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Posted in Events, News Bytes | 1 Comment »

Review
Cities XL 2012

There are not a lot of “modern” city-building games on the market. In the past, this landscape was dominated by the SimCity franchise, which fell out of favour with a large number of gamers (most likely due to the changes to the game). A few years ago, Monte Cristo launched Cities XL, a new way for you to be mayor of your own settlement (settlements, when you think about it). With a decent single-player “campaign” mode and hopes of a large multi-player community, Cities XL made things look interesting again. Even though the multi-player element disappeared rather quickly, the single-player mode was still engaging and fun. Cities XL 2011 (which was taken on by Focus Home Interactive) added new game-play enhancements, more buildings and nicer graphics. So what does Cities XL 2012 add to the mix?

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Posted in PC, Reviews | No Comments »

Krytical Eye
The Long-Lasting Appeal of JRPGs

Many a year ago, when I was first introduced to the wonderful world of anime and Japanese pop culture, there was a certain style of role-playing game that I ended up overlooking. Sure, I may have played Final Fantasy II, A Link to the Past, and Secret of Mana before I made this revelation but I was a young’un and could not have possibly known any better. Then came a time when a student in the ESL program (this was grade school, mind you) introduced me to Final Fantasy VII; an eye-opener very similar to opening the Ark of the Covenant – minus the face melting.

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Posted in Commentary, Krytical Eye | 5 Comments »

Review
Vanguard Bandits

While my tastes tend to bend toward RTS, I also find the occasional Tactical RPGs fun to play. In some ways, engaging in these types of games is probably a subconscious desire to replicate the amount of fun I had playing one of my all-time favourite TRPG’s: X-Com: UFO Defense. Human Entertainment’s Vanguard Bandits does not really come close to that experience for me; however, it is definitely a fun romp that Mike Jackson’s favourite team, Monkey Paw, has seen fit to bring to North America – to the PS3 (from the PSN).

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Posted in Byte-Size Reviews, PlayStation 3, PSN | No Comments »