Toronto Thumbs

Alpha Bits
Spellirium

Some things are too cool for KickStarter. Take Untold Entertainment’s latest project: Spellirium, for example. Is it a point-and-click graphic adventure game? Or is it a word puzzler? The answer is: yes! As you make your way through the awesome-looking landscape, you will have to rely on your wits and your vocabulary to help you solve problems. Currently in the alpha stage, the developer is looking for interested parties to pre-order and join in the fun – in the name of Science!

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Posted in Awesome, First Impressions, PC | 2 Comments »

Quick Impression
RaceRoom Racing Experience
Beta

RaceRoom Racing Experience is Simbin’s free-to-play racing simulator that offers a racing experience to rival other games in the genre. Indeed, the screenshots show an impressive display of detail that seem to be too good to be true. While it may not be as polished as I would like it to be, it is still only in beta, which means that it is a great-looking title that has the potential to become a fantastic skill-based racing game.

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Posted in First Impressions, PC, Steam | No Comments »

Events
God of War: Ascension
Media Event

In a brilliant move, Sony Playstation Canada recently hosted an event at the Royal Ontario Museum celebrating the upcoming release of God of War: Ascension. Stations were set up for people to try out the game before its upcoming release. I have to say, the game looks pretty damned impressive. The franchise has always been about cinematic fights in epic setpieces – you will not be disappointed. John Palamarchuk, from Santa Monica Studios, was on hand to answer questions. We got to chat with him briefly and this is what he had to say.

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Posted in Events, First Impressions, Interviews, PlayStation 3 | No Comments »

First Impressions
Castlevania: Lord of Shadows
Mirror of Fate

Castlevania: Lord of Shadows on the console was an interesting game in the series. It changed up a lot of the core mechanics in favour of a more action-oriented experience. It was a valiant effort, but one that I felt didn’t quite hit the mark. Now, just over two years later, two new games are planned for the newly-relaunched series and hopefully they can fix what didn’t work in the first Lord of Shadows. One of the newly developed games is Castlevania: Lord of Shadows – Mirror of Fate for the 3DS. It’s the first handheld version of the relaunched series and I recently had a chance to play it – and I think that it’s a lot of fun.

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Horizons
Playstation 4

This past week brought us the announcement of the Playstation 4. When new platforms are announced, it is usually a given that the computational and graphical power have improved significantly. As great as that is, I am usually more interested in paradigm shifts and new initiatives. So what does the Playstation 4 bring to the living room? I think that this new platform aims to expand your gaming experience to something beyond your house.

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Posted in First Impressions, Hardware, Playstation 4, Sony | No Comments »

First Impressions
SimCity Beta

In case you were worried that the new SimCity was going to be bad, I can assure you that it is not. Well, since the closed beta only gives you 1 hour of playtime, I guess I can only really assure you that 2013 SimCity is awesome for at least 1 hour. I was a bit skeptical on how I would respond to the game, to be honest. It’s easy to over-romanticize games that you loved in your childhood; and the last SimCity game that I truly played was SimCity 2000, which was released in 1994. Needless to say, the 2013 version of SimCity was quite overwhelming – in the best way possible.

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Posted in First Impressions, PC | 2 Comments »

Of Interest
Autodesk SketchBook Pro

I grabbed this from Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro page on Facebook. Pretty awesome, eh?

If you are an artist that is already savvy in the way of the digital, then you probably already know about Autodesk SketchBook Pro (v.6). If you are a newbie – it is definitely a digital art application worth trying out. Flexible and relatively powerful, SketchBook Pro is a great program with something for everyone. This is not a review so much as a note of encouragement to download a demo of this product to give it a shot (like I did).

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Posted in Art, First Impressions, PC | No Comments »