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Thanks to our friends at Kalypso Media and Reverb Publishing, we have another great console prize package to give away. As listed above, we are giving out the custom 250 GB Alien Spidy Xbox 360 and more! We were very excited to get a hold of this prize package, but we’re not keeping it for ourselves. One lucky site reader will be gaming on this console very soon! All you need to do to enter this contest is answer the following question in the comment section below:
Alien Spidy was developed by Enigma Software Productions and published by Kalypso Media. It was released March 20, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.
In the interest of full disclosure, we were unable to complete Alien Spidy for this review. Finishing a game before it’s reviewed is the ideal, but as you read you’ll understand the issues encountered that led to these circumstances.
Enigma Software Productions may not be a familiar name to most gamers, especially on the Xbox Marketplace. Their previous titles include History Channel: Legends of War – Patton, War Leaders: Clash of Nations and several other RTS and action games. Coming from a lineage of titles like that, it’s surprising to see a game like Alien Spidy come from the same studio. With its cute animation style and what looks to be fun, laid-back platformer gameplay, the game is a real step into uncertain territory — which is something we’d normally encourage. However, looks can be deceiving, and even though it’s nice to see a developer step out of their comfort zone, there’s something to be said for sticking to your strengths. In this case, Alien Spidy is a game that would have been better left unspun.
Alien Spidy puts players in the role of an alien spider named, you guessed it, Spidy. As the game opens, Spidy’s friend Virgi sets out on an exploratory mission to the planet Earth; however, Spidy quickly becomes concerned when he loses contact with her. Being the adventurous sort, Spidy decides to set out for Earth to save his friend. As he approaches the planet, his ship runs in to some technical difficulties. Crash landing on Earth, pieces of the ship are scattered across 70 levels in three unique areas. It is here players set out to find the missing parts of Spidy’s ship and save Virigi.
Alien Spidy released this past Wednesday on Xbox Live Arcade, and a launch trailer is here to give a glimpse of what you can expect from the title. In …
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Kalypso Media has officially confirmed the highly anticipated Alien Spidy will come to Xbox Live Arcade on Wednesday, March 20. This glowing side-scroller casts you as an extraterrestrial arachnid capable of web-slinging like a commando with bionic alterations. The press release promises “a single-player action-platformer packed with dozens of challenging levels, boss fights, and a colorful array of insectoid, mammalian, and amphibious enemies that are as cute as they are deadly.”
As one of our anticipated games of 2013, we’ve had a few chances to play it. We also interviewed the developers about its evolution. Inside you can find some newly released screenshots, and you can check out the recent trailer to see the game in action!
The world is full of creatures big and small – but not all of them are nice or helpful. Luckily, Kalypso Digital Media and Enigma Software have provided this …
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Developer Might and Delight has announced that it plans to make its puzzle-platformer, Pid, more accessible by adding an Easy Mode to the game’s existing Normal and Hard …
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Pid was developed by Might and Delight and published by D3 Publisher. It was released on October 31, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.
Pid developer Might and Delight doesn’t much care for you. In fact, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that the studio outright hates you. That may sound harsh, but how else can you explain the extreme lengths to which Might and Delight has gone to ensure death comes early and often for you in the developer’s new XBLA platformer?
Yes, creating a game in which modern visuals are intermingled with classic platforming charm and challenge was a premeditated act on Might and Delight’s part. And, yes, it’s a design philosophy that many developers of digital games have successfully adopted over the past several years. The team behind Pid, however, had its collective foot planted so heavily on the “player death” pedal throughout development,that the game’s surreal, charming atmosphere is an unrecognizable mess of roadkill by the time the gameplay finishes repeatedly mowing the player down hundreds of times. Pid’s world is an imaginatively oddball setting that beseeches the player to carry on and discover what lies on the other side of the next loading screen (more on that later), but it’s a world so fixated on presenting constant, frustrating challenges that no amount of audio-visual stimuli can convince one to keep on keepin’ on.
Heading to XBLA later this fall, Enigma Software’s Alien Spidy is a game that’s about as true to the descriptor “traditional platformer” as modern games come. It doesn’t arm the player with crazy weapons. It doesn’t have sandbox, shooter or RPG elements. Its story is set up with the time-honored tradition of the protagonist’s girlfriend going missing. Players guide a space-traveling spider from left to right and run, jump and swing over enemies, pits and other environmental hazards. Simple, right? Maybe when broken down like so, but it also has that other element of the classic platformer: when you play it, you sometimes die.
Certainly it’s not the first game on modern consoles to make simply progressing from left to right a challenge. Other games featuring far tougher gameplay have come and gone over the past decade, but it’s still a trait worth mentioning. Alien Spidy approaches difficulty by stripping the player of any and all offensive capabilities, putting deadly hazards in his way and keeping him coming back for more with a forgiving checkpoint system. Anyone who’s played a platformer before can pick this one up and immediately start progressing, but don’t expect to do so unchallenged. To find out more about how the game works, XBLA Fans spoke with Enigma CEO Daniel Parente.
Alien Spidy is, as the name implies, a game starring an alien spider. Now, it seems to me that there are plenty of good (bad?) spiders right here on planet Earth, so I have to ask: why make the character an alien?
Daniel Parente: Indeed there is quite a lot of spiders on Earth, but we thought that an alien one would give us greater freedom to make it different and less “spidery” with a more human touch to avoid the arachnophobia to take place. Plus, an alien spider was giving us the logical possibility of [a] player with power-ups [and] a cool spaceship.