UK gamers, you've got a heck of a sale going on. Select titles from online retailer Play.com have gotten their prices slashed, with free shipping on all titles purchased. Any games purchased won't get there before Christmas, sadly, but you will get one heck of a sweet deal. Perhaps you've shopped for everyone else and now it's time to treat yourself?
As far as good games you can get on the cheap, Drawn to Life (£12.99), Custom Robo (£14.99) and Jam Sessions (£17.99) are a few of the titles that are up for grabs. Not only that, but newer games like Call of Duty 4 (£17.99) are even getting in on the price cut action.
Posted Oct 21st 2007 1:30PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
If you've been considering picking up 5th Cell's great Drawn to Life, you might want to think about grabbing one from Best Buy. It's on sale right now for $19.99, as reported in their weekly circular. That's a great price for an original 2D platformer! Although if you weren't planning on buying it, your expenditures for the next few months have probably been very carefully planned out.
Also of interest: they've got Spectrobes for $14.99. If you're in a more Disney/ Pokemon/ whatever-else-Spectrobes-is mood.
5th Cell's Drawn to Life is one of the best games for kids on the Nintendo DS. Don't misinterpret that as a dismissal: there's plenty to like here, especially for anyone for whom the idea of an Actraiser/Animal Crossing mashup with totally customizable characters sounds appealing (which should be everyone). Children, especially, may find an infinitely entertaining toy in the game's drawing tool, which engages the imagination in a way that most linear video games cannot.
The game casts you as both an unseen deity called the Creator, with the power to draw elements of the world (given possession of the appropriate page of the "Book of Life"), and a sort of golem sent down by the Creator to protect the town (which you name). Of course, your first task as Creator is to define the appearance of your hero; multiple designs can be saved and switched at any time, and you can edit your hero's appearance at any point in the game.
The town is covered in shadowy black clouds; most of the (adorable, big-eared) Raposa inhabitants have gone missing, and it's up to the Creator and its avatar to clear the darkness and rescue the Raposa. The Mayor and the few remaining Raposa coordinate your efforts to regain Book of Life pages, sending the golem into action stages after a certain page, in order to regain the item desired (everything from the sun to the sign on the town restaurant).
We asked you a while back to draw something in a demo version of the Drawn to Life character editor. But now that (we assume) some of you have the game and have chosen an avatar for real, we want to know what it is. How did you choose to represent yourself (or, we guess, how would you, for those of you who want to play along with no purchase necessary)?
Did you draw yourself? Your friend? A zombie? A robot? A puppy? A pile of puppies? The Kool-Aid Man? Mario? Wario? Ernie Keebler? Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's Rat Fink? Some random scribbles? Swamp Thing? Ace Frehley? Potatoes? "The Scream"? Robocop? James Pond: Robocod? James Bond, Jr.? Law & Order's Jerry Orbach? Cap'n Crunch? The other Cap'n Crunch?
Well, okay, we know what many of you chose. Don't tell us about that.
This week's releases included a little game by the name of Jam Sessions. Oh, and another called Drawn to Life. And we're not even including all of the wonderful releases hitting other territories. So, there's plenty of titles available to gamers looking for something new to play.
Will you get your jam on, or do you plan to release your inner artist? What will you be playing?
This is such a good week for releases that we're not sure if we'd rather be here at home or over in Europe, where DS owners can get a taste of Tingle this week! Not that we're displeased with the array of titles available anywhere, frankly. If only every week could be this week.
Except then we would be poor, and would require a very large cardboard-box-house in which to store our massive DS collection. Every rainstorm would see us huddled under a garbage bag in a futile effort to protect our babies. It's not a pretty picture.
Drawn to Life
Jam Sessions
Spelling Challenges and More!
Zoey 101: Field Trip Fiasco
Travel past the break to see what's out in the rest of the world this week.
While at PAX, we saw someone sitting behind us at a panel discussion playing Drawn to Life. We engaged them in conversation, and probably accused them of witchcraft, learning that a downloadable demo was available somewhere on the show floor. We went to THQ's booth to find it, and the representatives didn't know anything about it. We were in panels most of the day, and it was the last day of the show, so we never did find that Drawn to Life demo. We found out later that 5th Cell employees were wandering the convention center with a handful of DS units, sending out demos to fans.
Those hands drawing stuff in artificially high speed could have been our hands. Those doodled characters could have been our doodles.
These new Drawn to Life screens make us so happy that we have decided to institute an impromptu holiday in the game's honor. Today is 2D Friday! Happy 2D Friday, everybody.
The most important way to celebrate 2D Friday is to play a 2D game. Hug your DS for letting you do this in 2007. Nobody's around-- go ahead, give it a little embrace. Look at the gallery of brand new screenshots and marvel at how beautiful they are. You should also spend some face time with Contra 4 today. We're just going to go walk in a straight line and jump on everything in our path.
Posted Jun 29th 2007 9:50AM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Frequent readers know that we are infatuated with Drawn to Life. It's a 2D platformer that makes use of a fun gimmick that is perfect for the DS. What's not to love? So every time some news comes around about it, we're thrilled to post it.
GamesRadar interviewed Scott Rogers from THQ about the game, and got a little information about the story. You play "The Creator" who draws in the Book of Life to create champions and items, etc., in order to save a race called the Raposa from some evil drawings. It seems one of the Raposa tried to use the Book of Life, but his drawings came out all evil, and then the whole town was covered in ominous darkness. Dude should have read the manual first.
Posted Jun 19th 2007 2:05PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Good boxart is sometimes a rarity. We hope that this image is what THQ really plans to use for Drawn to Life, because it's perfect. The hand-drawn character featured not only demonstrates the main gimmick of the game, he's adorable. The color scheme is great, and the box is eye-catching in general.
We're rooting for Drawn to Life because it looks great and because we need more original side-scrolling platformers. A visually appealing boxart may not affect sales hugely, but it would at least attract the eyes of shoppers. We don't want this one to slip through the cracks.
Someone at Gametrailers has worked some arcane sorcery upon the preview images of Drawn to Life. We cannot comprehend the events that are occurring before our eyes. BEHOLD ... THE PICTURES MOVE!
After the break, we've posted three developer walkthroughs that show character creation, item creation, weapon creation, and, of course, the basic platforming gameplay. And it all looks amazing. There is a different category of customizable weapon for each of four worlds.
The animation on the characters is remarkable for something that is based on player drawings. Plus you can replace moving platforms with your own drawings. Something that random and weird, we have to love.
Posted May 24th 2007 2:25PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
1UP's Jeremy Parish was lucky enough to get to play 5th Cell's Drawn to Life, a game whose hype train we have already boarded, even before we knew anything about the gameplay. Parish's preview has gotten us even more hyped, because the drawing element, rather than being gimmicky window dressing, is integral to the gameplay in really unique ways.
One example given in the preview: players are asked to draw a clam to be used as a springboard. We don't know if the player's drawing affects the performance of the springboard (if, for example, the angle of the thing affects its power) but it seems logical.
The actual platforming, according to Parish, was just okay-- inoffensive, but not exceptional. We could chalk that impression up to its lack of novelty compared to the editing functions; and as long as the game isn't bad, we think the drawing will carry it.
Animal Crossing engages players by giving them tools to do whatever they feel like, a large part of which is designing clothing, wallpaper, flags, and even dialogue to personalize their towns. Mario Kart DS has customizable emblems. And then there's Drawn to Life, which looks like the ultimate example of the in-game drawing tool, with the whole game designed around player-created characters and items.
What is it that is so captivating about putting your own work into a game? We were really amused by the Drawn to Life demo, specifically because we got to watch our creations move while we were still creating them. But why are our crude scratchings often so much more interesting to us than professionally-designed art? Or is it just us?
Posted May 17th 2007 10:00AM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
5th Cell has released a demo of the character-drawing utility used in Drawn to Life. We've messed with it for a while, and here are our detailed impressions: wheeeee!
The tool is simple-- freehand, flood fill, and eraser, but it works well, and there is something incredibly satisfying about drawing a character and seeing it animate on the top screen as you're drawing it. It'll be a lot more satisfying to do the drawing with an actual stylus. So far, we feel justified in our anticipation of Drawn.
When you've created a character you're satisfied with (like our completely original protagonist above), you can enter it into a contest, the winner of which gets included in the game! Oh, and also you get a bunch of stuff.
We asked you a while back to draw something in a demo version of the Drawn to Life character editor. But now that (we assume) some of you have the game and have chosen an avatar for real, we want to know what it is. How did you choose to represent yourself (or, we guess, how would you, for those of you who want to play along with no purchase necessary)?
This is such a good week for releases that we're not sure if we'd rather be here at home or over in Europe, where DS owners can get a taste of Tingle this week! Not that we're displeased with the array of titles available anywhere, frankly. If only every week could be this week.
These new Drawn to Life screens make us so happy that we have decided to institute an impromptu holiday in the game's honor. Today is 2D Friday! Happy 2D Friday, everybody.
Good boxart is sometimes a rarity. We hope that this image is what THQ really plans to use for Drawn to Life, because it's perfect. The hand-drawn character featured not only demonstrates the main gimmick of the game, he's adorable. The color scheme is great, and the box is eye-catching in general.
Someone at Gametrailers has worked some arcane sorcery upon the preview images of Drawn to Life. We cannot comprehend the events that are occurring before our eyes. BEHOLD ... THE PICTURES MOVE!
1UP's Jeremy Parish was lucky enough to get to play 5th Cell's Drawn to Life, a game whose hype train we have already boarded, even before we knew anything about the gameplay. Parish's preview has gotten us even more hyped, because the drawing element, rather than being gimmicky window dressing, is integral to the gameplay in really unique ways.
Animal Crossing engages players by giving them tools to do whatever they feel like, a large part of which is designing clothing, wallpaper, flags, and even dialogue to personalize their towns. Mario Kart DS has customizable emblems. And then there's Drawn to Life, which looks like the ultimate example of the in-game drawing tool, with the whole game designed around player-created characters and items.
_thumbnail.jpg "Dragon Quest IV")
