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'StarCraft' gets the cartoon makeover nobody asked for
When you think of kid-friendly video games, StarCraft might not top the list. But that could change. A new version, StarCraft: Cartooned, reimagines every unit, structure, map, menu and mission with art by CarBot Animations. The usually dark game is swapping its Warhammer-like visual style for a complete makeover with cute cartoon graphics.
The battle for Warsong Gulch continues in Wowcraft
CarBot's latest Wowcraft episode continues to focus on our Horde and Alliance friends as they battle for the flags of Warsong Gulch. This episode pokes fun at lots of the typical mechanics and behavior you'll see in a battleground--the spring boots, the rez timer, and of course those infuriating, blinking mages. The game's still afoot, however, and despite the ominious (for the Alliance, anyway) ending to this short, nobody's yet won. We'll see how things continue in part four!
Wowcraft Episode 7 visits Warsong Gulch
I know Wowcraft is supposed to be a World of Warcraft parody, but this episode's trip to Warsong Gulch seems pretty true to my in-game experiences... except, of course, Wowcraft is way more adorable. In every battleground, though, you always seem to run into at least one player trying to organize for everyone else, one player jumping mindlessly around the entrance, one player autorunning against the starting gate, and one player (or more) standing still as a statue. But somehow CarBot makes these player stereotypes seem pretty charming. CarBot's animated adventures always amuse with its spot-on representation of in-game life. If you've missed any, you can catch the rest of their work -- including StarCraft and Diablo videos -- on their YouTube channel.
Wowcraft episode 4: Training Dummy
The latest episode of CarBot Animations' wonderful series, Wowcraft, is now available. In its fourth installment, we depart from our orc friend and his adventures in Durotar to focus on his purple, long-eared enemies up north. Yes, I'm talking about the night elves, and episode four is all about a struggling night elf hunter who is clearly attacking a training dummy that's a few levels (or fifty) above his own, to disastrous consequences. I'm really enjoying these little shorts from CarBot. They're a loving, light-hearted bit of fun at WoW's expense, and I particularly like the mount gag at the end. Where does my druid keep those 150 giant beasts (plus enormous kite--seriously, that thing is huge) that she can call on to cart her around the world? And, more importantly, why does she bother, when she can turn into a bird? The world may never know.
Wowcraft episode 2
Not too long ago, CarBot animations released the first episode of their WoW-themed shorts, Wowcraft. CarBot's an old hand at adorable tongue-in-cheek takes on Blizzard games, having done a parody trailer for Reaper of Souls, Heroes of the Storm, and a whole series on StarCraft. The videos are sweet and often hilarious, deftly poking fun at experiences I'm sure most of us can relate to. In Wowcraft's second episode, "Quest for Tooth," our (still) nameless hero is assigned the task of collecting teeth from Durotar's strangely cute coyotes. It goes about as well as you'd expect. I love CarBot's videos, but one thing I particularly admire is the way he juxtaposes the visuals and the sound. A lot of the sound effects in "Quest for Tooth" come straight from WoW itself. Their use and timing along with the original animations provide a good bit of the humor in the video. There's one specific sound-based joke here that absolutely cracked me up, but I won't name it because doing so would spoil it. Take a guess at which one it was in the comments, though!
Wowcraft Episode 1
CarBot Animations, the creator of the StarCrafts series and the recent Diablols episode, as well as the Heroes of the Storm cartoon trailer, has turned his hand to World of Warcraft cartoon creation. And, as you can see from the video above he began at the beginning of the character's life, with the inevitable issue of name creation. CarBot is well-known in the Starcraft II community for his video work, and the Blizzard gear store even sells his designs with official Blizzard branding. They're adorable, and I can only hope that the same trend emerges with his WoW work, so I can have cute cartoon WoW characters on a t-shirt! What did you think of the video? It seems like a great introduction, and made me chuckle. Orcs and Gnomes don't seem to mix. But maybe we'll see more gnomish participation in CarBot's video work than we usually do in Blizzard's!
A new Blizzard parody from CarBot Animation
CarBot Animation has done some fun and adorable Blizzard parodies in the past, and today their up to their usual tricks with a new parody of the Diablo III: Reaper of Souls trailer. Diablo isn't generally an IP we see a lot of blatant funny stuff about, considering the source material is easily the darkest of Blizzard's franchises. This adorable animation hits all the right comedic notes, from Tyrael casually eating a sandwich while the Horadrim handle the Black Soulstone to Malthael's owl-like head twist before he sends the guards to their humiliating end. The ending is easily the best bit, but I won't spoil that for you, you'll have to watch it for yourself!
DeskPets' CarBot is a little iOS-controlled car
The Parrot Quadricopter is probably the coolest thing you can control with your iPhone, but not all of us are willing to shell out $300 for a fully equipped airborne vehicle. For the rest of us, however, a company named DeskPets has released CarBot, a much more affordable (under $30) little four-wheeled vehicle, easily controlled with a free iPhone app. The company kindly sent TUAW a unit to test, and I ran the little robot through its paces, using my iPhone 5 to control the little guy around my Los Angeles apartment. Setup is a little overwhelming when you first get the car's plastic packaging open, just because it seems like there are more than a few different working parts involved. But once you figure it all out, it's actually pretty simple. The car comes all ready to go, green and translucent and packed with circuitry and gears. There's a little adapter that plugs into the headphone slot on your iDevice (I plugged it into the bottom of my iPhone 5 and into the top of my iPad without having to even remove either one's case). Both the adapter and the car need to be switched on (by holding down the car's only button for a few seconds, and then flipping the switch on the adapter), and then you simply pull up the free iPhone app and you're ready to go. The car has four different modes. The first is the standard driving mode, where you can use onscreen controls to move the car forwards and backwards, blow an on-board (digital) horn, or turn the car left or right. There's a small switch underneath the car with three frequency settings, so if you're using multiple cars, you can set up each iPhone to control separate frequencies. But on the first mode, you can simply drive the car around. On my carpet floors, the car drove just fine, though not as well as on linoleum or tile, obviously. The second mode is a multiplayer battle, for use only when you have more than one car. I didn't get to try this mode out, but it sounds fun: You can use a "Fire" button on the iPhone to "fire" an infrared shot from the car. Hitting another car will decrease its life meter. There's also a "Boost" button, which the manual says will give you a quick burst of speed (though given how small these cars are, that might be hard to tell). The third mode is called "obstacle detection" mode, and is designed to be used with another add-on called the MazeBot, which is yet to be released and presumably will let you build a maze for the car to navigate by itself. The last mode was almost the most interesting one for me. It's an "Autonomous Personality Mode", and it allows the car to navigate around by itself, free-roaming around whatever environment it's in. I had fun just watching the little car try to navigate my apartment like a Roomba, but this mode is really designed to be used with the multiplayer mode, basically to give you a non-player opponent to battle against. Unfortunately, the CarBot's worst quality is that it's far from accurate -- not only is the car rather clumsy (though I was impressed with how well it was able to navigate and move around the various environments I placed it in), but the iPhone's touchscreen controls are completely binary, in that you're either turning left, turning right or not turning at all. Likewise, you either are moving forward, backward or not moving, so if you're looking to make precision turns or drive at a dynamic speed, you're out of luck. The other big issue is that the car isn't controlled with Bluetooth -- instead, the controls are passed to the car completely through an IR port on the adapter. This means that it requires line of sight to operate, so if your hand blocks the signal or the car happens to pass out of the room at any time, you'll lose the connection. It's definitely weird that DeskPets didn't choose to go with Bluetooth, given how easily Apple has made using that protocol for app developers, but for whatever reason, it's all IR, with all of the issues that entails. Still, for $30 the CarBot seems like a great present, and it definitely does what it says on the box: Gives you a small remote-controlled car that you can drive around with your iPhone. There are some minor issues, like that choice to use IR and a generally terribly designed app. However, driving around this little car is so much fun, and the price is so easy to handle, that I ended up shrugging most of those issues off and just having a great time. If you're putting your Christmas lists together this year already, the CarBot might be a nice addition for the iPhone user in your family.
CarBot lets you settle those grudges with battle mode
If you prefer your robots a little more terrestrial, there's Desk Pets' CarBot, a buggy that can do tricks, navigate mazes, and race with -- or fire on -- your buddies. The cars can be controlled by a free app installed on any iOS or Android Device, and allow up to four players to duke it out in multiple play modes. For mayhem lovers the most popular may be "battle," allowing you to fire on rival cars to disable them, along with a personality mode for freestyling and a drift 'n' race option. There's even a maze mode, in which the tiny wheeled bots use their infrared sensors to avoid objects with "military precision," according to the company. The built-in battery will give you 25 minutes of playtime for every 45 minutes of USB-based juicing, and each CarBot will set you back $30. Check out the PR and video after the break to let the rolling deathmatch commence.
