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App review: Infinity Blade (iPhone)
Aww, would you look at that, the iPhone's trying to play big boy games! Following in the well received footsteps of Rage HD, today marks the debut of Infinity Blade, the second in what's hopefully a wave of gorgeous-looking iOS games boasting advanced 3D graphics, if not 3D gameplay. Epic Games has put aside the chainsaw-equipped projectile weaponry of its wildly successful Gears of War console series to deliver the first mobile game built around its Unreal Engine 3. You won't be surprised to hear that it's utterly delicious to look at, and the visuals certainly helped transport us to this alien realm of swords, axes, shields, and magical rings -- where body armor is optional, but helmets apparently are not. Jump past the break to see this visual feast in motion and to soak up some more of our impressions. %Gallery-110231%
The Daily Grind: Careful where you point that thing
There are parts of the game that you look at it without a great deal of affection. They're bland but functional, the sort of thing that doesn't show up in pre-release screenshots for obvious reasons. Then there are the parts that you look at that could curdle milk based solely on the visuals. They bring you to a state of Lovecraftian horrible knowledge about the hideous true nature of the universe. Maybe something has been modeled to be something particularly ugly, or perhaps it's a combination of poor polygon counts and bad choices in terms of color. In creator-heavy games such as City of Heroes and Champions Online, you might wind up with a character whose calculated appearance is eye-searing. What's universal is that they are so ugly that even if you're used to playing games with unskinned conglomerates of polygons, they strike you as downright hideous. What have you seen in your favorite game that made you just recoil in shock, horror, and possibly disgust? Was it a badly-designed model, or something that was meant to be horrific and succeeded far too well? Did you take screenshots to prove how nauseating it was, or did you just get away and never look back?
Super effective Pokemon bento
Some people are just gifted, like the Japanese mother who is responsible for these brilliant Pokémon-themed lunches. We've seen some neat Nintendo-themed bento before, but comparing those to today's specimens is a bit like holding up a Monet next to the scuffed chalk drawings on the sidewalk out front. They're just in different leagues.Hit the break to see the tastiest Pikachu ever. There's another of these, and tons that aren't made of Pokemans, at the source.
