Week in Games - November 27th

LoadingReadyRun Finish Desert Bus for Charity (again) Internet comedy group LoadingReadyRun have once again completed their annual Desert Bus marathon, raising almost $380,000 for charity Child's Play, which provides sick children in hospitals with video games as entertainment. The game is infamous in gaming circles for its utter pointlessness, making it all the more entertaining to watch a group of people attempt to play it non-stop for 150 hours.

The premise is simple - drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada. The only catch is, it's all done in real-time, and the bus only goes at 45mph - covering the distance takes about eight hours, and once you reach the other end, the bus turns around and you head back to Tucson. It's not a game you can leave alone with blu-tack over the buttons either, the bus veers slightly, requiring constant attention. Allowing it to reach the edge of the road results in a tow-truck pulling you back where you came from - again in real time. For the gruelling task, I'd say the $380k was well-earned.

Tired of Humble Game Bundles? Why Not Try the Indie Game Music Bundle? For today and tomorrow only, you can get your hands on ten great indie game soundtracks for as little as $1. Obviously drawing inspiration from the popular Humble Indie Bundle, you can pay anywhere from $1 to $10,000. These aren't some obscure indie titles no-one has ever heard of either, included in the pack are the soundtracks of games such as Minecraft and Super Meat Boy (the full list is on their website at www.gamemusicbundle.com). Many of the artists, like Big Giant Circles and virt started their music careers doing fanmade remixes on OC Remix, so it's great to see how far they've come.

Users who spend more than $10 also get seven more albums, from titles such as The Binding of Isaac and Extreme Roadtrip. The offer's only on till Monday, so if you're interested, go for it now. After all, what's 60p for a whole bunch of excellent music? But then, we know Yorker readers are more generous than that ;). All tracks are DRM-free and encoded at a high-bitrate, so it's quality stuff!

Black Friday Brings Out Worst in People - While we don't share the event in the UK, the US sales day, Black Friday, is incredibly popular. All kinds of stores plummet their prices to generate sales before the rush on Christmas week - and it's definitely a Big Deal every year.

So much so that with every Black Friday there's at least one account of a person getting trampled, a fight breaking out over an item, and this year at least 5 people got a face full of pepper spray by a 'competitive shopper' at the video games aisle in the Porter Ranch branch of Wal-Mart.

At a Buckeye Wal-Mart, a grandfather was accused of shoplifting some games, and was summarily beaten into the floor by mall cops. At time of writing it is not publicly known whether the man was actually shoplifting.

Puzzling Romance-Drama Catherine now has a February Release - It's already old-news overseas, but Catherine is something different. Made by Atlus, a development team usually occupied in making lengthy and difficult RPGs about Jungian Theory, Catherine follows a weary and awkward protagonist, Vincent. He is torn between two women in his life; and deals with the emotional conflict... by solving timed puzzles in his nightmares. It's all very odd.

Japan and North America have been enjoying Catherine since July, but the release date for Europe keeps being pushed back. It's not too hard to see why, it deals with some heavy sexual themes. That said, we now have a confirmation for February - publishers Deep Silver jumping through hoops to make sure it arrives on our shores. Even if narrative-heavy or puzzle games aren't your usual fare, Catherine's experience is different enough to be worth a shot.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.