wideload posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Stuff your vote in the ballot box and decide on your favorite zoo animal, because it's time to get political with a new Hail to the Chimp demo that just released to the Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo, which is only available to U.S. and Canadian Live subscribers, features "presidential party game" style shenanigans and enough animal-based jokes to last you a few years. Download if you're interested, ignore this post if you're not ... but we really didn't have to tell you that did we?

[Via Game Stooge]

A reminder that Gamecock has offered Joystiq readers an exclusive offer: preorder Hail to the Chimp at GameStop (it comes out a week from today) and get a free $10 gift certificate to the Onion Store, the virtual storefront of the popular fake (and funny!) newspaper. So, to recap: you preorder the $40 PS3 or Xbox 360 politically themed party game before the end of the day, send the Gamecock people a copy of your receipt (details here), and get ten bucks of free Onion Store credit.

*Sigh* More delays. This time it's Hail to the Chimp, the arena-fighting, politically-charged, animal-filled cel-shaded game from Wideload studios. Originally set for release at the end of this month, Hail to the Chimp has been delayed a month for "polish." As former QA experience tells us, this is likely a good thing, as there was probably a choice between hitting ship with a certain amount of bugs or delaying the game and getting to fix the bugs. When it does finally hit on June 24th, Hail to the Chimp should hopefully be that much better.

[Via Joystiq]

Wideload's Hail to the Chimp party game has been pushed back from a scheduled May 27 release date into "mid-June," a Gamecock representative told us this morning. [Update: Gamecock has clarified that the new release date has been set for June 24.] The publisher attributed the short delay to a need for "polish" (working with animals can get dirty, after all), though we wonder if the extra weeks aren't equally necessary to generate some excitement for a campaign, which to date, has received little coverage. Ape or not, a politician's success relies on the strength of a savvy marketing team.

For further analysis of the issues at hand, check out our Hail to the Chimp impressions from GDC and EIEIO.

Wideload Games' Hail to the Chimp consistently delivered laughs to its audience of journalists at EIEIO. Being that the event was a large party, it was the perfect venue to try out a party game. The crowd got almost as boisterous during the gameplay sessions as they did later that evening, when the event metamorphosed from a video game press event into a concert.

The "concert" portion of the event was also the first chance I had to talk about the game with Wideload's Senior Producer Jon Krusell. He was kind enough to yell over the din in order to discuss the thought process that led naturally into a party combat game about animal presidential elections, his theories about the lack of comedy in games, and his revolutionary Robot Jox-based political platform.

Not being much of a "next-gen" follower (sorry!) I had a vague belief that Wideload's Hail to the Chimp was a downloadable game. I was, then, surprised to find it a full-sized (but budget-priced) release. Developer Wideload Games used the retail-game budget to create not only a unique party game, but also a hilarious audiovisual experience that doesn't really have an analogue on modern systems.

Hail to the Chimp's menu interface is the GRR News Network, with pompous anchor Woodchuck Chumley (seen above enjoying some... hot coffee ... with Bean the Sloth) onscreen authoritatively intoning ridiculous stories, while the menu options take the place of all the ubiquitous TV news infoboxes and text clutter. Wrapping the game inside this TV-station premise allows Hail to the Chimp to have something resembling a storyline, and also provides the opportunity for the funniest aspect of the game, which I'll get to shortly.

Developed by Wideload (Stubbs the Zombie), Hail to the Chimp is a party game infused with political humor. As the story goes, various animals -- ranging from an octopus to an armadillo -- are competing to be elected as president of the animal kingdom. To do this, players engage in a series of arena fighting games with various goals. The game plays more or less like a simplified version of Power Stone with objectives thrown into the mix. The gameplay is simple with few nuances, as one might expect of a party game. The real question is whether or not the gameplay is too simple to maintain the attention of discerning gamers. Strange as it may seem, the satirical humor that frames Hail to the Chimp may be more endearing than the game itself.

When we first heard that the Gamecock published Hail to the Chimp would be showcased on a bus rather than in a booth, we assumed the worst. Even now, given our previous evidence, we aren't ashamed of that assumption. We imagined a bus of debauchery and decadence. A place of foolhardy revelry. Immediately we began to guess just what the bus would be called. After a long and passionate discussion, we settled on Shuttlecock as the most likely moniker. Alas, no wacky transpirations took place, and we are left with an empty feeling. That is, until we saw just how nice the bus was on the inside. As the gallery below will no doubt prove, the folks at Wideload really know how to travel in style.

This time, the foolishness was taken to the streets in promotion of Hail to the Chimp, Wideload Games's political animal-mascot fighting game. These particular characters didn't look like chimps, but we hailed to them anyway, mostly out of a sense of duty. We didn't want to make waves or anything ...

Wideload Games' new shorts division, appropriately titled Wideload Shorts and obviously using sex appeal to sell the brand (mmm, hippos) have announced that one of the first titles from the division, Cyclomite will debut early 2008 on InstantAction, a service developed by GarageGames where you play the game within your browser and against other gamers.

In Cyclomite, players control a multi-colored ring whose purpose is to catch meteors as the storm of space rock tries to destroy the universe as we know it. 1UP has a preview of the game.

The game is being dubbed the "premier" title from Wideload Shorts in the press release, though it also states later that the studio will "release its first game in late 2007," so we guess premier means the first project they begun developing. No word on what that other title is. Wideload has stated it will support handheld, cell and online game platforms.

[Via Press Release]

Wideload, the kooky cats behind Hail to the Chimp, the satirical fighter set in the animal kingdom, has announced the formation of its Shorts division. The Shorts division will focus (surprisingly) on downloadable games for various console services and PC. As you might suspect, Wideload Shorts has plans to create games for Xbox Live Arcade. Wideload is careful not to call such games "casual," as they wish to make it clear that while gameplay will be kept simple, it should still be compelling to longtime gamers as well as newcomers. While no specific titles have been named, the first Wideload Shorts game is expected to arrive in late 2007.

[Via Joystiq]

After the beans pretty much spilled yesterday that Wideload Games (Hail to the Chimp), headed by former Bungie CEO Alex Seropian, is working on XBLA games, more details emerged later in the day. In an interview with GameDaily they discuss their new Wideload Shorts division designed to focus on smaller downloadable games "via established and emerging download channels." The first game is expected later this year.

Heading the new division is Scott Corley who says he doesn't want to use the term "casual games" for Wideload Shorts because it has so many different meaning now. He says the games they are creating are "meant to have clear goals, allow shorter periods of play, and have interfaces that are intuitive even if the player is new to games." He says they are planning on releasing games on XBLA, PSN and WiiWare. There's no word yet what these games will be, but they will have Wideload's "trademark humor," which means if you like Stubbs the Zombie and the upcoming Hail to the Chimp intrigues you, keep an eye out for the first game from Wideload Shorts this fall.

Since our first glance of Hail to the Chimp we've been intrigued. The party game for Xbox 360 and PS3 can be best described as "monkeying" the Pixar philosophy, the game looks like it'd be for kids, but there's a bunch of sly jokes in there that adults will get and the gameplay is simple but deep. The game revolves around 10 animals vying for control over the Animal Kingdom through a bunch of Power Stone-type levels where you need to collect clams in order to fund the campaign. Meanwhile, an anchor for a cable television station style network will give briefs after each battle, along with doing voice-overs during bouts. The anchor isn't your cheap kind of recap character either, this beaver has over 5000 lines of dialog speaking specifically to the action which has occurred.

Playing Hail to the Chimp against three of the developers, it was tough to put up any kind of fight, but we got an idea of how the game might play when it releases next year in time for the U.S. presidential election. Each character has special attacks and if players are failing they can even team up for different combo attacks. For example, the hippo and armadillo can join forces and the hippo will kick the armadillo like a soccer ball at opponents. There are also various traps, warps and environmental incidents that occur during any given stage. After about three rounds you get a solid idea of what's going on. Once again, playing against three of the game's developers you'll have your jackass handed to you, but we did win an elimination round fair and square, where a cloud chases the character with the lowest number of clams to kick them out of the game.

Hail to the Chimp still has a while to go, but the basics are there and so far it's fun. The depth is involved in learning the animal combinations and what the 10 characters offer, but you can hardly learn that in 20 minutes. The great thing about the game is that it is clearly designed to utilize Xbox Live and PSN so battles will be easily played online -- which is more than we can say about a more famous "party" game. What Hail to the Chimp does truly have working for it is a colorful cast of characters who will supposedly have backstory attached to them and a wit in mocking the political system.

Wideload Games has released the first trailer and bits of information for their new PS3/360 party game, Hail to the Chimp. Dubbed an "over-the-top party game" with "biting political satire," the title appears to be a cross between brawlers like Powerstone and the political comics like Doonesbury. Sporting a cartoony look with subtle cel-shading, the game looks bright and colorful but fairly unremarkable. You have a mixture of political/racial stereotypes done up in animal form smacking each other around, with 'hilarious' and 'topical' newspaper headlines tossed in. Gameplay looks extremely generic and uninspired, but it's hard to tell from the short trailer.

What do you guys think? Does this game have any promise? Do our brawlers really need second-tier political comedy to make them more entertaining?