SpecialEffect's accessible GameBase

Space Ball Cosmo Dude is an addictive sports simulation style basketball game. Your objective is to achieve the highest score possible by shooting the ball into the basket which awards points. You have 2 min in which to do this in. Each "round" increases the minimum score required in order to move on to the next round.

Really colourful and exciting graphics make it a lot more engaging and intense. The little weird aliens also give you strange comments whenever you make a basket.

Gameplay is very simple: simply point and click where you wish to shoot the ball and the rest is taken care of. It's all about getting the correct angles. Play the game long enough and you will find yourself making shots on "autopilot" as your brain istinctively learns how to shoot. No dragging or double-click is needed; only a single left click.

Challenge your friends to beat your high score! There is no head-to-head multiplayer mode, but perhaps they may add this feature in future releases.

Link to the game: http://www.funny-games.biz/space-ball-cosmo-dude.html (www.bored.com)

Following (probably obliviously) in the footsteps of V.I. Fit games and Mousou controllers, comes Hyper Ping-Pong: A motion based audio-game that requires no screen.

As these kids in Qatar discovered, you can play Ping-Pong / Table-Tennis without the need for sight and have fun. 2000 Yen doesn't sound bad either (use www.xe.com for a currency conversion).

Link with thanks to Thomas Westin of the IGDA GASIG.

Masters Tiger Woods PGA 12 - EA Sports (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3)

I have to be honest when I first started to play The Masters I took a disliking to it.

The first thing I had to do was set up an EA Account, I know it sounds lame as in actuality it probably only took a couple of minutes. The loading times before I got to start playing were reasonably hefty and the golfing quotes and music it throws at you are oh so worthy. Giving all this some thought it is probably more a reflection of how impatient I have become as an adult. What happened to the wide eyed child who would sit patiently by his Commodore 64 watching the television flicker multicoloured lines, while a tape player screeched analogue obscenity at him?

PC - www.graemesfreegames.com

'Shodan' is a free on-screen virtual gamepad designed to enable people to play fighting games using cursor input alone.

By moving your cursor over the on-screen buttons you can emulate keyboard button presses and combinations of keyboard presses. You can choose your own actions for the buttons (go to 'Configure Controls') and then you can make combo moves from these by selecting on-screen buttons such as '1+3' to combine those two buttons.  A (free) game to test this with, as recommended by Graeme of www.graemesfreegames.com, is M.U.G.E.N.

Title: BATTLEFIELD 3 (DICE/EA)

Tested On: XBox 360.

Full Re-mapping: No.

Button Layout Options: 4 options available, including 'Lefty' option (all options displayed in the video below).

Stick Layout Options: 4 options available: Default (left stick = aim/look and right stick = move), Southpaw, Legacy and Southpaw Legacy (layouts shown in video below).

Stick Sensitivity Options: Combined horizontal and vertical sensitivity for both sticks with 32 different levels of sensitivity to choose from.

Look type: Normal and inverted are available (vertical).

After playing it for the first time at Replay Expo 2011 I decided to have another go at getting Konami's one-switch laser-disk game Badlands working on my laptop. Using the latest version of the Daphne emulator (v1.0), it worked!

So, what's the game like?

 

Developer: Bioware, Publisher: EA, Format PC

Have you ever pretended that your torch was a lightsaber, or your remote control was a blaster pistol? Well pretend no more, you'll have a real lightsaber as you serve the galaxy as a Jedi Knight, or be a bad guy with a blaster as you become an Imperial Agent. You can do it all in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

First things first, Star Wars; The Old Republic is an MMORPG, so if you need any help while playing you can team up with friends or other players, you can even join a guild that will organise events catering for every level of player in the guild. Guilds not only help you in missions, but they can be full of friendly people who love to chat with each other as well. I personally think this is a great feature of MMO's as you can not only find out tips and tricks from other players but also get to meet other like minded people.

Missile Strike is a free to download PC remake of Atari classic Missile Command. Defend your cities from nuclear attack from a not very friendly enemy. Happy new year(!)

This is another highly accessible title from Graeme's Free Games that offers a choice of ways to play. The game can be played with the keyboard or mouse with three modes aimed at opening up the game to one-switch, eye-tracker and head-tracker players. You can tweak the game play difficulty settings too (recommended) to make the game more fun for you, i.e. not too hard and not too easy.

PS3/Xbox 360 (tested on both) - PLATINUMGAMES INC/ SEGA

'Being bad never felt so good.'

'The last survivor survivor of an ancient Witch clan keeping the balance beteween light, dark and chaos. With ocer-the-top action in extreme evnvironments. Bayonetta will lure you into new realms of intensity.'

The description on the back of the box sums Bayonetta up pretty well, with 'over-the-top' and 'intensity' being the dominating features of the game. This can only be seen as positive. With many big games titles becoming more and more concerned over realism and accuracy, and, perhaps fairly, accused of taking themselves a little too seriously ocasionally. Bayonetta comes as a breath of fresh air, and a pretty big lungful it is too.

PC (opens in a separate window) - Ninja Doodle

As the title heavily implies, the controls to this game are minimal: just the left mouse button or equivalent switch.

Each scene must be completed using the button in different ways, often requiring accurate timing and reactions.

If you die (which happens frequently) you only start the page again rather than go back to the beginning.

The Adventures Of One Button Bob is an imaginative use of the one switch concept, and is inspiring in its variety of gameplay despite it's restrictions.