It had to happen eventually. In Hollywood’s relentless pursuit for more cash, any movie that doesn’t get a videogame tie-in either before or within a month of the movie’s release is a rarity – as is, sadly, the chance of said game being any good.

With Sharknado 2 scheduled to premiere on July 30 in US Cinemas, production studio The Asylum and TV channel Syfy have announced Sharknado: The Video Game will be released soon for iOS devices. Just like the film, the game features protagonist Fin racing to destroy several shark-infested tornadoes in New York City. And just what medium has the game chosen to represent this in gameplay terms? An “infinite runner”, similar to Canabalt and the variety of imitators its spawned.

Yawn.

Played in a third-person perspective with the camera just behind Fin; and with objects coming towards you from up ahead rather than side-on, the game nevertheless sees you running through Manhattan – collecting coins, for no apparent reason – while heading towards one of the shark-filled tornadoes. Along the way you’ll also pick up buckets of fish, which you can feed to any sharks thrown your way to avoid certain death. If you can’t feed them, you can try to fight them off with your trusty broadsword (yup). Reach the Sharknado and you can equip a chainsaw, jump inside and try to destroy it from within – as if you can just jump into a rapid vortex of wind rather than be scooped up by it and thrown around every which way but loose.

The game’s release date and price has yet to be announced, but given the imminent launch of the film as mentioned earlier, it probably won’t be long until we hear both details. Meanwhile, forgive me if I decide to spend my time looking for more interesting games to play.

Fans of the Civilization franchise of games are currently awaiting details of the next announced game, Civilization: Beyond Earth which will take the standard Civilization formula and place it onto alien planets in humanity’s near future.

Today 2K have released gameplay footage from E3 of the game:

They’ve also given a date of release for the game: October 27th. There’s also been a pre-order bonus pack announced. The Exoplanets Map Pack, a DLC mini-drop which takes inspiration from real-life exoplanets and includes:

• “Kepler 186f: This lush forest planet is one of the oldest known Earth-like planets;
• “Rigil Khantoris Bb: Orbiting the closest star to our solar system, the historical records of this arid continental planet’s settlement are well-preserved;
• “Tau Ceti d: This planet of seas and archipelagos features a booming biodiversity and a wealth of resources;
• “Mu Arae f: Tidally locked in orbit around a weak star, the southern hemisphere of this planet is a blistering desert where the sun never sets, while the northern hemisphere is perpetually in frozen darkness;
• “82 Eridani e: An alien world of scarce water and wracked by tectonic forces;
• “Eta Vulpeculae b: A mysterious new discovery with unknown terrain.”

Upon release the game will be retailing at £27/$50.

If yesterday’s article (that can be found here) about the Hearthstone qualifier in Finland with access restricted to only the male sex made your blood boil then be angry no more. The International eSports Federation have changed their mind and the male-only tournament will now be open to both male and female players. Result!

The scandal began on Tuesday when a flier for the event was passed about online, specifically on a sub-Reddit with the entry restrictions highlighted. The Finnish organisers then replied to the criticisms by revealing that they were only in place due to the IeSF’s own rules that split tournaments between male and female players as an attempt to get eSports taken seriously as sport. Upon hearing the outcry from the gaming community and the gaming press Blizzard themselves got involved, making it clear that they wouldn’t stand for such restrictions of entry and would in fact prohibit any event that tried to as they wouldn’t want to be seen to promote the exclusion of women from the gaming community. Upon hearing the opinions the IeSF held an emergency meeting of their board to make a decision on what should be done.

“IeSF shall have two event categories: “Open for All” events and events that are reserved for women. The events which were initially set aside as the male division will now be open to all genders, and the events which were initially set as the female division will remain as they were.” read the statement that they released declaring the change of the rules.

They further justified that the female-only events were staying as they were to encourage more women into eSports with the hopes that they would eventually grow in confidence enough to move to the Open for All events and make eSports less a less male-dominated industry of the gaming community.

Just shows what we as a community can do when we seek to go against the sexist stereotype that gamers often get tarred with

An eSports group has been forced to justify their decisions when people noticed that their listing for a Finnish qualifying tournament for the popular card game Hearthstone specified that only MALE Finns were allowed to enter.

The organising group, the Finnish eSports Federation have pointed to the organisers of the event the tournament is a qualifier for – a South Korean group called the International e-Sports Federation – as they are the people who are responsible for the restrictions. As part of their efforts to get eSports taken seriously as ‘real sport’, IeSF separates their tournaments between the sexes – guys against guys and women against women.

“In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation’s (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only. This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things.” said head admin of the qualifier Markus “Olodyn” Koskivirta in a statement made to PC Gamer. He then went on to say that the reason the entries are restricted is because if they allowed the tournament to be for both sexes, the winner could ultimately be female and then unable to progress to the next stage of the competition because of the IeSF’s rules.

The problem is that if you look over all of the qualifiers being played, there IS no Hearthstone tournament for the female players to compete in. Only two qualifiers are being run for women – Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2, while men get the afore-mentioned Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, Ultimate Street Fighter IV and Dota 2. It all just seems very strange.

Koskivirta adds that they are actively campaigning to get both sexes involved in tournaments together, but for now the Hearthstone tournament is remaining male-only until the IeSF changes their policies.

As a female gamer and a Hearthstone player myself, I can’t say that the idea of segregating the sexes in eSport makes much sense to me. It isn’t a necessary thing required for it to be taken seriously, and how can someone truly be the ‘best’ in a tournament if they haven’t had all the opportunity to play against everyone able to compete at that level of play? Gamers and the gaming community are often seen as being very sexist towards women and stories such as these don’t really help to dispel that image.

Another snapshot has just been released in the lead-up to the release of Minecraft 1.8. This time it adds a lot of Survival content and a new mob, rabbits, to the game.

The rabbit mobs are passive as you’d expect (with one exception), with their AI set to flee from the player if they get too close. They come in a variety of shades and with a few different eye colours and have a range of items they can drop upon death as well as being tameable and breedable with carrots. As of 14w27a the breeding seems to be a little bugged though, in that they sometimes won’t automatically seek out another rabbit with breeding mode triggered upon carrot being administered.

To the new drops, a rabbit can drop one of three things (and sometimes multiples of one thing/more than one type of drop per kill) – raw rabbit, rabbit’s foot and rabbit hide. The raw rabbit is like any raw meat, cook it for a cooked version and edible to restore hunger. The cooked rabbit can also be used to make rabbit stew with a bowl, uncooked potato, mushroom (red or brown) and a carrot. Four rabbit hides can be put together in a 2×2 formation to make one piece of leather and the rabbit’s foot is a potion ingredient used to make a potion of leaping.

Other additions include the addition of mutton, raw and cooked, which is now a drop from killed sheep and the small chance of a spawned rabbit actually being a killer rabbit ala Monty Python – hits hard but goes down with a few smacks of a sword.