[Sometimes you don't have $60 to drop on the latest big-budget AAA game.  Luckily, Gamer Limit is here to show you the best of the wide world of freeware.  Remember: you don't always get what you pay for.  Sometimes you get much, much more.]

The Experimental Gameplay Project brings together all the indie dudes in the house, gives them a topic, and says, “Go.  Make a game.”  March’s topic: “10 seconds.”  So what did Paolo Pedericini do?  He condensed the holy gospel into ten seconds with Run, Jesus Run! a.k.a. The 10 Second Gospel.

Blasphemy?  Pssh.  When the instructions are “Move with arrow keys.  Space: Do Jesus Things,” you know you’re about to witness… something.  And something it is.

Ten seconds isn’t a lot of time.  You rush through a 2D, 8-bit representation of the life of Jesus Christ (starting in the manger and ending with His death) and perform miracles on the way to the last supper and – eventually – His crucifixion.  Only when you play as Jesus could dying also mean winning.  For humanity!

You avoid Satan, feed the hungry, walk on water, cure the blind, raise the dead, and… hit a block in the sky to rain down love on His disciples.  It even makes the Mario noise when you hit the block.  Nifty!  Jesus = Mario?

At the end of the game, you get apostles based on how effectively you emulated the Messiah.  It kind of makes me wish that I was rated in every game on a scale of x/12 apostles.  “You saved the princess and only took one warp pipe!  10/12 apostles.”  “You shot the food!  0/12 apostles.”

The game is so simple (what do you expect – it was made in twelve hours).  You just run and jump and do Jesus things.  Like any biblical game, however, there is a message.  At the top right-hand corner of every miracle-making screen, you’ll see the bible passage that your particular Jesus task was taken from: Luke 4: 1-13, John 6: 1-14, etc., but it’s up to you to do the further research if you want to read about Jesus helping Lazarus or feeding the hungry.

Mollieindustria, the game’s developer, claims that RJR is “a kind of prequel of Everyday the Same Dream,” but they have an entirely different feeling and aesthetic.  (EtSD is highly recommended as well, although for entirely different reasons.)  Maybe they just meant prequel as “a game set in an earlier time period and using the same controls,” because then technically that’d be true.  Ah well.

One special aspect worth noting: the soundtrack is a chiptunes version of the Sonseed song “Jesus is My Friend,” a Christian ska pop song that became a three-million-view YouTube internet meme in 2008.  Check out how great this song is, and then imagine it in glorious mono chiptunes!

There are also a handful of remixes (this is the best one, by far), but you might not have known the song’s basis otherwise.  Being made aware of this adds an extra two layers of awesome sauce to Run, Jesus Run!

What else is there to say about a ten-second game?  It looks like it’d be right at home on the Atari 5200, but in a cool Arkedo retro kind of way.  Including Jesus as the only character makes you unsure if playing this miniature game is actually blasphemy (even just a little bit), but you get over it when you remember that there are gospel passage references in the upper corner.  If you are blaspheming, at least it’s for only ten seconds, right?  It’s like the ten-second rule if you drop your unleavened bread.

Run, Jesus Run! might be a joke.  Or, it might be an incentive to pick up that bible you’ve never read, sitting on your dusty bookshelf next to the Xbox 360 that you fire up daily.  Or it might just be ten seconds that you’re glad you spent on something that doesn’t involve ripping zombies’ spinal cords out and drinking the fluid.  Wholesome games can be fun too!  If they’re creative.

Play it here.

Gamer Limit gives Run, Jesus Run! a 9/10.

Remember Punch-Out!!, the Wii-exclusive, old-school update that released last June?  Imagine that game, but you play as a gladiator instead of a boxer, and you can’t duck, but you can jump.  Then stick it on WiiWare, add a few RPG elements, and only charge $10 for it.  Taa-daa!  You’ve got Rage of the Gladiator.

That’s pretty much my review in a nutshell, although, if you never played the obvious source material, I’ll delve into it for you.

Rage of the Gladiator is a series of one-on-one, first-person Colosseum battles.  You are Gracius, a former king, fallen from grace and forced to participate in arena fights to regain your former glory.  You have a big hammer, and a shield.  Hit stuff, block, dodge, repeat.

Like Punch-Out!!, Rage of the Gladiator is not about button mashing.  Instead, you need to learn your opponents’ “tells” and react quickly.  Flashing eyes?  Raise your shield!  Tail twitch?  Jump!  If you develop some incredible twitch reflexes, you may even be able to counter attack for massive damage.

Luckily, the controls are tight.  Super tight.  And there are three different controls schemes as well:

1. Hold the Wii-mote sideways, classic NES controller style (this is the only control scheme that is accurate enough for the precision required to beat the ridiculously challenging later levels)
2. Wii-mote plus nunchuck (think Wii Sports boxing)
3. MotionPlus (didn’t get to try this one out, as I am one of the millions across the world that doesn’t own this gimmick accessory yet)

The motion controls are fun, but I can’t imagine people beating the whole game with them; your reactions would have to be better than a Jedi’s, because the game is tough. Saying that you merely have to memorize a pattern and react accordingly is one thing – actually being able to remember each enemy’s five or so different tells and countering every one is a whole other bag of beans.  The enemies hit much harder than you, and you’ll have to dodge to survive.

There’s nothing to the game besides the fights, so they’d better be good, eh?  Fortunately, the enemy designs are varied and sometimes humorous (everything from a schizophrenic chimera to a Dirty Harry-esque ninja mercenary to a drunken orc), and the appropriately over-the-top voice acting gives each “boss” a personality of his own.  Their attacks and counters are all different enough, as well, and the different strategies mean that you’ll rarely (if ever) win a fight on the first try.

The fights sound fair, on paper.  Both your and the enemy’s life bar are the same size, and the first to score three falls is the winner.  They have magic spells or tails or Street Fighter-style fireballs, while you have a magic gauge that you build up to unleash devastating attacks.  The more you fill your magic gauge by successfully landing attacks, the more powerful your combo will be, and you learn better attacks over the course of the game.

And here is the defining difference between Rage of the Gladiator and Punch-Out!! – the experience system.  After every successful battle, you earn three experience points which may be relegated to offense, defense, or magic, depending on what kind of gladiator you want to be.

Offense is for the heavy hitters that can’t take too many shots to the face, defense enables you to take less damage from attacks and counter more effectively, and magic is all about building your magic gauge quickly to use more special moves.  It’s best to decide your focus at the beginning of the game and work towards building that one up, as this is the only way you’ll unlock the really good combos that drain your entire magic gauge but do soooo much damage.

At the end of every fight you also earn a rating depending on how many times you were knocked off your feet: C (2 times), B (1 time), A (0 times), or S (took no damage at all).  However, these don’t relate to the amount of experience earned, or an overall score, or anything, really… so there’s no real incentive to go back and try to earn a better rating.  The best way to do better is just repetition – fight the same fight over and over and over until you memorize exactly what to do in every scenario and go for that S rank!  Or not.  It doesn’t affect anything.

That’s about all there is to the game, but what more could you ask of a $10 WiiWare title?  It does what it tries to do, the graphics and aesthetic are passable, the controls are tight, the characters have personality, and winning a battle gives you a real sense of accomplishment.  Oh, and just when you think you won… Challenge Mode!  It takes the concept of “fighting the same guys again, but with new attacks that are much faster, and hit way harder.  It really reminds me of another Punch-Out!! feature; how about you?

Still, it’s only $10 for an incredibly solid WiiWare exclusive, one of the best games on the service.  Check it out if your reflexes are up to it.

Who says you need to be a million-seller (or even good) to justify a sequel?  Not Nintendo, that’s who.  They just officially announced The Conduit 2, sequel to the much-maligned Wii-exclusive FPS released last year.

Luckily, it looks like they’re trying to fix all the problems from the first (and boy were there a lot).  Hit the jump for details.

Nintendo Everything found this handful of clues about the sequel:

- Set in Atlantis
- Other locations include Siberia, Agartha, Washington D.C.
- Team is focusing on art/story
- New gameplay types for online
- Bounty Hunter mode returning
- Different character classes, each has unique attributes
- Can unlock suit upgrades (ex: robotic legs that let you sprint farther)
- WiiSpeak support
- High Voltage, for now, has decided “to have one primary suit slot and two secondary slots where you can equip upgrades, but that may change in the final game.”
- Will be able to change character’s appearance
- 2-4 player splitscreen option for all competitive
- Co-op Invasion mode: Up to 4 players (online or local), has unique challenges
- New weapons: Vortex Cannon and Phase Rifle
- Vortex Cannon: Sends bullets back at enemies with a more powerful force
- Phase Rifle: Shoot through walls
- Old weapons will be returning
- Some old weapons are seeing a facelift
- About 7 new weapons
- Big boss battles
- ASE also returning
- ASE used for more things other than puzzles (can do a lot of scanning, which is recorded)
- Can use TPC ammo as mines
- SEGA publishing again
- No release date

The most obvious improvement: SPLITSCREEN!  Finally.  That might make up for last time.

Might.

Source: Nintendo Everything

What’s Call of Duty?  Only the most popular entertainment property of all time.  A sequel is inevitable.  So are rumors and leaks about it.

Today, we’ve got a name (unconfirmed), some setting details (unconfirmed), and something that’ll make the PC gamers veeeery happy (also unconfirmed, but we’re crossing our fingers for some validation)…

All right, check it out:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops is what the latest Treyarch (not Infinity Ward!) creation is reportedly titled.
• Hitting stores in November 2010.
• Set between World War II and modern times, it’ll be set in Cuba and South America, ruling out the possibility of a Vietnam game (although the time era may still fit).
• The zombies from World at War are back…
• Play as a British SAS member; do British stuff (drink tea, scoff at poor people, hang out in Iranian embassies, etc.)
• And what else?  Oh yeah, they’re adding dedicated servers to the PC version (a noticeable omission in Modern Warfare 2).  Thought you’d like to know.

That’s a good summary of the news dropped on MapModNews.com, but you can see what they really said here:

“… With a scheduled release date of November 2010 the game is still in full development but undisclosed sources over at Activision have stated that “Call of Duty 7 will be set in recent history, between WWII and present day”. Besides this information the sources have also confirmed that some missions will take us to Cuba and South America, hinting again in the direction of a Cold War / Vietnam based game.

Also revealed was that in certain missions the players are able to play as a member of SAS (the Special Air Service), the principle special forces unit of the British Army. One of these SAS missions pitches you in close combat during a mission in the Iranian embassy in London during the 1980′s.

It has also been confirmed that Call of Duty 7: Black Ops will feature the popular zombie mode, in which players get to shoot down hordes of zombies, a feature that could not be seen in the Infinity Ward produced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

And last but not least, dedicated servers will also be part of the new Call of Duty game, much to the delight of PC gamers across the world. After Activision fired Vince Zampella and Jason West from Infinity Ward, it seems like they are taking yet another step back from the direction they had taken with Modern Warfare 2 by re-adding dedicated servers.”

Much wordier that way.  Oh well.

Source: MapModNews via CVG

You may have heard about the whole “get rid of the explicit apps in the iTunes Store” debacle a few weeks back.  Shortly after the apps were pulled, it was rumored that they might be coming back after it was revealed that developers had the option of selecting an “explicit” descriptor during the app submission process.  Then, Apple said no, not going to happen.

Now the rumors that Apple is bringing back the iPorn are flaring up again, with some screenshots of iTunes revealing an Explicit Apps section… and one for the iPad as well.

Check out these screenshots from MacStories.net:

The links to these are now broken (Apple saw ‘em, apparently), but could this be more proof that Apple is indeed trying to restructure their explicit apps’ availability?  Or is it just some rogue/unreliable programmer that let this slip through the cracks?  Will the April 3rd release of the iPad coincide with a new Dirty App-lication on iTunes?  We’ll see… but for now, Apple is sticking by their “no smut” policy.

However, money talks… and people like seeing nekkid girls.

Source: MacStories via iTWire

You heard about GameCrush.  Pay a girl to play video games with you?  Scandalous… and lucrative, it seems.

Hit the GameCrush site today and see this.  Over 10,000 lonely nerds lookin’ for love in the span of five minutes means that the GC servers bombed, hard.  The solution?  Add more servers!  Players gotta play!

Oh, and that “$6.60 for ten minutes” rate?  Yeah.  That’s for a Flash game, or Checkers.  Halo 3 is going to cost you a little more.  At least there’s a “dirty” section of the site for the truly deviant (that’s you, you know it is!).  Get on the email list to be notified as soon as you can come back for more.

Source: GameCrush website

If you’ve bought a Ubisoft game on the PC recently (what’s wrong with you?!), then you’ll be familiar with the fact that, to play one of their games, you must be connected to the internet the whole time.  Three cheers for copyright protection!

When Ubisoft’s DRM servers were attacked recently by cyber-terrorists, that led both the Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 servers going down, down, literally around (sugar, we’re goin’ down swingin’).  Gamers couldn’t even play their newly purchased games.

Ubisoft’s solution?  Free games for the sad people that couldn’t play their other games!  Check out the huge list of titles after the jump, and see the free stuff you’re missing out on because you bought AC2 on a console like everyone else.

For affected gamers, there is a list of… two choices for your free game.  You can get either Shaun White Snowboarding or Prince of Persia, both as downloadable PC titles.  Some AC2 gamers were even offered free DLC as an option… but you kind of get the impression that they’d rather just be allowed to play their legally purchased games offline if they so chose, instead of offering them a free game.  Honestly, if they wanted Shaun White, they would have bought it already.  Just sayin’.

Source: Big Download

Four days, fifteen hours, as of this writing.  That’s how long until BioWare does… something.  A mysterious countdown just shown up on the official BioWare website this morning, as well as on the Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect sub-sites.

What could it be?  The appearance of the countdown across all of BioWare’s major franchises’ sites is keeping the fanboys guessing.  An announcement of DA:O2?  Mass Effect 3?  Star Wars: The Old Republic going multi-platform?  Or (fingers crossed) the unveiling of MDK3?  Okay, it’s probably not the last one.  A boy can dream, can’t he?

Source: BioWare home page

OK, so the picture IS a joke.  There aren’t any images of the new system (yet), but it can supposedly create a 3D effect without requiring the use of those goofy 3D glasses that you had to wear at Avatar.

You know, like the Virtual Boy.  Except that Nintendo might know what they’re doing this time.

The info dropped onto Nintendo’s Japanese Investor Relations page in a .PDF format document, which was immediately translated to English by someone that speaks more languages than I can.  For those too lazy to click the links, here’s the translated document reproduced with a large amount of loving care or something:

If this didn’t come straight from the Nintendo website, I would never believe it.  E3 2010 = best E3 ever?  Lookin’ like a definite possibility.

Source: Nintendo Investor Relations Website, via Twitter

It’s hard to tell, but this has to be from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the only SNES Super Famicom Zelda release.  Japanese commercials are… weird.  No gameplay, no information, just lots of costumes, pumpin’ music, and choreographed dancing.  Oh, and a giant Ganon puppet that bears a passing resemblance to Jabba the Hutt.

But that’s what makes it just so incredibly awesome.  It reminds me a bit of the Men In Black theme song, but taken to the next level.  The level of… Zelda.  Check it out after the jump!

You’ve seen it.  You can’t un-see it.  But honestly, why would you want to?

Have a dusty ol’ Wii sitting on the shelf?  Looking for a reason to boot it up again?  Well, now you have one!

Telltale Games is offering free copies of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People: Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free, and all you have to do is provide your Wii friend code, live in the U.K. or Germany, and fill out a quick survey.  Hey, you’ve done worse things for a free game, right?  Details after the jump.

Visit the survey site here, give them ten minutes or so of your time while answering questions about your favorite movies, TV shows, and music, and have a Strong Bad game delivered right to your Wiinbox.  Come on, do it!  Don’t be a Wii-ner.  ‘Cause Strong Bad do what Nintendon’t!  Whew… I can do this all day people.

Source: Telltale Games Survey via CVG

A while back, Tommy Refenes (creator of indie gem Super Meat Boy) put a largely pointless app on the iTunes App Store: Zits & Giggles.  You pop zits, and that’s about all; it’s actually kind of gross.  It hit the store at the boring old app price of 99 cents, sold a few copies, and then the sales inevitably dried up.

Instead of dropping the price to free to re-spark interest (as many app devs are wont to do), Refenes tried something different: he raised the price to $15.  Three people bought it anyway.  So he raised the price to $50, and four more bought it.  And so our tale begins…

Refenes decided to perform a “social experiment:” he would raise the price of the app every time at least one copy is sold.  By the time it hits $300, he’s still selling.  Fourteen people pay $300 for it, and a handful more pay $350.  This proves, in Refenes’s own words, “the people who you’re selling to on the App Store are not necessarily gamers,” the App Store “is the Tiger handheld game of this generation” (meaning that licensed drivel sells better than original ideas nine times out of ten), and that he “absolutely f***ing hate(s) the iPhone App Store.”  That last line was delivered at this speech at GDC 2010.  Harsh.

So, what does Apple do?  They pull his app from the store.  He even sold one at $400 on the day it was pulled.  Why?  He didn’t break any rules about inappropriateness, and the price can change at the whim of the developer (Apple gets 30%, so I don’t know what they’re complaining about).  Unable to get a hold of Apple so far, it seems he must resign himself to his fate: Steve Jobs laid the smack down.  Don’t bite the hand that feeds you…

Source: GamaSutra, and Kotaku via Negative Gamer