tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43664748710291203282024-03-13T14:41:32.827-04:00When Last We Left Our Heroes...Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.comBlogger93125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-69270171619880966082013-11-10T21:59:00.000-05:002013-11-10T22:03:27.611-05:00My Love/Hate Relationship with SpelunkyOf all the games that have made me ragequit, <a href="http://www.spelunkyworld.com/" target="_blank">Spelunky</a> is the only one that I'll <em>giddily</em> return to five minutes later for "just one more round". I cannot stress how amazing of a complement this is.<br />
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Spelunky is a platformer where you explore a series of randomly-generated caves trying to loot as much treasure as possible while dodging traps, enemies, and chain reactions of death caused by your own stupidity. Please take note, Spelunky is a very hard game, and you'll probably die hundreds if not thousands of times before you finally beat the game. That said, even with the win condition so far out of reach, you can still get a hefty sense of enjoyment from just getting that little bit further in the caves, or grabbing a little more gold than last time, or whatever goal of self-improvement you can muster up.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.spelunkyworld.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbGgpBMzqX_G674ho3n5asXxppshGRvytRhKq8rg2z7LixZTKFf8zJ-ClvD58CvEnh52KjfJ6WITn6OAgiUe0FtMwwGlkmDQLPAuIJK8YKv3wMiTMC8b8wNrnHIKsK1R_QwJCmOeTcaY/s1600/spelunky.jpg" title="This is an incredibly boring snapshot just after an incredibly insane robbery. You've just got to take my word for it." /></a></div><br />
But for as many times as I've had a "good run" that I've felt proud of, I've had probably twenty times as many runs where I wanted to punch my ramen broth-stained monitor in the face. From giant frogs to angry cavemen to shotgun-wielding shopkeepers, there are tons of ways to die, and death is often instantaneous. And that's probably why Spelunky is so rage-inducing: Death can happen at any moment, in the blink of an eye, for reasons you couldn't possibly have anticipated. For contrast, consider another super-hard randomly-generated game like The Binding of Isaac. Seemingly everything is out to kill you in every room you enter, and you've got a limited amount of health you have to sustain throughout the entire game, but out of your cache of three or so hearts, getting hit by an enemy knocks either half a heart or, at most, a single whole heart off of your supply. You have a second of recovery time, then you're back up and running from danger again. In Spelunky, you start with four hearts, and can lose them all less than a second after starting the game (if you've got mad skillz like me). Falling on spikes instantly kills you. Standing next to a tiki trap when it goes off knocks four hearts off your life, which is usually your entire supply. Angering a shopkeeper turns him volatile and getting in the way of his shotgun is almost certain death. Suddenly dying is not fun at all.<br />
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<em>But yet I keep going back for more.</em> In the same way that dying sucks, narrowly avoiding death is <em>absolutely glorious</em>. I've never beaten Spelunky, but I've had plenty of moments of sheer awesome that I just want to keep playing it. And while I've loved hating/hated loving Spelunky for a while now, the game I just finished was the motivation for me to write this blog post. And I wish that I was recording that game, because it was possibly the most insane round I've played yet. And I wish I could relay that story to you so you understood all the dramatic highs and lows I experienced. Dodging the timer ghost of instadeath not once, but twice. Stealing seventy-some-odd bombs from the black market and somehow not dying with six angry shopkeepers chasing after me. Getting thrown down a chasm to my death by a yeti and screaming in horror, before realizing that I was being revived because I (accidentally!) picked up the ankh in the black market. Defeating Anubis and stealing his scepter, then eventually falling prey to it in one final showdown with a shopkeeper. According to the in-game statistics, it was my 640th death, and it was my favorite death by far. I've won 0 out of 640 times, but I don't mind. I just hope the next 640 deaths are equally as thrilling.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-42281427585041169522013-04-30T23:43:00.001-04:002013-04-30T23:45:39.926-04:00Making MölkkyBack in January, my friend Nate joined me for a <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2010/01/spa-einem-samstag-nachmittag.html">Schlag den Raab</a> viewing. We were treated to an afternoon of inflating bicycle tires, flailing swords, throwing coat hangers, and soccer with bowling shoes on ice. Yep, par for the course. Spiel 12 on this particular day was a Finnish lawn game called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6lkky" target="_blank">Mölkky</a>. They rolled out a giant mat of grass on the studio floor and played a game where they threw a stick at a bunch of numbered pins. <a href="http://www.myspass.de/myspass/shows/tvshows/schlag-den-raab/Spiel-12-Moelkky--/11280/" target="_blank">Watching this</a>, Nate and I said to each other, this is something we'd like to try.<br />
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A quick primer on the rules: The goal of the game is to be the first to reach exactly 50 points (played on SdR to only 40). On your turn, you throw the large pin (the mölkky) at twelve numbered pins. If you knock down <em>exactly one</em> pin, you score the number on that pin. If you knock down more than one pin, you score however many pins you knocked down. So hitting the 12-pin is worth a whopping 12 points, but hitting the 12 and the 11 is only worth 2 points. Going over 50 points resets your score to 25. After each throw, the pins are stood back up wherever they stopped, so while they start out in a tight cluster, they become pretty spread out quickly. If you completely miss all pins on three consecutive turns, you're out of the game.<br />
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I looked for Mölkky sets online, but only seemed to find sets for $50 or $60 (plus shipping), not really a price I'd be up for paying for pieces of wood. So I thought to myself, how hard could it be to make a set? After studying the SdR video trying to suss out dimensions and looking up directions online (even <a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/900271/molkky" target="_blank">Martha Stewart</a> gives a how-to), I decided to give it a go. <br />
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<img src="http://pedxingproductions.com/images/molkky2.jpg" alt="A step-by-step arrangement of the process: The large poplar board, the squared blocks, and the rounded blocks fresh from the lathe." title="A step-by-step arrangement of the process: The large poplar board, the squared blocks, and the rounded blocks fresh from the lathe." align="right" />My dad and I picked up a 3"x9"x9' board of poplar from a local lumberyard and started cutting it down into 3"x3"x13" blocks. I rounded down the corners a bit, then spun the blocks on the lathe until they got down to the desired width (about 2 1/4"). I then used a miter saw to make a diagonal cut to split the rods into the pins, sanded everything down, and painted numbers on the pins before several coats of polyeurethane. And voila, Mölkky!<br />
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As it turns out, I'm pretty bad at Mölkky. A lot of my throws bounce right over the pins I want to hit, and I've struck out of more games than I'd like to admit. Still, it's a fun game and I'm excited for this summer when I get to play it with friends. <br />
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Also, looking back on it, making the Mölkky set was a simple woodworking project that introduced me to a bunch of tools I had never used before. My dad and I started using a circular saw to cut the large board into blocks, but since it didn't cut through the whole way, we switched over to a Sawzall. I started using a plane to round down the corners before putting the blocks on the lathe, but then switched to using a belt sander (and then eventually not rounding the corners down at all, because of laziness). Add in the lathe and the miter saw, and I got a pretty good tour of the workshop under my belt. All of this, after a childhood of Pinewood Derby cars where the only tools I ever got to use (and under ridiculous paranoid parental supervision) were a reciprocating saw and the belt sander (and a hammer must've been involved at some point, though I really don't remember that). <br />
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One more thing, remember how I said most of the Mölkky sets I found online were $50-$60? The board of poplar cost me $25, and I got not one, but TWO sets out of it (with scrap wood leftover), one of which I gave to Nate. So, not counting the price of electricity for all the power tools, I made each set for about $10. Hooray for homemade Finnish lawn games as seen on German game shows!<br />
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<img src="http://pedxingproductions.com/images/molkky1.jpg" alt="The finished Mölkky sets, coming to a lawn near you!" title="The finished Mölkky sets, coming to a lawn near you!" align="center" />Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-34688182067412337422013-03-31T21:36:00.000-04:002013-03-31T21:36:01.857-04:00Of Meat Bicycles and MenThis is my fourth attempt at writing a blog post about Borderlands 2. It's not for the lack of things to say about the game, I've definitely been singing praises about this game to anyone I can for the last few weeks. The bigger problem is that in order to write a blog post about Borderlands 2, I need to stop playing Borderlands 2. And every time I've tried, I think to myself, "I'd rather be playing Borderlands 2." And so I go play Borderlands 2. <br />
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I have played Borderlands 2 to the point where not only did I finish the main game, but I restarted the game in the hard mode, I restarted the game as a different character, and I would gladly do both again given the opportunity to do so, perhaps if ever I can rope more friends into playing it. (Edit: As of my <em>fifth</em> attempt at writing this blog post, I have started a third class.) This game has so much personality that even on the second or third time through, I'm still cracking up at gags I've already seen and loving every mission I re-encounter. <br />
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Before I sound too fanboyish, I should stress that if there's one thing Borderlands 2 sorta drops the ball on, it's bringing new players up to speed with the world of Pandora. The tutorial seems to be written backwards, where you're vaguely instructed to do a certain thing, then you have to figure out the bulk of it yourself, then after you've done the objective, a window pops up and says, "Hey, you just did X! You can do that again by pressing Y." Through an uncomfortable portion of my first runthrough, I died a lot because I didn't know that I could buy or equip a shield or open up a special menu that boosted my stats, until a friend (his name is Nate, I'll be referencing him a few more times in this post) told me how. Also, the plotline relies on you being familiar with characters and elements from the first Borderlands game. Unfortunately, some of these references went straight over my head until Nate pointed them out to me. And that's especially sad because looking back on it, there are several moments which would have been far more poignant and impactful if I was familiar with the context from the first game, but instead they were wasted on a thicko noob like me.<br />
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But those moments of awkward cluelessness aside, Borderlands is still a very accessible game. Unlike hyper-realistic military FPSes where you seemingly need to spend hours memorizing the statistics of every gun available in order to find the one that suits your play style, then playing with that gun for days until you unlock every possible doohickey and never changing your arsenal because there's no need to and it's in fact disadvantageous to ever step outside your comfort zone, Borderlands 2 hands you a gun, shows you a number that tells you what it can do, and lets you take it or not. Sure, you might be used to trying to experience a certain "feel" with some guns, but for someone gun-inept like myself, just being able to say "that number's higher than this one" makes the whole gun system a lot easier to digest. I've become comfortable with a wider range of guns here than I ever did in any Call of Duty game, and I think that's a testament to how well the game teaches you to play creatively rather than formulaically.<br />
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Also, Borderlands 2 is incredibly well-written and hilarious. It helps that I'm a fan of lead writer Anthony Burch's web series <a href="http://heyash.com" target="_blank">"Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?"</a>, and a lot of that breed of quick-witted, occasionally juvenile humor carries over here, but there are many scenes, even non-funny ones, that as I'm playing through on repeat runs, I'm still excited to play through again. Most games I play through have only one or two moments like that, but Borderlands 2 has at least a dozen, maybe a couple dozen at that. I repeat that there are some hurdles with the missing backstory as mentioned above, but particularly if you have someone that can fill in the details for you, the story is worth experiencing multiple times.<br />
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Let me throw some numbers at you: As I write this post, Borderlands 2 is on sale for $30 at Best Buy (<a href="http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Borderlands+2+-+Xbox+360/3433032.p?id=1218402131364&skuId=3433032&st=borderlands%202&lp=1&cp=1" target="_blank">link</a>), the same sale price I bought it for a month or two ago. If you think of it in terms of a brand new $60 game (we're ignoring the fact that the regular price is apparently now $40), that's a savings of thirty dollars... which I would recommend you reinvest in purchasing the DLC Season Pass, which has three extra playable campaigns available now (and a fourth coming in June). Then, plop another $20 down on the extra character classes for even more fun ($10 each, one available now, the other coming in May). Honestly, this game has provided more fun per dollar than any other game I've played in a long time, and that's even after I keep shelling out for the expansions. <br />
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I mean, I could continue trying to crunch the numbers to illustrate why you should play Borderlands 2. I could tell a bunch of stories about, if not the events that happened in the game (which would be very spoilery), then how Nate and I loved watching them play out. I don't want to go melodramatic and stake my left kidney on the fact that you'll enjoy this game, but I hope that the mere suggestion of such an event is enough to persuade you to at least give it a go. Please play Borderlands 2, and with friends if you can. It's an amazing experience, and I don't know how else to convey it to you without repeating myself further, so I'll stop writing now. (So I can go play some more Borderlands 2.) Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-53940407064183326232013-02-28T23:17:00.002-05:002013-02-28T23:19:02.670-05:00Ight Nams to RmmbrYou're welcome, Internet.<br />
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<img src="http://pedxingproductions.com/images/noEstates.jpg"><br />
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Here's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_U.S._place_names" target="_blank">the source</a> for this. The caveat about "place names (cities, towns, villages, boroughs and Census Designated Places)" makes the entire thing slightly inaccurate (depending on how loosely you define a "city"), but figuring out a quick-and-easy solution to the ridiculous Facebook game was an itch I just had to scratch. There were a couple other cities on the Wikipedia page that met the "no E" requirement, but weren't necessary to hit every state (one of which was Franklin, which would have knocked off the greatest number of states). In the back of my mind, I still wonder, can this still be done with seven cities?<br />
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Also, well done to Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-61968771798080022492013-01-18T00:14:00.000-05:002013-01-18T00:14:44.595-05:00I Should Like To Teach You The Dance Of My Peeps...Peeps? Crew? Homies? I dunno.<br />
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I haven't touched Dance Central (1) in a long time. I got myself into a rut of trying to conquer one song at a time, working from the easiest songs to the hardest songs (more of the songs I was interested in were up front anyway), and within each song, from the easiest mode to the hardest mode. As it turns out, methodically trying to perfect the game from front to back is a pretty bad way to play it. So I barely made it out of the first or second bracket of songs. <br />
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Aside from seeing it at PAX East last year, I know little to nil about Dance Central 2.<br />
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My sister got me a copy of Dance Central 3 for Christmas. ("I really liked the comment you put next to it on your Amazon Wish List... 'Don't judge me.'") Just as before, I started with the top bracket of songs ("Y.M.C.A.", "Better Off Alone", and "The Hustle"). But as I started to look down the song list, there were some interesting songs that caught my eye (mostly disco stuff, but also newer things like "Moves Like Jagger"), plus other intriguing songs I hadn't heard of before ("Mr. Saxobeat", "Stereo Love"). So I played through them. In some cases, I just threw myself straight into the song (on the easiest level) without even touching the Rehearsal mode. I even spent some of my precious Microsoft Points to purchase "We No Speak Americano" (you know, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iANRO3I30nM" target="_blank"><em>that</em></a> song).<br />
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And you know what? I'm having fun with it. In approaching the game from a slightly different angle, I've found that Dance Central 3 can be stupid amounts of fun. I'm getting over my need to be the perfectionist who goes for all achievements on the first run through, and I'm just enjoying the game. I find myself even ignoring the flash cards and just trying to mirror the on-screen dancers with songs I've never touched before. Because it's that fun. I don't care if I fail (well, I get a bit miffed if I don't get at least five blue stars), I just want to play the game.<br />
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But tonight I tried the Story mode for the first time. Sweet mother of Carl Kasell, it is AMAZING.<br />
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I should confess that as I started to work my way through the beginning of the Story mode, I was laughing hysterically at how ridiculous the premise is. You're invited to a secret underground dance party, which turns out to be the initiation for an equally secret underground dance FBI agency (I guess). And then you're sent back in time (yes, TIME TRAVEL, <em>IN A DANCE GAME</em>) to unlock dance moves from different eras in order to stop "Project Lockstep" and... See, now you know why I was laughing so hard. It's absolutely ridiculous, but amazing at the same time. I <em>think</em> the game knows how crazy it is, but it doesn't acknowledge it at any point in time. It doesn't matter anyway. It threw me into a couple songs I never tried before, but it made the experience so awesome, I have no regrets about my less-than-perfect performance. I can't wait to play through it more.<br />
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I'm not very far into it, but if you have a Kinect, I strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Dance Central 3. It's my favorite dance-based game so far, partially because of its good song mix, partially because of the more enjoyable atmosphere it brings that DC1 seemed to not have, partially because it's just plain fun. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that I have crap taste in music and it's just grimacing and nodding as I flail in front of my TV, but I don't care. It's so much fun. Just play this game.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-38196791180209556582012-12-31T23:03:00.000-05:002012-12-31T23:03:15.842-05:00Huge 2012 Year-End Blowout Inventory Clearance Blog Post!Well crap. It's been three months since my last blog post, which finally breaks my streak of having at least some sort of new content every calendar month since this blog started. The last few months have been busy with work and family obligations, and... Oh fine, I've just been too lazy to write. Too much gaming yielded too much to write about, too much to write about yielded too much procrastination, too much procrastination yielded too much gaming. It's a horrible loop. <br />
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At the very least, I wanted to share a little end-of-the-year blog post with you, reviewing some games that recently debuted that were featured in <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2012/04/pax-east-2012-in-twenty-disorganized.html">my PAX East post</a>. I have bought my pass and booked my hotel for next year, and I'm counting down the days until I get to do it all again (after I somewhat slagged it off as not something I should be doing last time). I started writing this blog post in October (honest), and I wanted to start the ball rolling on what should hopefully be a new year of anti-crastination.<br />
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<strong>Rock Band Blitz</strong><br />
<em>Xbox and PS3, reviewing Xbox</em><br />
Probably the most mainstream of the games I've checked out, Rock Band Blitz is a casual take on the rhythm game franchise. You play all of the instruments, although only one at a time, and with only two buttons to hit in a usually-alternating fashion. The challenge of the game is leveling up all of the instruments together to increase your scoring potential. You have to be familiar with how each song plays out, so you can anticipate what instrument to level up more quickly before it drops out of the song. Failure doesn't mean you lose, it just means you score less.<br />
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That said, the game seems to run on a very convoluted economic system. For each star you earn while playing (read: "For each scoring milestone you pass"), you earn 100 coins (plus "cred," which seem to have no value whatsoever). These coins can be spent on purchasing three types of power-ups, which cost 250, 200, and 100 coins each. Generally, you'll need three power-ups in some combination to get a high score, but if you do the math, you're spending 550 coins to do so, which means you need to hit the highest score bracket (five gold stars, worth 600 coins) to make any sort of profit. Mind you, you get double coins on your first playthrough of any song, and the payout system has been tweaked since the game was released to favor the player a bit more, but it still feels backward that anytime you play, you almost always have to take a loss. <br />
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The game comes with 25 songs, most of which I'd never heard of before. You can purchase additional songs from the in-game store for $2 a pop, which feels like a fair price, but I can't see myself splurging on many songs to flesh out this game more. Maybe if there were a way to use those hard-earned coins to purchase songs, I'd be more comfortable with the game on the whole, but without that option, Rock Band Blitz just feels like a social game where the more you play, the more the developer wins. Mind you, it's still a good game overall, but it's wrapped in an overall unappealing way.<br />
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<strong>Retro/Grade</strong><br />
<em>PS3</em><br />
Across the indie divide, we find Retro/Grade, a rhythm-based avoidance game, where you must undo entire space battles by un-firing your lasers and re-dodging backward-moving missiles from your enemies. If you make a mistake, you can un-rewind time to fix it (yeah, wrap your head around that), but you have a limited amount of un-rewind time per level. Ideally, if you rewind each level perfectly, you'll lower your score back to zero, though part of this relies on some luck with power-ups, so just know that a lower score is better.<br />
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In the main campaign, there are ten songs, which unfortunately get old somewhat quickly. It doesn't help that there are six difficulty levels with which to play the game, so you've got a lot of replaying the same songs for completion. A lot of the game's eye candy appeal (some really nice scenery and excellently-animated boss enemies) are lost to the fact that you have to keep focusing on the bullets in the foreground, which is sad.) However, there's also a separate choose-your-own-path adventure mode where you play the same songs with little challenging tweaks (faster speed, no color assistance, playing facing the opposite direction, etc.) bring the game back to life in an oddly intriguing way. In the end, the interesting gameplay tweaks compensate for its repetitiveness, and I'd say Retro/Grade is definitely worth a go.<br />
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<strong>Dyad</strong><br />
<em>PS3</em><br />
Other reviewers that have tackled Dyad claim it's impossible to describe it in one sentence, so here's my go: It's a racing game with color-matching elements. See? It's not hard, guys. Just stay away from the "magic shroom" metaphors and it's quite easy. In each level you travel through a tube, hooking on to enemies ahead of you to get a small speed boost. Hook two similarly-colored enemies for a larger speed boost. Some enemies may also leave short trails you can hop on for an extra speed boost (after you've dodged their attack). A good portion of the levels are straight race-against-the-clock rounds, while many others require you to grab a certain number of enemies or power-ups, and other interesting challenges where you're trying to hit the fastest speed possible or maintain power-up-edness for as long as possible.<br />
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This is probably a cliche thing to say about a racing game, but sometimes I felt like it was all moving too fast. Between the frantic music and the seizure-inducing colors, it was often hard to play the game well, or well enough to reach upper-echelon achievements. The game seems to be aware that some may use random button-mashing and penalizes players appropriately. Still, if you can focus hard enough, each level can be conquered, and it feels rather satisfying when you do. This one is also worth picking up, even if you don't do drugs. In fact, don't do drugs. The More You Know!, etc.<br />
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<strong>Runner 2</strong><br />
Runner 2 hasn't released yet, but I feel like I have to give it a mention here. In the past, I slagged off the original BIT.TRIP RUNNER as unenjoyable since the controls didn't seem to correspond with the on-screen actions in a weird lag-plus-rhythmic-dissonance sort of way, but for reasons I can't put my finger on, I'm somehow excited for its sequel to eventually come out. I've been checking up on Gaijin Games' blog, and something, maybe the new music (which I love), maybe the less pixeled, more cartoonish style, something jumps out at me. I hope good things come of it.<br />
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Happy New Year!Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-5807308033677980472012-09-30T00:47:00.000-04:002012-09-30T13:15:36.058-04:00Pick a Number, Any Number... So Long As It's FourJust for the fun of it, today I went back and played <a href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/05/tepiiku.php" target="_blank">Tepiiku</a>, a dice game I reviewed way back when for JIG. It's an interesting game for three players (you and two AI) where the player with the lowest-scoring hand has the obligation to either pay the highest-scoring player a forfeit, or attempt to increase their hand's value at the risk of paying double the forfeit for failing. There's a major flaw in how the wagering plays out, since the game will not allow you to attempt to reroll if you can't pay the potential double forfeit; sometimes your opponents will boost the stake between them, and by the time it passes to you, you're forced to pay up without ever getting to play. Sure, it could result in interesting tactics if you could find a way to work it to your advantage, but more often than not, it's just frustrating.<br />
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That was a flaw I pointed out in my review, and it was echoed by many of the commenters. Later on, the creator of the game stopped by to acknowledge the flaw and explain his reasoning for it. Which is awesome. I love it when the developer stops by to discuss the development of their game.<br />
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But that's not what this post is about. This post was sparked by what was the very first comment left to the game, by an ever-so-popular visitor named Anonymous. <br />
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<em>"Mmm-hmmm. Just like I thought. Just like every other dice and card game in existence, apparently, once you get out of the practice round, it's absolutely nothing but consistent crap for you, and perfect hands/rolls for all AI players, every single hand. No thanks. How about at least faking some random fairness for once, developers? Maybe?"</em><br />
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The developer addressed this comment by assuring Mr. 'mous that the dice rolls are "fair and random" and that there were no shenanigans at hand. Streaks of bad luck, perhaps, but no foul play. That didn't stop 'mous from insisting that the game was clearly still rigged, and even going so far as to accuse the developer of ignoring him and the "evidence" that the game is rigged. <br />
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This, for reasons I don't understand, is a trend in a lot of dice games I review or see reviewed; the game is cuh-learly rigged because the player doesn't win once or twice. It happened with Tepiiku. It happened with <a href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2005/04/pigalator_2k5.php" target="_blank">Pigalator 2k5</a>; the developer also addressed complaints about randomness there (but they still continued). It happened with <a href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/11/zilch.php" target="blank">Zilch</a>, and the developer not only <a href="http://blog.playr.co.uk/2008/11/bored-repetitive.html" target="_blank">addressed the griefers</a> but also <a href="http://blog.playr.co.uk/2008/11/random-it-is-random.html" target="_blank">released the code for the random number generator</a>. Is it so hard to accept that streaks of bad luck happen, and that hopefully you'll hit a good streak if you keep playing? Or, heaven forbid, could you just not be good at the game?<br />
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Bear with me on this sudden change of topic: Last week, I started working my way through <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/" target="_blank">Codecademy</a>, a website that takes you through the basics of coding in HTML, JavaScript, Python, and other programming languages. I'm obviously not a coding genius, but if my experiences with this website and SpaceChem are anything to go by, I might be a bit of a programming addict. I'm about a third of the way through the JavaScript Fundamentals track, which, if I am to take the authors' interpretations of "next week we'll talk about..." literally, is supposed to be a 26-week course... Whoops.<br />
<br />
I'm obviously not a coding genius, and I don't know how much JavaScript goes into programming Flash games, but I've picked up a few things from the course. In the lessons I've had so far, I've learned the basics for simple random events, such as rolling a die or picking a card. In fact, here's what rolling a die looks like:<br />
<br />
<strong>var roll = Math.floor(Math.random()*6+1);</strong><br />
<br />
To break that down:<br />
<ul><li>Starting inside the parentheses, <strong>Math.random()</strong> generates a random number between 0 and 1. I don't know how specific the number is, but in the printouts I've tried, it's generally extended out to something like twelve decimal places, like 0.728027699732 (and yes, I did pull that number from <a href="http://www.random.org" target="_blank">random.org</a>).</li>
<li>Since there are six sides on our die, we multiply that random value by six. That will give us something between 0.000000000006 and 5.999999999994. Our random value is now 4.368166198392.</li>
<li>Dice are usually labelled with the numbers 1-6, not 0-5, so we add one to our result. Now we've got 5.368166198392.</li>
<li>But what sort of die gives us a decimal as a roll? <strong>Math.floor()</strong> rounds down the value to the highest whole number below our value, which is 5. So there you have it, I just rolled a 5.</li>
</ul><br />
It's a long explanation, but that one line of code is all it takes to roll a six-sided die. (Well, you'd also add <strong>console.log(roll);</strong> to print out the number.) But can you imagine the coding it would take to rig a die so it rolls one number more frequently than another, for example, more low numbers than high? Walk with me through this idea.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>In theory, while you'd be visually displaying a die with six sides, you'd probably program it as something with more than six sides, with extra sides representing more instances of the numbers you want to occur more frequently. We'll keep it simple by secretly rolling a 10-sided die, where the numbers 7-10 give more weight to outcomes of 1 or 2.</li>
<li>We could start out with a similar line of code to the one above and substitute one number: <strong>var rollStack = Math.floor(Math.random()*10+1);</strong></li>
<li>On a regular roll of the dice, we would just return the value of roll as a result. But since we're stacking the deck, we need to add more coding. We need to add an if/else function statement that checks if our result is 7-10 and tweak it so it gives us a 1 or 2. (This was implemented in an exercise involving making a blackjack game, such that jacks, queens, and kings, with the values 11-13, still return a value of 10.) In the end, you'll end up with something like this:</li>
</ul><br />
<strong>var rollStack = function() {<br />
var die = Math.floor(Math.random()*10+1);<br />
return die;};<br />
var die = rollStack();<br />
var getValue = function(die) {<br />
if(die===7 || die===8 || die===9)<br />
{return 1;}<br />
else if(die===10)<br />
{return 2;}<br />
else<br />
{return die;}};</strong><br />
<br />
Slap a <strong>console.log(getValue(die));</strong> on the end, and you've got yourself a stacked die that gives 1s and 2s over half of the time. I've got to confess to you though, the above coding took me about two hours to figure out, and I ended up having to go back to the blackjack exercise and lift a decent portion of the code from there. In the end, by my writing (I'm sure someone could probably reduce what I've done down by a couple lines), it takes you about a dozen lines of code to rig a die, and a slender single line to play with a fair die.<br />
<br />
-----<br />
<br />
I went through all that coding hell to illustrate this point: Coding a fair die is so much easier than coding a stacked die. To think that someone would intentionally suffer through coding a stacked die to make a game unfair, rather than using a simple fair die, is just stupid. If anything, I would hope that if someone wrote a game with a stacked die, they would wear it as a badge to show you how much work they went through (like something by <a href="http://www.rrrrthats5rs.com/games/stacked-odds/" target="_blank">RRRRThats5Rs</a>, or <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/" target="_blank">The Binding of Isaac</a>). Plus, people would flock to it in greater numbers <em>knowing</em> that it's a deliberately unfair game against them. <br />
<br />
Coding a cheating game isn't logical. Next time you play a game that "seems to hate you," just accept it: You suck. But you can change that! Play some more. Develop new strategies. Find out how other people beat the game. It's entirely possible that you might've had bad luck once or twice or twenty times, but automatically blaming that on the game being rigged is narcissistic lunacy. After all, if you won every time, it wouldn't be much of a game, would it?<br />
<br />
-----<br />
<br />
<strong>Edit:</strong> Well, that didn't take long. As zxo points out in the comments, all it would take to change the fair die roll to a stacked die roll is to square the value of the random number, giving much greater weight to lower numbers. He suggests it could be done by adding two characters (I'd imagine ^2), but the shortest addition I can find is <strong>Math.pow()</strong>. So all of a sudden, my brick of stacked code looks like this:<br />
<br />
<strong>var roll = Math.floor(Math.pow(Math.random(),2)*6+1);</strong><br />
<br />
And my entire argument has already been obliterated. Not that it was even a strong argument to begin with, I confess. But can we at least agree that people who complain about random number generators need to shut up?Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-76308330873365373402012-09-14T23:36:00.000-04:002012-09-14T23:36:18.244-04:00Paint the Town Red... Or YellowPop Quiz: What do "Legends of the Hidden Temple," "American Dad," and "de Blob 2" have in common? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Bradley_Baker" target="_blank">Dee Bradley Baker</a>. But I digress.<br />
<br />
de Blob 2 is a pretty-good-but-not-perfect platformer that came out last year. In it, you play as Blob, the colorful leader of the Colour Underground, who must restore the color to Prisma City by fighting the evil Comrade Black and his army of inky soldiers. The gameplay involves rolling around town and painting buildings with your body to unlock previously inaccessible areas. The game is divided into three-dimensional platforming challenges while running around in gigantic outdoor cityscapes, and two-dimensional linear-maze-ish challenges while inside buildings. Even though there is combat, it's pretty minimal, where most enemies are defeated by jumping and squashing them, plowing through them, or just getting out of their way and letting them self-destruct. As such, with all of the ultra-colorful rainbow themes and excessive glee, it would be easy to mistake de Blob 2 as a children's game. Which it might actually be, I'm not sure. (It is put out by SyFy Kids, after all.) Kid cuisine or not, de Blob 2 does some awesome things that I wish more games would follow suit on.<br />
<br />
Each level in de Blob 2 is huge, both in length and height. You'll spend a good portion of your time unlocking each of five to seven sections of each map, one at a time. As such, each level is a pretty decent timesink; I probably spent 90 minutes or more on each level, which also includes a handful of time for completionist activites (more on that later). What amazes me is that even for all of the crazy long levels, and fairly few variations on the themes of "paint things, smash things, and collect things," the gameplay didn't feel that stale at all. Of course, it was frustrating having to go back and replay chunks of the level after dying, but somehow playing through rather similar sequences didn't feel that tedious at all. (But man, what I wouldn't do to have some sort of level map to see where everything is...)<br />
<br />
One thing that might have helped ease the tedium was the fact that each level has its own soundtrack, some of which you create as you go along. The music in each level generally starts out quite hollow and bare, maybe the vaguest semblance of a chord structure happening. As you accomplish more tasks and paint more of the level, you hear more instruments added to the mix until it's a raucous jam session by the end. Another cool element is that as you paint your surroundings, an extra instrumental riff is added in depending on what color you are (trumpets for yellow, bass for purple, organ for green, etc., although I might have those mixed up). Even though each level's music is essentially a long loop with different bits mixed in or taken out each time you hear it, it still feels fresh by the end of the level, and that's awesome.<br />
<br />
Another point I feel other games need to copy is the acknowledgement that you might have accomplished a certain task before you're formally asked to do so. Since each level is essentially a mini-sandbox game with new portions unlocked as you go, you have the ability to accomplish some tasks (such as painting buildings or freeing trapped citizens) before you reach their actual starting points. Often times, the game simply acknowledges that you've accomplished this and moves you right on to the next task, which is awesome. But perhaps it's worth noting that this stands out to me as a strong suit simply because I've played a number of games where this isn't the case, and you'll be asked to redo a task you've already done just because the game "needs" you to advance in a very set order in order to move on (there are some instances in the Assassin's Creed games that spring to mind with regards to this). So perhaps I only feel this is awesome because this is the first sandboxy game I've played, but it's still something that grabbed me as cool.<br />
<br />
Alas, if there's one huge issue I have with this game, it's a huge limiting factor to de Blob 2's sandbox-ness: Each level has a time limit in which you have to accomplish all story-related portions of the level. The time limit doesn't enhance the gameplay at all, it only feels like an extra layer of difficulty stapled on because the game wasn't "tough enough" to begin with. It's frustrating to have to restart a level simply because an arbitrary time limit ran out. It's frustrating to not be allowed to explore the levels and collect all of the hidden items just because you have to get the plotline tasks done first. As a gaming completionist, the latter point deeply bothers me. Mind you, once the main plot of each level is out of the way, you're free to explore the level with no time limit, but to restrict it to the end of each level is stupid. There's only once instance where the time limit means anything significant, and that's in the final level, where you are offered several temptations to save more citizens and grab extra swag at the penalty of wasting time before the crucial countdown ends. It's entirely possible that the time limits in all of the previous levels existed just to give the player a ballpark estimate of "Oh yeah, I could get that done with the amount of time I have left" at that final stage of the game, but before that, it's just fake difficulty.<br />
<br />
The camera and controls sometimes do wonky things, but that's not too large of an issue that I feel it's worth ranting about here.<br />
<br />
Aside from the time issue, de Blob 2 is definitely a very solid game. Even if you're not familiar with the plotline from the first commercial de Blob game (which I'm not), the in-game storyline and cutscenes are written in such a way that it's really easy to pick up the story and even make some emotional bonds with the characters, even if everything is gibberish. The gameplay, to my surprise, contains just enough variety to make sure the game never feels too stale, and is just the right difficulty for most ages. There's a ton of game to tackle in de Blob 2, which makes it very much worth the price (shame it seems to be on the clearance racks everywhere now). Pick up a copy and experience the joy of smearing paint all over town with your body.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-35734812804764304222012-08-03T01:53:00.000-04:002012-08-03T01:53:48.283-04:00A Quick Review of Quantum ConundrumHa! Another game that starts with a Q!<br />
<br />
Quantum Conundrum is an interesting puzzle platformer where you play a boy dropped into his uncle's mansion, who needs to free his uncle from some bizarre dimension he's trapped in. You know, like that one episode of Happy Days. To aid your rescue, you take control of an interdimensional-switching glove (I think that's what the acronym stood for?). Given the presence of the associated battery in an area, you can switch the dimension you're experiencing to a fluffy dimension (where you can move heavy objects), a heavy dimension (where you can make lightweight objects trigger weight-sensitive pads), a slow-motion dimension (where you can... well, it's self-explanatory), and a reverse-gravity dimension (ditto). <br />
<br />
There are sixty-some levels, and on the whole, I'd say they're... good. Not fabulous, but good. In my mind, I want to compare the puzzles in this game to the puzzles in Q.U.B.E. or Portal. In those games, solving a hard puzzle took quite a long time, and you got an exhilarating feeling of accomplishment when you figured it out. That excitement just doesn't happen here, and I can't pinpoint a specific reason why. It might be because the puzzles were faster and easier to solve, so that "ah-ha" bliss couldn't build up enough tension before the explosive moment of realization. It might be because the puzzles usually felt too intuitive, as though there was only one way to progress from point A to point B, and all you had to do was get there (not that red herring solutions would have improved it at all). Mind you, the puzzles in here were of a good quality and never felt "old" at any point, but they just weren't that compelling.<br />
<br />
The story's a bit disappointing, to be honest. You're working to save your uncle (voiced by John de Lancie, who was in <em>so many things</em> I've heard of but never seen, but he's apparently a big deal, I guess?) who chides you and gives you hints as you go along, but the payoff for your efforts really isn't worth it in the end. Still, the puzzles are good, and the game goes out of its way to bring you a fun and occasionally hilarious experience. Quantum Conundrum is worth a go, though you wouldn't miss out on too much if you waited for a sale.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-18807268951878045122012-07-02T19:30:00.001-04:002012-07-02T19:32:46.054-04:00Time Traveling Italians!After months of basically not playing the game because I didn't have a decent-enough television to allow me to read the on-screen text that described what my goal was, the tutorials that told me how to do what I was supposed to do, etc., I have finally finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and somehow, months before Assassin's Creed 3 comes out! I know, it's a miracle, right?<br />
<br />
Here's a bit of history between me and this game: ACRev was the first game I bought for my PS3 when I ordered it on Black Friday last year. I tried to work my way through the game, but the TV I found on Craigslist didn't give a clear enough image to let the game's tiny text be readable. This was annoying considering how many new concepts were introduced at the start of the game (bomb-making, den defense, rearranged buttons for old features), and especially when the tutorial bits would stay on the screen long enough for you to read the whole thing <em>minus</em> one line. Beyond this, for whatever reason, I would usually get a headache after trying to play any PS3 game for more than 20 minutes (though strangely, not anything on Xbox). So, ACRev sat on the shelf for a long time.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/acrevend.jpg" align="right" height="600" width="400" alt="Assassin's Creed: Revelations, credits" title="Look at those hairy legs. Oh, and Animus Island." />When I recently resumed playing ACRev (on a less headache-inducing television), I have to admit, I forgot most of the plotline leading up to that point. This wasn't aided by the bizarre plethora of missions available at any point in time. You could do this mission over here where you would look for a hidden book for love-interest Sofia (who effectively served as the new Leonardo, decoding it and giving you new sites to check out). You could do that mission where you assist one of your fellow Assassins in some task. You could do that other mission that <em>actually pertains to the plot of the game</em>. In the end, at least some of these elements came together to form a coherent storyline, but probably not until about halfway through the game.<br />
<br />
That's probably my biggest complaint about the game: Unlike in the past where side missions actually meant something, side missions here are little more than toys you can play with. For example, like in Brotherhood, you can recruit and send Assassins to do work for you in other cities. I think unlike the last game, they could knock a certain portion off of the Templars' control of that city, then once the city was "claimed" by the Assassins, it would slowly revert back to Templar control unless you kept sending Assassins there to do more tasks. By the end, I stopped caring about the other cities because this mindless economic exercise didn't even result in much change in the end; most cities became controlled by Templars again anyway. It was probably even a mindless economic exercise in ACBro as well, but it didn't hit home as such until this game proved the efforts to be futile.<br />
<br />
Taking over the (local) Templar dens and converting them to Assassin dens allows you to unlock shops for renovation, just like the last game. Once your Assassins reach a certain experience level, you can appoint them to take charge of certain districts of the city, where if a series of other missions are accomplished, they can completely protect that region from attack. How does a den get attacked? Well, if you let your notoriety meter spike just a little to high and remain notorious, one of your dens will be attacked. Or at the very least, that's what I think is supposed to happen, because I never had this issue. Never mind that there was a big tutorial den defense game way back before I gave up playing, I never encountered that problem again. Which I'm thankful for, really, because throwing a tower defense-style game in the middle of the AC series is a really stupid idea, but still the fact that the possibility that it could happen, and then is completely preventable, leaves a sour taste in one's mouth.<br />
<br />
But much to my surprise, ACRev is probably more of a story-driven game than its predecessors. Which is to say, its story was less crap than Brotherhood's. Near the end of the game, I played through a few missions that I'm surprised to admit struck an emotional chord with me, and especially after seeing the ending of the game (no spoilers here), those emotional moments were generously rewarded. I had to take a few moments to smack myself and remind myself that I still hated certain parts of the game and the entire game wasn't redeemed by the late-breaking awesomeness of the story. Still, while <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/03/assassins-dilemma.html">AC1's</a> ending was a middle finger, <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/07/armor-artwork-medicine-what-no.html">AC2's</a> was a strongly-shaken fist, and <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/11/we-need-more-types-of-chicken.html">ACBro's</a> was defecating one's trousers, ACRev's ending was probably the first point of satisfying closure the series has provided, though leaving the door open for more development in the future (obviously, if there's yet another sequel coming). <br />
<br />
So to sum up this game way more quickly than any of the other games in the series, is it worth playing? Yes. Does it mean having to go back and play Brotherhood? Eugh... unfortunately, maybe, if only to get certain references that come up again here. Am I pre-ordering Assassin's Creed 3? Not yet. Maybe. I dunno. I'll probably jump on the boat months after everyone else does, as is my usual style. I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually though. Sadly, I no longer have my television to blame.<br />
<br />
(Postscript: I haven't done much with the multiplayer, sorry. I'll get on that.)Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-58652093419997660422012-06-28T21:02:00.002-04:002012-06-28T21:06:32.222-04:00QuickersilvererLately I've complained a lot on here about games I haven't liked. How about something I do like? Probably the second game I purchased was <a href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Mercury-Hg/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410b8b" target="_blank">Mercury Hg</a>, a Labyrinth-esque (the ball-bearing kind) maze game with some interesting not-quite-puzzle elements. The object is to slide a drop (or drops) of mercury to a target area by tilting the entire game area, allowing the mercury to move with gravity. Along the way, there are bonus pickups to grab as well as moving platforms that might need to be activated by painting your mercury blob a different color and rolling over a handful of tiles. There are also magnets, conveyor belts, and holes that throw your mercury off the edge of the platform; lose too much, and it's game over.<br /><br />
<img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/mercuryhg.jpg" alt="Mercury Hg" title="Yay, new television for prettier screenshots!" height="450" width="400" align="right" />For each of the game's sixty levels, there are different targets to be reached for speed, the amount of mercury left in play, and how many bonuses you nab. On some levels, reaching these targets can unlock Bonus Levels (where you start out as a tiny blob and gather vials of mercury to make yourself larger) and Challenge Levels (strings of levels with combined time/mercury/bonus targets).<br /><br />
While some individual levels can be deviously frustrating, the overall difficulty of Mercury Hg is pleasantly middle-of-the-road. If you can't tackle all of the targets for a level at once, you can break the levels down into separate, more manageable runs. However, once some of these same levels enter into the Challenge and Bonus modes, the difficulty shoots through the roof as you try to grab 23 out of 24 bonuses in under three minutes with 100% of your starting mercury intact over the course of four levels (or something to that effect, you get the idea).<br /><br />
One thing that doesn't help is the camera movement in the game. While you can rotate the camera side-to-side fairly freely, you only seem to be able to zoom in and out via a weird curved camera track, which isn't helpful when you want to zoom in AND be directly above your blob. There's one level in particular (I think it was Iodine... Oh, did I mention the levels are laid out in the form of the periodic table of elements?) where you have two blobs that move through very high-walled mazes with holes in the ground, but you can't get a good angle to see the blobs and the layout of the maze at the same time.<br /><br />
The game itself costs 400MSP ($5), which is an absolutely fair price for a game like this. There are two expansion packs of 30 levels each available for 240MSP ($3) apiece, but they don't add too much to the game. A lot of expansion levels are rehashes of the gameplay ideas from the original levels. You'll feel like you've played the exact same level before, <em>but not quite</em>. Still, the basic package is well worth it on its own (unless you're an achievements chaser like myself), and I'd give it a strong recommendation. If you fancy a clever take on a classic game of skill, give Mercury Hg a shot.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-36499757327496041542012-05-22T01:59:00.000-04:002012-05-22T02:09:24.053-04:00One Day At A Time<img alt="One Day At A Time" height="2490" src="http://pedxingproductions.com/images/pageaday.jpg" title="Based on a true story." width="540" /><br />Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-25199645563994348522012-04-25T05:52:00.000-04:002012-04-25T05:53:32.217-04:00PAX East 2012, In Twenty Disorganized ThoughtsI went to PAX East in Boston this year. It's sad that I'm starting to write this post now, two weeks after the trip, but I swear, I had a lot going on between then and now, some of which is showcased below. This is going to be one crazy, disorganized post. <br /><br />
<b>1. Driving Sucks</b><br />
I broke down my trip into two parts both ways. I started by spending the night with some friends in Mansfield (about three hours from home) on Wednesday night, then drove the rest of the way to Boston (about seven hours) on Thursday. I've got to say, I'm really glad I broke the trip down, because I-88 and I-90 are terrifyingly depressing stretches of road to drive solo. I really wish I had a chatting buddy with me, as the limited supply of CDs I had in the car (half mix tapes of music, half <a href="http://radiolab.org/" target="_blank">Radiolab</a> episodes) really couldn't keep my attention off of how freaking long I had to go. It didn't help that the GPS in my car was displaying my ETA, a time that seemed to go down a single minute for every three hours I went five over the speed limit, but jumped up three minutes every time I stopped at a toll booth for twenty seconds. Also: Toll booths. What the heck.<br /><br />
<b>2. 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall</b><br />
<img align="right" alt="Having a Boston Lager in Boston" height="240" src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/IMG_0121.jpg" title="And the picture to prove it." width="360" />The last ten minutes of my drive into Boston was about an hour long. After exiting the turnpike, I found myself sitting at one traffic light for about thirty minutes, as it seemed to be where about ten lanes of traffic among four different ramps converged into one three-lane street. After finally finding my hotel (and shouting "LA QUINTA!" with embarrassing jubilation), I noticed that there was a restaurant across the street called <a href="http://www.99restaurants.com/" target="_blank">Ninety Nine</a> (or 99, I can't figure out which is the proper nomenclature). I made a mental note of the place, as I hadn't had any dinner yet. I checked into my hotel room (king size suite, because hey, it was the same price as the queen size) and found a menu for the restaurant sitting on the desk. Well played, Ninety Nine. Well played.<br /><br />
Sort of a New England-based Applebee's sort of place (except with far better food, service, and less likely to be where a girlfriend would dump me), I found myself there every night enjoying a meal. On the night I arrived, I got there in time for bar trivia, which I absolutely tanked at (but I tanked quite proudly). And yes, I had the obligatory pint of Boston Lager while in Boston. I mean, c'mon, you'd do it too. On the whole, I genuinely enjoyed the place, and I'd recommend stopping by one if you find yourself in the area.<br /><br />
<b>3. Brought to You by the Letter T</b><br />
<a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2010/03/random-thoughts-on-town-formerly-known.html">As I mentioned before,</a> I have a weird soft spot for public transportation. I was excited to use Boston's T for my travel back and forth between the hotel and the convention center. I still take pride in the fact that I can rattle off my route without any trouble (from Sullivan Square, take the Orange Line to Downtown Crossing, transfer to the Red Line and go to South Station, transfer to the Silver Line and go to World Trade Center). Since I was trying not to miss my frequent changeovers, I didn't have much time to let my mind wander like I usually do during the rides, but it was still a fun experience nonetheless.<br /><br />
<b>4. Anticipay-yay-tion</b><br />
A weird side note to the above: It's not hard to tell who's going to the convention center, particularly for a gaming conference. Never mind the cosplayers, you could tell the convention-goers apart because they always traveled in tight packs and stayed together on the trains. In addition, there was always a sense of anticipation in the air the closer you got to the convention center, and the anticipation grew as more people hopped on your train. When everyone hopped off the Red Line at South Station and crammed onto the Silver Line buses, you knew that the party was just getting started.<br /><br />
However, this effect also worked in reverse. Every night, I found myself hopping on a bus toward the red line with people, and everyone had that sort of afterglow of awesome about them. Then, as everyone split into different directions, there were fewer and fewer people with me, and the sense of unadulterated bliss wound back down into lonely sadness. I'm pretty sure I was the only convention-goer at my hotel, so the last stretch back to the hotel was always a bit depressing. If anything though, this just serves as a testament to how awesome the conference was.<br /><br />
<b>5. Spoiler Alert, It Doesn't End Well</b><br />
How awesome was the conference? Awesome enough that I don't think I'll go back. <br /><br />
Well, maybe. See, a large part of the reason I wanted to go to PAX East was to see if there was some way I could get my foot in the door working in the gaming industry <i>at all</i>. I even printed out ten resumes just in case. On Friday, I spent a decent amount of time going to sessions presented by different folks in the industry, much like any conference, except significantly awesome-r because the topic was gaming. Unfortunately, one of those sessions I went to was specifically on how to get into the gaming industry. The panel seemed to be a bunch of experienced, but overly-bitter folks who argued back and forth about whether it was better to have far too much on your resume to show off, or to have no resume at all and have some presentable product that you can hand to any potential employer in lieu of a resume proper. I have neither, and I don't foresee either happening soon. I graduated with a degree in broadcasting, not computer programming or graphic design or art or music (well, a minor in music), and I'm not in a position where I can readily turn around and go learn a(nother) new trade. So, I decided right then and there that as much as I love games, I could never make them for a living.<br /><br />
<b>6. Let's Talk</b><br />
<i>However.</i><br /><br />
However, however, however. One other thing I realized is that I do have that broadcasting experience, and the know-how to use it. Thus, on Saturday, the impromptu interviews began. <br /><br />
Having decided to skip out on any sessions I had planned to attend that day, I spent most of Saturday on the exhibition hall floor. Of all the big brand games that were featured, I found myself gravitating toward one cluster of booths. The <a href="http://marctenbosch.com/megabooth/" target="_blank">Indie Megabooth</a> was a collaboration of sixteen different independent developers who, rather than settling for tiny booths tucked along the outer walls of the hall, banded together to form a giant block of awesomeness smack dab in the mid-- eh, it was still kinda close to the edge. But it was still awesome. After I played around with a few of the games, I had an idea. I pulled out my camera and started to interview the developers about their games. Nothing too tremendous, just the basic "tell me about your game," "what platforms," and "release date" questions. Later, after returning home, I strung them together to make this video.
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kcXXz5H6ItA" width="640"></iframe><br />
The video was featured on <a href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2012/04/link_dump_friday_262.php" target="_blank">Jay is Games</a>, but don't click the link yet! There are spoilers for later stuff in there!<br /><br />
<b>7. He Wasn't Wearing a Pink Suit</b><br />
I'd like to take a moment to pull some of those awesome Indie Megabooth entries aside and give them a little more attention. One game I'm particularly looking forward to is <a href="http://www.antichamber-game.com/" target="_blank">Antichamber</a>, which is sort of like other first-person puzzle games like Portal 2 in the sense that OH MY GOD WOW WOW WOW. The world of Antichamber plays a lot with M.C. Escher-like "physics" where you have infinite staircases and rooms that seem to double back on themselves as if the entire room has changed its position. I didn't record this bit in the interview, but I was talking to the developer, Alexander Bruce, and he said that he wanted to make a game that broke every possible conventional gaming rule that you're used to. At the very start of the game you see a chasm with the word "JUMP" floating over it. Your instinct is to jump, expecting to make it across the gap. Absolutely not. That which you think you know coming into the game is ultimately challenged in one form or another in Antichamber, and it takes careful observation and fantastic lateral thinking skills to make it through the game. I managed to play a portion of the game, with a crowd of people watching my moves on a TV. Without spoiling anything, there was one puzzle that one member of the crowd blurted out the answer to. The developer, looking to give me a hint, pointed out what he said to me, and I responded honestly, "I would have never thought of that. That's amazing." Seriously, I absolutely can't wait for this game to come out. It's that awesome.<br /><br />
<b>8. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA! A Reckless Disregard for Fanboyishness</b><br />
If there's one interview I feel I really screwed up in my impromptu reporting, it was the one with <a href="http://www.dejobaan.com/" target="_blank">Dejobaan Games</a>. As I was preparing for the trip, I thought about what game companies I knew that were actually based in Boston and wouldn't be traveling from the west coast just to be here. I was excited when I realized that Dejobaan was from Boston. I think I actually did a fist pump in the laundry room when the thought occurred to me. Yeah, I was that excited.<br /><br />
Lo and behold, Dejobaan was featuring two games at the Indie Megabooth. One was Force=MassxAcceleration, an iPad port of their AaaAAA! skydiving games, and a new prototype called Drunken Robot Pornography, where you faced off against a year's worth of mechanical robotic centerfolds that got progressively harder as you went along. Quite cool-looking. There were plenty of jellyfish-laden red shirts in their portion of the booth, and I pulled one (Elliot Borenstein) aside for the interview. Somehow, things went wrong at this point. Dejobaan was the second interview I did, and I hadn't really nailed down a specific format for the questions I wanted to ask. That, plus the fact that I'm a bit of a Dejobaan fanboy left me awkwardly speechless near the end of our interview as I struggled to come up with <i>anything</i> to ask him. Things went pretty smoothly after that, but I feel terrible about how unprofessional I was at that time. Elliot, if you're somehow reading this, I'm really sorry. Also, why are you Googling yourself? Get back to DRP. Or make me some more TWEOTW levels.<br /><br />
<b>9. Break In, Break Out, Break Down</b><br />
One fun thing about playing these games and talking to the developers was getting to be unsuspecting beta testers. <a href="http://www.monacoismine.com/" target="_blank">Monaco</a> is a top-down maze-slash-heist game, described to me by creator Andy Schatz as "Pac-Man meets Hitman." On each level, you can see the layout of the area like a floor plan, but all of the traps and enemies remain hidden until you've actually "spotted" them in your line of vision, which is a really cool touch. Before I spoke with Andy about his game, I sat down at one of the laptops set up and played a bit of a single-player game (seriously, the multiplayer looks way too crazy for me to handle). I got a few levels in playing as the Lockpick when the game suddenly froze up on me. After a few moments of hesitation, the laptop then rebooted and went to a crazy BIOS setup screen. I sat in the chair, shocked and afraid I was about to be killed for destroying their computer. Luckily, Andy came over and said it was a known issue (I think it had something to do with the laptop's video card) and that they were working on it. <br /><br />
But yeah, Monaco looks cool, and I'm looking forward to it coming out as well. It'll be a while before I tackle the multiplayer though.<br /><br />
<b>10. Future to the Back</b><br />
All of the games in the Indie Megabooth looked really awesome, but I wanted to give one more really quick shout-out for <a href="http://www.retrogradegame.com/" target="_blank">Retro/Grade</a>, which hails itself as the first video game played entirely in reverse, credits to tutorial. I'm going to get my time travel terminology completely wrong here, but due to a rift in the space-time continuum, an entire space war has to be undone in order to preserve the universe. Thus, you've got to line your ship up with the shots that you fired moving back toward your gun, as well as dodge your enemies' bullets moving back toward theirs in reverse. I didn't get the chance to sit down and play this one, and I'm not describing it that well here, but this is definitely another game I'm looking forward to.<br /><br />
<b>11. Of My Own Volition</b><br />
Right next door to the Indie Megabooth was a selection of six more indie developers selected as the Boston Indiecade, featured by the convention itself. Rather stupidly, I didn't grab any interviews, but I tried most of the games and talked with the developers. One game that caught my attention was <a href="http://spelltower.com/" target="_blank">SpellTower</a>, a sort of Boggle/Tetris hybrid game for mobile devices where you clear words to prevent rising stacks of letters from reaching the top of the screen. I'm not wholly sure the concept is actually that novel, but the sleek presentation and varied gameplay makes this game quite fun. However, the highlight for me was when I picked up one of the demo iPads and started playing the game myself. I'm sort of a word game nut, so without realizing it, I was quickly approaching the high score on the iPad. What I didn't realize that that wasn't a convention high score, that was the developer's own high score. I was playing on the developer's own iPad, and I clobbered his score with something like 6400 to his 5500. The developer wasn't at the booth at the moment, but his roommate was standing guard, and he was freaking out with every ridiculous word I made (I somehow pulled out VOLITION for about 500 points in one turn). In a really weird schadenfreude-istic way, this was a major highlight to my Sunday afternoon.<br /><br />
<b>12. Of Assassins and Men</b><br />
I didn't do too much with the bigger label games, but I did find myself waiting a half hour to see a demo video of Assassin's Creed 3. We were ushered into a small theatre where we sat on wooden crates and were asked to put our cameras away. To which I genuinely ask, why? You've already produced a video for the purposes of showing the general public what's going on with your game, and you've certainly not made us sign waivers that prevent us from telling anyone else about what we've seen. Particularly retrospectively, some of the things they were showing in this movie were features that would make for fantastic selling points for the game, why would they want to keep them faux-hidden like that? Isn't the point of publicity to make things public?<br /><br />
That all having been said, here are some points I recall from watching the movie.
<br />
<ul>
<li>The clip opens with the protagonist riding to a battlefield on a horse. I almost burst out laughing, and we were hardly twenty seconds into the movie.</li>
<li>The missions give you more options for play, for example, a "stealth" route and an "action" route, depending on how you like to play the game. Nice touch, though I'd bet they'd always make one option or the other the "full synchronization" option, meaning completionists probably won't have the liberty this decision implies.</li>
<li>The protagonist (note I'm trying to dodge recalling his name... Connor Somethingorrather is at least his English name, never mind his actual Native American name) reacts more to environment events (such as a cannonball kicking up dirt right next to him). Make of this information what you will.</li>
<li>More MOTWYW information: Troops stay in lines/blocks/clusters like they did in the war, you auto-crouch when hiding in tall grass, and you seem to have allies and enemies on both sides of the war, for various Assassin/Templar reasons.</li>
<li>They made a big deal about the trees in this game. Unlike previous games where you have a lot of architecture to play around with, it was implied that you'll be spending a lot of time on battlefields and other naturey places. They talked about the challenges of making trees not just look like random Ts for you to jump around on, and how you can "more intuitively" walk from branch to branch of a tree by hugging the trunk. That's all well and good, but the killer for the whole deal for me came near the end of the tree speech, when a few rogue leaves blocked the camera view for a moment, just as they had with every freaking game before this. They just don't learn, do they?</li>
<li>Weapons, then. Yes, you've still got the famous double-blade, but there's more emphasis put on a period-appropriate tomahawk. Also, a demonstration of the rope-dart, which is a dart on a rope. Brilliant. More brilliantly, you can spear someone from a tree, then lower yourself down elevator-style to the ground level (pulling your enemy's corpse up to branch-level). A bit of comic relief came from this bit, when the developer paused the video here to talk about the upcoming fight sequence, then adding on at the end, "Also, that guy's feet are still dangling there. We liked that part."</li>
<li>The big assassination finale happens right as the screen fades to white, but I'm sure it's just like every other assassination we've seen so far, where the protagonist and the victim have a long chat on the ground before the protagonist does his "In pace resquiat" bit and tenderly caresses his prey... or was I just imagining that bit? Don't judge me.</li>
</ul>
And then I left the theatre and I got a free inflatable tomahawk.<br /><br />
<strong>13. Blitzkrieg Bop</strong><br />
One mainstream thing I'm looking forward to is Rock Band Blitz. It'll apparently be released first for XBLA (if not elsewhere eventually), and it plays like a single-player redux of the Rock Band games. You've got five or so tracks to play, each representing a different instrument/part of the song. As you switch to that track, your performance is reflected in how well/poorly that bit of the music plays in the background. You have the freedom to switch tracks at any time, but you can only get a high score by leveling up all of the tracks equally. You can't fail a song, you just score less. To be honest, the whole thing feels way more casual in a very PopCap sort of way (complete with the glitzy "Clear" screen at the end of each song), and I'm perfectly fine with that.<br /><br />
That's all swell and good, but here's the weird bit: Each track only has two notes to play. It's just left or right, and very rarely deviating from a pattern that just seems to alternate L/R/L/R along with the rhythm of the music. Having experienced far fiercer games like <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/10/oh-so-its-racist-rap-battle.html">Sequence</a>, this is a bit of a letdown, but I can understand how having more buttons could be a bit daunting for the target audience this game is probably targeted at. I'm still cool with it though, and I'm looking forward to this game being available.<br /><br />
<strong>14. I'm Pretty Good at Pokerface on Easy</strong><br />
Speaking of Harmonix (oh, I guess we were speaking of Harmonix?), there was a nice huge stage with two side-by-side games of Dance Central 2 going on. People were lining up in pairs to play with friends, and I stood by and watched a bit. I've not tackled too much of Dance Central, but I'm familiar with how the game works. For each song, there are three difficulty levels, and you can choose to "break it down" and learn each of the steps in the song one by one before going into "performance mode". As I watched people play, I assumed there were going to be some horrible performances mixed in with the brilliant players.<br /><br />
That, I found out, was incredibly false. Everyone that I saw hop up on that stage came to freaking perform. Always the hardest difficulty, always straight to performance mode. And they did crazy well. (Side note: You've not seen how amazing this game can be until you've seen a TF2 Medic dancing his heart out.) It was at this point that I had a somewhat sad revelation about Dance Central. I always imagined Dance Central would be a fun party game that just about anyone can jump right into and play along, like at a party. This is extremely not true. In fact, it falls into that class of game where you have to work your butt off to not only unlock later parts of the game, but you have to devote large portions of your time to memorizing the game to perfection (as in, on one playthrough I saw, the commands actually disappeared for half the song). It's right back to Guitar Hero and Super Smash Brothers, where to access more content, you have to be good, but once you're too good, no one wants to play with you because you'll just beat them. I'm not sure I'm comfortable playing a game like that. Granted, I've lent my Kinect to a friend, so I won't even see the game for a while, but seeing these people performing like that really put a huge damper on the game for me.<br /><br />
<strong>15. Oh, What Was That One Thing, With the Colors and the Beams and the...</strong><br />
I'm blanking here, but there was another cool game I liked. It was one where you played a ship flying through a tube with colored blocks along the way. You would grab a block of one color, then another block of the same color, which would propel you through the tube faster. And you'd keep making pairs to pull yourself through the level, and try to pass through the auras surrounding the blocks without actually hitting the blocks... I think it was called Dyad? I'm not sure. But it looked cool. <br /><br />
<strong>16. Kids in the Hall</strong><br />
It was Saturday night, and I was looking for something to do. I went up to the second floor of the convention center, turned the corner, and walked into someone rolling on the ground. Little did I know that I stepped into a game called Ninja.<br />
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RpXVVhRrYvM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
As I quickly learned, Ninja is played with a group of people starting out in a circle. On the leader's count, everyone strikes their favorite ninja pose (or just strike any old pose), and going in clockwise order around the order (and staying in that order, even after the circle breaks apart), each person takes a turn making one fluid motion to try to tag another person's hand with their own. (The phrase "one fluid motion" is a bit vague, but when you start to play, you can quickly figure out what's one motion and what's not.) If you miss or if you don't attack, you have to hold your stance until the next turn, unless if you're being attacked; then, you're allowed one fluid motion to take a defensive position, using the same rules as above.<br /><br />
I played a few rounds of this game and had a ton of fun. (In the video above, I'm just off the camera in the black shirt.) After many failed dives to attack opponents (one of which resulting in a pretty nasty rugburn that's still healing), I ended up winning the last game I played that night before I had to leave to catch the trains back to the hotel. It just goes to show that among all the organized awesomeness, these cool little impromptu games can pop up and be just as entertaining.<br /><br />
<strong>17. Another Reason to Hate the Sessions</strong><br />
I forgot to mention this before: Before any session began, there was always a separate queueing room where you had to line up to enter the session. Getting there early <em>sometimes</em> guaranteed you a decent seat, or it might screw you over further depending on how they filled the hall in. It really sucked, since it took away from time you could've been doing something else. It was a necessary evil though, considering how many people attended some sessions.<br /><br />
<strong>18. James Portnow: The Man, The Myth, The Legend (in no particular order)</strong><br />
Right, so this particular story takes a long time to tell. To set this up, here's some pertinent information: <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits" target="_blank">Extra Credits</a> is a video lecture series of sorts started by/starring Daniel Floyd, written by James Portnow, and with artwork by Allison Theus. In it, all sorts of topics relating to games, the gaming industry, and gaming culture are discussed. Seriously, go watch all eighty-some episodes now. You won't regret it. I can't remember if it was one or two years ago now, but Allison had to have some major shoulder surgery done, but her insurance wouldn't cover the operation. Considering her main profession is art, this was a really big thing. The Extra Credits crew decided to set up a RocketHub fundraiser to take donations to support Allison's surgery. The initial goal of the fundraiser was $15,000 in 60 days. I'm making up numbers here, but by the end of the first day, they had something like over $60,000 in donations.<br /><br />
<img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/IMG_0122.jpg" align="right" width="360" height="240" alt="Me with James Portnow" title="Shortly after our first embrace" />On Friday, I was walking around on the exhibition hall floor when out of nowhere, James Portnow came up to me, said, "Thank you!" and hugged me. I didn't realize it until after the fact, but James apparently spotted the Extra Credits t-shirt I was wearing, which was a gift for donors to Allison's surgery fund. After we exchanged a few quick words, I got my picture taken with him, and we both continued on our way. The more I think about it, the entire episode, with him (the celebrity) randomly walking up and hugging me (the civvy), should have been far more awkward than it was, but instead it was really awesome.<br /><br />
Right after this, I scurried out of the expo hall and hopped on my netbook to share the photo with the JIG editors just to make them jealous (because I'm a horrible person). I'm not sure how it happened, but from the short discussion we had, I decided I would try to get an interview with the Extra Credits crew for the site. (Note that this happened before I had my not-games-but-broadcasting revelation.) I knew that I could see Daniel, James, and Allison at the Extra Credits session later that night, so I arrived 40 minutes early for the session. (It wasn't nearly early enough.)<br /><br />
Sadly, neither Daniel nor Allison could make it to PAX due to varying work circumstances, so the panel was just James until he pulled up a few other random developers he spotted in the audience to help him field questions. (Also: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/ExtraCreditz/status/194207220634890243" target="_blank">this happened.</a>) After the panel proper ended, James stuck around in the hallway for a long time taking more questions and autographing random objects for people. I waited patiently for my chance to ask him if he could spare ten minutes at some point in time for an interview for the site. At the very least, I knew that James was familiar with Jay is Games as he and Daniel had mentioned it as a good review site in a live Q&A stream they did once. The crowd eventually whittled down to about ten people, and I thought I was going to get to ask him for the interview time, but he said he could only take one more question before he had to go. Not wanting to lose the opportunity, I quickly pulled out the notebook in my pocket and scrawled out a quick note. "Are you available for 10-20 minutes tomorrow to do a short interview for JayisGames.com?" I listed JIG's Twitter handle, my Twitter handle, and my cell phone number. As he started to pull away to his next gig, I slipped the note to him and told him to respond at his leisure. And that was the end of my Friday at PAX East.<br /><br />
Among all the interviews I was doing with the Indie Megabooth folks, I kept checking my cell phone to see if I had gotten any sort of reply from James (or a forwarded reply from the JIG editors, who controlled the JIG Twitter). Nothing. At around 3 o'clock or so, I left the exhibition hall to hop in the staging queue for a session I wanted to attend (at 4 o'clock... I finally learned my lesson with those stupid queues). To pass the time, I decided to check my email and Twitter in the queue. I got no response, but I spotted another tweet from James saying he'd be at the Digipen Institute booth from 4 to 4:30. Dang. So there it was, possibly my last chance to talk with him about an interview. I ended up leaving the queue and waiting at the booth for James to show up, with my netbook of questions, tripod, and camera at the ready. He showed up, he answered questions, he signed more things, and then he was on his way again, and I still didn't have any interview lined up.<br /><br />
But this time, I wasn't going to let him off as easily. As he and a couple other people (at least one of whom I'm assuming was either a girlfriend or spouse, I'm not sure) made their way through the exhibition hall toward the front exit, I followed closely behind, trying to pack away my gear as I walked, while still trying to keep James in my sights. Either James was really good at ignoring me or he genuinely didn't see this bumbling idiot following him with crazy amounts of gear in hand. It wasn't until he reached the front door of the convention center that I decided to interrupt him and ask him if he had any time for the interview. To my surprise, he not only remembered me from the night before, but he still had the note I handed him in his jacket pocket. He confirmed that it was my contact information, and he said he'd send me a message later that night. No specific time, but he said he'd get a hold of me.<br /><br />
And for the time being, that was that. I finally sort of got what I wanted, and I was sort of satisfied with that. I stopped in to catch the tail end of the session I wanted to see, then later found myself lying on the floor of the convention center, with my netbook and camera batteries charging on the floor behind me. Honestly, it was nice to just lie down and relax for a bit. I ate my lunch, which was the Pop-Tarts I had stuck in my pocket back in the hotel room, at seven o'clock. By the way, this was my normal dietary habit for the weekend. I ate the free breakfast at the hotel room in the morning, then didn't eat anything until the Pop-Tarts around 7, then a midnight snack back at the Ninety Nine before I went to bed.<br /><br />
Around 8, I found myself wandering around the convention center and stumbled upon the Ninja game. (Isn't it cool how all these stories are coming together now?) I played a few rounds with everyone, scraped up my leg with the rugburn, etc. All of a sudden, around 9, I saw James and his undisclosed female acquaintance coming around the corner. I immediately left the Ninja circle, grabbed my bags, and gave chase. Down the hallway, I finally caught up with James once again.<br /><br />
And I got the interview.<br />
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/st-Lb-wpWlE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
I should add that before I started recording, he asked me if I had a business card he could have for further contact. I didn't have any business cards. That was probably my biggest regret from the trip, not having business cards. A lot of the folks I interviewed at the Indie Megabooth asked if I had business cards so they could keep in touch as well. But I didn't have any business cards. But I had ten resumes! (See, it's all coming together now!) So I gave James a resume, and he stuck it inside his jacket, just like with the note. And... well, that portion of the anecdote sorta falls flat right there, but it was cool that I was networking in a small way.<br /><br />
Also, I asked James another question that didn't make the above cut. On a personal note, I asked him if he saw much of a calling for games outside of video games, for example, games on television or radio or movies. He said yes, there's tremendous opportunities for games elsewhere in society, and that we've got to potential to make them happen anywhere, anytime. He even referenced the game of Ninja he passed by in the hallway as an example. Games are such an integral part of our culture that we're bound to find games elsewhere.<br /><br />
This interview experience with James confirmed a few things within my mind. One, I've really got to pursue a job in the broadcasting field a little more fiercely. Two, via that same highway, it's still entirely possible to get a job working with games. Perhaps not video games per se, but games in other media. Three, I am one creepy man. Seriously, I stalked a guy around for the better portion of a day? That's just plain not right. Granted, it was for the sake of journalism, but still, that do-anything-for-the-story attitude has got to mean something's wrong with me. Maybe I'll end up writing for tabloids. (I really hope I don't end up writing for tabloids.)<br /><br />
<strong>19. Cooling Down</strong><br />
But what of that Saturday session I missed to try to schedule the interview with James? That session was the "Pitch Your Game Idea" session. Again, I don't know what all went on in the session since I came in for only the last ten minutes or so of it, but I was a bit irritated I didn't get to try my hand at pitching a game idea. Nonetheless, I stuck around afterward and managed to get a word in with one of the judges, Gordon Bellamy, one of the big names at the <a href="http://www.igda.org/" target="_blank">International Game Developers Association</a>. However, I didn't ask him about games. I said, "I really enjoyed you on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kEho1YIqUY" target="_blank">Million Dollar Mind Game</a>." He burst out laughing, then fake crying, then we had a great little chat about game shows and we geeked out a bit and it was all sorts of awesome. He gave me his business card and asked for mine, which I didn't have (SEE?). I should've grabbed a picture with him. Dang. Not sure why I didn't, really.<br /><br />
<strong>20. Okay, But Seriously, Would You Do It Again?</strong>
I guess I ducked this question earlier, so now I should really come back and give a proper answer. Would I do PAX East again? Or PAX Prime out in Seattle? My answer is yes, but I'd have to be approaching it very differently from how I did this time. I'd love to go strictly as a press person and interview as many developers as I could. I'd love to go as an exhibitor or panelist with something fantastic on my resume to talk about. I'm not sure I'd enjoy going as a straight observer again, but I wouldn't speak ill of it for anyone else who would want to go. PAX East was a fantastic experience, and I'll cherish the memories of the mysteriously non-awkward hug, the fiercest rugburn I ever received, and the motivation I needed to write a puzzle book.<br /><br />
Oh, I'm working on writing a puzzle book. That was also a thing that happened.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-45941643171396716212012-04-19T14:14:00.002-04:002012-04-19T14:36:24.395-04:00Fez, Part 2For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, I'm putting this in a separate post. I've almost completely finished Fez, though I'm still a bit shy of the ending for reasons that I'll explain later. I feel that I needed to write some sort of follow-up post to my previous entry, in which I pretty much ripped Fez to shreds. The post was incredibly unfair, as I based most of my opinions on my tired, unpleasant experience with the first ending in the game. If I had been truly professional about the experience, I would have played the game through to the end in order to take in the full meaning of not only that ending, but the post-game that followed. For that, I apologize for my horrible reporting the first time around.<br /><br />Note that I'm not wholly redacting my first post though. Certain elements of my opinion still stand. The game is based on a mechanic that, between the time of announcement and release, has been duplicated by other games, and isn't used to the extent that it probably could have been used here. I was asked by a friend if my experience would have been changed if there weren't a five-year waiting period between announcement and release. I responded that the mechanic, no matter how you slice it, still gets old quickly, but without the time for copycats to come along and steal my attention, it might've held my interest for a little bit longer.<br /><br />What's changed between my first posting and now? I have since chosen that "New Game +" mode, and I'm satisfied to note that it's a continuation of the first game that happens to start very similarly to the opening scenes the first time you play, but with a certain extra element given to your character allowing new puzzles to be unlocked (I'm trying to avoid spoilers this time). Those spoilers held my interest for a while, but eventually you realize that there are only so many new puzzles added; they're just repeated several times in different ways or places. For example (and I don't think this is too much of a spoiler), on one island with a clock tower, there are four bonus cubes that can be unlocked, allegedly on the schedule with one appearing once every minute, one once every hour, one once every day, and one appearing once every week. That's what I'm stuck on now. I have about two more days to wait to grab that last cube, that final cube that will let me finally finish the game with a proper ending. So yes, there's also an element of frustration that comes with some of the puzzles' designs.<br /><br />So where does that leave me? I'm going to stick by the opinion I posted last time, and that's that you should try the demo and see how you feel about the game.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-447202078136903462012-04-15T01:02:00.003-04:002012-04-15T01:48:54.883-04:00FezHa, a tie for my shortest blog post title! Words are so much fun.<br /><br /><em>(Please note that this review will contain spoilers for the ending of Fez. I'll give another warning later when I hit the spoilers.)</em><br /><br />Fez, that long-awaited perspective-based puzzle platformer, has finally hit XBLA for 800MSP ($10). You play as Gomez, a man who lives in a flat world with lots of squares until plotline plotline plotline and suddenly everything has depth. By rotating the world 90 degrees at a time, you can line up platforms to reach new places and collect cube fragments to unlock new worlds.<br /><br />On the whole, it's an interesting mechanic, but it's not new. Or at least, it's not new anymore. Fez was first announced in 2007, and in the years that have passed, other games have come along that used the same rotating-perspective gameplay (I reviewed one for JIG <a href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2011/03/sky_island.php" target="_blank">here</a>). When I heard that Fez was finally going to be released, I reacted with cautious joy, since I knew this game had to be absolutely amazing in order to live up to all the hype it received over the years. I started to play the game, and it already felt like the magic of this wonderful new mechanic was already gone.<br /><br />Normally, a game like this would already be dead in the water for me, but despite the puzzle of jumping from one platform to another then rotating and doing it all over again having no novelty, I found a puzzle simply in the navigation system of the game. Each section of the world is connected via doorways in a larger three-dimensional meta-map, which baffled me at first. Lines seemed to connect one place to another like a flowchart made of a bowl of spaghetti. Somehow, the game around the mechanic, rather than the mechanic in the game, was more entertaining to me than anything else. Where solving ways to get from point A to point B was no longer interesting, navigating my way across the world was more fascinating to me.<br /><br /><em><strong>NOTE: SPOILERS START HERE.</strong></em> Unfortunately, I made the mistake of stumbling on the end of the game a bit too quickly. It's safe to say that in collecting only half of the total number of cubes available in the game, what I was was the "bad ending." If ever a bad ending was to be had though, this was probably the least logical and trippiest bad ending I've ever seen. Rather than the game saying "Yay, you did it, but you didn't do enough! Go back and do some more," the ending consisted of a bizarre dance of geometric figures like a horrible old screen saver. I'm still not even sure I found the bad ending. It might've been the good ending. Or perhaps <em>the only</em> ending. I'm not comfortable with that.<br /><br />What's probably more irritating is that in completing the game, my progress appears to have been erased. Or at the very least, I no longer have a "continue game" option on the main menu, but I now have a "start new game+" option. I've stepped away from the console for the night, but I can't help but feel that this probably means that all the hard work and exploring I did have been wiped out needlessly. (Watch this space for an edit, I'll see if I was right tomorrow.) Certainly a better ending could be ascertained by replaying the game to full completion, but I'm not sure I could be convinced to redo everything I've done before once again. <em><strong>SPOILERS END HERE.</strong></em><br /><br />My experience with Fez, though limited, has been very bipolar. First I was underwhelmed, then I was enthralled, then I was let down again. I really don't want to chalk up a third mostly-negative review in a row, but there's something about Fez, be it something in its story (or potential lack thereof), or its now-less-than-novel mechanics, or <em>something</em> that makes the game oddly irritating. I stress however that your mileage may vary, and encourage you to play through the demo at the very least. Please don't just go by my sleepy, jaded opinion on this one; experience the game for yourself and come to your own conclusions.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-60210817046387869872012-04-03T16:58:00.002-04:002012-04-03T17:22:00.131-04:00Let Me Save You Ten Bucks<img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/3switched.jpg" align="right" height="307" width="410" alt="3Switched" title="Ignore the man in the top-left corner." />I'll keep this short and sweet: Don't buy 3SwitcheD. It's a dull knockoff of too many matching puzzles (two Bejeweled clone levels, two Atomica clone levels, two samegame clone levels) to have any originality in its gameplay. Its only remaining selling point is how you can use a webcam to track your facial movements, and the screen follows where you turn your head, except it doesn't even do this well. In the end, there's really nothing new to see here. I mean, c'mon, they couldn't have even thought of something other than gems to swap? Criminy.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-79153720567862441222012-03-25T17:39:00.004-04:002012-03-25T18:32:37.040-04:00Ten Reasons Why I Won't Buy Rise of NightmaresI'm visiting a friend this weekend, and I decided to bring my Xbox and Kinect with me. Upon his insistence, I downloaded the Rise of Nightmares demo. Apparently, it was one of the first (possibly the only?) Kinect games to incorporate heavy doses of violence in a horror atmosphere. After I played through the demo on my own, I forced him to play through it. As revenge.<br /><br />Yeah, it was that bad.<br /><br />1. If your intention is to set up a horrifying atmosphere, don't start off the game with a confusing and hilarious cutscene involving a mad scientist seemingly faking a phone call with his wife as an excuse to leave the room. <br />2. Turning the camera by rotating your shoulders is okay, but there's always a bit of backwards turning when you return to the "forward" position, which is annoying. Also, no looking forward or down.<br />3. Forward and backward motion by putting one leg forward or backward is... awkward. Allegedly, how far you put your leg forward or backward changes the speed at which you move, but your character (apparently your name is Josh) only seems to move at one speed: Half-saunter. <br />4. No sideways movement. Expect to spend a lot of time smearing your face into the wall because you've overturned and can't right yourself.<br />5. The game encourages you to perform certain commands as though you were doing them in real life. For example, when you see a door, you grab the handle and pull it open, right? Wrong. Every door is pushed open, regardless of whether you're on the push or pull side of it. Brilliant.<br />6. See something that needs killed? Put your arms up in a guarded position, and flail. It doesn't seem to matter what weapon you're holding, a flailing motion seems to make it go. <br />7. Your traveling companion (who does pretty much nothing beyond a very awkward scamper behind you) randomly gets killed by a giant guillotine. His dying words? "I knew I would die here!" Okay. <br />8. At one point, you're introduced to an icon that lets you take a break while the computer moves you to the next objective by raising your right arm. This saves a decent amount of trouble, except when it keeps returning you to a dead end. Keep holding your arm up, and it keeps repeating the error message.<br />9. How many times can the same horror movie cliche be pumped into one game? Too much, apparently. Do a thing with no one else in the room, turn around to see a line of zombies approaching you. Every. Single. Time.<br />10. Even if it's a horror game in which everything is out to kill you solely for the purposes of killing you, I'd still expect at least a little bit of logic to come into play. If I'm in a room with a whole bunch of zombies, and I kill all of these zombies, why does a previously unmovable door suddenly open? It'd be hypocritical for me to say that sort of cause-and-effect is unreasonable, since it's worked for titles as old as The Legend of Zelda. On the other hand, The Legend of Zelda didn't try to make itself out as a realistic (heh) survival horror game. It's moments like this that you become painfully aware that you're playing a very specific role in a very generic movie.<br /><br />What starts out as a decent concept for an action game is made intensely frivolous by how broken it is. I wouldn't've anticipated many people enjoying this game, though another friend really loved kicking during the fight scenes. I, on the other hand, felt less ridiculous during the freestyle dance segments in Dance Central (you have to take my word for this). Any sense of horror is killed off right at the beginning of the demo, so all one could hope for with this game is a gory, slow slog through a cinematic. I will not buy this game.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-58884313895857335342012-02-27T21:59:00.005-05:002012-02-27T23:55:09.635-05:00My Nanoblogging Is Your Microblogging - Episode 5This post was mostly written while watching an episode of Castle. It's really hard to write while watching Castle. <br /><br /><strong>19. On Jan Berenstain</strong><br />Here's a story I've never really told anyone before. I can't remember what semester it was, but I took Composition II, which was more like "Do a Bunch of Book Reports for a Grade 2202". We read Michael Pollan's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-Manifesto/dp/0143114964/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330398982&sr=8-1" target="_blank">In Defense of Food</a>. Not a bad book, really. The first two-thirds of the book, talking about the science and culture of food, are a bit dry, but the latter third where he discusses the things one can do to one's diet sparked a few interesting discussions in class. After a really good chat one day in class, I walked out the door and thought to myself, "I really want to interview Jan Berenstain."<br /><br />I have no idea why that thought popped in my mind, but it did. I mulled over the idea for a while, and I decided I would try interviewing her. I thought up a shortlist of other people I'd love to interview. I figured, set up Skype so that I could record the calls, then share the interviews here on this blog. Unfortunately, due to procrastination and technical incompetence, none of these interviews ever happened. <br /><br />Tonight, I found out that <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/02/27/147516778/jan-berenstain-co-creator-of-berenstain-bears-dies" target="_blank">Jan Berenstain has passed away</a>. This is sad news on multiple levels. One, rather selfishly, I know I've blown my chance to get that interview I've always wanted. Two, more importantly, a huge part of my childhood has passed away. Our family has a huge stack of Berenstain Bears books sitting on a shelf somewhere, all of which I'm sure I've read at least a few dozen times each. I understand that Stan and Jan Berenstain's sons have gotten involved in the family business, but it'll still feel weird knowing that such a huge part of my childhood is gone. Thank you, Jan, for your hand in my upbringing, you will be missed.<br /><br /><strong>20. Ped Xing Reboot</strong><br />In case you missed it, I finally rebooted my personal portfolio website, <a href="http://pedxingproductions.com" target="_blank">Ped Xing Productions</a>. The only thing I think I'm missing is the Contact page, as I'm still trying to figure out the best way to post contact information in a way that won't bring in tons of spam. If you have any suggestions, contact me via the Conta-- oh. Leave a comment here, a'ight?<br /><br /><strong>21. 1000 Letters on 1000 Amps</strong><br /><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/205690/" target="_blank">1000 Amps</a> is a puzzle platformer released last week on Steam in which you control a little robot bloke, trying to restore the light in a world of darkness. As you move around, the blocks you touch are revealed; hopefully you can stumble on the all-white light blocks that set the entire room aglow if all are found. Your ability to move around and fight off enemies relies on how many light blocks you've uncovered. As such, each room starts out as a guessing game, where you've got to deduce where it's safe to walk, or else you might fall through a hole to the next room below. This is a rather frustrating mechanic, considering you usually have to trek around five or more rooms just to get back to that point to try again, though if you can't remember how you screwed up six rooms ago, you're doomed to repeat the same mistake. Worse, the power-ups you get over the course of the game are really hard to anticipate, so you can't tell when you should just desert a room and come back to it when you're better prepared to handle it. On the whole, 1000 Amps is an okay game, but the incessant trial-and-error-ness of the game is irritating. I'd recommend grabbing this if it's on sale, but be prepared for some frustration.<br /><br /><strong>22. The Assassin's Dilemma, Revisited</strong><br />Assassin's Creed 3 will apparently be released on October 30th. Will I set aside the money now in an envelope and hang it on my bedroom wall until preorders are available? Eh... Well, I've posted more about the AC series on this blog than any other game franchise (unless if you count the dozens of subtle nods to Portal), but I think my love for the series is starting to dry up. Just as Ezio was young, fun, and playful in Assassin's Creed 2, which I consider the highlight of the series so far, Ezio feels old and cranky in Assassin's Creed: Revelations, which is where I'm stuck right now. I'm having a hard time forcing myself to finish the game, especially when the plot feels far disconnected from the rest of the franchise (and I say this knowing full well that the previous games very logically lead to this point). I don't have any hatred for the series as a whole, but I'm just having a hard time getting the motivation to move forward with it. So, sorry, Ezio... No envelope for you. I'll likely end up getting it, but I'm in no rush.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-6912600312841360482012-02-21T23:05:00.002-05:002012-02-21T23:43:20.087-05:00A Quick Review of Q.U.B.E.Dear game makers, please make more games that start with the letter Q so I can keep recycling this title setup. <br /><br /><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/203730/" target="_blank">Q.U.B.E.</a> (Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion) is a first-person puzzle game that borrows heavily from the Portal aesthetic of clean white walls and playing your way through tutorials disguised as spatial puzzles right until the end. Instead of the famous portal gun, you're now given fancy gloves that can manipulate blocks on the walls around you. These blocks are color-coded so you know exactly what they do. For example, red blocks can be pulled straight out of the walls (up to three units long), while yellow blocks come in clusters of three that must all be pulled out at once, but at different lengths (making a staircase shape). Using these blocks, you've got to move objects around the rooms and climb your way to the next level.<br /><br />The above is a bit of an oversimplification of the puzzles in Q.U.B.E. Really, they're quite complex, in that Portal sort of way where you have the tools, but you have to figure out new ways to use them, particularly as new elements are introduced (balls that have to be filtered into different holes, cubes that have to be positioned correctly to redirect beams of light). The mix of puzzles is quite satisfying, save for one annoying section of puzzles done in the dark, as the darkness doesn't add anything but unnecessary difficulty.<br /><br />The story, on the other hand, is far from Portalesque. In fact, as much as the game tries to gesture at a story being there, I just can't find it. You wake up in a room, just like Portal, but you don't have the benefit of GLaDOS to give you the basic instructions as you go. Perhaps the game assumes that everyone is familiar with Portal, and that the clean white walls instantly signals your goal is to escape from whatever facility you're in. This is, in this case, true, but even after having completed the game, I don't feel satisfied that I've accomplished anything more than solving the puzzles and getting to the next room umpteen times.<br /><br />At this point, I should throw in that I'm a bit bitter about this game, as I worked my way through much of the game pretty quickly, but upon resuming one day, the game would only crash when I tried to load my save file. It took a while for the developers to fix this issue, and when the patch finally came, it turned out that I was stuck right before the final puzzle in the game. I lost a hearty chunk of love for this game right then, having to wait for an unsatisfying conclusion. It's taken me a couple of weeks since that patch to start writing this post.<br /><br />Despite the lacking story and the glitch I had to deal with, the puzzles more than carry this game. Is it enough to justify a $15 price tag? Absolutely not, but considering it's an indie start-up title, it's forgiveable. I'd personally recommend waiting for a good enough sale to grab it, but whatever you do, please be sure to grab it at some point in time and play it if only for the puzzles alone. If you loved the progressing spacial puzzles of Portal, Q.U.B.E. will feel right at home for you.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-508635816735906632012-01-26T19:37:00.003-05:002012-03-04T12:33:25.011-05:00A Quick Review of Quarrel<img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/quarrel.jpg" align="right" alt="Quarrel" title="Aah, nothing like photographs of TVs to hammer home how cheap this blog really is." />About time I started reviewing proper console games, eh? Quarrel, released yesterday for XBLA (earlier on iOS), is a word/strategy hybrid game that plays like a mix of the Letters rounds on Countdown and the board game Risk. The goal of the game is to capture the entire map through a series of battles. Rather than using dice, you use letters. Eight letters are given (for which there is at least one perfect anagram); your goal is to make the highest-scoring single word from those letters, hopefully higher than your opponent's selection. The twist is that the length of your word is limited to however many men are in your attacking/defending territory, so actually playing the vicious 8-letter anagram rarely happens. If you get the higher-scoring word, you successfully capture your opponent's territory (or block their advance if you're defending). <br /><br />Quarrel comes packed in a tremendously entertaining world, almost parodying itself with how seriously silly the game is (such as the over-the-top DUN-DUN-DAAAAAH music sting when a player's last territory is targeted). The subtle humor of the atmosphere of the game is played up perfectly between the tense "hope my word is good enough" moments. While the gameplay is certainly fun (at least for a word game freak like myself), I can't help but feel the strategic side of the game is a bit screwy. I don't know if comebacks are readily possible when each game is small enough to begin with (I think the standard formula is 4 territories per player); the somewhat linear shapes of the boards might not help this issue at all. That's not to say it's impossible to have upset moments, like a territory of 3 defending itself against an attacker of 8 (not that I'm bragging), but the winner sometimes becomes a little too obvious too early on.<br /><br />Still, it's nice to have a strategy game like this that uses skill more than it does luck. I feel like when I lose a territory, it's actually my fault, rather than trying to pin the blame on bad dice. Close games can still be quite tense, especially when a tied round goes to whoever submitted their word first. The game knows when to tease you that little bit longer, just to make the reveal of the win/loss all the more amazing. Plus, the word list in this game is comfortably large, and the AI players have a pretty good range of difficulties between them. At a pleasantly low 400MSP ($5), I'd wholeheartedly recommend Quarrel.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-22773084526167771692012-01-04T20:30:00.005-05:002012-01-04T22:05:00.354-05:00Killing Two Birds with One Stone, Four Magic Stars, a Fire Gem, and a Partridge in a Pear TreeRemember that console rundown I promised last time? It might actually happen soon! Or not! All I can really say is that when Steam sales happen, I tend to buy things. I'm human, you know. As part of my spoils, I ended up buying a couple of games that I've had my eye on for quite some time, but couldn't be bothered to get because they weren't on sale before. After a while, you'd think I'd spring for a banner for the top of this blog that says "cheapest reviewer on earth", but then again, I'd have to shop around first.<br /><br />The first of these two games was <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/78000/" target="_blank">Bejeweled 3</a>. Yes, that Bejeweled. (And I suppose by extension, yes, that 3.) I probably don't need to go over the rules of how to play match-3 games, so I'll cut to the chase and say it's lacking <em>something</em>. You've got Classic mode, where you try to keep making matches until you can't make anymore (which is to say, let a random number generator decide when you stop playing), a Zen mode wherein one can play non-stop while being awkwardly pelted with subliminal messages and mind-altering sound waves, and about twenty different variations on the speed mode. The quest mode houses a number of these, and I've got to say, it's a really disappointing smattering of minigames. It's got only 40 levels to play through, compared to the 100 or so back in the days of Bejeweled Twist. Within about four hours of all playtime, I had already unlocked every mode available in the game, beaten the quest, and received half of the achievements, most of which simply stack on one another (clear 500 whatnots, clear 1000 of the same whatnots, etc.). All in all, it's a disappointing showing.<br /><br /><img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/bej.jpg" align="right">I do have to give thumbs up to the at least partially-entertaining Poker and Diamond Mine modes. The latter, shown here, is one of those speed levels where you have to clear gems adjacent to dirt to dig through them to go deeper. The Poker mode has you making five-gem "hands", by clearing gems in a certain order to put them on your cards. Both take a bit of strategy to play well, but they also make you realize how much the random number generator hates you. In every game mode (except for Classic), gems fall onto the board such that there's always at least one possible move. Sometimes, that's nowhere near where you want to go. Sometimes, it sets up a never-ending combo that keeps clearing over and over again. No joke, in the game pictured above, I nearly lost on the very first round because three gems of the same color kept falling into place on the right edge of the board, over and over again, while I was left with no move elsewhere and couldn't advance the game (what a time for crummy behavior, right when the blogger is writing about it!). It's instances like this that make the random number generator that chooses the gems for you seem really poorly-designed. <br /><br />With very little added on to previous titles, and many things feeling broken, I just can't positively recommend Bejeweled 3. Then again, it's also somewhat unfair comparing it to semi-related titles like Twist, where the mechanics worked differently in so many ways. Then again, you're probably playing manly games like Skyrim instead of this, so what do you care anyway. <br /><br />If you're still with me for some reason, the second game I wanted to share with you is <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/45500/" target="_blank">Clickr</a>. Rather than being a match-3 game, Clickr is best described as a match-4-plus-others game, if that makes any sense. You're given a grid with a colored squares, mostly red, blue, and green, plus stars which are wild and stones which are <s>domestica</s> blockers. Clicking any colored square will remove it from the grid, and gravity will drop the pieces above it down. When you create a 2x2 square of any piece, you can click it to remove it from the board, along with similarly-colored pieces of the same color. <br /><br />Too complex? Try this: Just click until things happen. Unfortunately, for a game that finally takes a novel approach to matching and clearing tiles, the rewards for good play don't seem balanced enough. Clearing consecutive combos without stumbling seems to give bonuses on a curve so flat you'd be better off just playing clicking furiously rather than strategizing. Note that I said "furiously" rather than "randomly", because the game is still complex enough that it requires some thought, but too much and the game just bogs down.<br /><br />Now that I've gotten my biggest complaint about Clickr out of the way up front, what of the rest of the game then? There are four modes to choose from, two puzzley clear-the-items-to-meet-a-certain-requirement modes, plus two clear-things-to-attack-your-opponent modes. (Actually, I guess there are five modes if you count the multiplayer mode, but I haven't tried that yet.) These modes all seem to be connected through a currency system that seems to be just as unforgiving as the combo system for good play. In playing the game, you can earn a handful (maybe five or so) of "cubes", but you get 100 every time you fulfill an in-game achievement, most of which are just things that you do while naturally playing, or worse, spending those same cubes to unlock new modes. <br /><br />Despite a similar brokenness to the mechanics of Bejeweled 3, Clickr still seems to have some good entertainment value to it, even if only because of the chipper graphics and sound effects (think <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2009/07/if-i-were-bad-demoman-i-wouldnt-be.html">Yosumin</a>, if you can remember that far back). Don't quote me on this, but I'd guess that I'll probably play more Clickr than Bejeweled 3 from this point in, though they'll both have to be wedged between the many awesome console games I'll be reviewing! Or not!Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-38291048761265043872011-12-20T13:42:00.000-05:002011-12-20T13:42:53.793-05:00Print This Out and Put It Where A Loved One Might Find It - 2011 EditionIt's that time of year again... and yet I'm somehow no more prepared for it than any year in the past. In anticipation of Steam's end-of-year sale, I usually make a list of games I'd recommend buying or asking for. I've run into a bit of a problem this year though, as I've just recently discovered the joy of console gaming. (Two consoles, really... Black Friday was particularly good to me this year.) I do feel it's my duty to bring you a list of recommendations though (not that you haven't already bought half of these games). So, in no particular order, here are some things to look into:<br /><br /><strong>The Binding of Isaac</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />After the Thanksgiving Steam sale, I found myself with a handful of new games to try, but kept gravitating back to The Binding of Isaac. In this roguelike (a new word I learned through this game) from Edmund McMillen, creator of Super Meat Boy, you play as Isaac, a child who escapes his oppressive mother by traveling through an underground tunnel he discovers in his home. Of course, no underground tunnel would be complete without a ridiculous number of enemies waiting to kill you. That's why I'm writing this review from the roof. Man, it's cold outside.<br /><br />As you travel from room to room looking for a way to escape the randomly-generated dungeons, you encounter a number of enemies to fight before you can move on, as well as tons of power-ups (or occasionally, power-downs!) It's this randomness that gives this game incredible replay value, as the maze you must traverse is never the same. Sometimes you get an easier run with all the right power-ups, sometimes you get 20 keys and no heart containers. If there's one drawback to this game, it's that the fantastic gameplay is surrounded by some potentially disturbing (well, slightly disgusting, thus offensive) aesthetics. Expect lots of blood, guts, urine, feces, etc. It's certainly not a family game, but there's still a lot to love about The Binding of Isaac.<br /><br /><strong>Trauma</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/98100/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />Another item I picked up from that Thanksgiving sale was Trauma, an interesting escape-room-esque puzzler about a student who needs to recover her lost memories. Each of the four separate scenes in this game are made up of a series of photographs that overlap in a three-dimensional space, which really helps to suggest that you're trapped in this small space. Navigation and item manipulation are not just done by clicking, but also painting certain symbols with streaks of light. <br /><br />Unfortunately, Trauma is rather short, with four worlds that can each be solved in under five minutes, but part of the fun in this game is really taking time to explore the different environments. Each world has nine tricky-to-find Polaroid photos scattered throughout the level. Some contain instructions for navigating and manipulating objects (unfortunately, they repeat through the levels), some contain more of the backstory of your character. While Trauma might not bring a tremendous amount of novelty to the escape genre, it does have a surprising amount of replayability as you piece together all of the parts of the story, one photograph at a time. This is a must-try game if you can get it on sale.<br /><br /><strong>Fractal</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/61310/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />Fractal is a tile-sliding puzzle where your goal is to clear the board of tiles using an interesing pushing mechanic that's really hard to explain well. Basically, you can place a tile (or tiles) on the board by clicking in a space adjacent to a tile(s). In doing so, you don't put a tile there, but rather, you push the adjacent tile(s) outward from that point, and adding a new tile in place of the old location of any pushed tiles. When you make a bloom (a seven-hexagon honeycomb of one color), the outer six hexagons push outward before disappearing, potentially triggering chain reactions across the board.<br /><br />Okay, fess up, who gave up reading that last paragraph? If you want a tl;dr version, here's the scoop: I previously reviewed Fractal for <a href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/05/fractal.php" target="_blank">Jay is Games</a>, and it's been rereleased for Steam, mostly only with some cosmetic changes. If you bought it before, you can go back to Cipher Prime's website and generate a Steam key. If you're new to the game, I'd strongly recommend giving it a go, as it's quite good mental gymnastics. And yes, the rules are much simpler than I can articulate them, you just have to try it for yourself.<br /><br /><strong>The "Other Recommendations" Lighting Round</strong><br /><strong>Sequence</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/200910/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />Definitely a favorite from this year, and one I still return to for the occasional button-mashing blitz. Previously reviewed <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/10/oh-so-its-racist-rap-battle.html">here</a>.<br /><strong>Portal 2</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/620/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />Dear Modern Warfare 3 and the VGA's: Piss off, this was <em>my</em> most anticipated game of the year, and it didn't suck as much as yours! Previously reviewed <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/04/very-spoilers-oh-review-of-portal-2.html">here</a>.<br /><strong>Assassin's Creed 2</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/33230/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />After playing through its prequel and its first sequel, I can confidently say this was my favorite of the series so far. Previously reviewed <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/07/armor-artwork-medicine-what-no.html">here</a>.<br /><strong>B.U.T.T.O.N.</strong> - <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/92400/" target="_blank">Link</a><br />Have I raved about this game on this blog yet? This hilarious physical party game has you wrestling your friends for button-mashing dominance. Quite good, but I'd recommend using a junker keyboard just in case.<br /><br />That's all the recommendations I have for now. Feel free to peruse all of my posts from this year for more good games (and ones to avoid). Hopefully, I'll be posting again within a couple of days with more thoughts on the console world, but if I don't before then, have a very Merry Christmas!Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-23124472260586697022011-11-22T22:21:00.002-05:002011-11-22T22:24:04.539-05:00WE NEED MORE TYPES OF CHICKENAs I begin typing this on one computer, I'm watching the eternally slow credits roll for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on the other. I have officially completed the main single-player campaign of the game, but not even close to all the side quests in the game. That was not my choice however, as it turns out the ending of the game is thrust upon you rather quickly. <br /><br />Buried somewhere underneath the fullscreen credits roll on the other ocmputer, I had been keeping a journal of all of my experiences while playing Assassin's Creed: Grilled, making observations about certain events in the game and how they related to <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/03/assassins-dilemma.html">Original Recipe</a> and <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/2011/07/armor-artwork-medicine-what-no.html">Extra Crispy</a>. It's chock full of SPOILERS, but it's the most complete summary of my thoughts on the game, so if you don't mind a leg-numbing read, <a href="http://whenlastweleftourheroes.blogspot.com/p/assassins-creed-brotherhood-journal.html">here it is</a>.<br /><br />If you're not up for the spoilers, but still want my general impressions on the game, let me say this: It feels like it was way too short, and not necessarily in a way that left me wanting more. I don't have it perfectly divvied up, but I would imagine that I probably spent about as much time on the billions of sidequests as on the actual points relating to the plot. In fact, even some of the points to the plot felt like they were sidequest material that got tacked onto the main plotline just to make it longer. To be honest, I don't feel like I got my money's worth with the single-player campaign alone. <br /><br />Oh, and I figured out why they call Rome "The Eternal City": It's because <em>you never leave Rome the entire game</em>. Am I the first to use that joke? I hope so. I've had that in the back of my mind for a while now.<br /><br />Fortunately, the game's primary selling point was the new multiplayer mode, which I can pleasantly describe as absolutely fascinating chaos. I only squeezed about an hour or two of the multiplayer in so far, but I look forward to returning to play some more. In the multiplayer mode I played (Wanted), you're randomly assigned another player to kill. Meanwhile, other people might be searching for you to kill. Run around for ten minutes trying to rack up points (with bonuses for stealthy kills), high score wins. It's as simple as that, but the specially-made maps feel like you're playing a real-world game of Pac-Man. If there's one thing I don't fully appreciate, it's that veteran players are blessed with special weapons and tools that aren't ever even explained to the noob player, making it a bit frustrating at times, since it's hard to know exactly why your attacker killed you or why your target escaped you in the way they did. Still, it's an overall fun romp and I'd say that the multiplayer makes up for a large portion of the shortcomings in the single-player.<br /><br />But I guess I still have to make some sort of verdict, don't I? Well, if the game allows it (pending these bloody credits ever finish), I would not be opposed to going back and clearing more of the side missions I missed out on, now that I know I can't endanger my chances of accidentally running into the end of the game anymore. I would happily spend more time playing multiplayer. But would I recommend buying this game at full price? Probably not. If anything, it feels like it's more of a bridge to the final game, Assassin's Creed... Popcorn Chicken? Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is only really good as a sum of its three parts (the single-player campaign, the single-player sidequests, and the multiplayer mode), but it's hard for the former two to stand on their own without the multiplayer holding them up.<br /><br />Will I play Assassin's Creed: Revelations? At this point, I guess I have no choice but to finish up the series. I don't know if it'll be again on Steam or perhaps a legitimate console... Let's just say we'll wait and see what Black Friday brings.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-56987000431400593592011-10-21T00:42:00.008-04:002012-07-24T13:28:16.205-04:00Oh, So It's a Racist Rap BattleHm, where to start this post... Well, I've finally started playing through Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. But this post isn't about that. The problem was, for whatever reason (most likely having to do with the fact that I've been using a crappy $9 controller to play games on my PC to this point), Brotherhood didn't work with my old controller. So I ended up splurging on a shiny new $40 XBox controller, which pretty much negated any savings I made while buying the game on sale. But as a side bonus, it works rather well with other games too, so I guess I can't complain too much.<br />
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<img src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac27/artbegotti/sequence.jpg" align="right" alt="Sequence" title="Oh, and the name of this particular enemy? Audrey II. Yep." />Today (or yesterday by this point, I guess), I downloaded <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/200910/" target="_blank">Sequence</a>, a combination rhythm/RPG game. To sum up the game really quickly, you accumulate XP and gather items by defeating enemies in rhythm-based combat, where you face <em>three</em> simultaneous screens of Dance Dance Revolution-style arrow-tapping. Obviously, you can't play all three at once, so part of the strategy of the game comes in when you play each specific screen. Do you take a few points of damage (on your Defense screen) to build up Mana on another screen, so you can charge up to cast a Spell on yet another? You've got to keep an eye on all three screens at once, switching back and forth at the right moment to defeat your opponent quickly.<br />
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Keeping in the tradition of RPG games (which, I'll admit, I know nothing about), items dropped by defeated enemies can be equipped to increase your health or strength, or combined in recipes to create new items and spells. Crafting these items takes a bit of luck, as you must always wager a portion of your experience points to make the crafting work. You can risk more of your points for a greater success rate, but it's still capped at 95% odds, so there's always some shot of losing those points for nothing. Spells must also be mastered before they can be used in battle by completing a solo round with a matching task (over X% accuracy, X-hit streak, etc.). <br />
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Let me start out my analysis of this game by saying that it's pretty fantastic overall. The combination of multitasking and rhythm makes for a good challenge, and the four levels of difficulty (I chose medium, for the record) mean you can dive right in at any level of experience with rhythm games (or general rhythmic competency). The attached storyline, while so far mostly bare-bones, is still intriguing and hilariously well-written, taking the mickey out of itself and other similar games without ever begging for you to like it. The music you play with isn't exactly gripping, but that non-intrusiveness is perfect for a game like this where you've just got to keep tapping your feet and smashing the right buttons. And as for the art, more than the fairly simple graphics, I'm impressed that there exists an RPG character that wears NORMAL CLOTHING. Seriously, cargo pants and a sweatshirt? <em>I wear those things!</em> (Though green was never really my color.) But I say that to say that the main character is so instantly relatable that you'll have no trouble getting into this game.<br />
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<em>(Note: The following struck text is referring to bugs present at the time the review was written, but were fixed quickly afterwards. I've kept the text here, but feel free to skip it.)</em> <s>...But staying in this game might be a different matter. My biggest drawback from giving Sequence a wholehearted recommendation right off the top is the fact that it's still oddly buggy, in one way or another. The first minor quirk was that this game seems to be highly susceptible to fluctuations in CPU usage (I had my browser window open in the background while using this), meaning the scrolling arrows might slow down and speed up for a bit mid-game, or my controller buttons didn't seem to register all the time. I will gladly admit that this might simply be an issue with my computer being old and crappy, but there are further issues to be discussed.<br />
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In addition to this, it seemed like after the game initially finished downloading, it immediately started to download another update. Initial release date blues, I thought, no problem at all. However, it seemed that it kept downloading more and more updates, all large and cumbersome for my connection to handle (Dear Steam, when are you finishing the interface update that lets users throttle download speeds? XOXO, --steve), even after verifying the game cache a few times. Despite this, there seems to now be an issue (which started just this evening) where when I attempt to master a spell to add it to my arsenal, the game instantly crashes every time (and it still charges me the 50 XP I pay to do so!). That definitely wasn't an issue earlier today when I mastered my first spell, so I don't know what's going on. (Edit: It appears I can't access the Spellset options now. Fix plz?) (Edit again: It's the morning after, and it looks like both of these issues have been fixed. <a href="http://twitpic.com/73ncio" target="_blank">Link</a>)<br />
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If you can get over the annoying buggyness (which I'm sure someone is constantly working on fixing),</s> Sequence is definitely a strong title and well worth buying even at its non-sale price of $5. The trailer videos (worth a watch, if only to hear one of the most brutally honest PR speeches I've heard in a while) boast 10+ hours of gameplay, but even though I'm only two hours in, I can already tell it will be worth the time.Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4366474871029120328.post-21051166873094610862011-10-11T20:28:00.004-04:002011-10-11T21:35:34.425-04:00Wheel! Of! Ridiculous.I downloaded <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/200130/?snr=1_4_4__103" target="_blank">Puzzler World 2</a> yesterday. The fact that I'm writing a blog post about it now means that either I've found so many things to love about it that I have to share it with you so can jump on the sale price, or it's so terrible that I've already gathered a list of complaints long enough that I have to get it off my chest before I suffocate. Puzzler World 2 falls into the latter category. Mostly.<br /><br />Puzzler World 2, much like the original Puzzler World, is a collection of 560 puzzles of ten different types, each with a bonus puzzle attached to help you "win big", if the entire thing is to be interpreted as a game show. Which is probably what the developers were shooting for, really, although it's hard to imagine crosswords, sudoku, and hidden picture puzzles as game shows. (Never mind the fact that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUvtD_FUMcw" target="_blank">all</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVeCVnZTQMw" target="_blank">three</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK7VUuVBluI" target="_blank">happened</a>.) The puzzles range from fairly challenging, like the three I already mentioned, to the inane, like the Silhouette puzzles which are essentially monochromatic coloring book pages, or Word Searches, which, to quote my high school chemistry teacher, "are for stupid people." (Which is to say, they're algorithmic and don't require tremendous skill.)<br /><br />I enjoy the Backwords and Patchwords puzzles new to this second edition, although they become somewhat banal after a bit. The game showy atmosphere is still present, though it seems to oscillate between light, daytime game show and deadpan, serious-face million-dollar game show too quickly. Altogether, it's a decent collection of puzzles, and it's large enough to hold one over for quite a while. <br /><br />But it also sucks somewhat grandly. Like its predecessor, Puzzler World 2 seems to have been ported from another platform to the PC. (The first one came from the DS, this one seems very iPaddy.) The transition from device to PC isn't nearly as smooth here, and there are some bizarre interface quirks that show this. Plus, there are a lot more instances in this game where you have to sit and endure animations, rather than being able to skip them like before. <br /><br />It feels like a lot of things that weren't broken before were "fixed" in this edition, but the "fixing" just made them worse. While you now have access to larger Link-a-Pix puzzles (courteously supplied by the often-cited folks at Conceptis Puzzles), the interface is also much clunkier and frustrating to work with (including not solving the basic problem of not allowing multiple active lines). The Fitword puzzles got a helpful drag-and-drop makeover (rather than typing in every word), but the controls can still be finicky and dropping one pixel away from your target can set you back several steps. There are a lot of things that make Puzzler World 2 gradually more frustrating than the original.<br /><br />I'm not saying you shouldn't buy this game though. As far as puzzle collections go, it still has a larger batch of puzzles and a wider variety than what you'll find most other places. It's just those annoying quirks everywhere that give Puzzler World 2 a major downside. If you're considering buying this, I'd say the current sale price on Steam ($7.99) is fair, especially considering you get Puzzler World 1 for free along with it. But if you're easily turned off by these sorts of issues, you'd only be putting your money in Jeopardy! (See that? I did a game shows thing!)Stephen Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089504241903477120noreply@blogger.com0