I downloaded Puzzler World 2 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.
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 all three happened.) 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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!)
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Funny, Chrakovsky Isn't On iTunes
On another unrelated whim, I bought Vertigo Games' greenTech+ the other day. There's no long convoluted backstory to go into with regards to this game, aside from I really enjoyed the AcidBomb and Shellblast games and I've played the pre-commerical greenTech, so I can jump into reviewing the game without a long history lesson.
Instead, let's talk ecology. Just kidding! Sort of. greenTech+ is a game about global warming and pollution management, though in a definitely (and surprisingly) non-preachy way. Over the course of a level, factories release pollution into the air at regular intervals. Your goal is to guide the pollution to the waiting cleaning centers. How? By controlling a hurricane that sucks the pollution toward itself. Naturally. To make matters worse, the cleaning centers have limited uses, meaning you've got to guide the pollution all around the map. Also, if the pollution hits an area of high air pressure, the pollution disperses into the atmosphere, raising global warming by 10%. If any pollution hits the hurricane itself, it shoots up 20%. If you reach 100%, it's game over.
greenTech+ is an easy game to get the hang of, but very hard to master. Most of the levels can be passed even if only barely (sneaking by with 90%), and each completed level unlocks a new monitor for you to upgrade to (more on the aesthetics later). But, to unlock new levels, you have to achieve a certain number of perfect levels, finishing with 0%. This is way easier said than done, as a split second of lost concentration can tack an unwanted 10% on your score. As you play, you pick up certain strategies like rounding up a ton of pollution into a tiny cluster before making the rounds to the cleaning centers, or speeding up and slowing down the hurricane's attraction speed, but figuring out when to use each is extremely difficult.
Despite being a game that tackles a serious problem (though in a wholly fictional way), greenTech+ carries a very light-hearted tone. It's been trimmed down in this commercial re-release, but in the original greenTech the opening titles gave the impression that the game simulated the daily job of one lonely office worker who would find his favorite classical music station on the radio while booting up his computer to work his magic, Fantasia-style. That quirky attitude toward a life-or-death situation carries over here in perfect form. (One of my favorite examples of this is when you lose a level, destroying the world, then you're asked press X to "accept".) Tie in the fake classical music and the retro graphics on upgradable (though still crappy) monitors, and this game bleeds personality despite its harsh gameplay.
greenTech+ is definitely challenging, but still fun to tackle. If you don't want to dive into the full version of the game, you can always try the original greenTech (the only major difference is free mouse control vs. grid-based keyboard control). Once you fight your way through that, it'll be hard not to give into the allure of the newer version. The greenTech series is frustrating but fun, and makes an excellent diversion for when you don't have the time to get into larger puzzle games.
Oh, and there are also apparently 3-D settings for greenTech+ to play with, but I don't have the glasses and it'd probably give me a headache pretty quickly anyway.
Instead, let's talk ecology. Just kidding! Sort of. greenTech+ is a game about global warming and pollution management, though in a definitely (and surprisingly) non-preachy way. Over the course of a level, factories release pollution into the air at regular intervals. Your goal is to guide the pollution to the waiting cleaning centers. How? By controlling a hurricane that sucks the pollution toward itself. Naturally. To make matters worse, the cleaning centers have limited uses, meaning you've got to guide the pollution all around the map. Also, if the pollution hits an area of high air pressure, the pollution disperses into the atmosphere, raising global warming by 10%. If any pollution hits the hurricane itself, it shoots up 20%. If you reach 100%, it's game over.greenTech+ is an easy game to get the hang of, but very hard to master. Most of the levels can be passed even if only barely (sneaking by with 90%), and each completed level unlocks a new monitor for you to upgrade to (more on the aesthetics later). But, to unlock new levels, you have to achieve a certain number of perfect levels, finishing with 0%. This is way easier said than done, as a split second of lost concentration can tack an unwanted 10% on your score. As you play, you pick up certain strategies like rounding up a ton of pollution into a tiny cluster before making the rounds to the cleaning centers, or speeding up and slowing down the hurricane's attraction speed, but figuring out when to use each is extremely difficult.
Despite being a game that tackles a serious problem (though in a wholly fictional way), greenTech+ carries a very light-hearted tone. It's been trimmed down in this commercial re-release, but in the original greenTech the opening titles gave the impression that the game simulated the daily job of one lonely office worker who would find his favorite classical music station on the radio while booting up his computer to work his magic, Fantasia-style. That quirky attitude toward a life-or-death situation carries over here in perfect form. (One of my favorite examples of this is when you lose a level, destroying the world, then you're asked press X to "accept".) Tie in the fake classical music and the retro graphics on upgradable (though still crappy) monitors, and this game bleeds personality despite its harsh gameplay.
greenTech+ is definitely challenging, but still fun to tackle. If you don't want to dive into the full version of the game, you can always try the original greenTech (the only major difference is free mouse control vs. grid-based keyboard control). Once you fight your way through that, it'll be hard not to give into the allure of the newer version. The greenTech series is frustrating but fun, and makes an excellent diversion for when you don't have the time to get into larger puzzle games.
Oh, and there are also apparently 3-D settings for greenTech+ to play with, but I don't have the glasses and it'd probably give me a headache pretty quickly anyway.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
It's Like Doing Pull-Ups With a Box
On a whim, I went ahead and bought myself Edge today, as they've released some extra levels and gone on sale and whatnot. It'll be really hard for me to review this game, since I've had such a long history with this game, going back years before it became available on a platform I owned. See, way back in the days of iTunes being "popular" and "non-irritating", Mobigame released a game app called Edge where you control a cube moving around a three-dimensional playing field like an obese Q*bert who gets himself wedged in between things too often. Then, the app disappeared, due to legal conflicts with one Tim Langdall, on the grounds that the game clearly mimicked one of his own (eh, sorta, but not significantly enough) and the fact that he trademarked the word "Edge" (wait, what?). I can't remember the rest of this story, but three things have definitely happened since then:
Edge is a three-dimensional platformer where you move a cube through a series of obstacles, picking up smaller cubes along the way, and trying not to fall in a myriad of ways. (Well, walking off the edge of the platform, getting pushed off, staying on one of the disappearing blocks too long... A myriad is pretty much three, apparently. It just feels like more because it happens a lot.) Get to the exit, and you get an arbitrary rating based on how many things you picked up and how quickly you did it. That's the game, really.
I guess the main selling point to this game, aside from the rebel-against-the-tyrant background it boasts, is that there's more to it than just walking around and picking daisies. Since you're a cube, you move like a cube (rolling from one face to another), but you're also somehow a cube with sticky edges, meaning you can stick to moving objects by hoisting yourself on one edge and holding that position for as long as necessary. It's known as "Edge Time", and any Edge Time you accumulate is subtracted from your time at the end of the level. Shame it doesn't really make that much of a dent when you're sucking one second off of a 90-second level.
I don't know which angle to tackle this game from first, so let me start by saying that the level design in Edge is quite good, but it doesn't make up for the game itself. There's no shortage of interesting puzzles that can be made from what few mechanics are introduced in the game, but there's really a limit to how much you can play before you start to get bored. I could easily see myself playing through all the levels, but I don't think I'd want to go back and 100% everything right away. I already know it takes some fierce tedium to go back and conquer the highest ranking for each level, so I'll gladly settle for second-best. Or lowest. Frankly, that doesn't much matter to me. I guess what I'm saying is that it feels like there's not enough of a reward for doing well in a level. Top marks or last place, you still unlock the next level, and that's it.
Mind you, there are plenty of levels to go through, between the 40-or-so in the main game, the 40-or-so in the first DLC pack, plus more in the bonus levels obtained by becoming a member of the Edge Steam Group. This is a Two Tribes thing (the company who ported the game to Steam). Between Toki Tori, Rush, and now Edge, they seem to enjoy making you join their group before they give you toys to play with. On the upside, they don't spam you once you're in, but I hope they realize that people don't really want to follow their exploits on Steam, they just want more content for free.
The chiptune music and fairly basic graphics go well with this game, and really help set the mood for a good time. The controls, on the other hand, do not. I understand that the game was originally designed for a touch-screen device, where you play by swiping the cube in one direction or another, and that's fine, but I don't think it really translated well to my keyboard. There are times when I have too much momentum and seem to go right off the edge of a cliff even after I've taken my finger off the key, or that the cube wants to balance on its edge way longer than I would have intended, which is especially annoying when trying to move through a section quickly. The controls aren't a definite turn-off, but they don't help much.
Ultimately, I would recommend buying Edge if it's on sale, and if you can swing it, a better sale than the 20%-off deal going on right now. It's definitely a game that's worth tackling at least once, but I can't see there being much replay value to it. Alternatively, you can be gung-ho about supporting a game that "fought the man" and got away with it, but that battle is long over and shouldn't be relevant when judging this game.
- Edge shaving cream is still available in grocery stores,
- Mirror's Edge was still allowed to be made into one of the first games I ever outright panned on this blog, and
- The aforementioned Edge game is now on Steam.
Edge is a three-dimensional platformer where you move a cube through a series of obstacles, picking up smaller cubes along the way, and trying not to fall in a myriad of ways. (Well, walking off the edge of the platform, getting pushed off, staying on one of the disappearing blocks too long... A myriad is pretty much three, apparently. It just feels like more because it happens a lot.) Get to the exit, and you get an arbitrary rating based on how many things you picked up and how quickly you did it. That's the game, really. I guess the main selling point to this game, aside from the rebel-against-the-tyrant background it boasts, is that there's more to it than just walking around and picking daisies. Since you're a cube, you move like a cube (rolling from one face to another), but you're also somehow a cube with sticky edges, meaning you can stick to moving objects by hoisting yourself on one edge and holding that position for as long as necessary. It's known as "Edge Time", and any Edge Time you accumulate is subtracted from your time at the end of the level. Shame it doesn't really make that much of a dent when you're sucking one second off of a 90-second level.
I don't know which angle to tackle this game from first, so let me start by saying that the level design in Edge is quite good, but it doesn't make up for the game itself. There's no shortage of interesting puzzles that can be made from what few mechanics are introduced in the game, but there's really a limit to how much you can play before you start to get bored. I could easily see myself playing through all the levels, but I don't think I'd want to go back and 100% everything right away. I already know it takes some fierce tedium to go back and conquer the highest ranking for each level, so I'll gladly settle for second-best. Or lowest. Frankly, that doesn't much matter to me. I guess what I'm saying is that it feels like there's not enough of a reward for doing well in a level. Top marks or last place, you still unlock the next level, and that's it.
Mind you, there are plenty of levels to go through, between the 40-or-so in the main game, the 40-or-so in the first DLC pack, plus more in the bonus levels obtained by becoming a member of the Edge Steam Group. This is a Two Tribes thing (the company who ported the game to Steam). Between Toki Tori, Rush, and now Edge, they seem to enjoy making you join their group before they give you toys to play with. On the upside, they don't spam you once you're in, but I hope they realize that people don't really want to follow their exploits on Steam, they just want more content for free.
The chiptune music and fairly basic graphics go well with this game, and really help set the mood for a good time. The controls, on the other hand, do not. I understand that the game was originally designed for a touch-screen device, where you play by swiping the cube in one direction or another, and that's fine, but I don't think it really translated well to my keyboard. There are times when I have too much momentum and seem to go right off the edge of a cliff even after I've taken my finger off the key, or that the cube wants to balance on its edge way longer than I would have intended, which is especially annoying when trying to move through a section quickly. The controls aren't a definite turn-off, but they don't help much.
Ultimately, I would recommend buying Edge if it's on sale, and if you can swing it, a better sale than the 20%-off deal going on right now. It's definitely a game that's worth tackling at least once, but I can't see there being much replay value to it. Alternatively, you can be gung-ho about supporting a game that "fought the man" and got away with it, but that battle is long over and shouldn't be relevant when judging this game.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
My Nanoblogging Is Your Microblogging - Episode 4
It's the end of the month, and you know what that means... It's time for me to throw up an emergency blog post so it at least looks like I've done something for every month. Hey, at least I'm honest about my filler material.
14. Edge and Limbo Make Steam Debut; Blogger Fails to Create Humorous Title
Hey you, do you like games that were released years ago on other platforms that finally make their way to PC via Steam? You know I do! It seems like we got a double-dose of this at least with the help of popular app Edge and popular console download Limbo, both shuffling into the Steam store within a couple weeks of each other. I hear both games are quite good, and I'll gladly look into reviewing them here... after they go on sale. That's the other thing you can always count on. Me being a miserly old grump.
15. Hey Guys, Guess What? I READ A BOOK!
If you know me and my terrible reading habits, this is a huge deal. I finally finished reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture the other day. I first heard about the book thanks to the occasional nod from xkcd. On a whim, I decided to try the book out, and it ended up being the first pleasure book I've taken notes on. I got halfway through the book last summer, and took a Communications Law class in the fall semester. We only spent a couple days talking about copyright law, but I wrote a term paper on copyright terms and cited what I had already read in the book. What I found weird was that during the research for the paper, I noticed the author's name coming up in some of the court transcripts I found. As I found out (when I resumed reading the book over winter break), the author of the book was one of the lawyers in a Supreme Court case regarding the issue. So I continued reading like a madman, and I got up to about seven pages from the end of the book before I returned to school in the spring. I just finished reading those seven pages now.
I know copyright law isn't the most thrilling discussion topic in the world, but he makes some interesting points about how our culture and entertainment economy works. The book's a bit dated now (I think it was written in 2005?), but I'd still recommend it to anyone who's looking for an interesting read on a part of law not discussed much in public, or for anyone who's looking for a good conspiracy theory over how much control big businesses have over us. (I say that not to be cynical but to summarize what I took from the book in an exaggerated, humorous way.)
16. Goodbye, Pinky
I don't know how many readers I get who visit from Jay is Games (although I guess I have that little stats toolbar... Well, apparently that's 21 of you in the last month... and three people searching for "people riding kangaroos"), but I have a bit of a complaint to get off my chest. I've been continuing my mostly weekly Letters In Boxes column for a few months now (we've just wrapped up the 12th edition, containing the 50th individual puzzle). But in the most recent edition of the series, I squandered away a puzzle I've been harboring away for quite some time now. This puzzle set was based on the concept of base mathematics, where you had to convert a bunch of numbers from binary and ternary and other bases into decimal form. The third puzzle in the series takes a severe deviation from the normal puzzle style and instead uses a screenshot taken from MSPaint's color selection palette. The answer, if you sit down and convert the red, green, and blue values to hexadecimal, is FACADE.
I've had an oddly long attachment to this puzzle, and I'm sad to announce that what was used in the series was nowhere near what I had originally hoped to do. The puzzle idea first came about back when we ran a SpaceChem Giveaway on the site. John, my fellow puzzle inventor, and I came up with a series of puzzles based on the periodic table. I came up with one puzzle idea, where a greenish-colored box was supposed to be translated in the same hexadecimal way to get BA for barium. Ultimately, the puzzle was shot down because it would be "too colorblind-unfriendly", but I was determined to make it work somehow. It was only last week that I thought up the idea for the base-themed puzzles and decided to give the idea another go. The entire puzzle consisted of only a box with a pinkish hue in it. Sadly, in my test run, I found that the #FACADE-colored box I wanted to use would turn into different colors depending on which file format it was saved in, or even which program opened it, so the idea was scrapped and turned into the straightforward "here are the numbers, figure out what to do with them" format linked to above.
In the end, the puzzle seemed to get rather positive remarks, as people enjoyed the shock of seeing something unusual in the middle of the normally dichromatic puzzle series (one person compared it to playing an ARG... wholly not what I intended, but thanks!). But still, in the back of my mind, I have this nagging feeling that I threw away that puzzle unnecessarily, and I can't ever get it back. Perhaps someday there might be a browser or a file format or a painting program that will allow colors to show up exactly as intended no matter what, but by that time, this little nugget of an idea might have spread too far to be novel anymore. Perhaps it's already been done, and I just haven't heard of it yet. It's like I let a little part of myself go into the world, never to return again. I can't help but wonder if that's something normal to be feeling, but yet I also wonder why I don't feel that with so many other puzzles I've made. Perhaps it's time to step back and reflect on what I've done.
17. Vusy as a VVVVVV
You all have gone out and bought VVVVVV by now, right? And you've played through it multiple times as well, right? And you've put the soundtrack music into your jogging playlist, right? Suddenly, that's not enough love for the 22nd letter of the alphabet. The most recent version of the game, released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, includes a level editor, preloaded with a bunch of user-made levels. In addition, it's incredibly easy to download other players' homemade maps, and the developer has featured a number of levels on his website. For the past couple of weeks, I've been playing through user levels like mad, and I'm actually running out of levels to tackle! I guess that means it's time I finish up the level I've been working on, except I'm terrible with scripting. Hurry that tutorial up, Terry, eh?
18. One Final Note, Brought to You By the Letter Z
In my last post, I mentioned how I wish I bought Atom Zombie Smasher when it was on sale. Well, thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle mentioned above, I now own AZS. As it turns out, it was just as fun as I was imagining it to be, but it also bizarrely lacks replay value. After a certain point, it feels like once you've beaten the game enough times, it loses its novelty. There are plenty of user-made mods available to tweak certain aspects of the game (sadly, you have to wade through the hordes of people who just re-uploaded the sample mod just to get an achievement), but it still feels like the same game too many times over. Still, I've put a handsome chunk of time into the game, so maybe there's still just enough of a cling factor to keep me coming back.
14. Edge and Limbo Make Steam Debut; Blogger Fails to Create Humorous Title
Hey you, do you like games that were released years ago on other platforms that finally make their way to PC via Steam? You know I do! It seems like we got a double-dose of this at least with the help of popular app Edge and popular console download Limbo, both shuffling into the Steam store within a couple weeks of each other. I hear both games are quite good, and I'll gladly look into reviewing them here... after they go on sale. That's the other thing you can always count on. Me being a miserly old grump.
15. Hey Guys, Guess What? I READ A BOOK!
If you know me and my terrible reading habits, this is a huge deal. I finally finished reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture the other day. I first heard about the book thanks to the occasional nod from xkcd. On a whim, I decided to try the book out, and it ended up being the first pleasure book I've taken notes on. I got halfway through the book last summer, and took a Communications Law class in the fall semester. We only spent a couple days talking about copyright law, but I wrote a term paper on copyright terms and cited what I had already read in the book. What I found weird was that during the research for the paper, I noticed the author's name coming up in some of the court transcripts I found. As I found out (when I resumed reading the book over winter break), the author of the book was one of the lawyers in a Supreme Court case regarding the issue. So I continued reading like a madman, and I got up to about seven pages from the end of the book before I returned to school in the spring. I just finished reading those seven pages now.
I know copyright law isn't the most thrilling discussion topic in the world, but he makes some interesting points about how our culture and entertainment economy works. The book's a bit dated now (I think it was written in 2005?), but I'd still recommend it to anyone who's looking for an interesting read on a part of law not discussed much in public, or for anyone who's looking for a good conspiracy theory over how much control big businesses have over us. (I say that not to be cynical but to summarize what I took from the book in an exaggerated, humorous way.)
16. Goodbye, Pinky
I don't know how many readers I get who visit from Jay is Games (although I guess I have that little stats toolbar... Well, apparently that's 21 of you in the last month... and three people searching for "people riding kangaroos"), but I have a bit of a complaint to get off my chest. I've been continuing my mostly weekly Letters In Boxes column for a few months now (we've just wrapped up the 12th edition, containing the 50th individual puzzle). But in the most recent edition of the series, I squandered away a puzzle I've been harboring away for quite some time now. This puzzle set was based on the concept of base mathematics, where you had to convert a bunch of numbers from binary and ternary and other bases into decimal form. The third puzzle in the series takes a severe deviation from the normal puzzle style and instead uses a screenshot taken from MSPaint's color selection palette. The answer, if you sit down and convert the red, green, and blue values to hexadecimal, is FACADE.
I've had an oddly long attachment to this puzzle, and I'm sad to announce that what was used in the series was nowhere near what I had originally hoped to do. The puzzle idea first came about back when we ran a SpaceChem Giveaway on the site. John, my fellow puzzle inventor, and I came up with a series of puzzles based on the periodic table. I came up with one puzzle idea, where a greenish-colored box was supposed to be translated in the same hexadecimal way to get BA for barium. Ultimately, the puzzle was shot down because it would be "too colorblind-unfriendly", but I was determined to make it work somehow. It was only last week that I thought up the idea for the base-themed puzzles and decided to give the idea another go. The entire puzzle consisted of only a box with a pinkish hue in it. Sadly, in my test run, I found that the #FACADE-colored box I wanted to use would turn into different colors depending on which file format it was saved in, or even which program opened it, so the idea was scrapped and turned into the straightforward "here are the numbers, figure out what to do with them" format linked to above.
In the end, the puzzle seemed to get rather positive remarks, as people enjoyed the shock of seeing something unusual in the middle of the normally dichromatic puzzle series (one person compared it to playing an ARG... wholly not what I intended, but thanks!). But still, in the back of my mind, I have this nagging feeling that I threw away that puzzle unnecessarily, and I can't ever get it back. Perhaps someday there might be a browser or a file format or a painting program that will allow colors to show up exactly as intended no matter what, but by that time, this little nugget of an idea might have spread too far to be novel anymore. Perhaps it's already been done, and I just haven't heard of it yet. It's like I let a little part of myself go into the world, never to return again. I can't help but wonder if that's something normal to be feeling, but yet I also wonder why I don't feel that with so many other puzzles I've made. Perhaps it's time to step back and reflect on what I've done.
17. Vusy as a VVVVVV
You all have gone out and bought VVVVVV by now, right? And you've played through it multiple times as well, right? And you've put the soundtrack music into your jogging playlist, right? Suddenly, that's not enough love for the 22nd letter of the alphabet. The most recent version of the game, released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, includes a level editor, preloaded with a bunch of user-made levels. In addition, it's incredibly easy to download other players' homemade maps, and the developer has featured a number of levels on his website. For the past couple of weeks, I've been playing through user levels like mad, and I'm actually running out of levels to tackle! I guess that means it's time I finish up the level I've been working on, except I'm terrible with scripting. Hurry that tutorial up, Terry, eh?
18. One Final Note, Brought to You By the Letter Z
In my last post, I mentioned how I wish I bought Atom Zombie Smasher when it was on sale. Well, thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle mentioned above, I now own AZS. As it turns out, it was just as fun as I was imagining it to be, but it also bizarrely lacks replay value. After a certain point, it feels like once you've beaten the game enough times, it loses its novelty. There are plenty of user-made mods available to tweak certain aspects of the game (sadly, you have to wade through the hordes of people who just re-uploaded the sample mod just to get an achievement), but it still feels like the same game too many times over. Still, I've put a handsome chunk of time into the game, so maybe there's still just enough of a cling factor to keep me coming back.
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