Making Mölkky

Back in January, my friend Nate joined me for a Schlag den Raab 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 Mölkky. 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. Watching this, Nate and I said to each other, this is something we'd like to try.

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 exactly one 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.

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 Martha Stewart gives a how-to), I decided to give it a go.

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!

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.

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).

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!

Time 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?

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 minus 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.

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 actually pertains to the plot of the game. 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.

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.

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.

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 AC1's ending was a middle finger, AC2's was a strongly-shaken fist, and ACBro's 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).

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.

(Postscript: I haven't done much with the multiplayer, sorry. I'll get on that.)

Quickersilverer

Lately 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 Mercury Hg, 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.

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).

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).

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.

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, but not quite. 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.

One Day At A Time

PAX East 2012, In Twenty Disorganized Thoughts

I 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.

1. Driving Sucks
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 Radiolab 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.

2. 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
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 Ninety Nine (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.

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.

3. Brought to You by the Letter T
As I mentioned before, 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.

4. Anticipay-yay-tion
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.

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.

5. Spoiler Alert, It Doesn't End Well
How awesome was the conference? Awesome enough that I don't think I'll go back.

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 at all. 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.

6. Let's Talk
However.

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.

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 Indie Megabooth 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.
The video was featured on Jay is Games, but don't click the link yet! There are spoilers for later stuff in there!

7. He Wasn't Wearing a Pink Suit
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 Antichamber, 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.

8. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA! A Reckless Disregard for Fanboyishness
If there's one interview I feel I really screwed up in my impromptu reporting, it was the one with Dejobaan Games. 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.

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 anything 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.

9. Break In, Break Out, Break Down
One fun thing about playing these games and talking to the developers was getting to be unsuspecting beta testers. Monaco 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.

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.

10. Future to the Back
All of the games in the Indie Megabooth looked really awesome, but I wanted to give one more really quick shout-out for Retro/Grade, 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.

11. Of My Own Volition
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 SpellTower, 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.

12. Of Assassins and Men
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?

That all having been said, here are some points I recall from watching the movie.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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?
• 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."
• 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.

And then I left the theatre and I got a free inflatable tomahawk.

13. Blitzkrieg Bop
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.

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 Sequence, 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.

14. I'm Pretty Good at Pokerface on Easy
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.

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.

15. Oh, What Was That One Thing, With the Colors and the Beams and the...
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.

16. Kids in the Hall
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.

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.

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.

17. Another Reason to Hate the Sessions
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 sometimes 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.

18. James Portnow: The Man, The Myth, The Legend (in no particular order)
Right, so this particular story takes a long time to tell. To set this up, here's some pertinent information: Extra Credits 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.

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.

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.)

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: this happened.) 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And I got the interview.

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.

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.

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.)

19. Cooling Down
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 International Game Developers Association. However, I didn't ask him about games. I said, "I really enjoyed you on Million Dollar Mind Game." 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.

20. Okay, But Seriously, Would You Do It Again? 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.

Oh, I'm working on writing a puzzle book. That was also a thing that happened.

Oh, So It's a Racist Rap Battle

Hm, 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.

Today (or yesterday by this point, I guess), I downloaded Sequence, 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 three 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.

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.).

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? I wear those things! (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.

(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.) ...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.

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. Link)

If you can get over the annoying buggyness (which I'm sure someone is constantly working on fixing), 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.

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.

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:

1. Edge shaving cream is still available in grocery stores,
2. Mirror's Edge was still allowed to be made into one of the first games I ever outright panned on this blog, and
3. The aforementioned Edge game is now on Steam.

So I guess the lawsuits didn't work out for Langdall. And for the longest time, that was my only connection to Edge, and I had mostly forgotten about it, aside from the fact that the hoopla surrounding it was probably one of the first things that got me interested in copyright law.

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.

Surveying the Wreckage of a Summer Sale

It's been a week or two since the annual Steam Summer Sale. Surprisingly, I probably didn't buy as many games for myself as I did for others, but I'm okay with that. I think I'm hitting that plateau where unless some fantastic new game comes out, I'm pretty comfortable with the games I do own. Still, I did take the time to try a few new games, and I have the following report to present to you.

One of my earlier purchases of the sale was BIT.TRIP RUNNER, which claims to be "the fastest, most exhilarating music/rhythm-platformer to hit Steam!" Erm, well, I suppose it's a valid claim, but I can't think of other music/rhythm-platformers on Steam, so make of that what you will. While BEAT was a legitimately rhythm-based Pong-esque game, RUNNER takes the form of a constant-motion platformer, where you must time Commander Video's actions to dodge obstacles, break through barriers, and collect gold bars. It just happens to have a backing soundtrack.

Note that that's very much not to say that the music corresponds to the actions you're performing on screen. For one, in order to, say, jump over a hole in the ground, you've got to hit the "jump" button before you get to the hole. As you pass over the hole, you hear the associated note/sound for completing the jump. This is supposed to make you feel like you've passed the obstacle, but instead I couldn't help feeling that the awkward disconnect between the action and the consequence/confirmation made it uncomfortably arhythmic. Add to that the fact that there's even a tiny delay between when you push the button and the action appears on screen, and it's just frustrating to play. I can't help but feel that if I were to play the game with the sound turned off, I'd do better because I wouldn't be tempted to follow the rhythm of the music.

In thinking about how to describe this game, I keep coming back to Mevo and the Grooveriders, a similar music platformer from a few years back. Mevo is played with only two keys (left-shift, right-shift, and a combo of both), but it uses a scoring system similar to a Dance Dance Revolution game, where you're graded on how close you are on hitting the designated beats, gaining or losing health as you go. In RUNNER, if you slip up, you're instantly sent back to the beginning of the level. You're either perfect or you're doing it again. And again. Factor in the arhythm I described above, and this game is just not fun to play. You don't feel encouraged to keep playing, you feel hindered by the difficulty. In all the time I've spent with this game so far, I've yet to beat two levels in a row. I just can't stomach it. On the whole, I just can't recommend BIT.TRIP RUNNER.

I can, however, put up a geeky nod for Vertex Dispenser (demo available), a puzzle... shooter? Puzzle shooter, I guess. The general goal of the game is to conquer the board, a three-dimensional shape composed of a bunch of triangles and squares, with colored vertices. The vertices change colors, depending on what "activated" vertices surround it; a vertex will always be blue, unless there's already another blue vertex next to it, at which point it will become red; a vertex will be red unless there's already a red and blue next to it, at which point it's green, and so on. The rarer the color, the stronger the power-ups you can charge up. You move along the edges of the shapes, trying to break through defenses set up by opponents, trying to dominate the board and eliminate your opponents. It's not just a brainy strategy game, but it's also a fast-paced action game.

There are two complaints I have to file against this game though. At any point in time, you can have upwards of 14 power-ups available to you, each of which are activated by a key on your keyboard. That's way too many to juggle at once, especially when there are also four power-ups per slot to choose from. You need to use a diverse range of power-ups to win a game, but I find myself having to check the laundry list of options every time I want to use one, and by the time I figure out what I want, it's too late. As a result, I usually stick to only two or three power-ups for most of the game, which is a bit of a waste. The other complaint is that I can't seem to find anyone playing multiplayer matches. Or is it only multiplayer with Steam friends, and I happen to lack other friends who play this game? Despite both of these, I'd still give Vertex Dispenser a solid thumbs up.

Lume is a very beautiful point-and-click puzzler, with an artistic style of cardboard characters and settings that make the entire experience feel like an amazing children's TV show (so it must've been a European show). On the downside, some of the puzzles in it are a bit too obscure to solve without any hints (I ended up either brute-forcing or checking a walkthrough for a couple of puzzles). Plus, it's really short. Granted, it's part one of a series, but still, I'd definitely not recommend this at its regular $7 price, but I'd say give it a go if it comes up on sale again. If nothing else, add it to your list of games with good loop music for playing in the background while working on a late-night paper.

Critical Mass (demo available) looked like it should have been an equally geeky puzzle game, considering the game looks like you're attacking a neon Rubik's Cube. Unfortunately, it's just a three-dimensional match-4 game. Your goal is to clear the blocks before the mass reaches "critical mass", AKA an arbitrary time limit irrelevant to the actual size of the mass. I've only gotten the demo, but it seems like there's very little else to this game. I'll pass, thanks.

I've played all of about five minutes of Terraria and I've yet to touch Magicka, though I hear both are quite good. I also picked up Assassin's Creed: Grilled and Greed Corp, but I don't know much about either of those yet.

I also downloaded the demo for But do you want to know where my biggest regret is? I didn't buy Atom Zombie Smasher. With about an hour left in its day for an extra discount in the store, I tried out the demo. I decided not to buy it, because I'm not a huge fan of real-time strategy games. However, in the last couple of days I've found myself coming back to the demo to play its limited four levels over and over again. There's something about the chipper, surf guitar-y theme that makes this game much more lively than other RTS titles, much less zombie titles. Plus, the action is easy to get into, meaning a strategy thicko like me could get sucked in. I've not got that drum and guitar riff looping in my mind, and I tremendously crave this game. I'm seriously regretting not buying this game.

Because the Internet Needs More Men Eating Ramen in Their Boxers

Just a quick post to let you know of a new feature I've enabled for this site. Since I got a webcam a month or two ago, I've been having a lot of fun with terrible homemade YouTube videos for friends and Skype chats. But then I got to wondering, what other fun things can I do with my webcam?

The result, in case you missed it, is now on the toolbar on the right. I've added a live webcam to my site! The camera is set up just to the left of my computer monitor, facing my chair so you can always see when I'm at the computer by checking the webcam. Now you can see in an instant if I'll be right there to answer a message from you. Hopefully we can start a trend of people opening up their availability on the Internet. After all, how popular are things like FourSquare and other mobile apps that do much the same thing? Check back later to see if I'm around and maybe we'll chat!

[Edit: On the incredibly off chance that you didn't figure it out, this was an April Fool's joke.]

My Nanoblogging Is Your Microblogging - Episode 2

5. I Was Going to Write a Review on the New "You Don't Know Jack" Game But Then I Was Asked to Do a Review for JIG So I'll Just Link to It...
Here.

6. More Jack, No Coke
On a related note, I managed to win a copy of the You Don't Know Jack electronic tabletop game in an eBay auction. I thought it'd be all sorts of fun to write up a review of that, to pair with the above new release. You know, comparing the new 2011 computer game with the fantastic game technology of 1998. But then I realized, why do I need to wait to review it? I already played this thing way back when at my piano teacher's house. In a nutshell, it's that same Jack humor (just, you know, from 13 years ago), but in a stack of colorful question cards. Two to four players play (no solo mode, I don't believe), and the screw option is still in play. After you enter in the five-digit question code (so the computer knows which answer is correct), read the question, open the trapdoor to reveal the answers, and buzz away. It's a ten-question game. Aaand review done. But hey, another toy for random get-togethers.

7. Everything You Loved About Chemistry Class with Half the Calories
If you haven't played it yet, you really need to give Zachtronics' SpaceChem a go. Like most of Zachtronics' other releases, SpaceChem is a "game for engineers", meaning most of the puzzles revolve around developing a system to complete a task that works on its own after you set it into motion. In this case, most of the action is bonding (or unbonding or rebonding) chemical compounds by laying down pathways and commands for your little transporter doohickeys to follow (I'd call them by their proper name, "waldos", but that'd make less sense). To be honest, the entire system is crazy hard to understand, but some good effort is put into a tutorial and levels with gradually increasing difficulty, two things notably missing from most Zachtronics titles. But when you experience that moment when all the weird symbols and flashing colors make sense in one earth-shaking moment, you'll be hooked. Then you'll come to another dead end and struggle for a while. It's a fairly simple cycle. Anyway, I tell you all this (1) because it's a good game, (2) because JIG is giving away a few copies. You just need to solve a few puzzles. I helped make them. Yay! Contest ends March 5.

8. Finally, A Few Quick Words on Portal 2
The preorder's up. And I swear, in the last bit I'll blab about Portal until the game comes out, I'd like to repost a photo of something I found to be quite useful lately:

"Easy Money" - Or, A Game of "Spot the Continuity Errors"

Last semester I took TV Production 2, a class whose final project is to come up with a short film presentation. This is what I came up with. There's not much more to say aside from the following:

• Yes, the audio is crap in a lot of places, and is pretty much absent in one scene. I tried to fix it in the editing software, but it was beyond salvaging. Sorry.
• Yes, the dialogue is crap. Half of that is my inability to write comfortable dialogue that doesn't sound like two surfers on heavy tranquilizers, half of that comes from the editing which makes people repeat lines in awkward places. Sorry.
• Yes, the whole thing was done on a shoestring budget. I offer no apologies.

Enjoy! Or not, if that's what you prefer.

No Ordinary Blog Post... wow, that was unclever

For a class, I was assigned to follow one of the television shows that debuted this fall. I was lucky enough to have been able to grab ABC's "No Ordinary Family," which airs Tuesdays at 8pm EST. I say that I'm lucky because it is just as interesting and intriguing as I had hoped, and it was also one of the few shows that didn't look terrible. (I feel kinda bad for the kid that got stuck with "Lone Star"...)

"No Ordinary Family" follows the lives of the Powells, a slightly dysfunctional family that becomes slightly less (or more?) dysfunctional after a family vacation to Brazil results in a plane crash into a mysterious lake. As a result of something in the water, the family develops superhuman powers, such as father Jim's (Michael Chiklis) super strength and ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound (though NOT fly), mother Stephanie's (Julie Benz) 600mph running speed (and a side effect of a ridiculous metabolism), daughter Daphne's (Kay Panabaker) who can read minds, and son JJ's (Jimmy Bennett) genius mind.

On the whole, the show is fun to watch, and the running plotlines (such as Jim and Stephanie's constant arguing over when it's "right" to use their powers and JJ's initial reluctance to tell his parents about his powers) make for some interesting drama. I won't say the writing is entirely perfect, though. There are moments where the dialogue and action feels sorta... oh, what's the word... hokey. For instance, there are times (which seem to pop up at random) where you can't help but feel like everyone around the Powells are completely thick and miss the obvious signs that something just plain ain't right with this family. I'm saying this while well aware that we, the audience, have the omnipresent eye and know everything that's going on, but it still feels like someone somewhere should have picked up on something.

While not entirely proving my point, I would like to reference a scene from this week's show. In this episode, Stephanie's prying parents stop by for a surprise visit, and the family try to keep them entertained (and to keep their secret safe). Steph's father (Bruce McGill), still under the impression that JJ's thick, schools his grandson for a few games before the following scene occurs. (Note: Video will likely expire about a month from when this post is written.)



Well then, how many things did we spot wrong with that scene? Trust me, you've got to see the amazing stuntwork that takes place later in the episode, it's equally sad. Not all of the show is this terrible, but there are those moments of hokeyness that just drive you up a wall.

In any case, the main point of the class assignment was to follow the show, and pay attention to the ratings. To be honest, "No Ordinary Family" is against stiff veteran competition, including apparent old-person favorite "NCIS," younger-skewing powerhouse "Glee," and... well, "The Biggest Loser" returned for another season. Let's give them a hand. Right then, the ratings (as of this Sunday, when I first scrawled out this chart):



Wa-hey, a pretty consistent third place! For being the rookie for the time slot, I'd say that "No Ordinary Family" is holding its own fairly well (though I'm not a network exec, so I could be way off). There's something about those Tuesday 8pm numbers that scare me a bit though. While "NCIS" consistently holds rating well over its nearest competitor on most nights, "Glee" wins over the 18-49 demographic on nights with new episodes. "Dancing with the Stars," normally a powerhouse for the older demographic, creamed "NCIS" with last week's early results show. These two factors lead me to believe that while "Glee" gets the younger crowd (and subsequently, the advertising), "NCIS" gets the points from the Neilsen Nursing Homes across America.

So where does that leave "No Ordinary Family?" Limbo, I guess. It's holding its ground, but it's not really excelling. Seeing that it hasn't gotten the "Lone Star" treatment yet, I still think there's great potential for the show. Most of the casual remarks I've heard/read about the show say that it's "interesting." I hope ABC continues to back this show, because they really do have a unique show on their hands. I've somewhat fallen in love with the plot, despite its flaws, so I hope this show catches on, possibly in a different time slot where it has more exposure. Oh, and some more consistent writing would be lovely.

Does Ms. Pac-Man Know He's Seeing Other Women?

Have you ever had the indescribable urge to try something just because it sounded so amazingly terrible that it had to be hilarious? Old movies seem to have a knack for being a target of this sort of humor (heck, who could forget Mystery Science Theatre 3000 which practically mastered the art of ripping up terrible movies), and many talent shows on television capitalize on humor from terrible auditionees (American Idol and America's Got A Fleeting Desire To Act As Though It Has Talent Other Than Singing are two examples). This same joy of snobbish mockery can even come from games, if you look hard enough.

At some point in time last week, I ran across a banner ad for PAC-MAN Pizza Parlor. As I read through the game's description, I instantly thought to myself, "Mystery Science Arcade 3000". For perhaps not the first time but definitely not the last, I came across a game that looked so terrible, it had to be pathetically hilarious.

The game, in a nutshell (and forgive me for lacking on the exact details of the plot): Cathy's father has lost his memory, and it's up to her to maintain the family business until he can get better again. Naturally, assistance for Cathy comes in the form of a basketball-sized yellow man with a giant nose that happens to pop out of an arcade machine. Naturally.

So in terms of the actual game itself, customers place orders on the left side of the screen, Pac-Man (not sure why it's capitalized in the title) fetches the individual ingredients on the right side, and you assemble and deliver the ingredients in the middle. You start off by serving drinks, then salads, then in a traditionally tertiary object of priority when owning a pizza parlor, pizzas. Mr. P, on the right side, needs to not only collect the ingredients for foods in a specific order (no pepperoni before the dough, no tomatoes before the lettuce, etc.), but also avoid running into ghosts (which randomly turn into fruits for bonus points) and stay away from the edges of his section, as it turns out that he's on a conveyor belt that moves periodically, possibly dragging him off the edge and causing you to lose time (whereas Cathy's only limitation is that she can only carry two objects at a time).

Honestly, there are some pretty cringeworthy parts to this game. The plotline, presented in click-to-see-the-next-frame-even-though-it's-already-in-front-of-you form, seems to be held together with imitation maple syrup (two random guys in suits come looking for my dad with the intention of breaking his legs, only to walk away in near-tears when they find that he's already been hospitalized, and a random old acquaintance shares his honey for use in recipes for no reason other than... well, heck if I remember). The customers seem to always wear exactly one emotion even when angry, and happiness seems to be always expressed with a wink and an accompanying gesture. When a customer orders more than one item, you have to deliver them in a specific order, even though the ingredients pop up at the same time and you can fairly easily assume what some people want in larger orders. Even some of the in-game text seemed to be presented in Engrish, and the freaking fairy (a nickname I assigned her) taught you how to make every single item in the game with robotic repetition, as though we couldn't figure out that a salad with tomato is different from a salad with egg because one has tomato and the other has egg. I want to guess that this game is aimed at a younger, less game-experienced demographic than whatever group I'd be in.

Yet somehow, in some very odd way, it's really not that bad of a game.

Perhaps I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to these time management games that seem to frequently take place at restaurants, hotels, and other service-related industries. Honestly, the last TM game I played was Diner Dash (the original one, which is probably over five years old), which just has one character running around doing every job on the floor of a 'raunt. Somehow, the divide-and-conquer method of splitting up the action into two halves of the screen works well, and it's rather challenging to make sure you don't get too far ahead or behind on either side to keep everything flowing. Perhaps this is an incredibly old mechanic that I've just never seen before, but for now at least, it's really a new thing for me. (In retrospect, there is Arcadia which divides your attention in four directions, but that's different in that the games are independent and doing something in one doesn't really affect what happens in another.)

I guess the $64,000 question left to be asked is why. Why is Pac-Man our assistant throughout this journey? Why is he working on a moving conveyor belt that can kill him if he doesn't move quickly enough? Why do the ghosts randomly show up in the restaurant? You could quickly answer any of these questions with "because it makes it more challenging" or "because it adds to the plot" (it's definitely not the latter). But still, it seems like the developers of the game (which includes Namco, which explains a lot) came up with a semi-feasible premise for a game (girl in pizza parlor), but needed some other schtick to justify some other challenges in the game (stock arcade character helps her). When your justification for making such a terrible tie-in is "to make the game work," perhaps you need to reconsider why the game is broken to begin with. Playing this game with Pac-Man on the other side of the counter feels like awkward product placement. Playing with someone else, let's say Cathy's sister, would be a lot less painful.

Would I buy this game? Likely not. Perhaps my pint of admiration for this game is because it's one of the few time management games I've played in way too long. I definitely wouldn't buy this game because Pac-Man is in the title, and I hope no one else would either. I would recommend it on the fact that despite its numerous annoyances, it's still an interesting take on the time management genre, although possibly one that's overdone and I don't even know it. On the whole, definitely try it before you buy it.

Unlike Mega Man 2, This Could Still Happen in the Future

As I was reading through my last post, I realized that I had unintentionally made it stupidly long. Four full reviews in one post was really a bit too much all at once. I decided that the next time I wanted to write a game review, I should try to do one game at a time, just to keep things nice and short. Digestible. Manageable. Biodegradable.

This past week, I found myself returning to an old favorite for kicks and giggles. "Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden" is an RPG retelling (forecasting?) of the great B-Ball Apocalypse of 2041. Twelve years after B-Ball was outlawed and many of the legends of the sport are massacred, a Chaos Dunk devastates Neo New York, and Charles Barkley is blamed for the wreckage. It's up to Charles, his son, Hoopz, and a cast of other allies to clear his name and restore the glory of B-Ball to the world. The journey ahead is long and rough, so be sure to stock up on steroids and chicken fries...

Even if you haven't really been paying attention to professional basketball since "Space Jam" (like myself, except I don't think I even saw the movie), the plotline of "Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden" is easy to follow (although you might miss a few jokes). Surprisingly, despite being a fan-made game (the entire credits list appears to be three pseudonyms long), a lot of work went into this game, and the result is a few good hours of a hilarious trip though basketball, science fiction, and pop culture. "Barkley" isn't just a straight RPG either. It pulls elements from many different genres, including old-school point-and-click adventure games, puzzles, horror/survival games, dating simulators, and a few simple quick-time scenes for good measure.

Be warned though that "Barkley" is very much not a game for children. Between frequent strong language and occasional mature themes, this game is probably for adults only. Also, as this is a fan-made game, there is a bit of editorializing in certain places. The most frequent occurrence of this is at the save points throughout the game. A talking gas pump-like object lectures you on how your American tastes in gaming prove your stupidity and how you should switch to the "far superior" world of Japanese gaming. Fanboyish, yes. Annoying, yes. But I suppose the developers have the right to throw in their pearls of wisdom now and then. (Fine, maybe not pearls of wisdom... How about chickpeas of commentary?)

If you're willing to look past a few minor annoyances, "Barkley, Shut Up and Jam" is truly a fun experience that's worth playing a few times. I remember when I first played this game back in 2008, there were several points in the game where I found myself laughing for five minutes straight. Even playing through this game two years later, I still find some little bits of dialogue that I might have missed before that make me chuckle. "Barkley" is well-assembled and intriguing, and I'm truly hoping that the mentioned sequel is not a gag, because I would really like to see this game continue.

Go download it for free.

Wishing You a Happy Rest of July, Because the Fourth is Gone

You know what makes for a good combination? The end of a semester of summer courses, a well-timed Steam sale, and a blog post. Yes, my tastes are screwy, but this is what I do best. (Sometimes.) I ended up buying three games during the sale, and after playing through them a bit (although some more than others), I'd like to share my findings with you. (I feel like I should be wearing a lab coat as I explain these to you.)

Left 4 Dead 2 - Steam link
Remember how I always used to keep talking about Team Fortress 2 and my undying love for it? Well, that's still in place. But surprisingly, Left 4 Dead 2 is up there in terms of shmups that I actually find to be fun. I'm sure I don't need to explain much about the premise of L4D2, but for the uninitiated, it's a zombie apocolypse again (the "again" because it's a sequel, obviously), and the only four survivors (sorta... remember that it's a sequel) are trying to escape relatively unscathed. You team up with three other players and basically shoot anything that moves en route to the exit point, with a couple of exceptions (namely, each other and witches).

I've not played the original Left 4 Dead, so I'm not sure how much L4D2 expands on the original, but as someone whose main shmup experience lately comes from TF2, L4D2 is a rather refreshing change of pace. In addition to the garden-variety "common infected", you've also got Spitters that vomit acid everywhere, Jockeys that ride their victim and push them towards massive throngs of the infected, and the witch that basically kills you in one shot if you startle her. Swell. Needless to say, this game is quite a bit different from TF2 as you're now faced with a horror-themed zombie film setting rather than a jovial, cartoonish romp.

While the game is intended to be played with four players online, there are plenty of offline modes with computer AI to practice on. I've primarily stuck to the easiest difficulty, and the AI usually does a good job of saving my butt everytime a Charger pommels me. Unfortunately, I've gotten quite used to these near-perfect AI, and that hurt me yesterday as I played my first online game. Even on the easiest difficulty, I think I died a total of three times, and our team had to restart one chapter over again because we all died. The AI spoiled us, basically.

I've still not had the time to look over all of the aspects of this game (such as the numerous multiplayer modes as well as the weekly "mutations" that offer a random challenge to tackle), but Left 4 Dead 2 is entertaining and holding my attention so far. I'm hoping that with a bit more practice, I can become more comfortable with this game and hopefully hook up with more friends for some fun. (Besides, they pressured me into buying the game, so they owe me.)


Shatter - Steam link
First off, let me confess something to you: I really wish this game sucked. I wish I could tear this game limb from limb, picking apart every annoying bit about this game until there's nothing left, solely because I have an amazing arsenal of jokes about this game lined up (the most obvious being what happens when you change one letter in the game's name... and no, it's not Chatter, Swatter, or Shutter).

Alas, Shatter is a good game. It might look like your standard Breakout/Arkanoid clone at first glance, but Shatter makes good use of physics to significantly impact the game. The main mechanic you can use to your advantage is that your paddle (a spaceship, natch) can generate wind to move the ball and blocks in different directions. Hold the left mouse button to suck and the right mouse button to blow (two more jokes I would have capitalized on if this game was bad). Shattered bricks release shards which, when sucked in and caught by the paddle, increase your multiplier for the wave and build up for a powerful storm attack that can clear half of the board if used properly. Sucking can also be dangerous though, as any bricks that hit your paddle temporarily stun it, which puts you in danger of losing a ball. On the other hand, if you do this before launching a ball, the automatic ball-launching timer resets back to zero, and it's possible to clear out the majority of some levels without breaking a single brick. Obviously, there are less points available for doing this, but it gets you through the levels quicker.

One major difference that sets this game apart from most Breakout clones is the use of boss battles at the end of each world to face off against. Each boss has a unique defense system that must be conquered before you can do any damage, and part of the fun of each boss is figuring out how it works. Some follow the standard hit-the-shield-until-it-breaks mechanic, but some require you to suck or blow the boss into a certain position before you can attack. I didn't think it was possible to get one of those "aha" moments from a Breakout game, but Shatter accomplishes it with its fiendish boss fight puzzles.

I can only think of two minor quibbles to file against this game, and neither one is terribly significant. First, of the three shapes that the levels will come in (rectangle where you play on the side, rectangle where you play on the bottom, circle where you play on the bottom), the circular levels are generally annoying. It's hard to predict where the ball will go with each bounce. I'm partly tempted to outright accuse the game of completely botching natural rebounding physics on this one, but it's just a game and it doesn't much matter here. Also, the keyboard controls seem oddly designed, but it's likely set up in such a way so that you can share the keys with a same-computer co-op player.

Beyond that, there's way more to this game to love than to hate. I won't lie, this game probably first caught my attention for the catchy music in its short preview video (watch it here), but the game itself more than met my expectations. Even if you're only an average player, the game seems to be designed to give you little boosts when you need it (such as 1-ups appearing more frequently when you suddenly run low on lives), which makes this game harder to put down. Of the three games I bought in this sale, I've probably spent the most time with this one so far, and I'm thoroughly glad I caught it when it was on sale.


Thief: Deadly Shadows - Steam link
Writing this bit is going to be interesting, because this is the game I've had the least experience with, and equally so, the least positive experience with. As it turns out, after downloading this game the other night and having a small power failure earlier yesterday that took my computer down, Thief seems to have disappeared from my computer. I'm laughing about this irony now, but I'll wake up tomorrow and wonder if that's a sign of things to come. Anyway, for the time being, I really can't make any screencaps, and I'm stuck basing the majority of this review solely on what I've experienced in only the first level, the tutorial.

Thief is a game where for whatever reason, you play as a thief who sneaks around and steals things. There's apparently a backstory in previous games that I don't know about, so I'm kinda in the dark here. Honestly, I decided to give this game a shot because I've never done a stealth-based game before, and it was only three dollars. In the tutorial mission, my goal was to steal someone's purse. (Okay, it was a satchel of some sort with a MICROSCOPIC SPOILER special medallion in it, but you catch my drift.) Even though I've only played the first level, I can already see I'm in for trouble.

The controls start out intuitively enough, with the standard WASD to move and mouse to look around. However, this quickly becomes cluttered with all sorts of commands for different actions. Control to creep, X to crouch, 8 to select the water arrow, F1 to select the flash bomb and I to throw it, Alt-P to renew your Netflix account, whatever. I know that eventually I will have to make a cheat sheet in order to play this game so I can quickly figure out where each command is.

Despite this level being a tutorial level, I quickly ran into trouble with the bit on lockpicking. The instructions only tell you that you right-click to start picking a lock, and by moving the mouse around, you will eventually find a "sweet spot". Stay in the sweet spot long enough (how long?), and you will get past each tumbler in turn. The game tells you that you're near the sweet spot when the little tumbler icon is making the most movement. This apparently isn't true, as where I found the tumbler to be moving the most wasn't the sweet spot at all. In fact, after two or three failed attempts, I actually had to look up a walkthrough to get past this part. As a reminder, this is still the tutorial level. Having to look up the solution in a walkthrough on the tutorial level is not a good sign. (Or I'm just thick, but let's not jump to that conclusion. Yet.)

As far as the more stealthy bits go (what few there are in the tutorial), I couldn't really decide if the AI was too dumb or too smart. The guards who keep an eye out for suspicious movement (and announce their findings in comedically melodramatic fashion) seem to either walk right by you when you're inches away from them, or spot you because of a square inch of light from that candle you didn't notice making you completely visible. Perhaps playing a bit more (if/when I re-download the game) will reveal some of the finer points of stealth, but for now, I'm just not getting the hang of it.

On the whole, the interface is rather crappy. To start, the game doesn't seem to want to work with the Steam overlay, which may or may not be a problem caused by the game's designers. However, fiddling with the F1 key for that flashbomb at the end of the level apparently made me tap the Escape key and some other combination of buttons by accident, leaving me at a "load game" screen. I clicked the "back" button thinking it would return me to my game, but apparently I had already exited to the main menu without even realizing it. This forced me to plow through the tutorial level for a fifth time, because if there was any sort of confirmation request before sending me back to the menu, I missed it entirely. Needless to say, I was rather not happy with the game at this point.

It's also a shame that the game isn't working now, because it seemed impossible to play this game during the day. My monitor, which is usually capable of showing contrast between near-black colors if you get at the right angle, seemed to be worthless during the day. On the other hand, the second level (of which I survived twenty seconds) starts out with you in a well-lit entryway, with two guards waiting for you to catch their attention. The more I played this game, the more I felt like I was missing some essential bit of skill I should have acquired from previous installments in the series.

So between overly-complex controls, AI with seemingly random I, and gameplay that leaves you out in the dark, Thief and I are not getting along right now. I'm glad I have a temporary break from the game due to it accidentally uninstalling itself, so I can focus my attention on my two other new games (and more TF2 in prep for another major update). I'd like to try this game again just to see if I can overcome some of these noob-unfriendly hurdles, but for now, I guess I just have to pretend that I didn't notice this less-than pleasant game, disappearing like a Thief in the... oh.


Late Entry: Turba - Steam link
This one didn't show up in the Steam store until yesterday, so this was technically not part of my purchases, but I figured I might include it here anyway. Turba, which I vaguely remember as a project raising funds on Kickstarter way back in the day, is a music-based match-3 game where once again, your music determines how the game is played. From what I could tell you though, the music seems to have less to do with the game than you'd originally expect, but at least it does a semi-decent job with what it does.

As the song you select plays, the rhythm allegedly determines when new blocks are added to your grid, always from bottom to top and left to right. Blocks show up in one of four colors or a bonus multiplier. Your goal is to keep the grid from filling by selecting clusters of three or more blocks (by left-clicking) and clearing them (by right-clicking). Rather nicely, you can select chains of more than one color (although no more than one chain of each color) and clear them all at once, with a bonus for clearing chains of all four colors in one shot. You can also swap columns to make new matches if you're having trouble finding a natural pair. But to make things more difficult, there are time bomb-esque tiles which explode after so many "beats" occur, leaving behind a mess of ugly debris squares that disappear after time. Errant chains also result in debris, so you've got to be rather accurate when you're panicking to clear the board.

This somewhat unfair "heads, I win, tails, you lose" situation makes levels rather difficult to beat, even when on the medium level. I actually have yet to beat a single song on the medium level, because the board just fills up too quickly. I need to try this again with less rhythm-heavy songs, but for the time being, I can only declare this game as outright hard.

So then, where does this leave us with the game's ability to make a game that actually corresponds to the music? Let's check our little rating scale, which still has only two elements, because no one left any suggestions for other factors, cough cough. In terms of reflecting the tempo and rhythm of the music, Turba would probably score a 5, and maybe squeak out a 4 in terms of reflecting changes in dynamics. (For reference, we're assuming Audiosurf scored a 7 in both categories. 7 is pretty good, but there's always room for improvement.) One of the things that makes it difficult to gauge where Turba falls on this scale is how new blocks (which appear on the "beats") don't show up immediately, but rather, fate into view. There's a soft drum kick to illustrate where it's picking up the rhythm, and it's not always accurate, but it at least makes a gallant effort. I've not yet tried a song with a weaker drum pattern and a more prominent instrumental line, so for now I can only guess that the dynamic analyzers are just picking up the spikes in the percussion. Otherwise, I might bump that rating up a smidge.

If you don't mind being pummeled by the difficulty, Turba can be quite a fun game, and it's not really that bad of a music game either. It'd be nice if a little more could be done with the music, but it's at least a moderately fun take on the way-overdone match-3 genre. It's on sale now for a buck off to celebrate its release, but I'll probably wait until the next huge sale comes around to buy it.