In the course of my tomb raiding, Link has recovered all manner of potent artifacts. Completing the Palace of Darkness earned me a magic hammer. Other excursions have netted me gloves which confer the strength of a giant, the miraculous hookshot, and a cloak of invisibility. To get these, I’ve heroically slashed through legions of carnivorous plants, helmeted lizards, and leaping skeletons.
After the jump, it’s all about the milk bottles Continue reading →
Take a beautiful woman. A classically beautiful woman, not some latter day slattern. Convince her to stretch out on a big fluffy bed. Nothing raunchy. Something tasteful enough to paint on the nose of a bomber. Now send her home. Carefully analyze the topography of the bed where she has just lain. Calculate a track over that topography. Now you have the Glendale Raceway.
After the jump, Shift 2’s greatest track Continue reading →
One of the main themes that has run through this series is that time is precious. Therefore, it’s fitting that the most precious thing in my life — my family — takes up almost all of my time. But as the earlier entries have shown, there are still fleeting moments when I can play a game or two.
But for how much longer? Much to my dismay, I’ve discovered three adversaries that are conspiring to take all of my remaining time and consign me to a game-free life.
After the jump, the villains revealed. Continue reading →
One of the writers for this site, Christien Murawski, claims to be color blind. I’ve always suspected it was a ruse to explain why he’s terrible at shooters. But then I saw this piece from BBC journalist Dave Lee, who claims to be colorblind. Or “colourblind”, as he puts it. A short video shows how Call of Duty: Black Ops looks to colorblind folks. That explains a lot! Fortunately, Black Ops is one of a handful of games with settings that help colorblind players. In Lee’s article and video, Nintendo plays the role of the insensitive publisher who can’t be arsed to the accommodate colorblind players.
I remember how this was a big issue in Alpha Centauri, a strategy game where the location of pink fungus, which is invisible to colorblind players, is hugely important. That game also got a patch to enable settings for colorblind players.
(Thanks, Peter!)
The new Mars table is out for Pinball FX 2. Well, “new” if you haven’t already been playing it for a year on the Playstation 3 as part of Zen Pinball. In terms of sci-fi tables, it’s not quite as lively as Earth Defense Force, but it’s got its own sexy near-future cool. You’ll discover fancy gravity tricks, a fat space shuttle that sits in the middle of the table when it lands (I’m playin’ here!) and occasionally deploys a robot arm, a satellite that literally orbits the table, a cute little spider robot helpfully retrieving your ball (am I the only one who remembers AMEE from that Val Kilmer Mars movie?), scanning beam missions, and a mysterious pyramid. And, of course, a weird face peering out at you. It wouldn’t be Mars without that face.
I like Mars for how hard it is to lose the ball. I think it’s safe to say this is the most generous Zen Studios table in terms of letting you play longer. Mars is the table for those of us averse to failure.
And courtesy of the folks at Zen Studios, we have two free codes for Mars. It’s an add-on to Pinball FX 2, so it won’t do you much good unless you already own the core game. Post in the comments section below and make sure you’ve entered your email in the sign-in box when you post. In 24 hours, I’ll draw two names from a virtual hat and the lucky winners will get Mars for free. The table, not the planet.
At some point first person shooters and I parted ways. I was there at the beginning, playing Wolfenstein and downloading the DOOM preview off of the campus network. I learned the ways of WASD and circle strafing. I followed the evolution of the genre. I even jumped over to consoles to learn how to twin stick with Halo. But somewhere after Battlefield 2, sometime around Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, I began to drift away. My brief dalliance with Modern Warfare confirmed my feelings that I was no longer a “mainstream” FPSer. So I slunk off to strategy games. At least I didn’t fall all the way into wargaming.
Fortunately with a mature genre like FPSs, plenty of games will excite an almost 40-year-old father of a sub-2-year-old, homeowner, and mouselook inverter. If you’re willing to look past the multi-million dollar ad campaigns and dig around the edges you’ll find some gems.
After the jump, I “drop in” on Section 8: Prejudice Continue reading →
Most Wanted Entertainment is excited to introduce Defenders of Ardania, a tower defense game built out of Majesty 2. In this developer diary, designer Andras Klujber explains that this is tower defense, but with a twist. We all know that you can defend in a tower defense game, but what Defenders of Ardania supposes is…what if you could attack?
If the enemies and us both have a base, and “good will” is spewed forth against us in endless hordes, why shouldn’t we return it in kind?
This is how it came to be that Defenders of Ardania put a little twist in the tower defense style and smuggled in the possibility of sending units…Just think about it! The enemies attacking us in waves are still there, but being forced to defend is now extended with the possibility of striking back.
Defenders of Ardania also has three playable races, hero units, spell powers, unit upgrades, multiplayer, and a storyline. It sounds to me like Most Wanted has inadvertently made a real time strategy game.
I don’t mean to be a jerk, since I’m looking forward to whatever Most Wanted decides to do with Majesty 2. Tower defense games have plenty of room for new ideas. For instance, the recent Warzone Anomoly tasks you with managing a convoy working its way through defensive towers.
But the supposed unique twist in Defenders of Ardania is in no way unique. Allow me to again mention a really cool game on the Playstation Network called Comet Crash. It seems at first blush like straight-up tower defense, but it introduces the mechanic of building barracks that gradually accumulate an offensive army. In addition to the usual tower defense gameplay, you have to decide how much to invest in barracks, what sort of counterattack you’ll assemble, when you’ll loose it, and what you’ll do to manage its attack path. Comet Crash even has multiplayer, and it works particularly well for two players in the same room, playing on the same screen.
So, yeah, Most Wanted, that’s a cool idea for Defenders of Ardania. I’ve been enjoying it for the last few years.
We resume Link’s quest in the middle of the game’s fifth dungeon, the Palace of Darkness. Something about it must have pissed me off, because I am in a sub-basement with no inkling of how to progress. Zelda games are nothing like bikes — they’re nearly impossible to pick up again. Each dungeon requires the player to assemble a mental map and the few skills necessary to solving its puzzles. After not playing for a year, I remember none of these tricks. I’m stuck in a room with a locked door and three giant, bipedal rats — two green and one red. Experience with the series tells me that if I clear the enemies from the room, that door will slide open.
After the jump, easier said than done Continue reading →
The movie that finally made us figure out how to pronounce “Saoirse”. If you haven’t seen Hanna yet, fast forward to our 3×3 of the worst villains, which begins at the one hour and 28 minute (!) mark.
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When I first learned that my wife was pregnant, I knew that my life was going to change. And it has, even in the most mundane ways. Going to the grocery store now requires D-Day level planning and preparation. Buying a taco sets off an internal fiscal debate. A slight temperature deviation in our apartment means frantically dialing down radiators or cranking up space heaters.
I was less prepared for the personal changes. Sure, there are the usual things like a sense of responsibility more potent than ever and an ineffable love that swells each time I look at the twins. But the surprises come from the smaller stuff. Like the fact that my burning hatred of scatological humor has mellowed after months of my kids’ boisterous and unrestrained flatulence. Or that my rock solid faith in the medical profession has crumbled thanks to the parade of obstetric and pediatric bozos we’ve dealt with since the births.
And then there are two recent revelations that came to me through games.
After the jump, friend becomes foe and man becomes mental. Continue reading →
I was going to try to come up with some sort of clever title for this week’s post, but how can I possibly top the name of the game itself? “The Fish Dies in the End” Rarely does a game put forth such brutal honesty right there on the title screen. The game’s developer, who goes by “bandidoquest” on the forums, recently posted that the game was finally finished and available. It was his first game, and he was looking for feedback. I am, if nothing else, chock full of feedback.
After the jump: If it’s feedback you want, then feedback you shall have! Continue reading →
We don’t really do reader mail on this site because, frankly, we don’t get any reader mail. But when someone writes me some literature, I can’t resist sharing it. The following poem, titled “Your review is so garbage” was written by murut87, who shared it on 1up in response to my Patapon 3 review.
Your review is so garbage.
Oh man,here`s come Tom Chicken…..
Your review is so awful,i didn`t have problems on this game,really addictive game but you are worst.
The reason why we all hate your review:
Your review is so awful.
Your review are not-understandable.
Your review are so junk.
You not playing this game…..instead,you just watching….and then you review it suck.
Your rating a totally complete bullcrap.
Thats all i can say,your review are worst than my cat.
The only thing that would make this poem better is a picture of the aforementioned cat.
While trying to get a handle on one of the cars in Shift 2, I fired up the first Shift to see how it felt in that game. It felt pretty much the same, which was no surprise. I had confirmed that, yep, Shift 1 still felt great. The guys at Slightly Mad Studios get how to model the feel of a car — whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean — better than anyone else, so that was no surprise.
But what surprised me while playing Shift 1, which is a good-looking game, is how much better Shift 2 actually looks. My brain remembered Shift 1 looking awesome. But now, to my eyes, it doesn’t look as good as Shift 2. You can’t trust your brain and your eyes to get along. They’re often at odds.
After the jump, putting one right in the brain Continue reading →
Link trudges south across a beige flatland, his shield hoisted. Scuttling about him are Octoroks, red cephalopods with a cannon maw that identifies them as cross-catalogue cousins to Mario’s Birdo. The Hero of Hyrule draws his sword and prepares to join battle. Before he does, a greenish gray smog descends over the land. The heroic music chokes and stutters. My older brother and I moan. Our Hyrule is buggy, prone to armageddons of corrupted data. My brother yanks the cartridge from the NES and blows on the circuitboard like he’s playing harmonica, then slots it back in. I watch eagerly, waiting for Hyrule to return.
Since then, just one other game has enthralled me like that. The game was Link to the Past, because it was the first Zelda I was old enough to play instead of watch. Of the handful of other games to come close, most were Zelda sequels: Link’s Awakening in green monochrome on my half-brick Game Boy; Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess.
Twilight Princess came out five years ago. In the meantime I’ve gotten tired of gaming.
After the jump, I’m getting too old for this Continue reading →
It’s the debut of Game of Thrones on HBO and the eve of Portal 2 on Steam. So why does Mike — you know him on the forum as Vesper — want to talk about a busted down old game like Wing Commander? Find out on this week’s podcast. Also find out what game was doing romances long before Bioware hooked you up.
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