"I'm here to kick ass and drink cups of tea...and I'm all out of tea."

• 21Dec 09

  Game Review: Word Kingdom and Ad Lib

  Both these games can be found by going to dictionary.com and clicking on Word Games.

  Word Kingdom: In this game, you earn supplies for your kingdom by spelling out words using tiles representing each item: food, wood, stone, and gold. At each level you are given certain tasks to complete. At first it starts out easy as your first objectives are just to gather enough items to build a level one marketplace, level one blacksmith, and a level one archery, stable, barrack, or magic guild. Then you have enemies to worry about attacking or defending against. If you're defeated you have to start the level over again. These enemies get tougher as you go along and while they're attacking you have to keep spelling out words to replenish your supplies in order to have soldiers defending your castle. This gets very annoying as most of the tiles will not be the ones you need (food, gold, or magic if you've decided to go with a magic guild). You can't pause the action to stop and replenish items or trade your unwanted quantities of stone for any of the other supplies at your marketplace. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it since a good percentage of the time my troops will march right past an oncoming attacker and wander off-screen never to be seen again! They use up so much of my resources they'd better damn well be doing their job! After almost a week of playing, I'm still stuck at the same level, but that's okay since my Flashplayer will probably conk out again by Christmas and I won't be able to play anymore. Although I hate it that my Flashplayer routinely updates itself every 2-4 months and then stops working after a week, I will not miss playing this game because it frustrates the hell out of me.

  Ad Lib: This game is designed a lot like Tetris, only with letters instead of groups of four blocks (since most of the words I'm able to hash together on the quick have four letters, Tetris is a pretty accurate comparison). The more words you spell or the more of the same letter you group together, the more rows you eliminate. One way this is not like Tetris is the storyline they give you. In the beginning, you see two siblings walking into a room and picking up a supposedly magic book that turns one of them into an owl. You're playing as the other sibling and you have to spell out words to pass all the levels to turn your sibling back to normal. If this were one continuous game like Tetris, I think I'd enjoy it a little better because just when I'm getting into the zone, I get enough points to pass and the level ends abruptly. Plus, every so often little messages will pop up warning you about the different kinds of blocks that will appear: unmovable letters, exploding letters, freezing letters, and extra points letters. As usual, if you can't spell any words to eliminate enough rows, the game is over once the top row reaches the top of the screen. After a certain number of levels, the sibling is returned to normal. You'd think you've won and the game would be over, but not so. After the screen announcing his return to humanity, the game still continues until all the letters reach the top of the screen. There are still levels to pass, however, but I haven't been through enough of them since the game does get harder from here. I do enjoy this game - in fact, I think I might be addicted to it. It's a great game to pass the time with because it's way more exciting than the daily crossword (about the only game on that site that will work after my Flashplayer inevitably dies again) and nowhere near as aggravating as Word Kingdom. It will be missed. In fact, this is probably going to be me after my Flashplayer stops working and I won't get to play for months on end:

  

  "Going crazy...Need my Tetris..."

  • Posted Dec 21, 2009 5:01 am PT
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• 18Dec 09

  Yule Ball - Who would be your guests of honor?

  I was just thinking of all the things I have to do for next week....wow....

  Anyway, that got me to thinking about Harry Potter. Specifically, I saw a Christmas tree that looked like Luna's dress from Half-Blood Prince. I know that was Slughorn's Christmas party and Yule Ball was in Goblet of Fire, but whatever. It sounds better. Which leads to my question: if you could invite anyone to your party, real or fictional, who would it be and why?

  Aside from my friends and tv.com friends, it would be Ryou, of course. After that, Luna herself and possibly Hermione. If I lived in the Potterverse, I hope I could call them friends. Then there's Abby and McGee from NCIS. Hopefully Abby would bring Caf-Nog and gingerbread Abby cookies. Finally, there would be several Power Rangers invited: Tommy, Zack, Rocky, Adam, Kimberly, and possibly a few others.

  Now I have to go kill a fly because I haven't felt comfortable eating and stuff with it buzzing around the house for the past two days.

  • Posted Dec 18, 2009 9:33 am PT
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• 1Dec 09

  It's December 1st...What's your favorite holiday song?

  Hi! I've changed to a more festive banner for the month. On the left is Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Angel from RENT, and on the right is Jesse Martin as The Ghost of Christmas Present from A Christmas Carol (2004).

  What sort of songs do you like to listen to at this time of year? My favorite classic to listen to is Carol of the Bells, especially the version played by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. My favorite classic to parody is The Twelve Days of Christmas, my favorites being The Twelve Pains of Christmas and Shrek's Twelve Days of Christmas. And there's this other song that's been stuck in my head ever since I heard it called Merry Frickin' Christmas. Not to beat you over the head with Christmas, I'm going to shut up now. But first, a few elf pics because over at the Yu-Gi-Oh Elfed thread we kinda got bored of it around Thanksgiving.

  

  

  

  

  • Posted Dec 1, 2009 5:01 am PT
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