Spectre welcomes you to the profile of alx222000.

I have a plan,
a grand scheme.
But it would take such luck,
it's little more than a dream.
My mind has convinced me,
that it's the way things will be.
Now I'm caught in the dream of my head.
A terrible trap. The sweetest web.

--------------------------------------

Logic. Literacy. Law.
For these I Live.
Creation. Comedy. Company.
For these I Care.
Weakness. War. Wrongs.
For these I Worry.

In life we create, In creating we live - The Creators' Guild Union


Want an up to date list of anime I've watched? Go here.

• 16Oct 09

  Indie stack

  Just a round-up of game purchases since last blog.

  There was a set of indie games on sale on steam (some time ago now ), so I've now got:

  Audiosurf - Nice idea, take any music, and it becomes a little racetrack with coloured blocks to collect and make sets, like a puzzle game. Unfortunately, I'm not that into trying to beat online scoreboards, so there's not much insentive for me to play this.

  Blueberry Garden - More a piece of art than a game. Haven't played it much, but I know it involves finding things that can be used to build a makeshift tower.

  Braid - Platform puzzle with temporal physics and a lovely artstyle. Quite good, though I was really annoyed when I found out the reason I couldn't complete a puzzle was the fact that the game didn't tell me I could change how fast time rewinds. One puzzle. One, single, puzzle in the whole game needed this. If it wasn't for that puzzle, the feature wouldn't be necessary. But the puzzle existed, so it was necessary, so why didn't they tell me about it? *rage*

  Crayon Physics Deluxe - Draw shapes to make a ball roll past obstacles to the star? Nice idea, but this game doesn't really feel like they've done it right. Example - Creating swinging objects to knock the ball. Okay, the first time, with an outline is fine, but ever time after you have to judge the distance yourself, and it's tempting to go find a ruler or compass so you don't have to watch the hammer you just made run into the ground for the umpteenth time. Actually, the original (free) CP, which restricted you to rectangles, was kind of fun.

  Darwinia - A minimalist RTS, with a style reminiscent of (really) old shooters like Robotron. The story and feel are nice, but pretty much every level involves going through the same motions, with only a handful of available strategies. and since you can't really lose, it's not that difficult. One nice thing, you get upgrades over time, so if you do get a bit stuck (if), you'll eventually get some improvement to assist you.

  Everyday Shooter - Static screen shooting game, but with a bit of music and flair. From what I remember, the main hook is that by shooting stuff, you create additional notes that add to the background music. It was a nice feature, but not really all that. Still, the actual game was solid, and each level was interesting to play. Though, I found it quite difficult to get through all the stages with just the default amount of lives, but that's why you can buy more.

  Gish - Platform game with a mildly physics-based character: A ball of tar. The abilities are: stick, slide, heavy. But the physics aren't really a puzzle thing. Small gap? slide. Enemy/small wall? Jump and heavy. High platform? Stick and climb the wall. Not really a bad idea, but sometimes it's just too difficult to do what you want. You can sometimes get stuck while sticking (ha), and trying to get a decent jump is annoying, bouncing up and down until you've got enough height (which doesn't always work properly).

  Mr. Robot - Part isometric puzzle-platforming, part RPG, with a nice story. The platforming and puzzles are solid, though the isometric angle can be a little difficult. The RPG part is decent, but a bit on the easy side (last boss is a pushover). One thing, the upgrading/equipment part made me feel like there should have been more to find, for instance, some equippable items have slots. I started finding slot equipment about half-way through the game, but only found a couple of items to use in them until right near the end of the game, and then, there were only two different types. Oh, and the stat boost items, well, raising your max HP by 1 point is alright when you have about 10, but once you've got 20 it becomes a bit pointless. At least those boosts can be switched to something else.

  The Path - Little spooky exploration game, with a red-riding-hood theme. Not really horror, just a spooky atmosphere. Is interesting, but can take a little long.

  World of Goo - Physics puzzle, attach blobs of goo together to form a structure that takes them where they need to go. Very nice, with quite a bit of variety.

  ---

  That's all for the pack. I also wanted to mention that just yesterday I got a few more games, Assassin's Creed for the PC (Draw distance on some of those objects is terrible, is that just the graphics not being set high enough?), along with a few DS games, Scribblenauts (just had to), Pheonix Wright and Sonic Rush adventure.

  Okay, I'm done, I'm not even going to proofread this thing, bye.

  • Posted Oct 16, 2009 9:22 pm PT
  • Category: Games
  • 18 Comments
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• 18Jul 09

  A word unto the silence

  Well, thought I should mention, I've started my yearly work. Would have considered the announcement more important if it actually made any difference here, but with people being boring, it doesn't really.

  
  Badly-drawn al-X raises an eyebrow at you. You take 9999 damage.

  Got little King's Story for the Wii. Nice so far, though it can take a little long to get places and sort out particular things, I also keep kinda wishing there was another layer of control.

  What's that? You're bored as well as boring? Okay, couple of good old-arcade-type flash games: Dodge & Boomstick.

  • Posted Jul 18, 2009 11:18 pm PT
  • Category: Other
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• 31May 09

  Blog O' Spam

  One blog, ingredients: 0% content, 100% spam.

  Here is an appropriate song. Now, on with the spam.

  I occasionally find links to various flash games, but I'm starting to notice a trend, that many of them, particularly the better quality ones, seem to be found on one site, a place called Kongregate. And since I was ending up there regularly, I thought I might as well create an account and see just how much of my life I end up actually spending there, by accumulating points and achiev....I mean, badges. They also have a referral thing, not sure why people bother, since the points have no actual use, yet anyway.

  A few examples of fun/interesting games I've tried out on Kongregate: Spewer (liquid-physics platform-puzzle), Crush the Castles (trebuchet firing), Shift 4 (perspective-change platform-puzzle), Gravitee (planet golf). Apparently there are also things called 'multiplayer games' on there which I have yet to explore.

  What? Trying to get people to do stuff to boost a pointless score on some website? No, no. If I was trying to do that, I'd tell people to go visit MyBrute and give my guy an exp boost. What is it? Well, I guess you would call it a little, pyramid-schemish, raise a guy to fight thing, where most everything is random/automatic, apart from choosing who to fight. There's not really much to it, but it does look nice.

  Let's see, what else.....

  The Escapist is home to some nice video series, like Zero Punctuation (Cynical and humorous game reviews at sports-commentator speed), Unforgotten Realms (Animated D&D parody), and I suppose I'll mention Unskippable (Game intro movies with added humorous narration).

  If there are any Team Fortress 2 fans reading the blog, you might want to check out Nerf Now. Best TF2 webcomic I've come across so far, though I suppose that's mostly because it isn't a Garry's mod thing

  Hmm, alright, I seem to be out of spam, for now.
  Blog Ends.

  • Posted May 31, 2009 1:58 am PT
  • Category: Other
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