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[Nov. 18th, 2009|08:55 pm] |
I joined this group at school called Games for Learning Institute, or G4LI. Basically, we make small educational games for 6th-8th graders. I (partly) finished one and they put it up on the website: http://g4li.org/archives/1248
Feel free to play it. It's not a finished product, but it's playable. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|08:46 pm] |
a little late, but here's the list of games for October:
The Beatles: Rock Band (360)
Great game, and I'm still playing it. Basically it's just a rock band game, but with only Beatles songs. Also, there's stuff about their career and added three-part vocal harmonies. I actually got a couple extra mics and plan to get all the achievements in the game, if I can. 46 out of 50 so far...
God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)
Pretty good, although using the analog disc/stick on the PSP just frustrates me. I have the old model of the console, though. Does anyone know if the later models are any better? The game is just more of the same in the God of War series. More of the good.
Super Mario 64 DS (NDS)
Fully completed this port+ of Super Mario 64. The camera is even more frustrating on the small screen, but it's still decent. Not great, in my opinion, though.
Where's Waldo? The Fantastic Journey (NDS)
A Where's Waldo game for the DS. Fun, but not spectacular. And short. But not bad. Don't get it unless it's less than 5 bucks. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 19th, 2009|09:23 am] |
tetris was created 25 years ago this summer. here's some cool tetris related stuff:
bastet, or bastard tetris, is a version of tetris for unix that intentionally selects the worst piece for your current set up
here is a neat little program that someone set up to automatically play 9 simultaneous games. it looks neat.
furniture
also, if you search for them, you can find graduate theses related to tetris. |
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[Oct. 18th, 2009|11:49 am] |
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anyone wanna play (beatles) rock band or guitar hero on xbox live? |
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[Oct. 8th, 2009|12:23 pm] |
games for september:
Gun Nac (NES)
This wasn't a bad little shooter. It took a couple of tries (I think, I can't really remember), but it was over relatively quickly. There are a few different weapons that you can get and power up, as long as you don't accidentally pick up a power up of a different weapon, in which case you'll have to start all over again. None of the weapons are particularly stronger than any other which makes for a good balance in the game. It's an NES game, so there's no real in-game story.
Assassin's Creed (360)
Going around killing templars in 12th century middle east is fun, not to mention well animated. The framing device was fairly interesting and helped explain away a lot of what would otherwise be ridiculousness in the game. Basically, you're being held captive in some facility because your ancestor found out some information that your captors wants. The premise is that one's ancestral memories are passed down through one's DNA, so they hook you up to a machine and you "sync" yourself up with those memories by acting them out. Your ancestor was a member of the Hashashin, which is where the term "assassin" comes from. It's funny listening to people say "Why would someone do something like that" when you make your character run up and climb the side of a building in a busy plaza. However, a lot of things in the AI just don't seem right. You can murder someone 20 feet in front of a guard, walk past him as he approaches the body and hear him say "Did anyone see who did this?" The controls can be a little picky at times, especially when jumping around the pier, which led to a lot of restarts. The (non-stealth) combat plays a lot like a rhythm game, which often works, but sometimes you seem to get hit for no foreseeable reason. Despite these flaws, the whole of the game made it great, but not superb. Also, I don't find any joy in going around collecting flags just for the sake of collecting them. If I wanted to play Animal Crossing, I would.
Scribblenauts (DS)
This game was a huge letdown. You control this jerk named Maxwell, and it's unclear whether you, the player or Maxwell (through your actions) are writing things in a pad. The aforementioned things then appear in the game for you to place wherever you want as long as the game decides it's a valid place to put it, i.e. not in a wall (or apparently too close to a wall). I assume the game is called "Scribblenauts" because everything in the game looks like it was drawn by a 5-year-old. The designers pride themselves on putting over 22,000 writable items in the game, but I would venture a guess that 80% of those things are plants or animals that you've never heard of.
There are certain sparse, fun moments when you realize, "Hey, I could create *this*!" and you do, and it's a meager shell of what you wanted to create. Want a UFO? Well I hope you want a huge 5-year-old-drawn clunky UFO that can't fit anywhere you'd like to use it. Also, the game is really picky about adding modifiers to the nouns you throw at it. Ladder? Check. Long ladder? No. Large ladder? No. The way you get a long ladder is by typing in "fixed ladder." Ice Floe? No, "Large Ice Layer."
Did I forget to mention the plot of the game? That's because there isn't one. I'm sure if I could find the instruction booklet for Gun Nac, it would have some information about evil aliens trying to conquer the world and you trying to stop them. As for Scribblenauts, there is no story at all. You play two types of puzzles: "Puzzle" which is you doing shit for someone, which could be as basic as typing in "bone" for a dog, and "Action" which is you just getting a star. By the way, this star could be locked behind a door that may open up if you, say, type in "bone" for a dog, therefore eradicating any difference between the two modes.
But by far, what is worst about this game is the controls. You control your character, Assface, with the stylus. Click on someplace in the playing field, and he'll run ten feet past it, or simply jump repeatedly if he gets stuck behind some kind of barrier. Also, whenever you create a new object, it's centralized on the screen and you need to put it somewhere before it actually exists in the game, but when you use the stylus on it to drag it around, sometimes the game thinks you want Fuckwad to run to where your stylus is instead, despite the fact that you point to the direct center of the Glacier you just conjured. This is great when you're constructing some elaborate combination of items and you want someone to start jumping up and down on it, knocking everything everywhere.
On top of all this, the game has bugs. I watched a truck flicker, facing left and right and left and right, slowly rising off the screen and out of the game for no understandable reason. The ropes, which you end up using many times, act like snakes with buttholes that they believe you are trying to ram suppositories into. Half the ideas you come up with simply don't work or aren't programmed in. If a switch on the wall is up and you drop a crate on it, it doesn't flick down, it just bounces off! Fire makes ice explode, and anyone with out a weapon just fights by slamming themselves into each other until one falls down and then explodes. When I picture the programmers of this game, I imagine them coding in the same way that the characters fight.
Scribblenauts sucks. |
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[Oct. 8th, 2009|12:22 pm] |
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is bittorrent the only good way to go for music file sharing online nowadays? |
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[Sep. 25th, 2009|10:21 am] |
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is cursive writing still relevant? |
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[Sep. 23rd, 2009|09:26 am] |
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i saw jennifer's body yesterday (it's a movie). it was goofy, and there are strange facts about it: it was written by diablo cody (wrote juno). there's a screeching weasel song in it!! amy sedaris and the guy who plays j. jonah jameson in the spiderman movies are in it. |
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[Sep. 11th, 2009|09:33 am] |
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
--Charles Babbage, 1792-1871 |
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[Sep. 9th, 2009|09:13 am] |
only 5 more days til new mario and luigi rpg!
only 6 more days til scribblenauts! |
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[Sep. 4th, 2009|06:30 pm] |
Games of AUGUST:
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - The magnum opus of the phoenix wright style games. It incorporates the different methods of the PW games and adds it's own mechanic that was not bad but nothing special. The cases were fairly intriguing and the characters were colorful. All the cases were good on their own, but they all tie together to create a captivating story.
The Legendary Starfy - A 2D platformer in previously Japan-only series. The game was pretty easy, although some of the extra challenges were decently challenging. The writing was childish but insignificant. Fun if you have nothing better to do.
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box - One of the main flaws of this game is that it's too short. There are a ton of puzzles and brainteasers to figure out throughout the game, though the main storyline isn't the best. Some of the puzzles are a little tedious, but those a few and far between. Definitely try this one out and the original if you like puzzles.
Bioshock - Game number 350 on the list is this gem. An FPS isn't anything new, although it runs on the reliable Unreal engine. The setting and story are what make this game, in addition to the iconic Big Daddies. Plunged into a Randian dystopia, your character has to make his way through an underwater city full of disturbed npcs in an attempt to escape and save (or not save) the Little Sisters in the process.
LocoRoco - Good PSP games are hard to find. This game is easy to find. As a 2D platformer collection-fest with slightly innovative controls, LocoRoco offers little in the way of entertainment. The game could have been eight levels long because the 32 levels following the first eight are just rehashes. The hidden items are found simply by jumping (there is no walking in the game) at the walls. The physics are fairly consistent, but this makes for frustrating controls and sludgelike maneuvers. However, the searching for hidden alcoves is mind-bogglingly addictive. Even in the final levels when I was just trying to hurry up and end the game, I would find myself taking detours to accumulate more Loco House parts. |
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[Sep. 1st, 2009|08:51 pm] |
a while ago, an ancient landfill was found and there were early copies of the bible in it. what's funny is that they translated a certain part that said the number of the beast was 616.
also, there's a band called vomitron with a song called "665: the neighbor of the beast" |
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[Aug. 24th, 2009|09:06 am] |
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ugh, and now roald dahl, too? |
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[Aug. 23rd, 2009|04:38 pm] |
oh i'm bummed. i found out two things today that make the world suck slightly more:
1 - lovecraft was a big ol' stinky racist. were jews so out of favor in the early 20th century?
2 - orson scott card is a big ol' stinky homophobe. and a mormon.
i really don't like when people whose works i respect or thoroughly enjoy turn out to have such disgusting ideas. it's part of the reason i can't often bring myself to listen to wagner. what do you guys think? does it bother you when musicians, artists, authors whose art you enjoy are total assholes (present company excluded)? |
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[Aug. 6th, 2009|11:25 am] |
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nicole and i walked right past alec baldwin the other day. he looked at us and she made a crazy shocked face at him; it was pretty funny. |
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[Aug. 5th, 2009|10:33 am] |
Two Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games for July: Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations, both for DS. Both use the same format, but it's slightly different from the first game. There's no dusting for prints but you do use a "Magatama" to see if people are hiding things and then use evidence to get them to open up. Both are just as good as the original title, and, like the original, there are some parts where the logic doesn't seem exactly solid. However, those parts can be overlooked.
For the PSP, Crush. This game was fairly fun and would have been more fun if the analog stick for the PSP wasn't such a terrible piece of shit. The playing field is inside the main character's mind, in a 3D area that you can crush into 2D and go back to 3D in order to maneuver around obstacles and such. Not bad, but the controls make it frustrating at times. The puzzles are decently difficult and although I originally planned on 100%ing the game, the controls just got to me about 3/4 of the way through. |
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