Capcom Farmer 2: Quest for more cash

Super street fighter 4 Announced here.

So yea, let me try to phrase my feelings properly...

Capcom made a shitty boring unbalanced game, and they called it SF4. It had old ass characters and uninteresting ones. The game had false DLC (in the sense that the content was already in the game, but disabled on purpose unless u paid for it). They wanted to balance it and add to it. So what do they do? make an actual DLC? of course not, that would b too logical. They made the same game with minor extras and resell it again.


What the hell is wrong with the gaming world in the recent years? Maybe Valve is taking notes from Capcom though... *rubs chin thinking about L4D2*

But yea, am i the only one sick of being offered the same shit but with different bells and whistles on it and expected to pay full price for it all over again? Feels like people are playing to be beta testers for fuck's sake. And it's shit that should b provided either as DLC or patches.

Yes, that kind of shit exists, there's such a thing as patches, Blizzard makes fucking huge ones over 1gb sometimes for WoW, granted it's a lil different and they still charge u for the expansions (which seem they could had been patches themselves too sometimes), But that's the problem right there:

Blizzard itself used to release a ton of patches for the original WoW, and quite a few for the first expansion. But then they realized that patches aren't as profitable as the damn expansions. so what do u do? You update less and save it all to make an expansion so people pay you more. This recent 3rd expansion was announced really god damned fast if u ask me, and WotLK only had like 2 patches. But i digress...


No matter how much you whore the public, fucking idiots still buy bad recycled games, the gaming companies are realizing this more and more, meaning, they don't really need to make good games, it'll sell anyway so why bother. It's getting to a point where there's no quality, everything is recycled, and u have to pay for everything.

Oh valve, stop pretending

So to my surprise, earlier the L4D blog posted about how the long ass overdue and delayed campaign "Crash course" was finally out. and all the Vavle servers were unavailable instantly. Again.

Whenever L4D updates, u can't play it right away, the game just won't start. Great.


Zach and me waited like 1 hour, i got in and had to wait 10 mins for Zach to finish downloading, we played it, and it's a 2 maps long campaign.

2 maps? This was seriously short as fuck! We got to the rescue when i thought we wouldn't even b halfway done with the campaign. That shit had weapon drops even 20 fucking meters too! I don't even think this was a good campaign, it was decent at most, but not that good compared to the ones the community has been putting out.

It seems kinda obvious they pulled this out of their ass just to claim they did release DLC for L4D and they are indeed "supporting" the game as they first claimed.

Seems the campaign is available for VS, so i guess that's where the appeal for it might b, i don't play VS so i don't quite care for this.

Intresting and unusual tutorial

Or at least, I never saw a tutorial for this myself:

In short, this is a tutorial to make a stereogram picture.

What's a stereogram picture?

Mmm... well, it contains 2 images that u have to view crossing your eyes so that the left eye is lookin at the right pic and vice versa, this tricks your brain into seeing a 3rd image in the middle of them. the resulting image will have a distinct feel of depth to it as if it was 3d.

But aren't those 2 images the same?

No, and that's the point of this tutorial. By displacing background and foreground elements, you're creating a sense that the distance between the elements is different. Which is why u need both your eyes in real life to b able to tell how far stuff is.

Why are you posting this?

Who ARE you? get out of my head! ARGH!!!

P.S: I heard that not everyone is able to see stereogram pictures, like Zach. I dunno if it's a physical or mental limitation, but since i can, i wouldn't b able to explain why not.

Strangest thing this week

Jimmy alterted me to it a couple of days ago when he was helping me with the math for my game. It would seem that Elecbyte, the company that's only known for having created Mugen, the company who hasn't given any signs of life since mid 2001, suddenly decided to b alive again.


Didn't really post about it sooner cause it doesn't affect any of us directly here, nor we care that much about Mugen. but it's still really really strange.

And as they returned into... being alive i guess, they released an update for Mugen introducing new functions to it. I imagine all those Mugen communities might be really excited right now.

When u think about it, Elecbyte made a simplistic DOS based engine with a crappy example character and stage, and stopped updating it in 2001. And somehow, that lil engine became incredibly huge with massive communities still making characters for it. Entire "games" have been developped using Mugen and some fans actually made patches for it to add it more functions like Hi-res support. Weird.

It seems it could had easily become overlooked and forgotten like so many engines, but somehow, it's still big. I can't help but wonder how did that happen and if it was just luck.

Breast envy in Castlevania

I feel awkward just watching it...

My Fair Lady

Many, many years ago(actually like 2 or three, I think. I dunno), that bastion of horrible anime dubs, 4Kids, brought stateside the Kirby of the Stars anime. It was...alright, I guess.

Being the sort of artist I am (read: the type that always ruins things shortly after learning to draw them), I'd think about drawing some of the characters from said anime, but I always put it off, for some reason. I honestly couldn't tell you why. But I'd think of doing it every now and again.

As the years went by, the anime ended, and I pretty much stopped caring about it(as per usual). However, whilst browsing the oh-so-great internets, I happened along some...questionable pictures of some of the more major female characters. I mostly ignored the content and thought back: "Huh. You know, I always thought Tiff's mom was pretty cute, and I've thought about drawing her a few times, but I never actually have." I discussed this with buddy Tof (who is a Delicious Sexy Beast, you know), and when he provoked my little... erm... confession, I tried to scrounge up a screenshot for reference.

I found this:

Considering Lady Like (oh, you and your puns, 4Kids) is a borderline amputee(and that's actually pretty normal amongst Kirby characters), it was strange seeing such a pin-uppy type work of her, especially since it's official artwork...for a kid's show...a NINTENDO kid's show.

In any case, after much prodding from Tof (I think he was just annoyed about it, since I probably initiated the "Tiff's mom was pretty cute" conversation 4-5 times), I went ahead and tried it, and ended up with this:

It's horribly off-model (but most things I draw are), but I liked it. It was fun. Of course, it didn't take me long to corrupt things, as I am easily swayed by the thoughts of my second brain, and well, I'm sure you can guess what happened.


...But I have no regrets. If I got the chance to live my life over, you can bet I'd do it ALL OVER AGAIN.

As you could tell, I had too much free time

Yea i've been screwing around with the blog layout again, cause it's kind of fun to me.

Some stuff is still a work in progress (curse you sidebar), but for the most part it's done. Some things still bug me and don't quite feel right yet, so if you got a comment or suggestion, it'll b welcome.

On a site note

Found this site called Vector Logo Database, which contains vectorized versions of logos for all sorts of things, such as sports teams, cars and computer brands, etc. Thought i'd mention it.

it's one of those things that seems like you assume it isn't useful to anyone and then turns out somebody really needed it.

Cute widdle flurry

I never quite realized how much Debbie looks like them.

In case u dunno what a flurry is, shame on you and play Super Mario Bros 2.

Game review: Resident Evil 5

Well, i surprisingly liked it.

When RE5 originally came out for X-Box 360, I tried out RE4 for PC cause i had hear it played similar and thus i assumed the experience of playing it would b similar. Boy was i wrong...

RE4 is a terrible terrible and horrible game, very uninteresting and gave me a weird kind of headache cause by the horrible textures, everything looked like everything and made me strain myself really hard to figure out what was what. I'm not exaggerating when i say my eyeballs physically hurt after playing it. the fact that people compared RE5 to RE4 sure made me consider skipping it.

It's so hard not to stare at her personality.

Fortunately, it's much better.

Plot

The game stars Chris Redfield as he's part of the BSAA (some sort of anti bio weap group from what i gathered), Chris is in Africa on bisness as it seems there's bio activity there. He meets up with Sheva, local BSAA agent. That's about it, they team up, investigate and find out secrets about umbrella's past. fun for all!

Gameplay - Controls

It's fucking RE, Ugh... the game has classic RE gameplay (in that aspect people were right to compare it to RE4), and really with so many game nowdays with orignal and polished game plays, they're still using that wooden dummy one they have. seriously struggled more with the gameplay than the zombies for the first 2 hours.

And then Neo took the blue pill...

Never seases to amaze me how they never really did anything to fix that horrid gameplay. In this particular game though i noticed that it was hard to walk and strafe to the side, the character starts kinda turning on itself, it seemed retarded seem as strafing worked perfectly fine when not walking. Your best bet is to just run forward at all times, which is some of the stuff i ended up struggling with.

Originally, the RE games were kinda like metal gear solid gameplay wise and view wise, except MGS is actually good. But now RE games seem to more and more want to become first person shooters (which u know what? would b so fucking much better), but with the retarded controls. The reason they had those controls back then was cause the camera was stationary. These controls so don't work in this day and age.

Gameplay - Levels and Battles

So all those control problems aside, there's a RE game, within a RE game how does it fare?

The inventory is so fucking dumb, the "non paused inventory" i mean, god dammit that's just stupid, it's amazing how they manage to not realize that was never a good idea! u don't want zombies rushing u while you're looking for a weapon with bullets u can afford to "waste".

Admittedly, i like that u can buy and upgrade weaps between levels and continues

The levels aren't too hard to navigate in, i did get stuck a couple of times, but nothing major.

Battles are all the same though:

• Run away from enemy, Don't worry if u have to pass right in front of him, he'll probably miss if he tries to attack you.
• While they're approaching you, navigate through your menu and get appropriate weapon.
  
• Shoot at his weak point for massive damage.
• If he's still not dead, back to step 1.

Because of the still broken and unpractical gameplay, there's only so much u can demand of players, u can't matrix dodge shit, or even jump, so encounters all feel similar.

Also, Capcom needs to learn that NO ONE LIKES QUICK TIME EVENTS. worse, concept, ever. seriously game critics have been bitches about those for years and some people still think it's cool to do it? who wants to see the 5 mins long cutscene again because for god knows why the character couldn't dodge without u pressing A+D. This ends up making all cutscenes stressful and u don't pay attention to the story as you'd like. Dumb ass move.

Had to watch this scene 4 times.

I do like the partner gameplay though, having the CPU help me, auto use healing items when needed and find/carry items for me sure made this a much more bearable game cause the CPU sure didn't seem that bothered with the lame controls and it's nice to have at least 1 competent member in the duo. I believe u can play this game with a friend in co-op, which sounds pretty cool.

Prettynessness

The graphics are very good, this was a 360 game so it's obvious, the levels are well detailed and all that crap. Of course being a zombie game, it's all dark and gloomy, but still, looks fucking nice. Although the game doesn't really have a visual style, it does use filters to convey ambiances and make a tiny visual statement. Nothing really stood out though.

The monster designs can't b judged too harshly seeing as it's a RE game, so a bunch of crap already exists in the series and there's only so much room for improvement. Bosses are memorable to say the least though.

Is this still Africa? Seriously?

Levels are pretty good, there's a decent variety of settings u go through, some i totally didn't see coming.

Other stuff

Some boss battles seem so stupid. Especially the giant boss on the cargo ship, easily the biggest boss in the game. When he forms, you're treated to a big quick time event sequence (oh how i love pressing buttons when i'd rather see the scene), u make your way to the top of the ship as Sheva nags u on how to defeat it. as u get on the bridge, u see a note on how to operate a laser satellite. Convenient much? but more than that, is how the boss just dangles all his weak points in your face for u to shoot at your pleasure.

A boss that big should not be so simple though.

I just get this undeniable feeling of convenience and how the bosses really aren't trying. Except for Wesker, he's drastically on the other side of the scale (which only makes me ponder on the subject more).

In case u don't know, in this game Wesker is Neo from the matrix, and I'm not kidding, he's pretty much Neo, but evil. Talk about abusing the bullet time. And Jill is pretty much Trinity as well, all scenes where either are in feel like a direct rip off the matrix, even camera angles and shots, moves, etc. a lil too much is "borrowed" from the matrix. I just couldn't get into it cause it was being too obvious.

"Brrrrother!!!"

Unlike the mutated bosses, Wesker is played up a LOT and extremely inconvenient for you when it should logically be the other way around. I hated how he "dodged" a grenade's explosion at his feet by taking a low stance and moving his upper body towards the lower right, the animation was obviously meant to dodge bullets, but you know what? if this was an indie game people would give it crap about that and Capcom shouldn't b able to get away with that, especially with the huge fucking credits this game has.

Verdict

RE5 is weird to me, obviously Capcom could make a game with much better gameplay, a lil more fast paced and challenging. But they insist on this weird unnatural formula, so they actually choose to have it this way. Go figure...

[mandatory "get to the choppa!" joke]

The game likes to remind u of the events of the previous games, on every loading screen they tell u of past events in the series. I assume to keep u up to date with what's going on with the story, but as for the game's own story, meh, seemed a lil weak.

If u can get past the controls (which isn't that hard if you've played at least 1 RE game), it's actually a pretty cool game, there's clearly improvements over the other games in the series, it's visually well done and the partner system is good.

I don't really want to admit it, but I liked it. I can easily see how it could b disliked though.

Sort of want.

Minty Fresh

Just a random scribble I did for Bittenhard a while back. It wasn't at all an attempt to fill him with a sense of obligation to do something in return. I swear. Seriously. Nosiree...You still readin' this? Get outta here!

Sun-Bleached Sorceress

I want to emphasize how worrysome I am about oversexualizing this particular character.

...Eh, screw it. I just wanted to try doing tanlines.

Thoughts about furries

There's stuff that always bothered me about the "furry" deal, some with the furries themselves, and some about the people who aren't.

The thing that bothers me about furries is what it implies, or rather what people think it implies. Jimmy's girlfriend recently had to write something about furries and by what Jimmy told me, she knew next to nothing about them, but i can imagine what she thought they were: a bunch of weird people who wear animal costumes and are into bestiality. If that wasn't it, it probably was something close to that.

That's what something who knows next to nothing about furries would think. Someone who has seen some furry art (granted depending on the art) might think that furries are freaks that are all gay/bi and into vore, pedophilia, herms, inflation, dick nipples and other weird ass fetishes.

He's wearing fur! how come that doesn't make him a furry?

I personally can't even guess where the animal costume stereotype comes from, I'd say it'd a whole other fetish really, since more than 95% (i hope) of said furries wouldn't wear one of those. As for the rest, i guess people don't understand that being a furry is just liking anthropomorphic characters, and that's it. It doesn't even have to b sexual really. People see pictures of such characters involved in the previously mentioned weird ass fetishes and associate being furry with said fetish.

Some people are into vore (god knows why), some of those aren't furries. Doesn't mean that all non furries are into vore. It's this retarded assumption that people tend to make towards furries though.

Just baffles me.

The other thing that has been annoying me is how furries themselves are so incredibly unimaginative. 80% of the time, perhaps way more, they have their anthro character runnin' around in completely normal human settings. What i mean is, they will have, for example, a highschool or college setting, the characters go to classes, eat at a cafeteria, have parties, and hang at the dorm. Everything is really normal (and boring), and the only difference is, the characters are anthros.

What's the point?

Why bother having these unique (arguable, i know) and even fantastic beings if you're gonna just have them live like normal boring humans? it almost defeats the point of using anthros for that in the first place.

They're "evolved" versions of animals, one could give them a tribal culture, different traditions and values, their own society, etc. There's potential for very original, cool and interesting stuff, and people have them do boring ass regular human stuff. That just makes furries boring and lose their appeal. Humans in fantastic adventures seem far more appealing by comparison.

Well Flurry kinda sounds like Furry, seemed relevant...

The last thing that bugs me is, if an artist draws humans, mystical beings and anthros, there's a chance (not quite sure how big, but there is and has happened) that people will just flat out label him as a furry because of the anthro art. how does that make sense? can't a guy just be an artist anymore without being labeled?

Really furries nowadays are like butts: someone people are into them and some aren't, don't try to understand why.

"Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend"

One of the weirdest things I've seen in ages...



Was that gay or awesome?

If "Scooby doo" was a musical style

Varla's theme from "House of the dead: Overkill" would totally fit into it.

You can listen to it on Youtube and if you like it you can download it on Mediafire.

"Diesel's SFW XXX Party Clip"

It says it's SFW, but i seriously wouldn't watch it at work. It's fucking brilliant though!

Takin suggestions

Actually pretty neat animated cursor i made for it there, i swear.

Seems that i can use the mouse to create "something" on a click, question is, what would b a good idea to make?

Anyone with a good idea for a skill and effect on mouse click, just post a comment or something.

Platforms are excluded though. As Trine taught me, giving a character the ability to create platforms/blocks breaks a platformer.

"House of the Dead: Overkill" Ost

I kinda recommend it... It's very funky.

Feels oldschool, and some songs are hilarious and/or very rude. This OST is missing the rude ones though.

The game itself is pretty damn fun too. It's fun to play with a friend, but wielding both wiimotes by yourself is a pretty unique experience and works out better than you'd think.

I beat the game recently and it's great fun, the music is a big part of the experience though and i started listening to the OST again, found some links to it and thought I'd share:

Megaupload / Rapidshare

Enjoy.

P.S: Today's Debbie's Bday but nobody drew anything, so... nothing to post, sorry.

Remember that Daisy game idea?

Well, i started turning it into a reality shortly after Zach's Bday.


I picked up Multimedia fusion 2 (I heard it was used to create Noitu Love 2, which is awesome) and started to tinker with it. To my surprise, the "coding" is similar to the warcraft 3 world editor, in the sense that it's event based so it's not too hard to pick up.

The standard functions in MMF2 are however slightly flawed. For example:

• collisions would b calculated to the pixel, and so depended on the sprite instead of a collision box,
  
• inappropriate sprite could cause a bug where when u landed, the stance sprite was a few pixels higher from the ground, setting u back to the falling animation, back and forth.

I looked around and for a good tutorial "game" called the static engine, which uses invisible sensors to detect collisions. the engine is quite good and all the basics were there, so i started implementing Daisy into that engine, and in the process learning more from it. because i want the game to feel like a game from the Mario series, i had to add quite a few sensors and features.

At this point, i have all of Daisy's basic movements all perfectly done and tested. 1 action is still missing sprites and additional code for the animation (pushing), but everything else basic i could think of is done.

Now I'm at a point where i need to plan the game to know what to do next. What i mean is, i got the character moving and such, but what should she b able to do in the game? what puzzles or obstacles am i gonna have in the game that will make her require abilities to get through them? along with that, what kind of level design should i have?

I'm just kinda stuck. I wish i had help on this, it's annoying always doing everything alone.

Heroes of Newerth - The new DotA?

So i was randomly browsin 4chan's /v/ and came across a reference to "Heroes of Newerth" in a Warcraft 3 topic. What i found out surprised me a lot:

The site does not contain much info at all, but a lot can be deduced, such as:

• This is a remake of DotA on a new engine (easily assumed to be the Starcraft 2 engine), and the interface has been setup specifically for DotA.
• The Hero models and even spells were made specifically for this map/game.
  

Blizzard knows that DotA is what kept their sales of warcraft 3 going to this day, and is by far the most popular WC3 map ever. As to why, i have no fucking clue, it's boring as fuck and slow paced.

However, the existence of this game leads me to believe that Blizzard worked closely with the team that made DotA to make this. I have to admit it looks visually impressive, but when i think it's just DotA, the urge to yawn rises inside me. It's still impressive to me that such a project could happen, I've never heard of anything like it.

I really wish they had done all this work for something that was a lil more... u know, fun?

Sir Little Turd

Brave Fencer Musashi is a game I picked up on a whim, and somewhat due to a nice review in an old gaming rag I used to read. If anyone had to explain it briefly, saying "it's kinda like Zelda" is a good way to put it. But that sorta belittles the game, so I try to avoid doing it(even though it is sorta like what might've came to be if Nintendo decided to keep Zelda traditional instead of going in the direction they did with OoT).

I was surprised to find myself totally falling in love with this little gem(WARNING: I'm about to make this game sound way better than it probably really is), thanks mostly in part to it's pint-sized protagonist. Musashi is tough, somewhat bratty, an asshole, and an unlikely hero all at once. Well, unlikely is sort of a strong word, considering the little guy picks up steam-powered mechs and tosses them like they were made of paper. Musashi pretty much disrespects everyone from the get-go, making it no secret that he's not happy about being contractually obligated to save Alucaneet Kingdom from the Thirstquencher Empire. He adopts a blatently apparent "let's just get this over with" attitude towards pretty much everything he's asked to do, usually confirming his orders and punctuating them with a "Whatever". But over time, Musashi grows attatched to the people he meets, but in his own "I'm still a disrespectful jerk" way. I really love the little guy.

Been a long while since I drew him. It's mostly due to the fact I'm never really happy with how they turn out, or can never think of what he should be doing, etc. You know, the usual hang-ups I get nowadays.

Abysmal mood

Stuck in mid rage/depression/frustration/disappointment mood. It's not even because of TF2.

Air Ride or Die

Kirby Air Ride was originally a game meant to be released on the N64, but due to numerous pushbacks and delays, it was never released, until 2003, on the Gamecube.

Basically, Kirby Air Ride is like Mario Kart, except with Kirby. Actually, if you compare it to Mario Kart, it looks pretty bare-boned and abyssmal by comparison. I'd heard things about it in reviews, and when it was first released, I'd have to agree that I wouldn't recommend buying it after renting it for a few days. It's fun, but it's not really a must-have. But nowadays you could probably find it used for a good price. It's a nice way to kill time.

The game differs from other racers by offering essentially three different modes. Air Ride is the "main" mode, but unlike Mario Kart or other mascot-lead kart racers, there isn't any sort of Grand Prix to do. It's straight up Versus racing. The game plays on Kirby's copy ability in place of random item boxes, but for the most part, they're actually not that useful. Top Ride is a top-down race on very small tracks, just like this old arcade game that's name escapes me right now. It's somewhat more akin to Mario Kart in that random items will appear and they're effective in annoying other racers.

But this little guide here(yes, this IS supposed to be a guide) will be focusing on the City Trial mode, mostly because it's my personal favorite, it's more robust than the other modes, and it's the mode I know the most about. City Trial sticks you in this hub world for a set amount of time. When that time expires, everyone is challenged in a random "stadium" mini-game, using the Ride Machine they "built" to compete. What do I mean by built? I'll explain that more thoroughly some other time. ^^

Valve used to be a good company

But now they're a bunch of hypocrites that just hurt their fans.



Won't b playing anytime soon. Thx Valve for sucking hard.

Game review: Trine

As far as i can tell, Trine is fairly unknown. I heard about it from Yahtzee from Zero punctuation in a 2.5D review. The concept of Trine intrigued me, so i gave it a try.

Story

To b honest, the story feels like an obvious excuse to explain the gameplay system, but still, it has nice artwork so I'll tell it:

The story sets the mood for the game and begins as a fairy tale. Long ago, there was a peaceful kingdom, and all was good until the King died. Then a huge struggle to succeed him began and new kings would take the throne just to lose it the next day.

Meanwhile...


For unknown reasons, the dead began to rise and terrorize the kingdom. and... that's about it. I confess I'm going by memory here, but the artwork is so fucking nice.

After the exposition, we're introduced to the present time, where the thief is about to attempt stealing a powerful artifact. when she gets to it, she's stuck on it. soon after, the wizard awakens, and finds the thief, touches the artifact, and is stuck on it, and a bit later, you guessed it, the knight finds them and gets stuck too.

The artifact then fuses them all into a single entity, sort of, and they can switch between each other and talk to each other. They quest for a way to separate themselves. The wizard recalls that there are 2 more artifacts, so they go and look for them.

Gameplay/Characters

This is very much like "Sonic heroes" in the sense that you can switch character and each character has their own ability and skills. but i believe it's more like "Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse" because you only have 1 character on the screen at all times.

This is a pretty interesting plat former because it's physics based. you can move stuff around, throw it, hit it to make it swing, etc. maybe for that reason, some of the puzzles aren't as hard as intended because you can do it multiple ways.

the gameplay depends on the character really:


The Thief:

I honestly thought they would play the sex appeal card with her, but i don't think they did. you cant really tell how attractive she is and nothing is that exposed. You get the feeling she's hot, but she doesn't show too much skin so you can't confirm.

Early game most people might find the thief hard to play, but she's agile and quick, and can just save you a lot of platforming and hassle if used right. later on in the game she can b effectively used to battle enemies too.

Her skills involve a grappling hook and shooting arrows.

The Wizard:

Aka the guy who breaks the game. Early game you might find yourself milking this guy for all he's worth when you have to platform, but switching back when it comes to monsters, cause you see, he's the only one who can't attack monsters.

I felt he had an unexpected role in the game, i don't tend to find as wizards are the best things to platform with in a game. But his skills are based on creating boxes, ramps, floating platforms and also he has the ability to move stuff around.

Later on, when you dunno how to get passed something, you may found yourself picking this guy and creating 8 objects on top of each other to cheese it.

The Knight:

I think this guy is supposed to b the comic relief of the game. Early game, by far the best way to fight enemies, since that's all his abilities do really, he attacks and defends with his shield.

Later on he can pick up crates or stones to throw them, but that's incredibly useless since the wizard can move stuff around anyway. Although you can use the thief late game to fight enemies, since those will start having more and more armor, the knight is still the best choice against enemies.

You'll value him on the last level, believe me.

Graphics/Level design

This game is really really nice looking...


The levels have some fucked up platforms, it only tries so have to make the obstacles look natural, but still, wouldn't b a challenge if it didn't include difficult platforms such as those ones that rotate on an axis.

As Yahtzee mentioned on ZP, sometimes to get through an area and looks back at a tons of platforms and objects and wonder if you were supposed to used those, cause it's not that hard to skip stuff. But i guess that it makes you feel smart when you do it really.


The game has an intresting experience system: Potions. for each 50 green potions you get, you get a level, as you get a level, you can get or upgrade skills (triple arrow shot is how you make the thief decent against enemies)

Bosses you say? there aren't any as far as I'm concerned. sure there's a giant skeleton that pops up 2 or 3 times, and some sort of ogre thing, but they're so terribly easy to defeat that i don't thing they were meant as huge threats.

I really liked that the levels didn't ever make me backtrack, but there's an exception with the 2nd to last level, but it's not too hard. You cna easily get to the last level without getting a game over, but the last level is drastically different and will catch you by surprise.


As the pic might imply, the lava is flooding the place, and you're gonna race against it. but that's not all, a specter will spawn (much like the wizard does) objects in your path to fuck up your progress. and your will die, a lot. This is the closest the game has to a boss fight.

Thoughts

the skeletons are all you fight in the entire game, i'm not counting bats cause they're too easy. When into 1/3rd of the game, i started to hate the god dammed fights. not cause they're hard, but cause they're actually boring and slow the pace of the game.

But the thing is, a skeleton spawns, you kill it, and have to wait like 2-3 secs for the next one to spawn, and you don't wanna get the the delicate platforming with skeletons harassing you, so you wait for all of them to spawn, and maybe 5-6 will spawn. that's like an entire minute there waiting for the damn things.

Also, skeleton archers are dicks.

Verdict

I beat the game fairly quickly, it's 15 levels and i think you can beat it all easily in a day. The game is nice looking though.

I think of this game as an enjoyable experience, but with not much of a replay value. If you get a chance to borrow it from a friend i recommend it, just not sure it's worth paying for it to just have it sit on a shelf when you beat it.

I'm rating it "Sort of want".

Nyeh, lil djinn celebration soon

As espected, Tof's bday was vastly ignored by everyone, no big surprise, it's always the same and i dont mind that much.

"But master, I has never dun dis b4..."

But less than a week after Tof's bday, is Debbie's anniversary.

Unlike her master, Debbie has a lot of people who claim to like her, she's also the unofficial mascot of the blog until one of us actually comes up with something (which we probably wont).


I'm curious to see if anyone will doodle anything this time, if so, i'm so calling them a bunch of sexist bastards XD

Oh, btw, the doodle up there is obviously by Zach.

A composition of vnartist

Interesting... http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html