STG's

Dead Meets Lead - The Challenge is the demo of a zombie game. It features a top view and two weapons - a sword and an old style shotgun. You quickly get swarmed by zombies, and can kill plenty at a time with the shotgun and the special moves of the sword. The game is quite beautiful, and I really like the art style. However, I didn't find the gameplay - at least on this demo - to be any fun. It reminds me a bit of the old Crimsonland. The big difference is that I really loved it, and it had plenty of weapons and special powers that made it awesome. This is pretty personal, of course, and you might love it.

Sanctum Reviewed by: Luiz Marques Review Date: 2011-03-28 Latest Update:  2011-04-15 4 out of 5 stars When I heard that Sanctum was a FPS and a tower defense (TD) game, I just had to try it. But the overall effect is not exactly as good as I anticipated. Warning: this review is of the version available at the time (20/Mar/2011). I've added updates below of the changes in the beta and final release. While games with an FPS and TD component are not common, Sanctum is by no means the first. Iron Grip: Warlord is much older, and in many ways, better. As far as graphics goes, Sanctum is clearly the best looking TD game ever done. It uses the Unreal Development Kit and they really spent time and money making great looking graphics. The holograms and big screens in particular look amazing. The mechanics of how to build and upgrade the towers is clever - every single block shows a few holos of your options when you walk into it. The towers are about monster high,...

GhostBusters was a great film at the time. I loved it, and I also loved it the soundtrack, which I heard (on LP!) many many times. There were a few games about it, even starting with 8-bit computers in the 80s. I fondly remember one of those, which had many strategical components, even back then. GhostBusters: Sanctum of Slime is clearly a budget title. The comic book style bits are interesting, but I can't help but feel they could look better. The game looks ok. On all the action I've seen, you go around with your ghost busting crew in similar looking rooms, shooting ghosts that are either yellow or red - and choosing the red or yellow gun. You handle a few waves of ghosts, the room doors open up, and there you go to another door. After a few minutes of this, I was pretty bored and annoyed. I understand there are other game mechanics (something about driving in the car hitting ghosts), but I was way too tired of the beginning to bother. The only nice thing about the...

Just had the error "Product Activation could not write the activation signature" when trying to activate Multiplicity Pro on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Thought I'd post what solved it to help anyone who got a similar problem... I solved it by running Impulse and choosing Re-Activate. It did take the opportunity to complain that my subscription to Object Desktop was expired, but the program was activated anyway (as well it should, since I bought it out of the Object Desktop bundle).

I just heard about Blogger Stats  which are a simple way to get stats for your blog. Yes, I know it's pretty old, but I'll usually just come in, do a quick post and leave - I never noticed the new tab. It's neat, it works and it shows numbers that are very different (and always larger) from Google Analytics, which I have been using here and on my main site for a couple of years. I'm not sure why that would happen - and for example, on my Atom Zombie Smasher post I get 13 pageviews in Stats vs 2 in GA... Not a small difference. Of course, the tools available are very primitive by comparison with GA, but it's fairly acceptable for a built-in tools that requires no work on your part (not that GA requires much work, either). Given the difference in accuracy, I'll be using it regularly from now on. I was also surprised today to find out that this blog has a Google PR of 3. That's not very high, but it's much higher than the 0 I presumed... I imagine i...

DogFighter is, as you can probably guess from the name, an airplane to airplane casual game. I never bothered to try it before, but it was on sale on Steam this weekend, so I decided to give it a whirl. This is going to be an even shorter review than usual. The reason is that I really didn't like it. The gameplay and controls just feel annoying on my keyboard/mouse. The only thing I did like was the heavy rock soundtrack - but that is repetitive enough that I was bothered after a few minutes of it.

Atom Zombie Smasher is a strategy game with an interesting look. It is in many ways a tower defense game - you use a number of interesting towers (mercenaries) to kill and slow down zombies, while an helicopter flies in and rescues survivors. The helicopter is what makes it shift from the tower defense genre a bit. The most effective rescue spots shift with the incoming zombie mob, and can be manipulated with barricates, bait and your units. Mercenaries are also sometimes movable. The mercenaries are quite interesting - you get plain rifle units, snipers, artillery, barricades, mines, and more. There is quite a bit of strategy on getting things right, too. Mercenaries get experience over time, which allow you to upgrade them. Graphics are a little beyond retro - zombies and survivors, as you can see in the screenshot above, are merely colored dots. However, in the game setting this work well. The load screens have a fun, cartoonish theme, that is repeated in the "vignett...

Magicka is an action role playing-game where you use various elements combinations to make spells. You then use these spells to fight monsters. The spells are a huge part of the game. There are a whole lot of combinations, and several are shown throughout the game. Others you have to discover for yourself. There is a full reference at MagickaPedia  , as well as walkthroughs. There are also many funny references throughout the game. Check the screenshot below for one. And the walkthroughs are quite useful, as there is quite a bit of strategy involved for each boss, given the many spells available. One of the many funny dialogs What I didn't like - the mouse only controls (I'd much rather move with WASD keys - I guess this is an unfortunate console decision), and the game doesn't seem to have it's screen locked for multi-monitor configurations, so on a heated battle, you can easily click out of the game. Fortunately, the game stops, but then takes about 10 s...

During reviewing Risk:Factions, I set it to Windowed Mode. However, it was impossible to return to full screen because it lost focus of the cursor and wouldn't get it back. There is a very simple solution - just alt+tab way and back DURING the revert settings screen, and it gets cursor focus again.

Risk:Factions is based on the classic board game Risk. Some of the added features are silly characters, and a whole bunch of level specific game mechanics. For example, on the level on the screenshot, whoever has 3 barracks get control of the missile. The missile adds to your attack power on territories within range. On the next campaign level, you have mines. Whoever has the mines get extra troops depending on troops stationed at the mine. The animations are well done - specially the (somewhat silly) cutscenes. The sounds and music are ok, albeit a little repetitive. The only thing on the interface that really bothered me is how you select the number of troops to deploy or move - you have to move the mouse, but the control moves too fast and you have to try more than once to get it right sometimes. Overall, pretty good for the fans of the genre. Risk:Factions EA Review Date: 2011-03-09 4 out of 5 stars

Regarding Ducks and Universes - by Neve Maslakovik - is an unusual and pretty cool parallel universe story. The main character in the story is Felix - which recently discovered he wasn't unique. You see, in his Earth, the universe was split by Professor Singh (well not really, but saying what happened would be a spoiler) 35 years ago, and everyone that is that old has another self in the parallel universe. Now he has to find out if his alter is writing a culinary mistery book. If that sounds absurd, absurd is a sub-theme in this book. There are a lot of cute references to differences between the universes, and to the mystery of who is trying (if anyone is) to kill Felix, and why? Pretty fun, well recommended. Regarding Ducks and Universes Author: Neve Maslakovik Review Date: 2011-03-02 4.5 out of 5 stars

For the last few years, despite plenty of physical activity and eating food that are supposed to increase your HDL, my HDL levels have been low - lately it was 35. Last year, I commented with a friend about the research on how  anthocyanin increases HDL (contained in Açaí berries, and in other berries), and he suggested that I used a    Organic Blueberry Concentrate  . I had bought other stuff on iHerb, and it was pretty cheap so I gave it a try. A couple of months later, I did my regular blood tests, and I was very happy to see that my HDL had climbed to 45! So I highly recommend trying this if you have low HDL, or if you'd like to get higher HDL levels.  Y ou can use the coupon code   IHE117  to get a US$5 discount of your first order at iHerb.

Droid Assault is another game by Puppygames. It features their characteristic retro style graphics, and has some simplistic droid battles. The big twist is that you can hack over other droids, thus getting a small army of droids over time. There are plenty of droids, with different armor, weapons, etc. I didn't find the gameplay to be fun, though...

Spacechem is a puzzle game. You use sequences of blocks to - and that is the very original part - assemble molecules from atoms. I have in fact played many similar games (i.e.: connect blocks to achieve a certain effect). I've rarely really liked them, and that is the case here. I just don't see much fun in it. The music is pretty good, though. If you like this kind of game, you might enjoy it.