STG's

I just tried the new (on Steam) demo of another TD (Tower Defense) game, iBomber Defense. There are a number of apparently interesting features on the full game feature list, but unfortunately they don't make an appearance at the demo. The demo consists of two levels, one at land and another at sea (which is a nice, but overall meaningless change from the TD norm). The levels have a few (way too few) generic enemies and a couple of tower types that you can place and upgrade. That is pretty much it. You have a point at the beginning of each round that you can use to increase to amount of times a tower can be upgraded, and the towers can be damaged - which is sadly lacking on many tower games. But all that means is that you have to constantly watch for damage and click to pay for repairs. As far as I can see, nothing more worth mentioning. The graphics are ok, and the music is bearable, but the gameplay is so boring and uninteresting that I see no reason you should even try i...

I just got an interesting error: VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0) VCPU 0 RunVM failed: -2. Pretty scary. There was a single reference on the search page that was useful - apparently VMware Workstation and VirtualPC (running here in the form of Windows 7 XP Mode) don't like to run at the same time! I did have to restart the computer, but after that everything worked fine. A very nasty scare, though. I'll be sure to try and keep better backups of my VMs for a while... Update: I've been told that the problem doesn't happen if you turn off Hardware Virtualization in the VMs options. I was unable to find this option on the Windows 7 XP Mode version of Virtual PC, however.

4 of 5 stars Hydrophobia: Prophecy is an interesting third-person view game. I usually hate third-person games, but this has a good reason, as it has plenty of sequences where you jump into pipes and narrow walkways (reminds me of Mirror's Edge a bit), where it is definitely needed. The water effects are supposed to be a big deal. So far, they (and the rest of the game) look very nice, and are very appropriate for the theme. There are plenty of small puzzles, and the game definitely points you where to go most of the time. The tablet that is used in the game(called MAVI) has plenty of uses - a silly hacking routine (where you match waveforms), hacking into CCTV feeds, opening doors remotely... Pretty neat. Overall, I really like this game so far. It's well worth its price.

I just got "runtime error R6025 - pure virtual function call" when starting up Hydrophobia: Prophecy for the first time. The recommended fix I found in the forums is turning everything to medium and turning off Depth of Field and High Quality textures on the settings dialog. That didn't work for me, however - what did was turning off VSync. I then had to run twice - the first time it just closed without a message, but the second time it ran fine.

Fortix 2 is a QIX clone. As in all of those, you draw lines to try to enclose either a enemy, or an objective. You have to avoid being touched by enemies or their shots while drawing. I found Fortix 2 to be mostly boring. It has the classic QIX control system, which is slower and a bit annoying. One QIX clone I really liked was Cosmo Bots (Warning: download link). The different bugs and map shapes made it quite fun, and I really preferred the mouse based control scheme. I'm a bit amazed that they still sell it for US$20 after all those years, though!

Please note: this is a review of a beta version of a game demo. I'll update it as I play new versions. SPAZ - Space Pirates and Zombies - is a 2D space game, currently in beta. It reminds me a bit of Space Rangers, but you have a mothership, which makes the game completely different. In the mothership, you have hangars for the various sizes and types of ships. You can use the tactical screen to command all ships (flow by AI) and you can also command any one of them yourself. The game space, while not 3D, is gorgeous. You can fight enemies or mine, depending on the situation. There are also quests available, where you get resources or good will from a faction. There are a few resource drops - rez (which is described by the game as an element which makes gates possible, but sounds like a generic resource abbreviation), crew or data, which you can use to research better components, or add up over time for new ship types. You have many options when building your ships - canno...

Just went through another of the Trylle Trilogy books - Torn, by Amanda Hocking. Again, it was pretty entertaining, but not exactly epic. I'm not exactly sure how big they are, but each book feels more like a novella than a novel. The whole character development into Elora's past (and thus Wendy's) was interesting and a good complement to a story that had very little in important events after the beginning.

4 out 5 Dwarfs!? is a game I find a bit hard to define. It is a bit of an arcade game with strategy elements and retro style graphics. It also has a tower defense mode. The basic idea of the game is that you are the overseer of a mine. You command the dwarfs as they go around digging. Command is a bit too strong - as they mention in the game, it is more like directing lemmings. You use arrows to move dwarfs or guards to wherever you like, but these have a cost so you might want to just let them get near it randomly and give them nudges. In the Dwarfs world, there are several dangers - water, lava and enemies (goblins or warlocks). You use walls and dynamite (to create holes) to block the first two, and guards for the enemies. Guards are also directed with arrows, and you also have the option of shooting guards from a cannon from outposts. I'm not exactly sure how that is supposed to make sense (I mean, do they just go through rock???), but it is useful on the game as othe...

I've been reading Analog since the 90s - in paper, from newsstands. Several years later, I subscribed. And when I found it in e-book form at Fictionwise, back in 2004, I soon switched. The April 2011 edition is the first one I've read on my Kindle (Mobi format). Naturally, it is much better to read it this way than on the palmtops and smartphones I used over the years. I do like that the cover graphic is available, although I miss the story art (not available in the PDF format either, I was surprised to see). I'll be keeping to Fictionwise for now - not only I hear about problems in the Kindle versions bought from Amazon, it also only allows reading on Kindle hardware devices, while the Fictionwise version can be read on Kindle, PCs, iPad, smartphones, and more. A bunch of nice stories on this edition, although nothing that seems memorable. One item that I found interesting enough to comment on was the Science Fact article - Smart SETI by Gregory and James Benford. ...

Thought I'd share the following solution to the problem where you get the message Games for Windows live failed to initialize on Section 8 Prejudice, even before the main menu. Open Comodo settings Goto Defense+ Tab Open Defense+ Settings Goto "Execution Control Settings" Tab Click on "Exclusions" for shellcode injections (Buffer overflow) Add S9.exe Add S9-Win32-F.exe from the Binaries directory Click "Apply" That worked for me. This might work for other firewalls, just adjust the procedure to their setting screens. Some of you might say that can't possibly help, as there are no log entries anywhere for those programs in your firewall. The problem usually happens when the firewalls try to analyse the program while opening. I've seen it happen to many other programs, including my program that Print Folders . At one time, every single program that used Armadillo (which seems to me to be particularly troublesome in this regard) ...

3 out of 5 Initially I wasn't able to play - here are the details on how to fix it if you also have the message "Games for Windows Live Failed to initialize . Even after the fix I still wasn't able to login with Games for Windows Live - it complained that the e-mail/password didn't match and then showed me the login screen again. With a little detail - it won't let me edit the password! Pure genius! However, the game works even without logging on. So far it is a bit disappointing - it does look very good, and in principle it should be fun - it has all the right guns, some nice customization options and great graphics, but the gameplay was pretty disappointing to me. The enemies seem to come from nowhere, and shooting them tends to be too simple-minded. It's just no fun. For US$15, that might be acceptable, or maybe the standards for consoles are different, I don't know. But I really can't recommend it

I've been getting a Fatal Memory Error when trying to upgrade WordPress to 3.1.1 on my Linux Install. One thing that I really liked about the Linux install (as opposed to the install on my main site is that upgrade meant just a click - on the main install I have to download the ZIP file, unpack it, and either send everything again or read the list of what was changed and send those files. There was a simple solution though - going to PHP.INI and just increasing the memory using this line (it was set to 32MB before) memory_limit = 64M; You can see other ways if that doesn't work (you may not have access to PHP.ini) in this article .