STG's

Dead Horde is a top view, arcade style Zombie killing game. The graphics and sound are adequate. My problem with it was the gameplay, which mostly consists of holding the trigger (and all you need is point in the general direction - no precision required) and shooting at small groups of zombies while running in the other direction. That is pretty much it. There is not much strategy involved, and for me, not much fun either. You can also buy upgrades at a shop. While they do make some difference, it is not as much as I'd like. The game has vehicle sequences. One felt like a bonus round, where you went around running over groups of zombies with an Humvee.  Another was a simple "puzzle" - you get into a forklift to raise a metal structure. The problem was - the first time, it didn't show me the control system (up and down arrows). So I was going around trying to figure out what to do. The second time I entered it displayed the controls. Personally I'd just go w...

E.Y.E - Divine Cybermancy is an indie RPG FPS with a heavy cyberpunk style. While it does look interesting on the surface, it mostly feels like a mod made into a game. The graphics and sound are good (I'd say excellent for an indie game). There are some quasi-comical moments in the tutorial start - for example, a few times you'd get referred for a short video which could much better be expressed as 3 or 4 phrases (the basic movement tutorial or basic weapons, for example). Your missions consist of killing, hacking (which has a somewhat clever mechanism) and other mayhem. Personally I really didn't like the overall gameplay. Specially how enemies seemed to pop from anywhere...

Faerie Solitaire is a Solitaire game (my favorite is the Spider version that comes with Windows 7). The gameplay is quite simple - you have a foundation card that you must match with a lower or higher card. There are a few variations added to this - for example, frozen cards that must be defrosted with a special card before playing, or cards blocked by thorns, which you unlock by clearing a rose column. You can also buy extra powers, such as extra undo or seeing blocked cards. The gameplay is reasonably fun, since there is a bit of strategy to the game. There is also an attempt at story, but it is very minimal - it looks like they had a checklist with a Story item, and had to uncheck it. The graphics and sounds are acceptable. I do wish that it took the music off seriously - the music when a hand is over still plays... There is what feels like a side game with pets that are hatched from eggs. They don't seem to apply to the actual game - you just get the resources to g...

RuneSpell: Overture does not fit in the regular game genres. It is a poker game with battles decided by card matches - much like Puzzle Quest. In a very similar way, you also get a number of other cards and allies that you can use during the game. There is some strategy involved in which cards/allies you choose for each battle. Graphics are pretty good, but what surprised me the most was the quality of the music. I imagine many won't appreciate it, but I really loved the orchestral epic theme. I very much enjoyed the unusual gameplay. I recommend checking out the demo.

I just removed Addthis from my site  after realizing that their script was, by far, the largest object in the main page. Got my main page from 4s to 3.2s. And according to their stats (for my site), there really was no point in keeping it there... I'm keeping Google +1, however - it is tiny and may have direct effect on searches.

Lucid is a match-3 style game. It doesn't actually matches 3 (apparently it varies with the levels from 2 to 5), and it uses a different selection scheme than most games of the type. Instead of clicking or dragging a block, you draw aline  over the blocks you want to select. You also have to select all the connected blocks. The game mode in the demo requests specific colors for more points. Sometimes it won't be possible and you will have to do another color to get the right blocks. Overall, the sound and graphics are acceptable, only a little simple. I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay, but if you like the game style you might want to try out the demo.

Critical Mass is a 3D match-3 (actually, match 4) style game. You rotate a color shape made of cubes to find the right spot to eliminate as many cubes as possible. You also have a few power ups. The graphics are good, but the music is incredibly repetitive and annoying after a a minute or so, at most (something I've heard about elsewhere, so it is not just me!). I found the gameplay more annoying than fun. While the 3D does add to the possibilites, constantly rotating to look for the best match didn't feel as nice as just seeing the best matches. I have played a ton of match-3 games I've liked in the past, but this one really didn't work for me. There is a demo available - if you think you might like it, do yourself a favor and try the demo before buying. I'm off to play a little Bejeweled 3 - now that is great game music! :-)

MetaGame - by Sam Landstrom - was pretty awesome. It is hard to believe this is his first book. I certainly await anxiously for more of this quality - so much so that I immediately after finishing, I came to the computer to Like his page on Facebook and write this review. The world in MetaGame is pretty unique. Sure, there are a few staples of SF - nanotech, virtual reality, immortality, and more. But in this world it is all about the game. The game is not just a form of entertainment - every kind of work is rephrased as a game, where you get points instead of money. This can be used to optimize output - as mentioned in the traditional fake encyclopedia chapter starts, and also on real work (this reminded me of the chapter "Learning from Video Games" on Designed For Use  which also mentions Flow in user design). One neat point is that with ubiquitous tracking of everything you say applies to an universal affiliate system. All recommendations of a product that you make g...

Call of Duty: Black Ops is pretty much the same as most other CODs. Plenty of action, with minimum freedom of action (I miss the original Far Cry freedom to cover the objective in a dozen different ways!), and some nice shooting sequences from vehicles. One thing I really hated about this COD is the annoying flipping sequences whenever you go back to a menu (or the repetitive video sequences on Zombie mode). Other than that it is regular COD - good with some memorable sequences. What I really liked (although it gets tired fast) is the Zombie mode. Those are a few levels (at least with the full DLC - not sure how much and if any came with the original game) where you get attacked by zombies and slowly get extra "cash" to buy access to places and weapon. Pretty cool, albeit the hell dogs can be a bit though for me - and I really hate the fact that they teleporting from nowhere. A few levels have hilarious starts, such as the JFK/Nixon/McNamara/Castro pentagon level, a...

I recently bought an iPad 2. I already had a latest generation Kindle, which I really liked. However, reading PDFs (which are quite common for technical books) is a major pain in the Kindle. It is slow (and slows down more the further I get into the book), and highlighting is pretty slow too. The screen for the regular Kindle is nowhere big enough for a regular A4 formatted PDF. I had the option of getting a Kindle DX or a tablet. I kept hearing good things about the iPad 2, and it can do a lot more than just reading books, so I decided to try it out. (This is a Kindle vs iPad 2 comparison - I posted my iPad 2 review separately). One thing I really like about the iPad 2 is reading PDFs. It is pretty fast and works great. iBooks is not perfect - it seems I can't set a zoom level for a PDF and keep it there. Nor can I highlight text and add notes, only bookmark pages. I also read any Kindle technical books mostly in the iPad now. The bigger screen and faster highlighting ...

I've just finished American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition , by Neil Gaiman. I did read American Gods about ten years ago, when it came out. However, after all this time it was quite blurry in my memory and I only remembered bits and pieces. So I can't tell you exactly how much is changed in this edition. There are some obvious additions after the ending, such as a short scene with Jesus and a short interview with the author, that were midly interesting. I liked the book the first time, and this second time was pretty good, though. It was a real page turner, and very enjoyable. I'm not sure how to go to about the plot without dropping spoilers all over the place, however. I can only say that I really recommend it.

I just got an iPad 2. It looked pretty cool for a number of things, and while I love the Kindle for fiction books, it is pretty awful on PDFs (and also, highlighting, which I do an enormous amount of in some books). A decent browser would also avoid turning my computer on only to check minor things. My first surprise was when I saw the box - it said iPad only, not iPad 2. Looking up the model number reassured me that in fact this is an iPad 2. I can't help but think that this is a very annoying idea. I hear that the idea is that they never sell older models, so whatever you buy is always the latest... The box is pretty elegant, and reminds me a lot of the Kindle. The manual is even smaller... About the device, it feels a bit heavy (I'm used to the Kindle) and the color screen is gorgeous. The only other touch screen device I've used was a Samsung Galaxy S. The touch screen seems similar in quality. I really miss the return button - looks like it would be useful pret...