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.