STG's

I feel a bit silly reviewing  Batman: Arkham City, as it is such a well know game. However, that does fit on the minor function of public journal of this blog. Batman: Arkham City  is a sandbox game, where you are contained in a specific city area. You attack with cool moves you can upgrade, and can fly fast around the town in a completely non-feasable way, which nevertheless is very fun. Wait, was I describing Prototype  or Arkham City? Well, the description fits both equally. On a large scale, they feel very, very similar. And in fact, some of the parts I liked most is just flying around, using cover to take out enemies. The fight system on Batman (and boss battles) feel a little more console oriented, and less fun, though. Graphics and sounds are pretty good (although even with below top quality, sometimes it overwhelms my 2 year old PC), and most of the gameplay is fun. There are some mild puzzles, specially involving riddler's trophies, which unlock some sp...

Pirate Cinema, by Cory Doctorow, is a politically heavy novel that takes place in the near future. (Mild spoilers below!) In this future, (or current present - I'm not really keeping track) downloading illegal materials in the UK can get you cut off the net. As people increasingly depend on net access, this can be very bad. And that is what happens to the main character, who loves making new movies out of existing footage. Getting cut off from the net really messes with his family, and he ends up running away from a tiny city to London. In London, he ends up as a homeless person, but makes new friends, meets a girl, and continues to make awesome mashups of older movies. Eventually they fight the new law that criminalize piracy (in pretty creative aways). Overall, it was a very enjoyable read, and I imagine it would help set opinions against criminalizing piracy and allowing reuse of existing material - if almost everyone that reads it didn't already agree. Also, it ...

Gas Guzzlers Extreme is a racing shooter. You start with a particularly lame car (after a single race with a well loaded, nice car), and as you win unlock more powerful cars, upgrades and weapons. Clearly nothing revolutionary, but driving feels fun and has OK physics. You can really feel the difference between driving on the road, desert and snow. Crashes and bumping off the road looks a little arcade-y, though. Weapons are OK, but don't think that you are going to get a nice shot and take someone out. With the shotgun, machine guns or rocket launchers it is going to take a while to kill any enemy. There is some big impact effects from hits of rockets or shotguns, though. (on regular settings, at least. There is an arcade mode, but I didn't try it yet) There are several tracks, as well as regular, no weapon races (boring!), the main races where you can use guns, and an elimination mode where the slowest car on each lap is removed. Of course, there are power-ups you ca...

Voxatron is a 3D shooter using voxels (volumetric pixels). These were quite popular in the early 90s, and I remember Comanche (one of the first games I played that had them) fondly. Right now Voxatron is an alpha, but it is still fun. The biggest contributor to that, is that shooting out parts of the map is part of the game (for example, you can shoot out a column to get objects on top). There are also several guns available, as well as explosives and a build gun that shoots persistent blocks. Looks and sound are very retro, but very adequate for the theme. The game is tiny - 15MB installed.

Eets Munchies is a puzzle game. It is currently in beta, I believe. The game goes in the tradition of Lemmings and so many others since. You must guide a character using some objects that are available on each level. In Eets Munchies case, you also have objects the you interact with, such as a whale that will suck Eets in and throw him on an arc. Graphics are very good, and sounds are adequate. I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay - but then, this is a game genre where this is common for me.

Fez is an interesting puzzle platformer. The unusual part is that you can rotate your world around, which you need to do to get cube shards - which are used to unlock doors. The visual and sound are full on retro, with some cute extra effects. The one thing that really annoys me is the use of controller only control hints (also, using Enter to go to menu, and using escape for a map!). I prefer to use the keyboard in almost all games, and you have to figure out the equivalent keyboard controls. Other than that, it is pretty nice.

Rocketbirds Hardboiled Chicken is a neat action platformer. In this game, you are a chicken with a rocket pack, attacking some sort of albatross nation with an evil leader. Graphics are pretty good - specially so for the cut scenes - and music is pretty good too. Gameplay is OK - not bad, but I didn't feel it was particularly fun. There are regular platform levels - with minimal jump puzzles, at least as far as I played - where you mostly shoot around. There are also some section where you fly with your rocket pack. This game came with a Humble Bundle.