A Gaming Diary
Archive for April, 2010
Dwarf Fortress (Mac)
Apr 23rd
Infamous ASCII-like game with one of the most obscure interfaces I’ve ever seen.
I’ve tried to play it before, but never very successfully. By which I mean that I started it up, failed to do anything, then quit.
For the first time, though, I’ve got somewhere. Sure, I’ve flooded all my lower floors after a floodgate disaster. Yes, my dwarves nearly starved to death and many of them went berserk and killed their friends. No, I can’t work out why my dwarves are leaving animal corspes lying around. And I can’t work out why no crops seem to be growing on my farm.
Still, I’m doing okay. I actually managed to dig out a multi-level fort before flooding it. I’ve made beds and a floodgate and lever to operate the floodgate. I’ve managed to trade with the merchants who arrived. I’m doing pretty well, all in all.
Hipstamatic (iPhone)
Apr 23rd
Yes, I’m still taking pictures with Hipstamatic and still enjoying myself thoroughly.
Chaos Rings (iPhone)
Apr 23rd
Yesterday, I was wondering if I’d move on to the next dungeon or go back and level up a bit in the first dungeon.
The answer is that I went back to the first dungeon, but played it on a harder difficulty.
And got slaughtered.
I may have to rethink this plan.
Hipstamatic (iPhone)
Apr 22nd
I’ve still been playing around with this app a lot. I even got on Distracted By Star Wars with my Princess Leia picture. Hooray.
Chaos Rings (iPhone)
Apr 22nd
I cleared the first dungeon last night. The boss wasn’t easy, but I’ve seen worse. He had an annoying “restore health” spell, but at least he had a health bar, so I could see how well I was doing.
A far more tactical fight that just hitting Attack over and over again, with a lot of spell casting and item use involved.
And I ate a lot of chocolate.
Lovely little dungeon crawler, this. I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be a bit better with randomly-generated (rather than just randomly-populated) dungeons. Don’t suppose it makes much of a difference.
Not sure whether I’ll push on to the second dungeon or just level myself up in the first dungeon for a bit. I’ll probably find out at lunch time, if I don’t get distracted by anything else.
The Impossible Game (iPhone)
Apr 22nd
The Impossible Game is an iPhone conversion of an Xbox 360 indie game. It’s a side-scrolling, one button obstacle course, where you simply need to jump on blocks and avoid jumping on spikes.
It is, as you might expect, very, very difficult. There’s a practice mode, which lets you place checkpoints, but to do things properly you need to get from the start of the game to the end without a single death.
My best score so far is twenty percent.
I doubt I’ll ever do much better.
It’s a brutal, repetitive game of trial and error and trying to force the timing of screen presses into your muscle memory. As such, it’s the kind of thing that many people don’t like at all… but it’s the kind of thing that I’ve enjoyed since the days of Green Beret on the ZX Spectrum.
Chaos Rings (iPhone)
Apr 21st
A high profile release, this. It’s a proper handheld JPRG game, designed for the iPhone and not relying on an existing name for sales. It’s also very expensive by iPhone standards at £7.49, making it the most expensive iPhone game I’ve ever bought.
I’ve only played it for an hour and a half so far, but I don’t think I’ve wasted my money. It’s very impressive indeed. The production values are incredibly high, there seems to be a ton of content, the story is intriguing, the battle system is fairly simple (without being overly so) and the box-pushing puzzle sections are a nice change of pace. (You don’t need to stand next to the boxes to push them, taking care of the most annoying things about box-pushing puzzles in games.)
Back to the beginning, though.
When you start the game, you’re asked to choose your team from a choice of two. (I believe there are four teams in total and I guess you unlock the missing two by completing the game with the first teams.) I chose the team on the right, consisting of scantily-clad lady warrior types Eluca and Zhamo. (Yes, the game features silly RPG names. Yes, I had to look up those names because I couldn’t remember the spelling off the top of my head.)
Once you choose your team, there’s a fair bit of story to wade through before you can start playing. By JPRG standards it’s all over with pretty quickly, but it’s still a bit too long when you’ve got the iPhone in your hands and you’re itching to, you know, play the bloody thing.
After that’s done you walk through a big door into the first “dungeon”, a strange mix of lovely, leafy glades and neon-lit corridors. It all looks very nice and there’s loot to pick up from treasure chests (which appear to be placed randomly whenever you enter the dungeon) and a few puzzle rooms and, yes, random battles. (After a short while you get an item that lets you turn them off, but, really, I don’t think you’d want to very often. Partly for the rewards, partly just to see the excellently-animated enemies and partly because if you’re playing an RPG and don’t like the battle system, why are you playing at all?)
In battle you first choose whether to attack with each character separately or as a pair. The pair option gives a combined attack that’s supposedly very powerful, but means that each enemy can in turn target both of your characters with each of their attacks. I’ve not used that option very often, but I guess I’ll investigate its worth later in the game.
During battles you can obtain the “genes” of the monsters you fight, meaning that you can use some of their powers in the future. (Though, strangely, you can obtain the genes without obtaining any of the skills that come with it. I had tortoise genes for a while that didn’t come with any associated magic.) Or, to put it another way, you learn spells by fighting monsters.
It’s all beginning to sound a bit complicated, but it’s fairly simple in practice and I can see agonising choices ahead when choosing which genes to equip.
Using skills learned from genes uses up magic points, which, unlike hit points, don’t get refilled after battles. I got to the first mid-boss after lots of magical experimentation and had a devil of a time beating him. When he died I had one character knocked unconscious, my other character was one hit away from death, I was out of MP and I’d used most of my items.
Rather than carry on, I left the dungeon using an Emergency Exit (which refills your MP) and stocked up on supplies at the shop, before going back in for another go. I suspect that’s the pattern of the game. Choose a dungeon, choose a difficulty level for that dungeon, then work your way through it as far as possible before leaping out again, going to the shop and trying again. I’m already terrified of what the boss at the end of the first dungeon might do to me.
There’s a lot I’ve not talked about – levels, equipment, etc. – but this post is already far too long and if you’re reading this you’ve probably already read a proper review, anyway.
So, yes, it seems to be a really good game – it reminds me a bit of how I felt playing Riviera on the GBA, though I’m not sure why – but let’s see how much I actually end up playing it, eh?
Hipstamatic (iPhone)
Apr 20th
I didn’t play any games last night on any format, instead choosing to spend my time watching Nighty Night and taking pictures with my new toy – the Hipstamatic iPhone app. It’s a camera app that uses different virtual films, lenses and flashes to make interesting, retro-looking photographs.
There’s no way to apply filters to existing photographs, which initially disappointed me, but I soon got into the mindset of treating the Hipstamatic as an actual camera, not as a way to apply filters to pictures. It’s a lovely toy, but be warned that the £1.19 purchase price only gets you a few of the films, flashes and lenses – the total price of the app comes to over three pounds when you purchase everything else. Well worth it, though; I’ve not had this much fun taking pictures in years.
Here are some pictures I took, almost all using the shake-to-randomise function, which selects a random flash, lens and film when you shake the iPhone. You never know what you’re going to get!
Some of those pictures are obviously better than others, but they show off the range of effects – and can you imagine how dull a lot of those pictures would be just taken with the standard iPhone camera? I may never use the standard Camera app again.
Football Manager Handheld 2010 (iPhone)
Apr 19th
A weekend of highs and lows. Mostly highs. After a bit of a wobble we started winning more than we were losing and, at the time of writing, we’ve climbed up to second in the league. Not bad after our woeful start. (Let’s hope the Astros can do a similar thing over in baseball-land.)
Anyway, here’s some pictures.
The most annoying thing about the injury is that I should have prevented it. Jason Norville was getting tired, but he’s so very, very good that I didn’t want to be without him. So I decided to play him for the first half and replace him at half time. In the forty-third minute he picked up his three-month injury.
Still, after another rebuilding (i.e. losing) phase after his injury, we seem to be back to winning again. Maybe it won’t be a complete disaster.
Vector Runner (iPhone)
Apr 19th
Great little game to play for a few minutes here there. Which applies to approximately seventeen thousand iPhone games, I know, but this weekend’s time-killer of choice was Vector Runner. Very simple, gets very hard, doesn’t have any annoyances. Shrug.
Yeah, sorry, my heart’s not in it today. Back from the dentist after root canal work. Not really in the mood for extended blogging.