A Gaming Diary
Archive for July, 2010
Carcassonne (iPhone)
Jul 27th
As suspected, I’ve been dropping down my friends leaderboard. I managed to lose some very tight, tense games and my ranking took a big hit. I’ve also been playing some really idiotic moves in my current games, so I don’t expect things will get better soon.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Jul 27th
Really haven’t been gaming over the last few days. I’ve just not seemed to be in the mood for it. I’m sure I’ll get back into it before long. I have, however, been keeping up with multiplayer games, such as Words With Friends.
DungeonCore (iPhone)
Jul 23rd
Okay, forget my mealy-mouthed shit from yesterday. “Oh, well, I like it, but you might not, blah, blah, blah.” Fuck all that. Fuck it in the ear. DungeonCore is bloody brilliant and that’s the end of the story. If you don’t have the patience to get into it, that’s your fault. The game’s bloody great and I can’t stop playing it. If you don’t love it, leave it. When you’re running down DungeonCore, man, you’re walking on the fighting side of me.
And I have an excellent beard.
And I’m in a very strange mood this morning.
Plunderland (iPhone)
Jul 23rd
Looks gorgeous, but aiming your cannons and dealing with enemies is fiddly enough to be really quite annoying. Definitely a case of feeling like the game’s difficulty comes from bad controls, rather than actual game design. (Whatever the fuck that means. Come on, Owen, is that the best you can do?)
However – HOW-FUCKING-EVER – I’ve thought the same thing about games before. Cubed Rally Racer and DungeonCore both seemed to suffer from control issues, but after getting used to them I came to the conclusion that my first impressions were incorrect. Maybe the same will happen here. I do hope so, as I desperately want to like this game.
And, to be fair, it’s not like I dislike it. I just haven’t got comfortable with it.
DungeonCore (iPhone)
Jul 22nd
So, how to describe this game? The best I can come up with is that it’s a bit like an upside-down Doodle Jump, reimagined as a roguelike.
That’s not very helpful.
Okay, so you’re a little chap with some pants and a sword. You fall down the screen and run left and right across platforms. If you get stuck at the top of the screen, you die. If you fall off the bottom of the screen, you die. This is made much harder by a control system that doesn’t let you stay in place; you’re always running left or right if you’re on a platform.
So, you see, you need to plan ahead and try to stop on larger platforms, because it’s almost impossible to tilt the iPhone fast enough to stay on the small ones. Until, that is, you buy some better boots.
Which is my cunning segue into the RPG elements of the game. As you drop down you hit and kill enemies, earning gold and losing hit points. Every now and again you’ll enter a shop, where you can buy new items and equipment. Potions refill your health, shields increase your health bar, weapons increase your accuracy, caps increase the money you get from kills, etc.
So you fall down and down, trying to kill enough enemies to get the cash you need to survive – but without running out of hit points. There’s a lot to think about. In the first shop, do you buy a cap to increase your cash or buy some boots to help you control your hero better? Later on, should you upgrade your defence or attack? Or get an even better cap for even more money?
Tough decisions. And when you die it’s back to the beginning again, with just your basic sword and your pants, having to start from scratch… almost. You see, achievements gained in the game (e.g. getting to 100m depth, killing 150 enemies) unlock new items and equipment, which can then be purchased in any shop.
It took me quite a few goes to even unlock boots to buy, for example, but now I can normally afford some at the very first shop. So by doing well in the game, you make later attempts a bit easier, but the decisions you have to make in the shops a lot harder.
Does any of that make sense? Basically, you’ve got a little tilt-based arcade game with RPG elements and controls that take a lot of adjusting to. I really wasn’t sure if I liked the game at first, but the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. (Especially as I now have access to those lovely boots.)
I can imagine a lot of people being put off by the controls. I nearly was. Extended play, though, has made me like the game a lot more. Partly because I’ve unlocked more choices of equipment and partly because I’ve got better at the game.
There’s no neat conclusion, here, no easy recommendation to either get the game or stay away. I like it, but I have no idea if you will. Still, it’s only 59p. Could be worth trying.
Sword of Fargoal (iPhone)
Jul 21st
So, yeah, this has been getting billions of updates and I’ve not been playing it. Silly, foolish old me.
I continued my last character and couldn’t see much difference in the game, but then I started a new game after he died and – woah! It’s all different!
I can be a lady!
I can choose a difficulty level! (Though anyone who chooses to have infinite lives in a roguelike needs beating with the flat edge of a broadsword.)
There are vaults and grates and barrels and millions of new enemies and levers and tables and wow! Unfortunately poor Ladybump got incinerated on level two, so the game may have got harder, too. Either that or I’ve forgotten how to play it properly.
Anyway, if you haven’t given Fargoal a look for a while, you might want to look again. And if you never bought it in the first place, shame on you. SHAME. RIGHT ON YOUR FACE.
Angry Birds (iPhone)
Jul 21st
Right, I’ve finished the fucker. Every single level is now completed with all three stars. Level 8-10 was by far the hardest, taking me over two and a half hours to complete yesterday – and that’s after trying it a great many times beforehand. Shows the quality of the game, though, that over two hours on one level was still fun.
And, no, I’ve not got all the achievements or all the golden eggs. I may have something of an obsession, but even I’ve got my limits. (And getting the golden eggs without a FAQ would be impossible for me, I think.)
Until the next set let of levels come out, then, I’m done with the game.
Carcassonne (iPhone)
Jul 21st
So, yeah, as you can see from that picture up there, Carcassonne has a leaderboard that shows how you rank against all your friends. I’m not doing too badly at all, though I have a feeling I’m going to drop down a lot when a couple of my current games finish.
Angry Birds (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Fantastic day yesterday – I now only have two levels left to get three stars on. Not sure what happened, but I managed clear loads of stages that had been giving me trouble. Other than that, not much gaming as I watched a double bill of In The Electric Mist and Night At The Museum 2. And I don’t care what anyone else says, I enjoyed both them rather a lot.
Star Wars: Battle for Hoth (iPhone)
Jul 19th
Another decent Star Wars game. I’ve not played many levels yet – and I’m playing on Easy, which is may have been a mistake – but this seems like a solid, unspectacular tower defense game.
But it’s got a Star Wars theme, so that raises it from “good” to “great” for me. I love Star Wars.