InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Hills and Rivers Remain (iPhone)
Dec 3rd
Just one story level last night, but it was a pretty epic one. I wasn’t in any danger, really, but the enemy forces made sure I had to pay attention to them and couldn’t just wander through the map doing whatever I wanted.
I’d really recommend downloading the Lite version, having a go at the story level and then getting stuck in trying to get medals on the Free Play missions. It’s an excellent game once you get into it. Shame it doesn’t give a better first impression.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Dec 3rd
More mixed results in my current games. Still, I’m enjoying it, though the games where the letters get blocked up together aren’t fun at all.
Sword of Fargoal (iPhone)
Dec 2nd
I can’t resist a decent roguelike, especially when it’s less than two pounds (which is pretty much my barrier for an impulse buy).
Stop. Pause for a moment. In the App Store, over two pounds for a game seems expensive. Meditate on that for a while.
Right, let’s carry on. Sword of Fargoal is based on a simple early-eighties roguelike, full of monsters, treasure, traps and spells. The dungeons are randomly generated and once you’re dead, you’re dead.
Pretty standard, really, but there a few wrinkles. The combat is slightly different to normal – once in a fight you can sit back and watch if you simply want to carry on hitting the enemy with your sword. It’s not quite turn-based meaning if you put the game down without pressing the pause button, you’re in danger. You can see what items and spells are when you pick them up. No need for a scroll of identity here. (You might not know what they do, but playing around is always put of the fun.) There are a few other little wrinkles, but overall it’s simpler than even Rogue, while not being watered down enough to be boring. At least, not yet – I’ve only played half an hour or so.
(Remember, none of these blog posts are reviews, just my current impressions.)
So, it’s a slightly more casual roguelike than usual. What really sets it apart from other games of this nature is the loving presentation. It simply oozes style, with a gorgeous look that seems to effortlessly skip along the tightrope between retro and modern. It’s gorgeous and screenshots don’t really do it justice – which is odd, given the rather static nature of the thing.
If you want it you should probably grab it now, before the price goes up.
Hills and Rivers Remain (iPhone)
Dec 2nd
Didn’t play much last night, because I went out to the cinema to see Paranormal Activity. It scared me witless at the time – I believe I may even have screamed a couple of times and I never, ever do that – but luckily for me the fear faded with the adrenaline. My wife’s still freaked out, though, so I’m trying my best to look after her by emphasising the normality of things and how there aren’t really any nasty things that go bump in the night. (Except the cat, obviously.)
Still, I’ve advanced some way in the story of Hills and Rivers Remain and have tested out Free Play mode a bit more. I think to get fun out of it I’ll have to work out the best settings – on Normal with one enemy you can simply put your headquarters next to theirs and wipe them out before the game even really starts.
Hills and Rivers Remain (iPhone)
Dec 1st
Having given up on the Lite version (for now), I started on the full game. Jumped into story mode and my heart sank a bit when I saw that the first map is the same map that’s included in the Lite version of the game. Still, I won it easily and then moved on to chapter two, which – gasp! – features a whole new map. Ooh. It’s sandy.
I won that one without any hint of a problem, too. I hope story mode gets difficult enough to be fun before it’s over.
(Slight confusion: In the story you play the red guys, whereas I’ve been playing as the green guys in Free Play mode in the Lite. It’s made for some interesting “WTF?” moments.)
I also had a quick look at Free Play mode. As expected, it’s more of a Skirmish mode than the mission-based Free Play mode of the Lite version. You choose a map and then configure the number of sides, items, difficulty, etc. There are medals to earn, but they seem a bit pointless when you can set the options to give yourself an advantage. Hopefully some of the later maps will have medals for winning a game under certain option set-ups.
Hills and Rivers Remain Lite (iPhone)
Dec 1st
Grrr. Yes, that’s right, I said “grrr”. I say it because the level on Hills & Rivers Remain Lite that I’m currently on appears to be impossible. It’s this one:
I’ve realised what the main problem is – the enemy is just far stronger than me. No matter what the stats say when I choose sides, I need overwhelming forces to capture enemy bases. A small numbers advantage just isn’t enough. This makes things very, very difficult. So difficult that I think I’ve given up on it for now. I’ll come back later, I’m sure.
Rock Band (iPhone)
Dec 1st
What to do in the car while you’re waiting for it to warm up enough so that you can see out of the windows? Why, play the drums on Science Genius Girl by Freezepop, of course!
Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)
Dec 1st
Honestly, I’m not sure what I should say about this. I really don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, but otherwise all I can say is that I played this for a couple of hours last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I dreamt about the game last night, too. I killed some men carrying a jewel-encrusted chest through the streets, then opened it to see what goodies were inside. I remember the following:
Half a loaf of Sainsbury’s Long Life sliced white bread.
Half a bag of grated Sainsbury’s Basics cheese.
There were some other modern foodstuffs, too, but I don’t remember what. Anyway, I froze in confusion and then two monks opened their robes to reveal uzis and started spraying bullets around. Turned out they’d hacked into the animus to kill me in the past, or something.
All very exciting, but the cat woke me up before there was any conclusion.
Nothing like that happened in the game, though. Bit of a shame, as it could be excellent. I could live without the Sainsbury’s product placement, mind.
Hills and Rivers Remain Lite (iPhone)
Dec 1st
I’ve got to level twelve now, I think, in Free Play mode. It’s the first of the five star difficulty levels and I’m having a hard time completing it. There aren’t any special conditions, it’s just about killing the enemy, but even when I seem to be doing well, somehow my opponent manages to turn the tide against me. I’m really not sure how; I don’t think he has any more power ups than me or anything.
It’s all very interesting and I hope I can work out what I’m doing wrong – or what he’s doing right. More likely, though, I’ll eventually just win without being sure why or I’ll give up and move on to the full game.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Dec 1st
Yeah, I’m not doing so badly at the moment, but I stupidly lost a game by being more concerned with getting rid of letters than getting points. Always a problem for me in the endgame. If I can get 5 points and get rid of two letters or 15 points and get rid of one letter, I always seem to choose the former. Not a good idea when I’ve only got letters worth one point left in my rack.
