by Aggro Me on April 30, 2009
Sometimes a game just hits a ton of my gaming preferences in a big time way. I think my reviewer bias or tilt for this one would be something like 745,000. It certainly is not the game for everyone, but it sure is for me. The game that is my perfect iPhone game is called Rogue Touch, by ChronoSoft.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of casual roguelikes. Sure, sometimes I want to play the insanely complex and difficult ones. But more often I just want something more basic with a simple control scheme that does not involve remembering a ton of hotkeys. And I know I’m not hardcore, but I just can’t stand ascii graphics. I’m going to be staring at any roguelike I play for a long period of time and I need it to be easy on the eyes. And Rogue Touch fits this formula perfectly. It’s not too simplistic…there’s plenty of items and monsters and fun. But it’s very simple to pick up and play and the control scheme is easy to use once you get it down. And it has rather nice graphics (okay for a roguelike…don’t expect anything amazing).
But that’s not the only reason I love Rogue Touch. I was a huge Atari fanboy. The Atari 2600 was my first gaming console and I had a ton of fun with that. I moved on to the Atari 800 computer (it was seeing Star Raiders running in a store that first sold me) and that thing completely blew my mind. It really was an awesome computer and I had absolutely tons of games on floppy disks. Well early on I had a bunch of games on cassette tapes…CLOAD. Then when the next generation of PC’s came out there was no question of what I was going with. I snatched up an Atari 520 ST. Again, it was an awesome machine. The operating system was great, it was easy to use and there were more than enough games to keep me happy. I held on to that baby way way longer than I should of. And that was the end of my Atari run (I wasn’t crazy enough to get a Jaguar), but I still remember Atari fondly.
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by Aggro Me on April 29, 2009
I initially wasn’t crazy about tower defense games. In these games, you have to prevent wave after wave of monsters (or other assailants) from reaching your home base. The monsters navigate a maze to reach your sanctum and you usually defend you base by setting up a bunch of towers which fire on the monsters in order to kill them before they can reach the area you are protecting. Often you can upgrade these towers to have stronger firepower or additional special features. There are an absolute ton of these games out there now and though they all are similar in the core gameplay, there are obviously a ton of variations and differences in the surrounding aspects. As I said, I kind of ignored these games at first because I’m just not a big real time strategy fan (or a good RTS player) and these games certainly play that way. But once in a while I would try one and eventually the whole genre grew on me. Today I’d like to spotlight two Tower Defense games that I thought were interesting enough to mention. But there are so many more out there…do a search on any flash games portal. Well, here we go:
Wizard Defense - I totally think they’re being a little ridiculous with the whole “Wizard Defense is the World’s Best Flash Tower Defense Game” thing. I mean come on. But I do believe it is one of the most polished TD games and it definitely has the highest production values and the most “fluff.” I don’t mean “fluff” in a negative way, I just mean all the aspects outside of the core gameplay. For example, the animation is fantastic, the backgrounds are gorgeous and the overall graphics just blow most TD games away. In addition the sound is terrific, the controls are easy and intuitive and there is even an actual story to the game…one that is quite thought out with a lot of backstory and history. And remember this is a free game that you can play in a web browser.
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by Karnatos on April 28, 2009
Last month I mentioned television shows that were worth watching once Battlestar Galactica had aired its final episode. In that post I had a section on shows that were in my queue for watching, and the top-most title on my list was Wonderfalls
.
I just finished up the single-season series this weekend. The series revolves around our main character Jaye, an expert under-achiever. She is over-educated and unemployable, and despite being underwhelmed with her job at a souvenir shop in Niagara Falls, she is seemingly happy with her whole life situation.
She has convinced herself that she is perfectly comfortable with life as she’s living it, happy to let life just happen around her… but life for Jaye completely changes the day a tourist demands the store discount issued to her by a local motel.
More after the jump, but I’ll be leaving out any spoilers - so you may proceed without worrying about me ruining the series for you.
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by Aggro Me on April 27, 2009
As you probably know if you have an iPhone, the Weather app it comes with is pretty lame. Now it looks great and everything…I really like the style and the design of the little pictures that indicate sun or rain. And certainly, it is totally accurate with the information it does provide. But the problem is, that information is so incredibly basic and lacking any kind of detail. You get the high and low temperature and the rain or sun images. That’s great for a fast look. But come on…most times you want to check the weather you need a little more detail.
So I’ve been meaning to download a better weather app since I first got my iPhone. But it slipped my mind and I just never got around to it. Now, I’m happy I never downloaded one, because if I did I would never have seen Human Weather, the interesting app from Crowded Road. Now, I can’t say Human Weather is really what I went online looking for, but the concept that makes it different is so fascinating. And I see so much potential in this concept that could be applied to many different kinds of apps. And there’s even a little story about this app making it through the screening process which raises some serious questions.
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by Karnatos on April 24, 2009
This past week has been a very busy week for me and my family. It all started last week near the end of the workday. My 13 year old car, the indestructible Mazda Protegé, was at the mechanic’s to have its snow tires replaced with summer ones.
I love this time of year here in Canada; when you get to slap on the summer tires you know the winter has officially come to an end and soon the air will warm up and we can finally come out of hibernation - that’s right, changing our tires here is an official marker of spring time.
Only, last Friday my mechanic refused to put my summer tires on.
He was very sad to report that the life of my beloved car had finally come to an end; he was seeing several cracks in different engine seals, he discovered my water pump was not working properly and was about to die, and noticed my front brakes needed some work as well as new struts. He said that he could not ethically charge me for new summer tires and to put them on - the car was in dire need of around $2,000 in repairs and he felt it was time to just call it.
He said it’d be safe to drive home, but to start shopping for a replacement soon. We spent the next 4 days madly rushing between dealerships checking out new and used cars. My budget was more in-line with used cars, and we finally decided on a 2008 Pontiac G6 - which is a pretty snazzy ride in comparison to my old Protegé.
Despite the many hours rushing around town looking for a new used vehicle, I managed to come across some pretty awesome links, here they are as found on my tumblog:
- Carousel
- La Machine - Big Spider in Yokohama
- Chronicles of Humanity
- Twitter Using Only Your Brain
- Would Buffy Choose Spike or Angel?
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by Karnatos on April 23, 2009
Have you ever been scooting around the internet, following link after link, and you end up somewhere familiar only to do a double-take when you realize what you’ve stumbled across?
This week I happened onto these YouTube videos of a small stage production of Once More With Feeling. The show was put on by a great cast in front of what looked to be a fairly small audience.
For those of you that may not be Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, Once More With Feeling (OMWF) is an iconic episode of the series. It was a pivotal episode during the show’s 6th season, and several plot twists and character secrets were revealed throughout this episode.
Every song was recorded by the television show’s cast members themselves - and many of them had no real training as singers, yet they managed to pull off a fantastic musical. To say that this episode is a fan favorite is a complete understatement, and the music from it is simply fantastic.
And here I was… watching a small stage production of the Buffy musical in 13 parts on YouTube. And I really enjoyed it.
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by Aggro Me on April 22, 2009
I t has not been long at all since I posted about Omegle, the anonymous web-based chat app that let’s you converse with random strangers. If you missed that post or want to refresh your memory, it’s right here. I had a lot of fun with Omegle and I’ve continued to have fun with it after that post. It’s great because it’s so fast to get a conversation going and some can be quite funny. Usually I’ll play a quick flash game when I’m taking a break at work but sometimes I’ll hit up Omegle instead.
But one thing that bothers me a bit about Omegle is that my genius is lost in the ether of the intarwebs. Okay, so maybe not genius but sometimes when the planets align I’ll say some pretty witty stuff or make some hilarious remark that I’m stupidly proud of. So I want to share my rapier wit with others so they can laugh heartily at my droll remarks (or more likely give a polite smile). I mean I could copy/paste my convos into emails and send them to friends but I’m not sure they would appreciate a giant copy/paste like that. And shouldn’t the world at large be able to appreciate this sparkling repartee?
Well, enter Mobozo. The first thing I have to say is that I’m surprised at how fast this site appeared. I mean wow…Omegle was only launched on March 25th of this year. It’s now not even the end of April and this solid site already exists. It is polished and easy to use and has some nice features.
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