Deal time! OR I feel lucky!

I just bought:






for a grand total of 32 and change. Love buy 2 get 1 free sales. Love DS games. Ready for all the train rides in the world.

Browser Tag and....

So yes, I added a tag specific to browser games. PC will be downloadable PC games and boxed PC games.

The "and..." refers to the fact that my first writing assignment completed since the advent of GMness at Cryptic has gone up: a crazy, experimental Beat.Trip Beat review, yayyyyy. (If you love it or hate it, please post your feedback over at that link and not here!! Of course you can also comment here...I need more comments...)

For now, I think my lunch break is over, but I look forward to writing about more browser games on future breaks.

QWOP for your daily fail

Hit the ground falling.

So this actually has been around a bit, and I am too slow of a blogger, but let's take a look at QWOP, because it's so horrible!

The idea is to snap this little rag doll's tendons with the Q and W keys, as well as the...O and P keys, yes. Fast twitch muscles! Yeah! (Please don't correct my anatomy...)

So what we really have here is a puzzle game masquerading as a sports game. Perhaps all sports are puzzles, but that is another blog post and it will not appear here (!) I'm just saying that it's more about finding the correct sequence and timing of button presses than it is about jogging, nevermind sprinting.

It is pretty easy to uncover any variety of cripple runs, where you skid the avatar along on one heel and a knee. Some of these may cause you to giggle a bit, but of course, the best part is watching him finally flail out of control and whack his head, particularly because of concussion icon that pops up:

Sadface!

Satisfaction in fail! Great! Excellent! I need a new game to play! ;p Novetly for an Internet moment, QWOP nevertheless has a FB fan page.

Do I like Gears?

I guess the brief amount of time I spent playing the game this evening has not really furnished enough experience to allow me to answer that question. That said, I switched to Geometry Wars 2 after not too long (Glowing Triangles of War), so that might indicate something in and of itself.

My first and constant thought is, "Wow, these graphics have not aged well." Have we really come such a long way since 2006 that these look incredibly outdated? I guess so. The frame rate does that, "Hello, I am in a cut scene" thing, like, "Look at how hard I am working to get these characters walking across the screen." I'm not sure how else to describe it. A little fuzz on the motion, almost. *not a tech person, clearly, although you'd think I would be at least a bit by now* The character models are great, but some of skin textures look rather plastic. On the whole, I just can't remember the last time I played a game that looked like this (2006?) It's almost like playing a PC game with a computer that can't crank all the settings.

Aside from that, I'm not really getting the cover mechanic very well. It seems really clunky to me, for some reason. I thought that was the main draw of this game, the great cover system. Perhaps I'll do some instruction manual diving before my next outing (which is either tomorrow, or next weekend). Could probably use some systematic education.

The other thing I'm curious about is co-op. Maybe I will try that tomorrow -- see if there are any lame souls like me playing the original instead of 2. I have had people tell me to skip the first one, but I feel like it's probably important to at least give it a shot. Or two.

I'm really raring to go on DQIV, now that I'm not stuck anymore, but I will try to save the handheld stuff for the train.

DQ Breakthrough!

I really thought I was going to have to FAQ it, but Friday night in the train I managed to get past the place I was stuck in Dragon Quest IV. Where I was stuck is not really the topic here, though (although it really a pain in the ass to have a lock picking character in your party who cannot pick certain plot-salient locks just because), but moreso that I managed to resolve it on my own. What a rush! What a thrill! What a blast of genius ray!

(Or so you feel at the time before you realize that probably a bunch of people just waltzed right through it.)

It also seems to be a point for my theory of difficult games and probably difficult problems in general. If I am having trouble with a certain fight or a certain race or a certain pong-like acid trip (see Beat.Trip Beat), I just take a break. There is a limit to how effective you can be when banging your head against a brick wall. After a while of giving it all you got you just have less and less to give. Better to recharge those reflexes and come at it the next day.

In this particular case I was away (reading Dostoevsky) for almost a week before I came back to it. I wasn't even sure I had batteries. Then I was so giddy at finding my way into the mine (Chapter 4) that I accidentally rushed headlong into a boss fight without saving, ha! Luckily, managed to pull it out. Glory to the healer!

Grand Theft Velo

It's a bike race inspired by GTA. Check out an interview with one of the creators at Bike Blog NYC.

Spoke too soon

as I appear to be stuck in DQIV now. Report forthcoming. In the meantime, I've finally started on my first review since the new job at Cryptic drastically altered my lifestyle. Hopefully you'll be able to check it out soon on the Otaku USA website.

Dragon Quest IV: An Actual Blog Post About It **with many spoilers**

I'm so into this game o_O

Yeah! Ok, I have fifteen minutes to try to explain how this game is the first RPG to actually draw me in inexorably since Mother 3.

Even though it was really before Mother 3.

Or Mother 2, for that matter.

Let me first direct you to some very nostalgic blogs I wrote back on my 1Up blog wherein I started to play through the first Dragon Warrior game and didn't...quite...make it:

"Thou Art Dead:" The First Four Levels
Grinding Merrily Along
Ach! My Hits! *spoilers for Dragon Warrior*
The awesome has increased by 5 **more Dragon Warrior spoilers**
(I guess that was the end...)

Anyways, you can see that I was having fun, but I think what really got me was that flute thing. I don't want to have to use a faq to beat the game -- I want to use common sense or at least intelligence. This is why it's cool that IV has little glinties in the ground where you're supposed to search!!

But that is so beside the point...

basically, I've been playing DQIV non-stop. That isn't true, obviously, but I've been playing it on the bus and in the train, at the movie theater (in line, in a seat before the film, waiting for the box office to pick up, etc.), and even in bed just to get to the save point (as much as I wanted to keep going).

I have been playing so much DQIV that the joint in my left thumb hurts. Jenn said, "Oh, Nintendo Thumb!" But I never got it as a kid when I would play hours and hours of SNES -- maybe it's a *****taking more than 15 minutes***

So now it's lunch break at work. This is how it's gonna be! Haha.

Anyways, where was I? Oh yes, I have never had this thumb ailment before. Am I getting old? I'm only turning 24 this summer. It is preposterous that my thumb joint should hurt after little more than an hour or two (or three) of DS a day.

Anyways, why exactly am I finding this game so engaging despite the fact that you keep having to level everyone up from level 1 at the beginning of each chapter? (I'm in the middle of Chapter...4? right now...) I think first of all it's because the characters are all so different, not only from each other, but from other characters I've seen in other games I've played. I love that one of those freaking heal slimes joins your party. I love that you play as a freaking shop owner and SELL CRAP TO PEOPLE. That was a pain in the ass, but I enjoyed it for being novel.

I'm also impressed that I have never had to FAQ anything. Getting stuck is never any fun. When I was a kid (I am embarrassed to admit, although I probably have before) I played all RPGs with a guide at pretty much all times. That's just how I did it. I was more interested in experiencing the story than messing with annoying obscure items that were impossible to locate or drawers you would never think to open that happen to contain something ridiculously important. (Wasn't there a Breath of Fire like that? Where you needed like a million $ and it was just hidden in some guy's house? I'm not going to look it up, but I remember wondering how you would ever know that.) In DQIV, people give you the hints you need, the dungeons aren't needlessly ginormous or full of overkill dead-ends with no treasure. The grind is not too terribly evil, either. Goals feel attainable. That makes me happy, because I play for fun (obviously), and attaining goals is fun.

**

I have to leave work now, but I'm sure I'll have more to say about this later.