Tuesday, February 23, 2010

iPhone quickie: Tiki Totems, Lion Pride, Textropolis

Ie. "stuff for free" (well, were, at least).

Tiki Totems
... is probably most fun of the bunch. You have a totem that cannot touch the ground, but you have to destroy (by tapping) X number of blocks from underneath it.

Gets a little repetitive but it's still fun.

Graphics are "OK", sound is "there".
Physics are... "iffy". ;)




Lion Pride
... is a pretty boring "drag your finger to aim lions at prey" -game. *Yawn*










Textropolis
... is a fun way to pass time if you like making up words from jumbles of letters (or names of different Cities, in this case).

Friday, February 5, 2010

QnD Review: Dante's Inferno (Xbox 360)

This review is purely based on around hour and a half of gaming, from the start of the game to the Gluttony level of hell (ie. 2nd real game level).
Edit: some updates and the game has been thoroughly played through, and the score of 7.5 is appropriate.



First things first; is DI a God of War clone? Does the bear shit in the woods? Hell yeah - and it doesn't even try to hide it.

You have exp, mana and health fountains (GoW: chests), you have the same kind of ground and aerial combos, you buy skills (good or bad, here) with experience points as you proceed, etc.

Even the combat is pretty much the same; dozens of enemies coming at you at once, small bosses, big bosses, you have quicktime events that you kill small (optional) and big bosses (mandatory) with. Only difference is, usually, that you can either punish or save their souls while you do it (being good, ie. "Holy" will get you more experience, which is kinda silly).

You have your standard variety of lost souls, small, medium and big demons; noting you haven't seen before in a video game about hell (or a dozen other subjects). You also have a 7-layer depiction of hell that ranges from "ho-hum another wall made of souls and guts" to "Wow, those little demons bursting from the big demon's nipples were a nice touch!" -kinda moments.


It all reeks of unoriginality. (But that's fine, it's not like it is an original story either...)


It's not bad, though. The good parts are still good, but the whole lands short of it's clone-father; GoW just does everything slightly better, has a bit more style - and face it: if Dante and Kratos were put in the same room, Kratos would come out the winner, with Dante following him on a leash and wagging his... err... tail. ;)

If you're a 360 owner, this is pretty much as close as you can get to GoW - without the Greek parts, and with a lot more tits and darkness.

Addentum on 8.2.2010:
Now that I've played the game to completion I have to hand it one thing: the pre-rendered cut-scenes between different acts (and especially the one in the end) are nothing short of gorgeous. Of course these are made by a 3rd party studio (Blur) that has shown excellent results in recent games like Dragon Age: Origins, and have little to do with the game itself. In fact, in the last video it's eerie to see a really different looking Satan in the cut-scene from what you just fought on the "pentagram". Nevertheless, they build up the immersion pretty well.

The game itself held together pretty well to the end - being pretty much the same fare than in the earlier levels. No real "ooh, aah" -moments (aside from the cut-scenes), but no real feeling of boredom or insurmountable opposition.


Score 7.5/10

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Movie: Moon (2009)

It's a good sci-fi movie in the spirit of 2001 and makes you think thoughts like watching The Blade Runner.

Watch it. Sam Rockwell is good.

iPhone review: iBomber

Price: free (on 1.2.2010), lite version available
Publisher: Cobra Mobile
Release date: 18.7.2009

iBomber is a top-down bombing game where you never actually see your own plane, but rather view the action from the bombing scopes.

The era is WW2 and you're bombing Japanese targets in 14 missions that range from target bombing to escorting a fleet of ships through an archipelago.

Along with your basic, unlimited bombs, you can collect limited power-ups that include "triple bombs" called Blockbusters, black bombs that are more powerful that basic ones and the Grand Slam, or "The Nuke" as I like to call it; a single powerful, but slow moving bomb.

The other power-up is the health booster that will heal you for a small amount (pictured left).

You collect the power-ups by touching them on the screen (luckily you don't have to hit them with bombs, as they stay on the screen only for a short while).

Controls are fairly easy; you turn and control your speed by tilting the device and hit the only button available to drop your bombs (creatively labeled "BOMBS AWAY"). The forward / backward tilt is calibrated in the menu, so you can play at an angle that feels natural to you.

Speed of course affects how far your bombs will land from the initial dropping location, but unlike real bombers, yours will nearly turn "on a dime". All it's really missing is reverse.

Different enemies of course take different amounts of bombs to destroy, from the small mg-placements that only take one bomb to the battleships and carriers that take several (or a well placed "nuke", which is the slowest moving bomb in the game, and which "duds" if you hit the water with it).

You can also hit airplanes with your bombs, of which there are several kinds; small escorts that circle around islands or carriers, bigger bomber types and some US fighters.

Everything on the map is of course committed to killing you (with the exception of command huts, fuel depos, etc stationary targets), so those health power-ups not only come in handy; they are mandatory to your survival.

Your health is shown on the left, right next to your radar that will show enemies as red blimps, allies as green and mission targets as yellow triangles. The radar acts like the real counterpart, only showing the location and heading of the targets for a time after a radar sweep.

Gameplay is mostly fun, and why not; dropping bombs and seeing things explode is a great way to pass the time. Some missions feel a bit long though, and especially the escorting missions tend to take some of the fun away while you're juggling between the protection detail and gathering health-ups to keep yourself alive. In the latter missions, the flaming death spin that drops you from the skies becomes a somewhat a familiar sight.

Graphics are good - you have little trouble distinguishing what is what, and even in this small scale you can tell a destroyer from a battleship, etc.

Sound is mostly nothing to write home about. Its your standard fare of explosions, splashes and flak.

It's free (in early February, at least), so you can't really complain.

Score: 8/10