Little Wheel is a point-and-click adventure that’s much more my speed than the others in the genre I’ve played recently.  You can finish the whole game in about 20 minutes, and it’s relatively easy. It’s a really cute and engaging little story. Check it out.

Play Little Wheel

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

I’m a big fan of isometric games where you control multiple characters and are able to fight strategically. There aren’t many of them. Baldur’s Gate and the other Infinity Engine games, Fallout Tactics, and Temple of Elemental Evil spring to mind. And, of course, Freedom Force.

While I wasn’t a big fan of the original Freedom Force game, I had a ton of fun playing Freedom Force vs the Third Reich. After finishing the game, I replayed a second time using a custom superhero that I created. The character creation system is very robust for a dated game, and playing through a single-player campaign with a character I made is much more appealing to me than playing a MMO like Champions Online or City of Heroes. I’ve already played through the game twice, and I’m hanging onto it. I may play through a third time.

I’m big on social networking – I like to share my media with anyone who cares to look. On my personal site, I’ve written software to share what book I’m currently reading and what games I’m playing. I even wrote up a php script that parses Netflix’s XML feed to show what movies I currently have at home. While I’ve moved my gaming activity from GregHowley.com to this site, the other two are still in my sidebar and I update them regularly.

When I first saw Raptr‘s new ability to share the games you’re playing on Twitter and Facebook, I jumped right on board. More connectivity! Horray! It wasn’t until I heard a comment in a recent episode of the Brainy Gamer podcast that I began to question things. I’ve since heard it referred to as twitter videogame spam. That’s a filthy label to slap on anything. It simply hadn’t occurred to me before then that notifications such as “GHowley began playing Thief: Deadly Shadows” or “GHowley installed Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena” would annoy people.

PC World recently wrote an article about this very thing. Are Twitter updates from games annoying? Personally, I haven’t been annoyed by it simply because nobody that I’m following on Twitter or friends with on Facebook is connected to Raptr. I suppose I’d imagined that it wouldn’t bother me, but I suppose if I got tweets that said “ARockLegend is playing Madden 2009” eight times a day, it would start to bug me.

One of Uncharted 2’s big features was going to be Twitter support: It would do exactly what Raptr does, by automatically updating your Twitter account with gameplay accomplishments. But it seems that during beta tests, when the testers were updating their accounts with the completion of each chapter, somebody realized that it was kind of annoying to get updates with that frequency. Since the game is too close to launch to make the change and have it adequately tested, they’ve simply disabled Twitter support for chapter updates, and will patch the game later to make certain updates individually optional.

I’ve been procrastinating a bit, because it feels sad in a way to disconnect part of my social network, but I’m likely to disconnect Raptr from Twitter soon. Perhaps to compensate, I’ll code up that Raptr-powered gamer card I’d been considering. As soon as I get the time, that is. Raptr mentioned that they wouldn’t mind.

Scribblenauts gives most people some truly transcendant moments of emergent gameplay – that’s what makes the game so great. This is the bright side of Scribblenauts – when you first realize that an elephant is afraid of a mouse or that a mirror really will cause medusa to turn to stone. But Scribblenauts also has a dark side, that being the movement controls and poor physics engine. For these reasons, Scribblenauts is one of the most frustrating games I’ve played in a while.

Let’s look at a few examples. On one level, there’s a starite dangling by a rope over a pit of lava, and between you and it is a tripwire that drops the starite into the lava. After many failed attempts to float something on or above the lava, I tied a chain to the starite and tried chaining it to different heavy objects to keep it from falling into the lava: a safe, an armoire… none stopped it. So I figured on trying something that moves. I chained it to a scooter and sat at the wheel, but that didn’t work because I had to get off the scooter to trip the tripwire. I ended up chaining the starite to a tiger and putting a ribeye steak in front of it. When I broke the tripwire, the tiger ran forward to the steak, puling the starite along. Yay! I ran up to get the starite, and Maxwell kicked it into the lava instead of picking it up. Noooooo! After all that! Aargh! The guys over at 4 Player Podcast have a great conversation about these same frustrations.

This is the dark side of Scribblenauts. It can crush your soul when you go through so much to get the Starite and then fail due to stupid movement controls. Ropes and chains are very useful, but angling them properly when attaching them can be an exercise in frustration. More often than not, some part of the chain will end up positioned inside a wall in such a way that you can’t drop them. And you can only move the ends – not the center. If you’ve got the chain attached to something, then you’ll move the whole mess. Detaching the objects can be even harder.

Perhaps one way to minimize the irritation of Scribblenauts physics is to view it as cartoon-like. A handheld magnet can fling a huge steel box as if it were a soccer ball. A fan will propel a mac truck. These things can be useful once you realize what’s happening.

The game is fun – don’t get me wrong. But there’s certainly a lot of frustration.

Have you heard much about “A Boy and His Blob”? Me either. But check out this gameplay video. Doesn’t the blob remind you of Gleep and Gloop from the Herculoids?

The fourth world in Scribblenauts is entitled “Ancient”. Without spoiling any of the early game (worlds 1-3) for anoyone just starting the game, I’d like to discuss some things about the fourth world. If you’ve not made it all the way through, you may not want to read further for fear of spoilers. But if you’ve already finished “Ancient”, read on. Maybe I’ve found some solutions you haven’t thought of. If you’ve found some that I haven’t tried, feel free to post.

Since the world is all about mythological creatures, I summoned my fair share here: manticore, medusa, even Scylla. But I was a bit disappointed to find that Scribblenauts simply didn’t have certain creatures in its dictionary: Catoblepas, Lamia, and Wolfman don’t exist!

First, let’s look at the puzzle levels. In the interest of not writing a novel here, I’ll only discuss the levels that stood out to me. I’m sure that will be plenty.

4-2: Paint a Portrait

I really liked this level because I thought there was a lot of room to be creative. You can paint on lots of things and paint with lots of things. I’ve used crayons and spray paint amongst other things to complete this level in expert mode. Painting on the actual subject is fun too – he’ll change colors, but doesn’t seem to mind.

4-4: Bull in a China Shop

Another fun level, although getting the bottles in the niche at the left can be very difficult. I’ve had to use grappling hooks and TNT to get at them when I solved this one on expert mode. A boomerang can be very useful in getting the hanging chandoliers. A baseball bat works very nicely for the rest of the stuff.

4-5: Deliver the Baby to the King and Queen

I found this one to be really hard. I tried luring the baby with a pacifier, scaring it with a ghost, and tying a rope to it. Nothing worked. Babies seem to be immovable. I should go back and try using a snowplow. In the end, I used the ghost to scare the king and queen so they ran over to the baby.

4-7: Return the Chariot to the Fort

Getting that damned chariot up the hill took me forever. I should have tied it to a helicopter, but I decided to pull it with a horse. I lured the horse up the hill with hay (I probably used 15 different hay items) but even then the horse wasn’t strong enough. So I tied 4 or 5 balloons to the chariot to lighten the weight. Yeah – I was way over par on this one.

4-9: Lead the Sweethearts back to each other but don’t harm the Witch

The most aggravating thing about this level was the fact that the knight kept jumping into the water-filled trench. Why are all the NPCs in this game suicidal? I first killed the behemoth with a slime. (slimes are so badass) Then I built a suspension bridge and led the knight over the water-filled trench. I trapped the witch behind a wall and moved the suspension bridge over her so that the princess could pass. I lured the princess away with a jewel, and kept moving it every time she got close until I got her close enough to the knight. Viola.

4-10: Destroy the Enemies Before they Hurt the Royal Family

I’m really not a big fan of timed levels, but this one wasn’t so bad. First thing, I built a landmine near the noblewoman so that the minotaur couldn’t get to her. Then I gave myself a rifle and shot the ninja. When the door opened to the rogue, I was able to shoot him too before I ran out of ammo. I can’t remember whether I used a flail or a halberd to beat down the assassin on the bottom level, but when I did the door just opened and the minotaur hit my landmine. Boom. Starite.

4-11: Help the King Get to His Castle

What kind of an insane king rides a goat? I nearly had to build a wall in front of myself on this level to stop myself from running into lava, but I managed. I also discovered that bridges over lava burn if they’re wooden bridges. In the end, I put out the two fires with a raincloud, killed the dragon with a blob, and glued two drawbridges together to get the king across the pit. I then flew up with a pegasus to collect the star. Yeah – I’m not generally concerned about par in this game.

The action levels in Ancient weren’t nearly as interesting, as I expect is the norm in Scribblenauts.

4-2: Survive the Samurai

This one was fun. It was mainly about coming up with different creatures to kill the samurai. I ended up digging under the Oni with a jackhammer and avoiding that door.

4-5: Watch for the falling spikeballs

It’s fairly easy to move those giant spikeballs with a simple magnet. I think I ended up winning this level while standing in lava. Very strange how sometimes it lets you win when dead/dying and sometimes it doesn’t.

4-6: For Massive Damage

Probably my favorite level name. If you’re not in the know, this meme harks back to E3 2006 where Bill Ritch spoke of attacking a giant enemy crab‘s weak point for massive damage. Very much a gaming in-joke nowadays.

Anyway, in this level, you’ve got to get past three samurai. As soon as you get close, the giant enemy crab attacks. This one’s a lot of fun. I already beat this level in advanced mode by doing things like hiding in a helicopter while other creatures beat up the foes, but I’d like to retry again riding a T-Rex or a mech.

4-10: Race the Leprechaun

Originally, this level had me very frustrated. I hate timed levels, and items like rocket skates and fighter jets weren’t getting me to the finish quickly enough. Then I realized that you were allowed to kill the Leprechaun. After that, it was easy. I put a landmine in his path, a demon, and whatever else would stop him.

That’s it for my analysis of World 4: Ancient. I’ll probably do the same for world 5 when I finish.

Credit to Brandon for pointing this out to me first, but Trine has finally gotten a proper release date in North America: October 22nd. Rough deal, as it comes out 4 days before Borderlands, 4 days before The Gathering Storm, and 11 days before Dragon Age: Origins. Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 will already be out. It may be hard to find time for Trine, but I’ll probably still buy it.

Welcome back! I’m Vince Clortho coming to you live from the Lungfishopolis Coliseum in beautiful downtown Lungfishopolis. With me here is color commentator Gordon Freeman, whose career as a sports announcer I can only imagine will be coming to an end soon. What? You know I’m telling the truth, Gordon! You haven’t said a word all week! Oh come on, don’t be juvenile. Come back here.

Sorry about that folks. So with today’s big event only minutes away, let’s take a quick look into the colorful histories of each of our competitors.

The Blob is best known for its original attack on the town of Downingtown, Pennsylvania in 1958, although it appeared in many later movies. And… is this really all we have on the blob? One sentence? Not much of a retrospective.

Let’s see.. The Kraken is a member of an ancient race of leviathan-like giant squid that often claim relation to the god Cthulhu. He’s had numerous appearances in popular fiction going back to the 1870 title 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, although the Kraken would like it to be known that the bipedal “titan” that appeared in the 1981 film “Clash of the Titans” was a fraud. This kraken auditioned for the remake of that same film, but was rejected. Following the rejection, the kraken destroyed much of the set, killing six cast members and causing the release of the film to be delayed until 2010.

They tell me now that the competitors are ready. And there are the lights. There they are, folks. The two toughest creatures in Scribblenauts. Yesterday, we watched the kraken pull a dragon limb from limb. And the blob dissolved death himself. Today, they’re out for blood. Wait – do either of them actually have blood? No, I thought the kraken would have like… ichor or something.

Versus

The lights have come up and they’re playing the blob’s theme song as it oozes up the island where the final round will take place. How odd it is to hear the crowd cheering like that for an amorphorous blob. But as small as the blob is compared to the kraken, we’ve not seen anything yet that has truly hurt the blob. The dragon yesterday did a bit of a number on the kraken, but the blob has yet to show any true vulnerability.

And there it is. Someone has shouted “release the kraken!” over the PA, and here it comes. The kraken is obviously close to ten times the size of the blob – a clear weight advantage. But we’ve seen great things out of the Grim Reaper, and he was far smaller than many of his adversaries. Size may be a factor, but it isn’t everything.

And there they go! The kraken is slashing and grabbing away at the blob, but it looks like it’s getting hurt each time a tentacle touches it. The blob has managed to get past the tentacles and is attacking the kraken’s body. It’s not looking good for the kraken.

The kraken has gone limp! I think this may be it. Yes! The blob is the Scribblenauts Smackdown Grand Champion! The blob has won! The officiator has stepped out onto the island to award the blob with a medal.

Oh. That’s awkward. When the officiator put the medal around the blob, it dissolved. And now the blob is eating the officiator. This is not good. It’s moving out towards the audience now. Lots of screaming and running. I’ve got to be going now, so until next time, this is Vince Clortho signing off.

I’ve been hearing quite a lot about Canabalt recently. It’s a very simple game – you can play through in five seconds. But if you’re lucky you may last as long as a minute. It’s a randomly-generated 2D parkour game. How far can you get?

Play Canabalt

Hello, Scribblenauts fans! Welcome to the Scribblenauts Smackdown Semifinals. I’m Vince Clortho, with you on a beautiful Thursday here at the Lungfishopolis coliseum. The crowd here today is about double what we saw on Monday. With me here today, as always, is color commentator Gordon Freeman.

There is quite a bit of anticipation about today’s matches. The dragon has done surprisingly well this week, but today he’ll be fighting the kraken. And our second match will be between the blob and the Grim Reaper. The winners of these two matches will face off in the finals tomorrow afternoon.

Since we’re in the semifinals and we’ve only got the two matches today, our competitors will each be fighting three rounds. Best two of three wins.

By the increased volume of cheering I’m hearing now, it looks as though the big fight in the center of the coliseum is about to begin. The Kraken has climbed out of the water, and the dragon is flying in. Round one begins!

Vs

The Dragon is trying to play this smart, flying in circles, staying away from those tentacles, and breathing fire. We’ve seen this week just how much that fiery breath can do. But the kraken is one mean customer.

The dragon seems to be biding his time, and staying out of reach of those tentacles. His fire is starting to have an effect on the mighty kraken. Anything to add Gordon? Didn’t think so.

It looks like the kraken is down! It’s retreated to the water to recover for round two.

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…and we’re back to the second round, already in progress. The kraken has dropped back into the water, and the dragon’s fire seems largely ineffective, as the kraken is using the water as a shield. It’s been a while now, and the crowd is beginning to boo at this apparent stalemate.

Oh! The dragon has swooped a bit too close, and the kraken lunged forward and now has a grip on the dragon with its tentacles! It’s dragging the dragon underwater. This round may be over. Yes, it looks as though the dragon has been drowned. We’ll need a third round to break the tie.

While we’re waiting for the third round to begin, let’s check out today’s other event. The competitors seem ready. Both the blob and the Grim Reaper are in position, awaiting the results of the first match.

Versus

Those two certainly look anxious and ready to go. No, Gordon, I’m not sure how either of those faces would show anxiety, I’m just trying to do your job for you and add some color. Oh, put down that crowbar, you know you’re not gonna do anything. Twit.

Okay, we’re now ready for the tiebreaker between the kraken and the dragon. The judges have ruled that the dragon has too much of an advantage in the air, and that the kraken has too much of an advantage in the water, so this round will be fought on land.

They’re rushing towards each other now. Jeebus, this is brutal! The kraken is bleeding profusely from bites, and the dragon seems to already have a broken arm… er… paw? And the kraken is constricting it. Was that the sound of ribs cracking? Oh, it seems it was. This battle is over! The kraken wins! The kraken has defeated the dragon in a tiebreaker. What a show!

And now it’s time for our second and final match of the day, to see who gets to face the kraken in tomorrow’s finals. Will it be the blob? Or will it be the grim reaper?

Whoa. Those two have been waiting quite some time for the previous fight to finish, and they were raring to go. Now they’re fighting in earnest. Yes, I suppose it’s no surprise that the scythe does little to the blob. Oh, it’s really not looking good for the grim reaper. Nope. That was certainly over quickly.

Wow, Gordon. There are still two rounds to go, but with a match like that it’s hard to imagine any other outcome. The audience is already starting to leave, to beat the traffic. I suppose it’s time for us to sign off as well. Who will come out on top? Will it be the blob or the kraken? Tune in tomorrow for the big final match.