As you may have noticed, both Brandon and myself have a gamercard of my own design on the left sidebar here at Lungfishopoils. Because I feel like making some comments, I’m going to discuss the six games listed on my gamercard.

Crysis
Ever since I got the Vista machine I have now, I’ve been thinking about playing Crysis. And while my Radeon HD 3870 card may not have the horsepower to run it at anything more than medium settings, it’s still a great game. It’s a lot like Far Cry, which is a good thing. You can lay prone and crawl around, and you’ve got a meter that shows your enemies’ alertness levels. Plus, now you’ve got special abilities due to a nano suit.

I hit a bug yesterday in the second chapter where after having blown up two tanks, the game didn’t acknowledge that I’d done so, and I got stuck. I’d saved the game already, so now I’m gonna have to go back and redo a large section of the game. Despite this annoyance, I’m still enjoying Crysis.

Mass Effect
I’d heard a lot of mixed reviews of Mass Effect. Having played it now, I’m noticing how very Bioware it is. The engine feels like Neverwinter Nights and KotOR. I’m actually enjoying the dialogue and the story, but the combat could be a lot better. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but it just feels clunky. If it’s the same engine as those other games, there must just be something about that engine I don’t like. If not for the sniper rifle, I wouldn’t enjoy combat at all. But as it is, I’ll complete the game. I’m just a completionist like that.

One thing about Mass Effect that’s really annoying me is the infrequency of save points and nonexistence of checkpoints. I chose the highest difficulty level, and so I die quite a bit. As a result, I’ve had to replay quite a lot of the game. And I’ve become very good at hitting that F6 key for the quicksave frequently.

I also recently played through a level where I was driving a vehicle and the shadows were so dark that they were indistinguishable from the black of these bottomless pits. Just after I convinced myself that the black places were all just shadows, I drove off a cliff and died instantly. Guess I should adjust the contrast or something.

I think I’m about three quarters through the game, but I could be very wrong. I’m hitting a lot of the optional content, but not being too too anal about it.

Freeway Solitaire

This is the game I play when I’ve got ten spare minutes or so. When I’m waiting for files to upload or something. Brandon gifted me the game, and I’ve really been digging it. It’s a version of Solitaire themed as golf. The cards are laid out in different patterns on each “course”, and you’re given “clubs” as helper cards. Playing a 4-iron will let you then play a 3 or 5 card. It’s a lot of fun. I’m currently stuck on a course named The Willows. I can’t earn enough money to get past it. Grrr.

Dead Space
As I mentioned previously, Dead Space feels to me so much like the old Resident Evil games. Maybe that’s why I’m liking it. The cutting off limbs thing seemed gimmicky at first, and I suppose it is a gimmick, but I’m still liking the scare factor the game offers. The story is strictly average, but the gameplay is good. Much more than the Doom ripoff I’d expected.

Pixeljunk Monsters
As you may know from reading this site previously, I absolutely love Pixeljunk Monsters. While I don’t play it super frequently or for long stretches of time, I always love going back to it. It’s by far the PS3 game I play most often.

Audiosurf
Now that I’ve got my old machine set up as a TVersity media server, which I use primarily with the Playstation 3, I can stream music straight into Audiosurf, which is fuun. I’ll admit, I’m not very good at the game, but being able to race down the tetris track while listening to MC Frontalot or No More Kings is a trip.

And that’s it for my list. Oh – and I still have to go back and finish Okami at some point.

For passive-aggressive gamers. Sorry, no screenshot today. Hey, in my day, we didn’t have screenshots, and we played Lode Runner and Yars Revenge and we liked it.

Dodge

I’ve mentioned previously that I thought Oblivion was a better game than Fallout 3, despite the fact that both were created by Bethesda on the same engine, and despite the fact that Fallout 3 is a more recent game. Now I’d like to give you some concrete reasons as to why.

I’ll totally agree that Fallout 3 has better minigames. They got rid of that hideous conversation game and even the lockpick game in Fallout 3 is much improved. The new computer hacking game is simply awesome. Fallout 3 also has better character models and better voice acting. But all these things can’t change the fact that Oblivion was simply a better game.

First of all, Oblivion had much more creative and ingenious quests. The Daedric quests that granted special magical items, the arena, the dark brotherhood, the various guild quests, and the beautiful world-inside-a-painting are a few examples. Other quests in Obilivion had you trailing people, eavesdropping, following hand-drawn maps, and interpreting drawings on walls. Nothing that creative in Fallout 3. A few good characters and some funny conversations, but being able to talk through intercoms and watching static animations of vertibirds can’t match up with having to cast a high level lightning spell on an old stump in the middle of the wilderness to complete a quest.

Next up, the mods. Perhaps it was because I picked up Oblivion six or eight months after its release, and there’s also the fact that the Garden of Eden Creation Kit wasn’t released for Fallout 3 until months after the game was on store shelves. But for me, one of the things that made Oblivion truly great was the wealth of user mods. The BT Mod and Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul were by far the best Oblivion mods, but consider also the user-created music for Oblivion, the much needed No Psychic Guards mod, and a couple favorites of mine, the Darker Dungeons mod, which gave torches and light spells an actual purpose, and the Drop Lit Torches mod, which caused you to drop a lit torch when you drew a weapon. The torch would remain there on the ground, lit, and you could pick it back up if you needed. Fantastic.

What mods does Fallout 3 have? Mostly new and reskinned weapons. Of course, there are plenty of cheat mods and things to make you more powerful. They’ve got a decent start with the mods that remove slow motion from V.A.T.S. and allow you to use random logical items to repair weapons and armor, and Bethesda has blogged about some mods, but they’re nothing approaching the genius of the best Oblivion mods.

Third on my list is Alchemy. Here’s a genius engaging skill that has you hunting everywhere for different types of flora and vegetation and allows you to collect different equipment to create dozens of different potions, or mix multiple-effect potions as your skill increases. What does Fallout 3 have to compare? Collecting random junk like medical braces and lunchboxes to create a handful of weapons, many of which are fairly useless. Come on – did you really like the railroad spike gun? Did you find the Rock-It Launcher useful? Granted, the dart gun is great and I love the deathclaw gauntlet, but overall Fallout 3’s item crafting can’t match Oblivion’s alchemy system.

One of the primary things that made Oblivion better than Fallout 3 was the set pieces. The fall of Kvatch, leading a squad of soldiers through an Oblivion gate to try to close it, and stopping that crazy giant war machine were truly epic, and those are just the moments I can remember off the top of my head. What were Fallout 3’s set pieces? Umm… the giant robot at the end? The optional nuke? That’s all I can think of. Oblivion had a much more epic feel.

Lastly, the novelty. When Oblivion came out, it was brand new, and it was very impressive. But at the time Oblivion is coming out, we’re seeing the same NPCs, the same kinds of traps, and the whole same game engine. But no there are no spells, no new abilities as skills reach the 25/50/75/100 points, no shield blocking, and none of the beautiful weather effects that Oblivion had. The game’s drugs are a poor replacement for Oblivion’s alchemy system, and the weaponcrafting in Fallout 3 is extremely limited. I’d have felt a bit better if Fallout 3 had implemented a few vehicles. Even Oblivion had crappy, crappy horses.

Despite Greg’s proclamation that there would be no Free Game Friday, here I am with a Free Game Friday.

Today we have the glory and wonder that is the Puzzle Quest: Galactrix demo.  I remember when the demo for Puzzle Quest first hit.  I found it odd that they spent all of this time making a kick ass PC demo for a game that wasn’t going to be on the PC.  It didn’t make any sense.  Then I started playing it and I lost all sense of space and time as my life was sucked into the glorious wormhole that was Puzzle Quest. I played that dang demo all the time to the point where my wife had learned to hate the game well before it came out for the DS.

The Galactrix demo is about a thousand times prettier than the Puzzle Quest demo, which unfortunately means that my meager laptop can’t keep up with it.  Greg is also reporting problems running the demo however that shouldn’t dissuade you from checking it out.  The game looks gorgeous, and my only problem is that, on my machine, the gameplay is very, very slow.  Luckily the game is turn based, so the speed isnt a problem.

The basic mechanics of Puzzle Quest are here: you match colored tiles up to remove them from the board. As a new twist, due the hexagonal nature of the tiles, you have more directions to move the tiles, and rather than having the tiles fall down from the top, as in traditional tile matching games, the tiles come in from the same direction as your tile move.  It’s an interesting idea, and fits the space oeuvre what with the lack of gravity and all.

Puzzle Quest allowed you to match blue, red, green and yellow tiles to power up your spells a mechanic that has been streamlined to just red, green and yellow for Galactrix.  The blue tiles are matched to regain shields, which adds a new strategic element to the play.  Should I match those red tiles to power up my mega laser or try to give my shields some help?  In Puzzle Quest, your ability to be defensive was determined by the spells you had selected prior to going into battle, so it’s nice to see the ability to defend yourself all the time in Galactrix.  I’m not sure if having only three gem colors to fuel weapons means fewer weapons, or just more complicated weapon requirements, but come February, we’ll all be able to see for ourselves.

All in all, I’m happy with the demo, even if the novelty of the mash-up style of gameplay has worn off.  I do wish my laptop could do a better job handling the demo though as I don’t have much patience with it which means I’ll spend far less time playing Galactrix between now and 2/24 than I would have thought.  At any rate, take a look at the demo and get those fires of anticipation good and stoked.

Download and play the Puzzle Quest: Galactrix demo.

Okay, so no free game Friday today. I’ve been a bit busy. Instead, enjoy this trailer from the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Looks pretty good.

There’s also the intro for the game. Enjoy.

I played and enjoyed the first game from Penny Arcade shortly after it came out. I guess I was a bit surprised by its vulgarity, but I enjoyed it. Now, I’ve just finished the second game.

I suppose that it was a bit of a disappointment that the second one is also titled “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness”. It’s such a beautifully over-the-top title that I’d hoped that they could have come out with a different over-the-top title for this one. You know, something like “Spelunking the Cavern to Underhell” or “Deathgrip on a Fistful of Zombie Throat”.

Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik’s second game is just as enjoyable as the first, and has some minor improvements to the engine – enemies now sometimes flee from battle, and at other times, enemies call in backup.

If you like the Penny Arcade style of humor, I’d definitely recommend this game. You get to coat a poodle in pure gold, torture Gabe, beat up young lovestruck couples, and inject yourself with urine. Fun times.

This is a pointless yet enjoyable game. The goal is to earn all 99 achievements, and some are as easy as “move left”. But others are harrd. When looking at my 1436 second time, please consider that I went and read my daughter two books without pausing.

Play Achievement Unlocked

I’m just beginning the fourth chapter of Dead Space, and I’ve found myself pleasantly surprised about a number of things. I’ll admit that in many ways it feels like a direct copy of Doom, but Dead Space calls itself a survival horror game rather than a shooter. As such it borrows concepts from the earlier Resident Evil games, and this works to its favor.

For example, the game has succeeded in starling me at least twice, and the last game to do that was Resident Evil 2. [insert golf clap here] The game’s store also has a vault feature, which works exactly the same as Resident Evil’s chest system. Neither actually makes much sense, but they’re very useful inventory management tools. I could go on about save points and weapon upgrades, but those are very common mechanics.

The method by which weapons are upgraded is also pretty cool. You’re given a grid with different points. By finding power nodes, you can weld them into the weapon’s grid and upgrade ammo capacity, reload speed, damage, or other attributes.

I would probably consider Dead Space more a shooter than a survival horror game, but that said, the game still has a number of genuinely cool moments. The weapons are also unique and a lot of fun to use. They’re generally focused towards removing limbs from enemies, since in Dead Space, as Yahtzee so eloquently put it, “limb shots are the new head shots”. One really neat feature of the game’s main weapon, the plasma cutter, is its ability to change the angle of its cut from horizontal to vertical.

While I much prefer mouse and keyboard for this type of game, I found the Dualshock 3 controls to be as intuitive as any other gamepad game I’ve played. I’ve often said that the only shooter I played with a gamepad and enjoyed was Resident Evil 4, but Dead Space comes very close, largely in part to the fact that every weapon in the game has a laser site. There’s another thing Dead Space has borrowed from a Resident Evil game. Now I only wish I had Resident Evil 2’s quick turn ability, where I could pull an instant about face by hitting a certain button. With all the necromorphs sneaking up behind me and dropping out of overhead vents, it would be very very useful.

The game’s two coolest innovations are the zero-G areas and the total vacuum areas, which sometimes overlap. There are zero-G areas with air, and there are airless areas with gravity. The zero-gravity areas are implemented so much better than Prey’s gravity strips. You stick to walls with gravity boots most of the time, but can choose to leap through space and attach to another surface at any time. And the coolest thing about the vacuum areas is the sound. Without air, sound doesn’t travel well, and even life-or-death struggles make nearly no sound. Speaking of sound, the creepy music in Dead Space is probably the best spooky music I’ve ever heard.

I also appreciate the game’s transparent checkpoints. When killed, rather than going all the way back to my last save, I only go back to the previous checkpoint, although I may not know exactly where that was. The game is also very easy to navigate, as in addition to the 3d map, you can also hit R3 to see a line along the floor leading to your goal.

Overall, I’m enjoying the game, although given how quickly I’ve reached chapter 4, I’m wondering how long the game will be.

The name of this game was based off an old Commodore 64 game which I loved, Way of the Exploding Fist. This version has you battling wave after wave of vicious stick figure thugs. The keyboard controls take some getting used to, but it’s worth it to kick mucho stick figure ass.

Play Way of the Exploding Stick

I’ve played more Turbotanks than I’d really like to admit. It’s similar to the old Atari 2600 Combat in many ways, but the levels are varied and interesting. It also gets a lot tougher as you go, and as you have to fight more enemy tanks in more difficult terrain.

It’s more than a one-hit-kill game, as the tanks have hit points. And bullets always reflect. I’ve probably lost hours to this game.

Play Turbotanks