Minor Crisis

Well my paypal got deleted because of so called "bad clicks". I'm kinda tired of adsense anyways, so I am going to shift over to linkbucks.
In the meantime Im reaaaally busy but I will post another zombie-related review to tomorrow.
See ya then.
Enjoy bizarre videos.

The simple things.

It's the simple things that make me smile. Like fully-automated high caliber turrets that blast away at undead hordes while you kick back and enjoy a nice glass of white russian. Or people wearing red headbands while handling weapons that would rip a normal human's arms off. But the man I talk about is not a normal human. He is the main character of a Seant Cooper game series: Boxhead.
So far, there are five installments of the game: Boxhead: the rooms, Boxhead: More Rooms, The Halloween Special (which I believe to be the original one), Boxhead 2 Play (with multiplayer!) and the newest one Boxhead, The Zombie wars. Imma just go ahead and review the latter, if you don't mind.

I really like this scenic display of boxheaded zombies right here.

 The idea is just as simple as the graphics are: you are alone, you have guns, there are zombies which are after the soft, grey matter in your box-shaped head. And as always, the simple concepts are the best ones. The more zombies you kill in a row, the higher your combo-counter rises, the higher your combo-counter, the more upgrades and weapons you get.

Just don't get cornered...

 That is about all I have to say about the game mechanics of this series. There are a few things that set these games apart from the other zombie-shooters: for one this one does not try too hard to look good. There are so many games out there that try to create a creepy atmosphere but utterly fail. The boxhead games however just rely on action, action and even more action. You end up slamming your space key into oblivion in a fruitless attempt to hold off hordes and hordes of zombies. Especially the Boxhead 2 Play with it's co-op multiplayer and the fabolous possibility to wall yourself in with explosive barrels to mass-slaughter the undead does a really good job in creating a unique action experience for two people.

Turrets: the lazy man's choice for letting the dead rest.

 The Zombie wars one however is a little different. Not only does it feature new graphics, 3 new zombie types and completely different levels, it also gives you turrets. That's right: turrets. Automatic little thingies you put somewhere that just take out rotting walkers on their own. Just like that.
Amazing concept. Unfortunately this does not come without a prize: the devils became a lot stronger in this one, instead of just throwing fireballs they now launch entire firewalls at you that will destroy everything in their way (except for their little friends). Also their ammunition is quite limited, so in the end you rely on running around and going toe to toe with those smelly white-shirts as before. But trust me, that never gets old.

Turrets can't do the job alone :(

So if you have the time, and if you like shooting zombies, you should definitely check these games out. They will entertain you for hours and hours.

Bubbles and other things.

Allright, first things first. I decided I will from now on update this blog every monday. For one because I have too much real life stuff going on for daily updates but on the other hand, I want to give you guys something to read here on a realistic, regular basis. That's why I chose monday: once a week is just enough and it gives you something new to kill your time in the office or at school with for the week.

In other related "news": I hope you already know this but you can download GTA I and II on the Rockstar Games page! Like, the actual real games! Especially GTA 2 is a lot of fun (I dont know if I am just saying this because I grew up with these games) and you can even play it in multiplayer (though there is noone, who is able to beat me) which rocks. So if you can install shit on your computer, you oughta do that.

But now to the game I wanted to review today:

Pew Pew, Am I right?

 Today I am letting you take a look at a game called Bubble Shooter.  At the first look it is just one of these games where you shoot bubbles at a mass of bubbles while new ones are generated at the top of the screen. This is true, but there is more to it. For example, the new ones on top are generated whenever you run out of bubbles to shoot (see the bottom left side of the screenshot), which makes you think twice or three times about where to shoot once you are in a serious situation.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaw balls.

This adds a strategic element and actually... makes this game pretty addictive. Not THAT addictive, but still, you will play it for a while once you started.

Allright, that's it for today. One more thing though: I am having trouble with my adsense. For some reason my account is still being checked even though I applied for that stuff about a month ago... Someone else having trouble with this?

Busy day, busy day.

see more Comixed

Pretty much what I experienced myself using minecraft.

My driving instructor would pat me on the back and then slap me across the face.

If you are like me, then you like driving. But if you are even more like me you always imagine controlling a giant laser cannon on the roof, when riding shotgun. But if you are even more like me you played a little too much GTA I and II when you were way too young for this kind of game and now have quite a quick driving style (when no one's looking). (However, it would be kinda scary if we were so much alike) A couple of weeks ago I found a new way to get rid of my road rage... or to feed it even more, I don't know how these things work. Anyhow, I present to you Freeway Fury.

It is imperative that you keep the sound on in this game. Because it is awesome.

The idea behind this game is pretty easy: driving one car sucks, driving all the cars on the freeway rules. So instead of just being part of the daily steel snail that slurps its way across the landscape you get to jump out through your windshield, stand on the hood of your car and (at estimated 65 miles an hour) jump onto another one. This requires only four buttons and is an insane amount of fun.

I kind of misjudged the distance to the next car...

 Some factors make this simple concept even better. Like the fact that you get points for crushing cars, driving on the wrong side, jumping long distance, combo-jumping and so on. Also: the game's narrator is fucking awesome, so leave the sound on for christ's sake! There's nothing better than his mocking "YOOOOUUUU'RE DEEEAAAAAAD!" once you died. Hillarious.

This game is not set in England, btw.

There is just a little thing I'd like to point out in this game that does not really go well. And I do this because I feel bad for praising without giving any negative points, and finding this negative point was hard work. The car handling is kind of weird. Yes, it is nice that your car will always be pointed up and will get back in the upward direction whenever you steer onto another lane. But that doesn't feel... real enough, ya kno? I also dont like that you can't break and have (except for the nitro that apparently every car has) no control whatsoever over the acceleration. As I said though, that's just a minor point and didn't really destroy the gaming experience for me. In the pictures you can see my top score of 292500. Tell me once you beat it.

How to easily kill hours of your life

Allright, everybody was talking about this Minecraft, so obviously I had to check it out. It appears as if it is in it's alpha stage and you have to pay to play the actual alpha, but there seems to be a pre-alpha version you can try and mess around with. While doing that my clock just skipped three hours ahead, even though I was supposed to do something completely different.
There are no objectives or goals in minecraft yet, but the developers promise for this to change soon.
I do believe, however that this is not necessary. You run around in a randomly generated 3d world and can create and destroy the blocks that this world is made up from. Very easy concept. Apparently in the alpha version you can also build railroad tracks and stuff that actually works. Sweet.
So yeah, all I did the last three hours was run around and build stuff. Check this out:

First, I built a little temple

Then this menacing tower...

And then added an underground library.

Kind of like office space. With zombies. And completely different.

Ah, The Zombie Exploder is a game just the way I like it. It combines so many great elements and features to a good mini-gaming experience for people, who can take a little blood and gore on their work-computer, and who also like zombies the way I do: smashed to pieces.

Do you see that awesome menu? The zombies on the left move, btw.

The premise is pretty simple: at some point during your working day you realize that all your co-workers have turned into zombies. This wouldnt be much of a problem if you weren't in the 20th story of an office building packed with suit-wearing undead stumblers.
So you have to fight your way from storey to storey to finally reach the ground (which I never managed to do. Tell me in the comments, how far you got. The lowest I ever got was 10th).

You cant really tell, but I just threw a zombie out of this window.

The music is subtle, the "physics" feel smooth and the graphics look neat and gory. Even the menues can impress me with their 28-days-later-feel. One of the funniest moments in the game is however, when you throw a zombie out of a window and the game rewards you with a "HOMERUN!" and gives you extra points for your RAMPAGE-bar. I just cant help but imagine some poor dude running around on the streets and having zombie parts raining on him.

One thing bugs me about the game though, and that's how you control your character. It is... very innovative, but annoying. You still move with WASD or the arrow keys, and you can do a flying kick by pressing the left mouse button, but you control your fist via MOVING your mouse. Which leads to me flailing my mouse around like a crazy person. I tried to play this game from my girlfriend's sofa and it didn't work so well because the mouse didn't pick up the movement the way it should have and I got a lot of french kisses from rotting-ex-coworkers.

No means no!

 But overall, there is nothing better than running through a mass of walking corpses while kicking and punching them into oblivion.

The fist follows the movements of your mouse.

Finally the only spanish I know comes to a good use: "HOUSEKEEPING? CLEANING ROOM NOW!"

Allright, I'm just going to tell you to check this game out if you're like me and you like zombies and a little bit of gore.

Sort of like a metaphor for the modern work-environment.

Imagine this: you are an eraser-like looking object in a two dimensional world that hast to flee from lava coming from the ground while avoiding bricks that look like condom wrappers. Picture this with repetetive electro music and you get "Avalanche!".
The concept, as I just told you is ridicolously simple: bricks rain out of the sky (I wonder what meteorologists would say to that) while the screen gets filled with a red, transparent liquid through a pipe in the ground. A game description titled this liquid as "lava", though I fail to see lava being transparent. And having a flat surface. But whatever, this is not the point.

Am I the only one who thinks that the bricks look a little like condom wrappers?

The point afterall, is entertainment. And back in the day it just took a yellow circle eating white dots while being chased by blobs in 4 colours for that. And now we have more than 16 colours and don't have to use midi anymore. Which brings me to the only aspect of the game that really annoys me: the music. Yes, it is neat to hear the soundtrack "Dreams From Above" by "Maze Master" once. Or twice. Maybe a third time is fine, too. But after that it just gets annoying. And there is no way to turn it off. Dear game designers: don't do that. Some of us got our own music to listen to and would love to carry on listening.
Whatever. I wasn't done talking about the game. Because jumping up isn't enough. You can also jump from the SIDES of the blocks. And you can jump on blocks that are still in the air. But don't get excited just yet, because it becomes a necessity once the lava rises too quick to stay on the blocks that already landed.

Aw balls.

Your goal is simply to survive, which can be quite difficult considering that the lava burns you and the blocks crush you. And sometimes you just get trapped. Which is especially annoying if you already reached 260 ft.
And can someone tell me why exactly the blocks would have a hole in the middle? Did the game designers want to save money on material? Is there some subliminal message involved? Where the blocks too heavy before and wouldn't fall slow enough? Does it have something to do with aerodynamics?
No one knows.
Anyhow, I really recommend you check out Avalanche and try to beat my 520 ft. I didn't include a screenshot, because I forgot. You'll just have to believe me on this one.

Minigame related.

Its always kinda funny to see what the video games of the old inspire people to. I post this because Tetris is pretty much the inspiration for dozens of mini-games. Also because this is awesome. You better watch this and learn about Russian history, betch.

You will poop rainbows.

WTF IS THIS?

There is probably not a single one of you people who hasn't played Adultswim's "Robot Unicorn Attack" yet but there might still be one or two out there. Robot Unicorn Attack is a classical vertical running game in which the player must dodge objects, jump past gaps and dash through solid objects. When I first heard of this game I was like "meh, whatever".When I first saw the start screen (fig. 1) I was kind of questioning the sexual preferences of my best friend, who suggested the game to me.
But once you go in and the music starts (Always by Erasure) and you hear the first few lines you're caught.

THE COLOURS...

Because what this game does is kinda weird. Even though the colour scheme is... well girlish to say the least and the music is rather... soft, I was caught. Even though I exclusively wear black and listen to blackmetal to progressive. But whatever, the movements of that robot unicorn are smooth and seem nice and all in all its just a working concept.

Also the slight touch of creepyness - at certain points the game tells you that "all is hopeless" and "you will die.

Note the tear. A cut off robot head, that cries. Classic.

That doesn't quite seem to fit the concept at all.
I just don't get this game, especially because it doesnt fit into Adultswim's toilet humor and sort of gore games (which are completely fine with me). I just really have no clue what this is all about.
Oh the game is great btw.

Im sorry you guys...

But I will be off to Budapest, starting tonight. I'll try, but I can not promise you any entries. Check in every now and then.
Edit: Aw christ, I got the dates messed up... I meant to write 10/3 and not 3/10...

Stop it! IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE!

So, as "Much Poopies!" suggested, I checked out Bubble Tank 2 by Hero interactive. You can access it via Armor Games. First of all, let me say a few words about Hero interactive. For some reason I really hate them. It could be because of this horryfing disfiguration of a mascot that makes me want to take a dump, reach into the bowl and go Picasso on my screen with what I found. Or maybe one night I came home drunk, kick started my computer and decided to play a game and it happened to be by them. Whatever, whenever their logo pops up I grind my teeth and go "aw shit."
However, I gave Bubble Tank 2 a fair try. I was actually quite surprised, because I played Bubble Tanks 1 before and didnt know it had a sequel and a spin-off: Bubble Tank Tower Defense.
The idea is that you control a tank, made of bubbles, that shoots bubbles at other tanks, made of bubbles and collect bubbles they drop while driving( swimming?) around in a bubble.
I have no clue whatsoever how anyone would get the idea to make tanks from bubbles, seeing the defensive capability of soap being quite low. And a war of soap tanks could be won quite easily with, say, sand. Whatever. It's a game and games don't need realism! Fuck yeah, games!
So you start off with a pretty basic vehicle made up from a few blue and yellow bubbles, the yellow ones indicating turrets.

You grow with more bubbles.

You then proceed to slip from bubble to bubble and kill of others, first defenseless little guys, later bigger boss-like things that must have been constructed by some crazy bubble scientist.
Every enemy you kill drops little bubbles you can collect to grow and later on evolve (Darwin would kill me right here) into a bigger, better tank, either a fast one or a slow, heavy damage thing, or something inbetween. The problem is: whenever you take damage you loose collected bubbles and once the bubble counter reaches zero you start at the first bubble. Which sucks major ass, because you get hit. A lot.
But that is not the biggest problem yet. The biggest problem is that at some point the level bubbles get so crowded with enemies that sputter bullets like they're special or something because their mommies didn't love them enough. I have no clue what went through the developers mind. It must have been like "yeah, bathroom stalls are pretty awesome, because you don't have any space and have to avoid all the shit. We should totally include that into our game."

Kekeke Zergrush. The one in the red circle is me, btw.

Yeah, great fucking idea Hero interactive. Because what happens once you get to close to the level bubbles is that you get INSTA-WARPED to the next one. Once you jump back you realize that all the damage you have dealt to the enemies has been taken away, while you still limp around on your last 20 bubbles.
"This is bullshit", I said and shut the game off.

Now I remember why I hated Hero interactive.

*Insert Queens "Bicycle Race" here.*

I love being a freelancer and being able to review the games I want. Here is another great Kongregate one: "Cyclo Maniacs". It was created by LongAnimals & RobotJam, who are known for cute, original characters, reappearing in many of their games. The game itself can be found HERE.

The title screen gives you a bit of an idea what's to come.

So let's get in there, shall we? You start off with a single playable character, an average biker on a normal bike and a single available track. On this track (as on any other track) you have three achievements to complete. But unlike most other games these aren't just for prestige: they also bring you new characters and new tracks to play on, so finishing first is not always that important. Actually, it doesn't matter at all as long as it's not the achievement you want to work on right now.
The controls are pretty simple. You can accelerate, brake, jump and lean forward or backward, making wheelies or even loopings once you're off the ground.
Careful though: turn too far or not far enough and you'll spread that beautiful face of yours all over the place like liver-sausage on pumpernickl.

Many areas, many levels.

After a while you get the hang of it and quickly gain all characters, upgrades and tracks. And by quickly I mean it takes 8 fucking hours but you wont notice because this game is so god damn addictive.
I am serious. The easy controls, the nicely done difficulty curve and the funny characters, plus the fact that you'll be ripping combos like a mad cunt once you managed to get Ron.
I am serious, that guys power level is way beyond 9000 when it comes down to summersaults, like mine when we're talking about uhm... doing nothing really.
Anyway, where was I going with this? I don't even know anymore. Unfortunately my computer deleted my savegame for this one, so I had to start from scrap for the screenshots, which is sad. I had the thing played through man, like, all the way (what does it mean?).

Love me tender? Screw that. Buttfucktrain on the way.

Enough said. Play the game already.

Sandbox for the big boys. Well, pubescent boys.

Allright. This game has been the SHIT back when I was in that highschool in America. Like EVERYBODY was playing it in lunch hour and study hall and free periods. Mostly because it didnt exactly count as a game, but as a simulation? Whatever, it wasnt blocked by the school proxy server so we didnt care. We took any diversion. And boy, did we take it.
So what is this "game" I talk of? As I mentioned, it's more a simulation. It is a sandbox simulation and I mean that as literary as possible because man, no pile of code ever deserved the title "sandbox" as much as this one.
It's got the mysterious name "Dust" and You get to play with a wide arrange of toys, beginning from actual sand, over to seeds, up to high explosives and fireworks. All those fun things your mommy always took away when you were in an actual sandbox. Except for the sand, of course. Sand is still just sand.
While the graphics are ridicously simple, no music or sound effects present (thats why everybody who plays this game sits there going "BOOOOM! PSSSSHHHH! KAPOOOOOW!") the physics of this game are actually quite good: something explodes or burns, it creates heat, things move away from it due to expanding air. Everything gets whirled around, more things get to the heat source and catch fire... well you get my point.

Fireworks, Oil and Gundpowder raining down on a concrete bunker with a permanently lit fuse in the middle. Gee, that's not at all dangerous, right?

This was bound to happen.

Whoops.

You can clearly see the particle movement and heat simulation, indicated by the red, green and blue background.

But now, since "Dust" isnt a real... game and all, and you don't have a goal, why is it fun? Or is it fun at all? Well... Yes. It is fun. It's not going to take you through that class you despise but had to take because you needed the credit in which you now sit in the very back row with your netbook and pretend to be "working". At least it's not going to last all semester, no. But a little diversion on the side? Perfect. I mean seriously, look at the screenshot. You see the kind of shit you get to play around with? Don't you wanna rub each and every fucking element of this game in your face? Fuck, I havent even figured the shit out of some of them. For example the fuck is "soapy"? (And I love the abbreviation "F-Works" btw...) there's tons and tons of ridicolous amounts of things there. I mean, they don't behave realisticly in most cases but who gives a rat's ass. But come on, you can't tell me that the grenades in real life bounce off of walls like they do in Call of Duty 4, right?
Whatever folks. Imma build huge sky scrapers of stone and watch them tumble from the blast of a c4 explosion.

Hehehe.

Hello world.

Hello dear world. I would like to introduce myself and the concept of this blog. I am a 20 year old German, who lived a year in Wisconsin and spends a lot of time... well I like to call it thinking about important things. Yes. Let's use some phrase to hide that I actually just waste time. But we all remember John Lennon's quote "Time you enjoyed wasting wasn't really wasted" or something in that direction.
AAAAANYHOW. I like flash games and I always think that some of these are so cleverly thought out and well programmed, that there is just so much work in them that they deserve a proper review. Well this may not be proper and adequate, but I often like to think that writing about stuff while at the same time being critical and informative is fun, so its more of a personal thing.

I would like to begin today with one of my all time favorites: "The Space Game" by Kongregate.
(To be found here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/CasualCollective/the-space-game)

The campaign screen. I fail to finish the last mission...

The concept behind "The Space Game" is quite simple. You are a greedy miner who wants to cash some minerals in. The problem is that the wealthies areas are populated by pirates who'd like a slice of the cake. And a slice of your vulnerable space stations. And your workers. Maybe even from you, nobody knows.
So you build your bases (powered by a central generator) over a net of space-power lines. I know, I know. This isnt realistic. Boo hoo.

Cute base, isnt it?

While doing this you have to wisely choose how to spend your budget: do you want to expand quicker, gain more money but have a spread out base that will be hard to defend? Or do you save money to build a massive walls of lasers and missle cannons in the case of an attack?

And you will be attacked. A lot. Depending on what mode and what difficulty you chose, there will be different kinds of enemies that will require different defenses. The king (or queen?) of them being the mothership with powerful long-range lasers and interceptors, that can only be properly responded with upgraded missle launchers.

Aw balls.

 Furthermore it offers 3 game modes plus one if you have an account with Kongregate (hell, if that one company keeps buying websites there wont be a need to create an account, wink wink): campaign mode, in which you have to complete a certain amount of missions with certain varying targets, mining mode, in which you must harvest a given amount of minerals before you got your ass handed to you and survival mode. In survival mode there is no victory, (which is kind of ironic, considering the name of the mode) but instead there is just a lot of cash, a lot of space, and a lot of enemies. IMMO the best one.

But let's get down to what I like about this game.

First of all: I am an absolute science fiction freak. I especially looooove things that are "far out there" and "The Space Game" gives you that feeling. Well, if you zoom in all the way and just look at one of the single mining stations doing it's thing.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the simplicity, yet slight difficulty curve of this game. It's like its saying "Come on, just a little more, I have to show you just one more thing, just one more wave of enemies, can you get that?" - like when your grandparents call you if you could 'just help them build up the new cupboard they bought' and end up working all day covered in grease, sweat and filled with apple pancakes.

Also notable is the writing around it. Its kinda childish, but funny. It's not what a space agency would write to their space mining operator via space mail, but thats okay. I am sick and tired of mini games taking themselves too serious.

And I am even more sick of games making fun of that. This one just comes very natural, like the programmers sit next to you while you try out their newest creation.

The graphics are subtle, the music is fitting and the sound effects are ... well, they're there and you can kind of tell what they are, so I guess they suffice.

All in all very playable and very addictive.