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.