Recently

Beat Hazard got an update in preparation for the upcoming DLC. I’m not entirely sure I like it better this way, but the DLC looks like it might be interesting. I’m not so interested in the multiplayer aspect, but the boss rush, new enemies, and new perks look fun. So, anyway, I’ve been playing a bit of that.

Played some more Audiosurf, too. Still a great game.

Beat every level of Mario 1 and played a little of the second quest. It’s a pretty good game, but it’s really overshadowed by Mario 3.

I’ve played a bit of hardcore Diablo II in the last few months.

Played some more Super Meat Boy. Just a few levels left in the light world, and then I’ll play through the dark world.

Played Torchlight a bit. I’m wondering whether Torchlight 2 will be worth it–if it’ll be different enough to warrant purchase. I guess time will tell.

I learned that I’ve been played Palamedes either very wrong or very right, depending on how you look at it. Discovered that by collecting the right blocks and pressing down, you can remove several lines at once. By removing every block manually, as I had been doing, you get a 50,000 point bonus at the end of the level, though. I got up to stage nine, I think, that way. I haven’t yet tried playing by getting rid of lines, but I imagine I’ll get much further and have a much lower score.

Played a demo of Vertex Dispenser. It isn’t too bad, but I didn’t really like it that much. Certainly not well enough to buy it.

Beat Hazard, and others

Got to rank Elite 10 and unlocked Suicidal difficulty the other day. I’m making fairly good progress unlocking the rest of the achievements, too–I’ve got seven to go.

Played Ten Second War–it’s really great.

Been playing some Shards of Dalaya this week, which is fun. Not sure how long I’ll keep it up, but it’s holding my attention for the moment.

Played a little Plants vs. Zombies, but I’m not too impressed. It’s just a mediocre tower defense game, really.

Tried out Rhythm Zone. Nice idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

Played a little Audiosurf–I’m definitely out of practice, there.

Games on Steam

Recently, I got several games on Steam, due to the awesome sale prices.

Portal: free, a while ago. I beat this one just recently–around 2010-07-03, I guess. Awesome, awesome game. I’ve got 6/15 achievements.

Beat Hazard: $2.49. Neat game, and worth the price. I have 13/25 achievements.

Audiosurf: $2.50. Another cool music game. I have 2/17 achievements.

Torchlight: $5.00. At that price, who could resist it? I’ve got 9/67 achievements. My saves were even compatible, so onward I go.

Civilization 4 complete: $9.99. Civ 4 provides enough gameplay that, compared to movies or something, $10 per playing session wouldn’t really be overpriced. $10 for the whole set (Civ 4, Civ 4: Colonization, Civ 4: Beyond the Sword, and Civ 4: Warlords) is a totally good deal. I spent four hours playing it last night. I was playing on easy, and it was indeed very easy. I’ll have to play on the next difficulty up next time. I was about ten turns away from getting a diplomatic victory (by having enough votes to just vote myself in) when the game ended and I got a time victory instead. I wasn’t far off from a domination victory (is that right? Having most of the map and population. That one.), either. Great game, but at 4 hours for an easy game against a few computers, I remember why I stopped playing before. It takes so long! Still, I’m sure I’ll play it enough to get my money’s worth.

All told, I spent about $20 during the sale on several extremely worthy games. I’m satisfied with the value I’m getting, which is unusual. Definitely I’ll make sure to put aside some money for the next sale like this. Who knows what gems might reveal themselves? There were lots of other great games at great prices, though I already owned several: they had Freedom Force and its sequel for less than $2 for the pair, but I already own Freedom Force. They had similar extremely low prices on various shooters and other games of types I don’t like, so not much temptation there. Still, a dollar or two isn’t two much to pay for even a less-than-stellar game, so I’ll look forward to next time.

New games, and old

Still playing the pinball games. They’re still nice. However, I’ve been noticing more lately that the Williams pinball game has quite a few bugs. Sometimes, the ball will just shoot through solid obstacles, and more than once I’ve gotten a message that the ball fell off the table (what? how?). Twice (or thrice? I forget) now the game has randomly decided that the last player will go first. Everyone still gets to play all of their balls, but it gives the ‘match a number’ screen after the last (which is actually first) player loses the last ball, so when the other players lose and it should either show the match screen or proceed to the next table, it crashes instead. I’ve also had three-player tournaments going, and after each table, the game would show scores for players one, two, and four. Of course, there was no player four, so it was always zero, and there was no way to see play three’s score. Oh well. Can’t have everything. I haven’t noticed such bugs in the Gottlieb game, but I also haven’t played it as much.

I’ve been playing Beat Hazard a bit. It’s an arena shooter, like Asteroids or Warning Forever, but it generates each stage (which enemies appear, how they move, how they fire, and also how much the player fires) based on the song the user selects. In this way, it’s like Audiosurf. It didn’t take too long to reach Elite rank, though I guess it’s probably not supposed to. Most songs are fairly challenging to me on hardcore, and insane difficulty (I think? whatever the final, unlockable difficulty is) is too hard for me in general. I’m sure I’ll be able to play it with more practice. The game is pretty good, though the mouse and keyboard controls are a little problematic: I don’t know if it’s because of my dual-head setup, but the mouse doesn’t get locked to the visible game window, so it can be a pain when I need to change direction if the mouse has gone offscreen–it takes too long to get it back. It’s better with a gamepad, though it only supports 360 controllers (and clones, as I’ve discovered).

Controls aside, it works well for most songs. There is one big issue, though: songs with quiet segments can be absurdly difficult. Since the volume of fire depends on the volume of the song, it’s quite possible to have a 30 second period where very nearly no shots are fired by the player, but a boss or a bunch of ships or something like might be onscreen trying to kill the player. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the bosses fire homing missiles which have to be shot to be destroyed, so and length of time without the ability to reasonably destroy them can be very difficult indeed. So, counter-intuitively, the gentler, quieter songs can actually be much more difficult. Still, I’m enjoying it quite a lot, just as I enjoyed Audiosurf.

I recently played through the campaign of Creeper World, a tower defense game. Creeper World is unique in that rather than distinct enemies, the enemy behaves like a liquid, so the player takes the high ground and attempts to keep the level of the liquid low, and eventually beat it back enough to beat the level. Of course, not all levels are kind enough to give the player the high ground, so it is sometimes necessary to quickly defend the low ground so you can work your way up to the goal. I’d say that it’s one of the better tower defense games I’ve played, though the plot leaves something to be desired.

Got Another Code: R – A Journey into Lost Memories for the Wii and started it. It looks like it might be fun, but I’ll need to play it more before I can really form an opinion.

Played a little Monster Hunter Tri some days ago. It doesn’t seem too bad, but I don’t really like it–it seems to combine the worst elements of RPGs and 3D action games. It has annoying inventory management and weapon durability and food and stuff on the one hand, and irritating ‘aim yourself at the enemy and mash on the A button’ fighting on the other hand. I don’t think it’s really an awful game, but I don’t care for it. Maybe it’d be more fun in multiplayer, but I don’t really care much for multiplayer games either. Maybe I should just stick to platformers from two decades ago.