Savage 2

I recently downloaded the demo for Savage 2 (go Google it) and I’m installing it now. The demo will allow me to play for five hours, and when those five hours are spent, I’ll come back here and post a review for it.

Also, my week long absence was caused by a vacation without internet.

Audiosurf

Almost a month in the making, I have a game review for you guys! I’ll try to do this more often, maybe every time I get a new game. Or hell, I could review my own games as a way of introducing them. And believe me, I would be fair about them. I hate most of the stuff that I make, so they would all score low. So, without further ado…Audiosurf!

Title: Audiosurf
Format: PC
Genre: Music

The whole “ride your music” genre has really exploded lately. While Rock Band and Guitar Hero come with their own songs, you still play the game according to the way the music flows. Other, less known games, allow you to import your own music and play using that. One that I can think of off the top of my head is Osu, where you move your mouse and collect the circles that appear allow with the beat. There are many others, to many for me to name.

In Audiosurf, you choose a song and the game generates a specialized racing track filled with different colored blocks. The track consists of three different lanes, and on some modes, two shoulders where you can go to take a break from the action. To score points, you collect blocks and try to fill up the three bars at the bottom of the screen with three or more touching blocks of the same color. The more you match, the more points you rack up. If you fill up a column to much, all the blocks in it disappear and you have to wait a few seconds to “respawn”. Different color blocks are worth different amounts of point. Red, yellow, and orange (the hot colors) score you the most while blue, purple, and green (the cool colors) give you the least. Hot colors come in intense parts of the song, and cool colors everywhere else.

It’s fairly amazing how the reads the music and creates such a stylized track. Before you begin the song, a graph is displayed with a black line on it showing the bumps and curves of the course. Uphill sections are slow and easy, while downhill is blistering and fast. This is also represented in the game itself, and you can see if a hard or easy part is coming up next.

There are three different game play levels, easy, pro, and elite. In each level, there are three too six different characters (or ships) to choose from. Each has its own special ability. Vegas can go to the shoulder and shuffle all the blocks that he’s collected. Pusher and push blocks from column to column. Pointman can display tip arrows, as well as store blocks for later use. Each is somewhat of a different experience, and I find it really fun to try to same song over and over with different characters.

There are also three very unique characters, Mono, Mono Pro, and Ninja Mono. The game is a bit different when playing as them. There are only two types of blocks, and no shoulder. There are gray blocks, which have to be avoided. And there are colored blocks, which are collected. You score points by gaining combos, and from simply collecting blocks. The first time you nab one, you get one point. The second time, two, and so on and so forth. Hitting a gray block not only wastes space in your tray, but also resets your scoring back to one. Plus, if you get through the entire song without even hitting a gray, you get a 30% bonus to your score!

Overall, the game is very well done but a few things stand out to me. First of all, the scenery outside the track is very simplistic, not related all that much to the music, and sometimes blocks your camera. Also, as cool as the collecting blocks may seem, I always get a nagging feeling that much more could have been done with it. I like the Mono characters the best, and that’s how I think that most of the game should be. Sort of an obstacle course, with collecting blocks on the side.

The game sells for $10 on Steam, and comes with the entire Orange Box soundtrack. Surfing Still Alive has been great fun.

Appearance: 2.5/4 (It works, but the scenery could have used a lot of work in my opinion)
Audio: 4/4 (It’s a game about riding your music, duh)
Learning Curve: 4/4 (A very good tutorial, and simple game play at the easier levels)
Game Play: 3.5/4 (Fun and exciting, but I feel like more could have been done with it)
Fun: 4/4 (Very good, especially if you have some music that coverts well into tracks)

Final Score: 9/10 (An extremely well done game, but some parts just felt a very tiny bit off)

My Mini City

Yet another cool site! In this one, you create your own city and once per day when you visit a certain page, the city’s population, industry, transportation, and other values. I city is called Teal Thoughts, and is located here. So go over and help Teal Thoughts grow!

Also, make some cities of your own and put links to them in the comments. If we have enough (yah right, I rarely ever get a comment) then I’ll make a Mini City page. If we have enough.

Twitter

This is a cool site. You sign up, and you get sort of a mini blog. You can update it with short posts about what you’re doing, and then other people who choose to follow your “tweets” get notified. It’s really fun. I learned about it from a TF2 podcast that I just started listening too (Control Point, go Google it), and I’m following some of the hosts now. Surprisingly, one of them is following me too.

Anyways, here’s a link, and here’s another to my page. Go sign up and let’s follow eachother!

Update

I’m so sorry that I haven’t been able to write for awhile. I’ve been really busy with final exams, as well as three of my friends birthday’s. Anyway, I’m back, and I’ve done some more work on the podcast.

I found some good mikes and recording equipment, and now I need to just set a recording date. I might not be doing any actual talking though (I have a horrible radio voice) but I’ll write scripts, edit the sound, and work on the RSS feed and web site. So basically, the behind the scenes technical stuff.

So far I’ve made a web site (using Google Pages), that is located here. The feed is ready as well, and now all I have to do is record our first episode and then upload the files.

Also, I figured out one of the best ways to make scripts for things like this. Google Docs allows you to create text documents (though you can add pictures and links as well), and then set viewers or contributors for that document. So I was able to make the script outline, and then the other hosts added their parts in different colors, so now the script is finished without us even having to call or email each other. Simple, and really, really cool. Maybe sometime in the future I can set it up so that if you give me your Google account username you can view the latest scripts before the episode is even out.

And because school is now out, you can expect the first episode of Battlecast Heroes to be released sometime in the next couple weeks.

Podcast?

I was just thinking about making a podcast. I don’t know why it popped into my mind. I’ve been listening to two of them for about a year now, but I never thought of making one myself.

Anyway, I now want to make a Battlefield Heroes podcast. Why? Because that game is awesome. Also, they say that they’re going to be constantly adding new content to it, most likely in fortnightly or monthly patches, so there will be loads to talk about. I already have the first show planned out in my mind: Introduce the hosts, chat briefly about the game and give a general overview, talk about the beta, give out thoughts on what the soldier abilities will be (from one of the movies), and then end with some music and links.

I’ll be calling it Battlecast Heroes if I ever do end up making it, and I’ll post here with more updates if this gets off of the ground.

Beta beta beta!

Well, Battlefield Heroes is in a closed beta testing stage right now. For awhile, it had been personal invite only, but now there’s a place where you can register to join. Go here, sign up there, and then make a EA account at their web site. Wait a bit. They don’t send rejection emails, but if a week or so has passed, you probably won’t be getting in. I have (trying to figure out how to legally phrase this) been reviewed positively.

Anyway, I also wanted to talk about tips for actually getting yourself in. There are several different fields from what I remember, and I’ll try to go over them.

• First of all, it may be good practice to make the EA account first. I’m not sure. I made mine second.
• Having a good background in beta testing is very useful. I personally have tested countless games, and I think that that added a big bonus to my submission.
• Also, spend a lot of time working on your “why I should be in the beta” piece. That’s the biggest part, in my opinion. I mentioned co-leading Elate, raved about my love for the game, added some humor, and begged. Once the game goes into an open beta, and we can talk freely, I want to see which strategies worked the best.

So that’s the beta. I hope that you all get in!

Windows Live Writer

Is pretty cool.

When I was downloading MSN awhile ago, they had an option to download a blog editing program. I thought, well hey. I have a blog. This might be useful. So I checked the checkbox and it took a few extra minutes. When I was done, I booted up MSN and forgot about it. Well, when I was looking at the space that Microsoft gives you when you sign up, I noticed a little link to my own, blank, blog. I thought that I might try to connect it to this site so that people could view my posts from there.

Well, that didn’t work, but there was another link on the blog page that said “Download Windows Live Writer.” Suddenly, I remembered that I had downloaded and installed that awhile ago. So I booted it up, and here I am, writing a new post with it.

I haven’t seen much so far, but it sure looks sweet. Course, everything looks sweet in Vista. I’m guessing that it comes equipped with a bunch of super cool special features that’ll help me right state of the art posts.

Think of it as Word, but with a cooler logo and more options and links to my site. There’s even a spell check, which is a relief. Firefox checks to spelling on every text box, and I’m not sure that I could write anything without a spell checker. Why, in that last sentence I made two errors already, but at least I can fix them.

So, it’s a neat little tool, and I’ll be using it a lot in the future.

Another Smiley

I made another! Rejoice!

Smiley!

I made this in Paint.NET. It is epic.

So cute!

It’s so great that it has become my deviantART avatar. It’s also on that site. Linky.