The other day I stumbled upon an old game that I missed when it first came out and consequently it got buried in the pile at ArmorGames. Part of the fun of the site is sifting through the piles of old material and occasionally finding something really noteworthy. And this game here is definitely noteworthy as it isn’t so much a concept of “game” as it is a “reader”.
Basically you are a cursor, one that doesn’t blink, sadly. You have to light up the words of sentences without being hit by power-words. Inadvertently you also get to read the sentences as you go through it. This opens up a whole new world when it comes to fiction. To read is to enjoy, but what if reading became competitive and a score could be gauged? Would books still be as entertaining or moreso?
Arkandian Crusade: Grinding is what it’s all about
Despite this game being a MASSIVE time waster, you’ll still probably spend more than you realise playing Arkandian Crusade. It’s basically a “quick” adventure game where your adventures into dungeons and battles rarely extends beyond a few minutes. Yet despite this, you’ll spend around 7-8 hours building a unstopable character in order to defeat the boss demon who initially kicks your ass at the beginning.
This game shows that simplistic graphics are all that’s needed in most cases and highlights the importance of gameplay over that of eye candy. The story also manages to inject a fair bit of humour into the mix with the enemy demon being called “Fak-ough” and him being “Fak-ough” tough!
Saturday morning fog
This morning, I woke early after a whole day of sleep catch up. Recently, with my work and uni-study load I’ve been utterly bombarded by responsibility and schedule and my natural instinct is to withdraw into myself in order to escape.
During one of these sessions of introspection, I recalled one of my past relationships and the perception of who I was at the beginning to who I became at the end. This perception is not my own because even though I recognise that who I am is not a static entity, those around me aren’t aware of this internal discourse and can only judge me on how I act and behave.
I recall a long beach stroll once, early on in a new relationship where I was telling my girlfriend of how I got to where I am today and why I was me, why my outlook was unique. She listened to my story, perhaps somewhat embellished to make me look better, after all we are necessarily the heroic protagonists of our own story. But I recall her amazement of who I was and how despite the odds, I’d ended up with my particular outlook on life. Her words stuck with me because they seemed not disingenuous, but rather exaggerated.
She told me that I should become a motivational speaker.
Velocity: a melody game in space
So, the first thing I noticed about this game was the discourse occurring in the background. Apparently Earth is under attack from the Vorlons! It seems they have returned and decided to finally erase humanity from the stars instead of a proper welcome back party. Or perhaps this is a proper welcome back party, Vorlon style. Actually that makes sense!
As melody games go, this is a pretty good one, quick, punchy and too the point. Everything that I am not. Velocity is a fast paced dodge game, which has absolutely nothing to do with speed or velocity of any form and more to do with co-ordination and skill. You simply have to dodge stuff and move around. This perplexed and vexed me, why name the game velocity when speed has nothing to do with anything?!
It’s Sunday morning, unsurprisingly my head feels like a nail that’s been hammered into a wooden plank so badly that the end has curved over itself and subsequently been further hammered into the wood. The end result of this metaphor is of a nail being hammered in horizontally and looking like an atrocity. Welcome to my life on Sunday mornings.
Luckily, the innate desire to visit this carnage upon my fellow man has been fulfilled by this brilliant repose called Unicorns and Hand Grenades. It’s one of those horrendously one sided affairs that I have so much affection for. At first, I figured you’d be a lame Unicorn who throws hand grenades at stuff, but boy was I wrong.
Customisable Isolation
Technology is wonderful thing. It has changed our lives in fantastically commercial ways. Today we own the latest mobile phones, MP3 players, home theatre systems, gaming consoles, lap-tops and the latest shows fast tracked direct from the US to give us unprecedented freedom and the ability to customise reality to our own specific desires.
All this technology, all this customisation, has it really set us free or has it further entrapped us in an increasing reliance on commercialisation to fill the void of loneliness and isolation that it brings with it? Why is it that with each leap forward in technology, we take an equivalent step away from each other as people?
To-Suta: OMG! LazORS and SeIzureS filled with WTF!ness!!
It’s Friday before a long weekend. I’ve finished work and am waiting for my class to start. I know I’ve had too much coffee when I encounter this crazy game. You are a flying toaster with wings, yeah that’s right, wings! And get this, you freaking shoot rainbows out of your mouth! That’s right, this shit just got officially insane y’all!
So the shaking of my hands after playing this game indicates a few things:
- I like this game
- I’ve had too much coffee
- I am potentially stroking out
