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Thursday

Helldivers Review


Helldivers won't be remembered for its narrative, nor will it be praised for intriguing mission design. No, these elements of the game are merely average pieces of a backdrop in a theater enacting thrilling performances destined to be endlessly retold among friends and fellow helldivers--and many of those tales are the kind that begin with "Hey, do you remember that one time?" Among these stories, the best ones told by veteran helldivers are of the edge-of-your-seat moments that culminate in cries of jubilance and relief as you and your allies watch your space-faring drop ship fly to safety just in the nick of time. But just as indelible are the tales that end with howls of disappointment (or, sometimes, laughter) as the last remaining member of the team crumbles against the odds and is finally overtaken. There are undoubtedly some blemishes in Helldivers' armor, but inside that armor you'll find a story creator, helping you craft fond memories to be retold for ye ars to come.
Indeed, the stories you create will be ones that will stick with you long after you hang up your uniform, as the plot in Helldivers is one quickly lost to the recesses of space. A multiplayer twin-stick shooter, Helldivers sends you and your fellow caped soldiers to march across the galaxy, delivering "managed democracy," all for the glory of Super Earth. You fight an interstellar war against three other races: the grotesque bugs; the technologically advanced illuminati, and the cyborgs, humans who grafted flesh to metal after separating from the regime--all of whom the government has decreed the enemies of freedom for some reason or other.
The game draws its theme from current history and popular fiction such as Starship Troopers, with the latter inspiring the game's light-hearted, corny propaganda. There are also some thinly veiled references to real-world issues. The Super Earth government labels cyborgs, who reportedly attack with suicide bombers, as terrorists, all the while justifying war in the name of protecting democracy and "our way of life," as well as collecting necessary resources such as, you guessed it, oil deposits (sometimes the veil is so thin as to be nonexistent). But Helldivers isn't attempting to be the next Spec Ops: The Line. It uses tongue-in-cheek humor throughout, and a delicate touch with its weighty themes.
Helldivers is tug of war on a cosmic scale. You and your fellow helldivers fight together against the three computer-controlled species, who reciprocate by pushing toward Super Earth. It's a persistent online universe, in which battles are won and lost even if you don't partake in them. The war theater, viewed from a console on the deck of your ship, is split into three large sections that are then broken into smaller sectors, any of which are claimable after you gather enough community points. These points are earned by completing missions on the many procedurally created planets nestled within. Once all the smaller sectors are claimed, you can begin the real battle, on the alien homeworld. During my time with the game, we were able to take the fight to the bug planet, which invoked some fond memories of a certain sci-fi adventure romp. Hopes were high, but to say the planet was a tough nut to crack would be an understatement--we got completely whupped. The desert world was too much for our handful of helldivers, but perhaps the story will be different post launch. Ultimately, complete conquest of the three planets is the goal, and once achieved, the game starts anew. The home world fights are not the only special events, however. On occasion, helldivers are called to safeguard a city under siege, and cleansing the infestation results in a double dose of experience points. Also, if an enemy species manages to breach Super Earth's defenses, all players rally to its defense.

The humdrum missions, sadly, do put a damper on the engaging design of Helldivers' war front. Planets are won by completing objectives, which don't stretch far beyond the typical, such as capturing and holding an area, activating some device or another, or the always popular escort mission. Odds are you will be too occupied dealing with oncoming waves of enemies to notice boredom seeping in, but after hours of slowly dragging a briefcase or yet another hapless group of stranded civilians across a stretch of terrain, it's difficult not to feel a sense of slowly mounting frustration at the tedium. Completing missions offers a variety of awards, at least. Experience points, in an amount that varies depending on your performance, are showered upon you at the end of each stage. Leveling up unlocks new weapons and gear to be used in your campaign, though I would have preferred for the game to denote which piece of equipment unlocks at what level, rather than b eing occasionally surprised.
Helldivers' one-two punch of deep strategy complementing intense cooperative combat, however, is fantastic. It is so good, in fact, that it often overshadows much of the dreariness arising from the dull missions. It is incredibly satisfying to play on a team of up to four helldivers, all relying on each other to survive while executing carefully planned strategies involving perks and equipment. Playing the game solo is possible and provides its own set of challenges, but it just doesn't offer the same experience. Choosing a planet, the squad leader picks where the group of guerilla fighters will make its landing. On the ground, the team then decides what pieces of equipment, called stratagems, to call down, and what objectives to tackle first. Equipment varies, and includes options ranging from a UAV, which pinpoints threats on the map, to gun turrets, ammunition boxes, heavy guns, and much more. New stratagems are unlocked when battles on certain planet s are completed, with more equipment being offered as a reward. The enemies you face also affect your game plan: Bugs are plated in thick carapace, and charge at you brandishing massive claws; cyborgs are often strapped in bullet-deflecting armor, forcing you to carefully line your shots up with any exposed fleshy bits; and the illuminati attack with high-tech war machines, mind control, and snipers that can kill with one hit.
The stories you create will be ones that will stick with you long after you hang up your uniform, as the plot in Helldivers is one quickly lost to the recesses of space.
The combat itself unfolds organically as you make your way from objective to objective. If your landing is free of immediate hostiles, you can attempt to move through the area with stealth and haste, quickly eliminating any scouting party before scouts manage to raise an alarm. It's entirely possible to complete a mission leaving only the corpses of unwitting foes in your wake, but more often than not, you will end up hammering down your trigger as enraged forces rush to meet you. The weapons, which include a disparate array of rifles, shotguns, and beam cannons, dish out white-hot metal or plasma in gratifying thunder. Bullets rip through flesh, leaving smatterings of blood and piles of viscera in their wake. Effortlessly smooth controls make the gunplay feel terrific throughout every fight.
Helldivers is easy to jump into, depending on your familiarity with twin-stick shooters, but even if you're used to the style, you will find that the game has many factors for you to keep in mind the moment your boots touch terra firma. Chief among them is the immense difficulty, which requires all players to be at the height of their game, as one mistake can spell immediate disaster. As you travel around, research samples that dot maps must be collected in order to earn points to use to upgrade weapons and stratagems. Friendly fire is another item of concern, as it is always on and cannot be disabled, so practice keen trigger discipline. Ammo conservation is an equally high priority, as reloading will discard any unused rounds in a clip.

Death is no stranger in Helldivers, and despite your glorious, flowing cape, you are not superhuman. The game demands a sharp eye and a clever wit; otherwise, you will go down fast. And, take it from someone who knows, if your fallback procedure keeps circling back to running away as quickly as possible, then maybe it's time to rethink the battle plan. Falling in combat is hardly the end of the game, however, as you can call down a reinforcement stratagem to bring a lost comrade back onto the battlefield. But do keep an eye on where the pod (actually, any stratagem, come to think of it) is about to land. Far too many helldivers have lost their lives being crushed beneath incoming ordnance, which doesn't solve any problems whatsoever.
Beyond mission design and story, Helldivers has other issues, though some are negligible. For example, you can customize the look of your helldiver, as well as unlock new clothing designs as you go along, but the options only change from dark to not-so-dark. Since the camera floats off at a distance, it's easy to confuse one dark-armored soldier with another, often resulting in someone foolishly falling off a ledge or firing a weapon into an unrecognized ally. A friend I was playing with also mentioned that the game wasn't tracking his progress when he was playing in my lobby. This is a minor issue; one that I've been informed may be patched by the time the game releases. On the more nitpicky side: What is with the wind on some planets? More than once, during rare moments of silence, I watched as shadows of clouds moved northwest, while dust on the ground flowed to the west, and a small handful of particles lazily floated east. All the while my cape droo ped, apathetic to the elements. But on the subject of capes, it's oddly amusing to spin in place and watch your cape flow in response to the motion. And I know I'm not the only one to feel this way. Before nearly every mission, I watched as so-called hardened fighters twirled on the deck of a battleship; joining the impromptu dances is almost irresistible.
The game draws its theme from current history and popular fiction such as Starship Troopers, with the latter inspiring the game's light-hearted, corny propaganda.
Helldivers is a hugely entertaining space romp, despite bearing a few battle scars. It is truly a game designed for precious water cooler moments, when you can tell stories of fights barely won, and anecdotes detailing white-knuckle flights from insatiable hordes. The deafening cheers heard through my microphone as the last living member of the team squashed a bug tank with three reinforcement pods, turning the tide back toward victory, is forever etched in my mind. Imperfect as it may be, Helldivers' focus on the cooperation of a small team looking out for each other against oppressive waves of enemies elevates it from what would have been a fun and challenging shooter, to a game that now sits at the top of my list of how I plan to spend many future evenings: with a gun in hand, my allies at my back, and a broad smile on my face.

Words Block! Answers Level 51-75 (3/4)




Words Block! is a brand new game for android, exclusively. It is a fun new game where your screen gets filled with all these letters, and you have to figure out the word. Sounds easy? Maybe in the beginning, but it gets harder as you progress. It's nice to have a guide for all the levels like this one, isn't it? Anyways, I hope you got the help you needed!

WORDS BLOCK! LEVEL 51-75:

51: Nap, Ball, Cold, Sub, Eye, Criminal
52: Bug, Fish, Brick, Disc, Rush, Coast
53: Roth, Hulk, Wolverine, Deadpool
54: Genie, Foundation, Star, Candle
55: Stove, Fridge, Cup, Pot, Dish, Oven
56: Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Germany
57: Patient, Shy, Careful, Diligent
58: Shower, Bow, Chance, Risk, Pledge
59: Broccoli, Frog, Grouch, Spinach
60: Pomegranate, Fig, Durian, Mango
61: Window, Faith, Heart, Ice, Record
62: Sandbox, Slide, Swing, Children
63: Television, Drug, Alcohol, Game
64: Gigli, Transformers, Catwoman
65: Dracula, Vampire, Bat, Mosquito
66: Piglet, Kitty, Puppy, Chick, Calf
67: Avengers, Shrek, Avatar, Frozen
68: Cupid, Lonely, Chocolate, Lover
69: Water, Data, Money, Life, Penalty
70: Sincere, Plain, Truthful, Frank
71: Handwriting, Picture, Fly, Hang
72: Metallica, Radiohead, Placebo
73: Rapunzel, Aurora, Elsa, Jasmine
74: Man, Maiden, Will, Ore, Rule
75: Dodge, Ford, Subaru, Jeep, Toyota

Screamride Review


As fun as it is, there's something rather...disturbing...about Screamride. A game about racing rollercoaster cars down rails at tremendous speeds and smashing them into concrete skyscrapers isn't to be taken seriously, of course, and I'm not terribly concerned about the riders, who seem beyond thrilled for the chance to sacrifice their well-being for the chance to fling themselves into solid objects. My worry lies with the pedestrians walking around out there. There are promenades to stroll on among the office buildings and laboratories. What right-minded individual would think to hang out there--or to work there?
Well. This isn't the kind of thing you're supposed to be thinking when you play Screamride, which sets itself apart from the developer's own Rollercoaster Tycoon series in this regard. In the RCT series, a crash was always a tragedy; Screamride's thrill-seekers hoot and holler on their way towards collisions like the Duke boys sliding across the hood of the General Lee, and the rocktronica soundtrack doesn't miss a beat, even when the riders' ragdoll bodies thump against asphalt. They must enjoy it. So do I, actually, though your enjoyment depends on your willingness to cast aside memories of Rollercoaster Tycoon and its freedoms in favor of Screamride's hyper-happy attitude and unique mix of construction and destruction.

Add racing to that mix, too, if you want a fuller picture. Screamride is split into four discrete chunks: racing, demolition, engineering, and sandbox creation, locking creation tools behind gates that can only be opened by participating in career events. That's not the worst thing in the world--Little Big Planet manages to make the idea work, after all--but if coaster creation is your primary draw, busywork is mandatory. There are other limits that also stifle creative minds bursting with ideas, but forget about them for a moment. Instead, picture a roller coaster that gives its riders a modicum of control over speed and balance--coaster cars with brakes and accelerators, and with limited boosting capabilities, that let you lean into curves so you don't go flying from the tracks as you whip around corners.
Experiencing a coaster this way is called screamriding, and it closely resembles traditional racing, apart from the obvious limitation of being glued to the track, with the exception of jumps, or in circumstances when the race purposefully ends with a coaster train launching from the track and into a high-rise. You are an active participant, earning boost by pressing a button just as you near the end of a blue stretch of track, and using an analog stick to nudge the car left or right, either to keep the car on the track, or to navigate the twists the game throws in, such as monorails that require you to lean on two wheels. Of course, most of the twists are in the coaster design themselves. No real-life coaster would risk such barf-inducing curlicues, but in the Screamride fantasy, why not throw caution to the wind? The rider-view camera angles might inspire some waves of nausea for you, but I never felt like upchucking. Then again, I seem to be immune fr om coaster sickness in real life, too.
Your enjoyment depends on your willingness to cast aside memories of Rollercoaster Tycoon and its freedoms in favor of Screamride's aggressive xtreme attitude and unique mix of construction and destruction.
Real life coasters rarely allow you to reach speeds of 150 miles per hour, unless you're a regular at Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi. Early on, when navigation isn't so tricky, it's easy to enjoy the thrills; as the campaign progresses, you're more concerned with spotting where blue tracks ends so you can earn a spot of boost, and with avoiding spills that could cost you time. At advanced stages, Screamride isn't about the joys of riding roller coasters: It's about gaining as many points as you can and showing off your skills on the game's online leaderboards. The game's insistence on turning everything into a competition is its defining negative feature, actually. "Sorry if you want to just ride the coaster and enjoy it!" says Screamride. "Roller coasters aren't fun enough on their own." Screamriding comes with its own kind of thrills, at least; finishing the Sky-Scraping Serpent challenge without a derailment rewards you not just with points, but by allowi ng you to sigh with relief after several minutes of white-knuckle track navigation.
Screamride's biggest gameplay triumph is only tangentially related to coasters. The game is big on destruction. It wants you to see colossal buildings collapse into voxelized heaps, and even showcases a few debacles outside of demolition levels. (You can even fly your car into towers should you launch from the track during a race.) Being a demolition expert is the game's strongest allure. On a fundamental level, demolition challenges are akin to a 3D version of Angry Birds: You launch a cabin from a rotating arm into arrangements of structures in the hope of causing a cavalcade of destruction and gaining points for it. (2007's Pain for the PlayStation 3 also springs to mind as an apt comparison.) Explosive barrels are tucked away in strategic places, and spires are placed to maximize damage if you bump them in just the right way.
Destructive delights.
Demolition is based on physics, so even a seemingly perfect launch may not have the effect you desired. Luckily, Screamride avoids Angry Birds' aggravations, focusing more on the demolition than on unreasonable challenges. Later levels add all sorts of accoutrements to the mix: cabins that divide or bounce, trampolines and magnets that extend your cabin's usefulness, and so forth. Other levels launch coaster cars off of a track and let you steer them directly into structures. Whatever the specific wrecking ball you use, razing a level is wholly satisfying. Monoliths topple onto other monoliths like a set of massive dominoes, and firing a cabin into the spindly legs of a colossal robot causes it to collapse upon itself in a glorious implosion of rubble. You can always restart the level with the press of a button should you miss your target; doing so causes demolished structures to be rebuilt as you watch, a process that might have been almost as amusing a s the demolition if it didn't cause the frame rate to hit rock bottom. (Generally, the frame rate is not Screamride's strong suit.)
You get your build on in Screamride's engineering challenges. The sandbox aside, these levels best hark to the spirit of Frontier's previous creations, plopping a coaster down on some terrain, and asking you to complete it using a specific set of standards. "Complete the coaster with a minimum drop height of 100 meters, a minimum travel length of 950 meters, a top speed of 93 mph minimum, and using at least three special pieces" is one such goal, though others are much simpler ("Launch a rider"). There are some engineering control quirks to contend with, mostly to do with navigating between disconnected tracks, but the interface is otherwise commendable, and it's easy to test your coaster as you progress, and then return to construction, where you can add and twist tracks to your heart's content.
So many loops, so many restrictions.
The interface's usability is at its most apparent when you delve into Screamride's sandbox, which is overflowing with ways to build coasters and environments, whether you intend for those environments to provide atmosphere, or whether you intend to annihilate them. Make your own structures using cubes of concrete, glass, iron, and stone. Craft the island that your challenge rests upon with tiles of grass and metal. Delve into blueprints, where you can find pre-fashioned constructs that help automate the parts you aren't interested and focus on the parts you care about. Screamride asks a lot of a controller, given all the baubles and doodads, but clear tooltips make the process as simple as you could ask for.
There are complications that arise: all of this creation is in the service of a screamriding, demolition, or engineering challenge, so if you want to share your accomplishment, you must adjust vital parameters. That means setting goals, establishing any limits on coaster parts like loops and corkscrews, bonus challenges, and so forth. If you apply yourself, however, the results can be marvelous. As I write this, Screamride has not been released to the public, but press members and Frontier's developers have crafted some excellent stuff, like my favorite of the screamriding challenges, The Vaporizer, which flies along at speeds surpassing 170 miles per hour, and offers no hope of figuring which was is up and which is down until the challenge had ended. Thanks, SirTokeAlot85! Too bad I can't see how I fared against other racers on your level--or on any user-created levels.

The game is big on destruction. It wants you to see colossal buildings collapse into voxelized heaps.
The sandbox's downfall is not in the breadth of its toolset, but in the limitations on how you use it. Screamride suffers from a pressing need to give everything you do the same structure as its career challenges. You cannot simply build a coaster, ride it, and share it for others to do the same--not directly. Well, you can build an engineering challenge and ride your creation by testing it during and after construction, and then remove a couple of pieces of track and create a lame challenge out of it for others to complete and test. Or, you can save your coaster as a blueprint, which other players can use in their own level, which requires building a level, placing your coaster, and testing it. Or, others can download your challenge and then edit and test the coaster. But these are convoluted ways of circumventing Screamride's "Roller coasters aren't fun enough on their own!" outlook. It's frustrating to have so many tools, and so few ways of putting th em to use, like an overwhelming pile of Legos that you can only use for making a boat, a car, or a house. Future downloadable content allowing for straightforward sharing, riding (not screamriding), and viewing coasters in action would be as surprising as a pile of vomit at Busch Gardens Tampa's Montu exit.
I don't wish to further belabor the issue of "what Screamride doesn't do," however, because "what Screamride does do" is a more interesting subject. It turns roller coaster riding into a self-destructive blood sport in which you demolish buildings and ruin little computer people's lives for the inherent joy of it. Building up and tearing down is an age-old pleasure, and seeing sky-high structures fall like dominoes with a flick of a stick is Screamride's primary delight. I sometimes think of all those digital men and women that went plummeting to their dooms, but at least they died doing what they loved.

Monday

Words Block! Answers Level 76-100 (4/4)




Words Block! is a brand new game for android, exclusively. It is a fun new game where your screen gets filled with all these letters, and you have to figure out the word. Sounds easy? Maybe in the beginning, but it gets harder as you progress. It's nice to have a guide for all the levels like this one, isn't it? Anyways, I hope you got the help you needed!

WORDS BLOCK! LEVEL 76-100:

76: Snorkel, Economy, Soda, Soap, Gum
 77: Eggplant, Violet, Barney, Grape
 78: Beer, Cocoa, Coffee, Grapefruit
 79: Remember, Mufasa, Pumbaa, Simba
 80: Shirt, Coat, Vest, Jumper, Blouse
 81: Aladdin, Popeye, Hook, Insomnia
 82: Joy, Angry, Jealous, Misery, Melancholy
 83: Jaguar, Lion, Hippopotamus, Crocodile, Hyena
 84: Papyrus, Cleopatra, Sphinx, Pharaoh, Pyramid
 85: Lightsaber, Yoda, Luke, Force, Jedi, Chewbacca
 86: Simpsons, Mustard, Omelet, Yolk, Pikachu, Corn
 87: Sidecar, Manhattan, Martini, Sazerac, Gimlet


 88: Victim, Detective, Witness, Evidence, Robber
 89: Orangutan, Chimpanzee, Law, Gorilla, Justice
 90: Adolescence, Dream, Acne, Rebellion, Nirvana
 91: Abercrombie, Wetseal, Gucci, Hollister, Zara
 92: Treasure, Ship, Hat, Sail, Eyepatch, Caribbean
 93: Gogh, Rembrandt, Piccaso, Renoir, Munch, Monet
 94: Death, Berry, Board, Box, Friday, Smith, Out, List
 95: Promise, Bubble, China, Love, Peace, Glass, Bone
 96: Sliding, Track, Stage, Story, Slash, Ground, Hoe
 97: Costume, Treat, Pumpkin, Cauldron, Tomb, Witch
 98: Beatles, Bobdylan, Who, Elvis, Rollingstones
 99: Tomkat, Kimye, Brangelina, Bennifer, Billary
 100: Money, Smile, Water, Pipe, Blood, Fish, Computer

Hand of Fate Review


Hand of Fate may not be a Dungeons & Dragons game, but it captures the imagination in a similar way: by abstracting exploration and encouraging your mind to create exactly what the forests, dungeons, and villages you encounter might look like. The game's mysterious and melodramatic card dealer takes the role of dungeon master, uncovering cards that represent star-crossed lovers looking for a friendly face, or raging riverbeds that must be crossed. Meanwhile, you sit across from the enigma holding the cards, choosing whether to help the lovers, or to alert their parents; you navigate that river, hoping to traverse it unscathed, rather than to draw the ire of nearby lizardpeople. You never see these lovers: they exist only as a few words and a card. Hand of Fate invites you to look beyond its abstractions and picture such moments with your mind's eye. When the game tells you of a surreal circus that dissipates on the wind once you make your exit, the writing is just clear enough to let you paint within the outlines drawn for you.
It's tempting to call Hand of Fate a cross between a collectible card game and an action role-playing game, and while you can customize your deck, that comparison doesn't seem quite right. A typical CCG is competitive, having players attack and counter using cards that represent creatures, heroes, statistics, and so forth. In Hand of Fate, those cards act in tandem as a tabletop game board in which you move your token one square at a time, uncovering events with each turn. The enigmatic dealer places his cards face down in a linear or non-linear arrangement, and with each move, you lose a single ration of food, which is one of three primary resources--along with gold and health--that you must track. That card might represent a simple bandit ambush, a bard asking for coin in return for a song, or a magic portal that takes you to the next adventuring area--which means navigating a new arrangement of cards.
The gods will not always smile upon you.
Drawing a card often leads to more choices, many of which are determined solely by luck. You are running from a giant tentacled behemoth, and your destiny belongs to the whims of four cards, only one of which represents success, while the others represent various degrees of failure. The four cards are shuffled, and with a shaky hand, you choose the one you hope leads to safety. Some events are stacked in your favor--the hand may consist of three success cards and one failure card, for example--while others punish you with several randomized draws in a row, each of which possesses only a single chance of success. Victory often means drawing from a stack of equipment cards from your own deck (Ooh, look: a flaming sword!). Failure, on the other hand, usually means drawing loss cards that diminish your maximum health, or even curse you with negative effects that last until the game is over--unless, that is, you draw a card for a mage that sells curse removal s, and you actually have the 75 gold necessary to buy his services.
Encounter cards lead you into battles that are not left to your imagination, but occur in real time. Combat ushers you into a small map within a forest, or within a ruined temple, and you swing your axe or sword at rats and mages until they fall--or until you do. Skirmishes have a Batman: Arkham vibe, in the sense that prompts appear over your head, and you must press the proper button to counter a melee attack, or to deflect an incoming projectile. Early battles are easy enough to survive, but as the story mode wears on, you face difficult situations made even more challenging by bear traps hidden in bushes, and giant golems that pound the ground, forcing you to tumble away lest you lose a giant chunk of health.
What a clusterjam!
Hand of Fate's brilliance lies in how its abstract components inform very real battles. Should you run out of food, for instance, each turn slashes ten health points away from your total supply. If you are nearing death when the next battle begins, you are all that more anxious about timing your swings perfectly, and avoiding traps at all costs, knowing that being hit by a single dart is enough to change the tide of battle. Back and forth you move, from battle arenas to the cards in front of you. When you draw near death during battle, you return to the cards hoping the next move might bring you nearer a priest who might heal you, rather than draw a curse that siphons away your last remaining spirit. When you leave the cards for battle, you wish you hadn't sold shield for the food you were so desperate for. Tensions rise as the pendulum swings back and forth, and all you can do is pray the hand of fate provides cards that favor and bless you. It's a sati sfying tug of war, unusual in the way it marries the conceptual with the physical.
It is in the details that Hand of Fate suffers, occasionally allowing the frustrations to outweigh the fun. On the battlefield, the small maps and fixed camera don't play nice, too often limiting your point of view when you most need situational awareness. I often longed for breathing room, such as when close to a dozen rats swarmed me on a sea vessel so small that neither I nor my enemies could properly move about. And I often wished for a better camera, particularly during the occasional trap mazes, when I couldn't quite tell if a map square was trapped because a wall was in my way, and the camera had yet to pull closer. Off the battlefield, the element of chance also proves vexing. What is an adventurer to do when a series of curses has reduced your maximum health pool to one point of health before you have ever entered battle? You might play several story matches over and over again, pining for triumph, only to throw the controller and move on to som ething less cruel, like Spelunky or Dark Souls.
Health and food are even more valuable than gold--but boy does gold come in handy!
Technical troubles hinder the game in and out of combat. The frame rate in particular is habitually unstable; the single-digit jitters that typically occur when the dealer performs his mystical shuffles may not affect gameplay, but it certainly diminishes the magic of the moment. I also encountered numerous bugs; there was a period during which I had to start up the game multiple times before it would run, and another stretch during which the lava golem would immediately die when he performed his first attack, as if he was taking damage from his own wallops. (Note that I have only played on the Xbox One; these problems may or may not occur on PlayStation 4 or PC.)
Yet Hand of Fate has a way of drawing you back into its fold, even after you have completed its story and have taken to Endless Mode, which challenges you to stay alive as long as you can before your luck runs out. The game absorbs you in three ways at once, by invoking both the loot-gathering vibe of an action RPG, the deck-fiddling fun of a CCG, and the "I'm feeling lucky this time!" aspirations of games of chance. It's a powerful one-two-three punch, though you need to be prepared: sometimes those punches land with unexpected pain.

Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines Review


We're currently in a place with the Playstation Vita where every great game that arrives brings an air of sadness equal to its joys. Each artistic success is a reminder of how much of a portable paradise the system can be with even the most basic amount of love and attention. In the case of Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines, we get to see the traditional turn-based role-playing game get a serious injection of innovation that fewer and fewer developers are attempting to bring in favor of desolate open worlds and unworthy side missions.
The core of Oreshika is a traditional one. Four characters wait their turn to attack a horde of enemies by unleashing simple attacks, performing magic, or defending. A summon mechanic opens up later on. Much of your time is spent grinding through a relatively small number of dungeons, fighting many of the same enemies over and over, and bringing the spoils back home to divvy among your playable characters but offering bonuses based on certain conditions. In combat, it's a fine example of its genre, all things considered. But Oreshika brings a new mechanic to the table that makes the game its own compelling beast.
High stats. Low color coordination.
The story is this: It's medieval Japan in the time when the gods controlled every aspect of life. When six holy artifacts go missing, the gods' powers go a little haywire, and natural disasters start tearing the country apart. The emperor, under the advisement of his right hand, a sorcerer named Seimei, decides that the only way to appease the gods into sparing Japan is a massive human sacrifice: the complete decimation of a clan. Your clan. It mostly works, aside from the occasional wild storm or plague, but the gods most certainly don't approve of Seimei's methods, so they decide to pull themselves together and intervene. The gods resurrect your clan and set them on the course to gain enough power to exact some good old-fashioned revenge on Seimei.
There's one major problem, however: Seimei's human sacrifice left the clan stricken with the Curse of Broken Lineage, which means that the newly resurrected clan members can only live for two years, and they cannot reproduce with other full-blooded humans. The gods are at least willing to help there. In exchange for enough of their devotion (earned by slaying demons), members of the clan are allowed to mate with a god/goddess of their choosing to produce offspring who grow at an accelerated rate. It doesn't rid the clan of the curse--the offspring have two years to live, as well--but it allows your family to carry on your work, as well as bringing a whole host of supernatural powers and traits into the bloodline.
Where do we go from here?
And so your clan's quest for revenge begins. After going through an extensive character creator, in which you make a family name, select a few common hereditary physical features, and pick classes for an initial generation of three siblings (fencer, martial artist, or gunner), you spend most of your early time with Oreshika running your clan every month through beautifully rendered labyrinths based on Japanese art, myths, and legends. In addition, you slaughter the demons who live therein, leveling up clan members as much as possible, grabbing as much loot as you can, and making them powerful enough to kill the labyrinth's bosses for massive amounts of power and glory. Once a year, in every area, an event called the Feast of All Demons takes place. During this event, the demon world is accessible from a portal deep in a specific labyrinth, and you have a shot at taking out Seimei, though he's always too strong and often just sends a giant monster to play with you while he laughs the laugh of the criminally insane.
Beating the beast allows you to grab one of the lost artifacts. Losing, or not being able to find the demon portal before a member of your family gets too old/sick to fight, means waiting and training another year to make another attempt. And unfortunately, time is quite literally of the essence, especially in the labyrinths, where it moves on Inception rules (one month = around 10 minutes, with the clock slowing but not stopping while you're in fights). Thankfully, the gods grant you a helper, a weasel who can morph into a bouncy, happy, anime girl at will, who makes up for her grating anime-ness by being a ridiculously useful personal assistant who keeps you on task for the month. She automatically buys new armor and weapons if you let her, organizing your items, telling you everything that happened last month/will be happening in the next, and essentially operating as a quick reference guide for any of the game's mechanics you still don't grasp. There are at least a baker's dozen of games that could use such a character, just minus the weasel outfit.
If the game was just this, it'd be a fine, fun, slightly more self-serious twist on the Half-Minute Hero formula with the most striking use of the traditional ukiyo-e art style since Okami, and we'd leave it at that. The combat is a little on the easy side if you spend the time to level up early enough. Furthermore, most of the time it doesn't take much to start steamrolling the majority of what you'll encounter, but the gimmick of extensive battles taking time and effort that you may not be able to afford is a strong one to base a game around. There's even a unique set of difficulty options that can either make it so that leveling up is much slower, meaning that enemies are more difficult for a longer time, or, for folks who don't have time to kill or want to perform dungeon speed runs, can make every encounter worth several times as much XP, but you only get five minutes inside the dungeon. From the pure-blooded RPG side, you can customize just how much of a time suck you want the game to be.
And that's the way the Japanese fire demons have their picnic.
In addition, the game's loot system is a risk/reward proposition, in which you get more experience if you kill everyone on the field, but only killing the enemy leader gives you the loot, and the leader can take off at any time. Getting the game's best items versus leveling your characters is a constant conundrum, and it keeps things interesting throughout. The most egregious issue is that while you get a mini-map in the lower right corner, there's no full-on map to pull up of each labyrinth. This means that there is a lot of wandering around, particularly in twisty dungeons, and that you will be wasting time you don't have because you can't remember what room the portal to the Feast was. Luckily, combat is fun enough where the aimlessness is only an issue when you're trying to reach the Feast, and by then, hopefully, you've been in that labyrinth often enough to take notes and directions.
But Oreshika has deeper ambitions in mind than just being a slick dungeon crawler. More than anything, Oreshika is a better-than-advertised family simulator. The survival of your family's collective knowledge and power is dependent on your ability to breed carefully, to select heads of the family who will command respect, to make sure that each family member is treated fairly and feels useful (e.g., listening to their suggested actions in battle), and to keep everyone healthy and alive as long as humanly possible. There's an almost overwhelming number of stats to watch, measuring everything from a family member's vigor (i.e., how much of their stats they actually have access to, which lowers the older/more frail they get) to their loyalty, and all of them carry elemental/emotional values that affect that family member's actions. Family members that carry higher earth or water affinity in their stats tend to follow orders, fight smarter, and pick up on skills a lot more easily. Fire and air affinities tend to be powerful, but their loyalty stat tends to drop a lot more quickly, they demand attention much more, and they are most often the ones who run away from home when they hit maturity--taking a bunch of your family's wealth with them--if they feel they're not being used properly, listened to in battle, or respected. The game's primary focus isn't just to make yourself a higher level than the bosses; instead, the focus is to raise children who valiantly carry on their parents' work if they're not.
Ensuring the continuation of the bloodline means choosing a god to mate with from the pantheon. There are dozens and dozens of elaborately designed gods to choose from, all with their own genetic makeup, physical traits, elemental affinities, and personalities. Again, the sheer amount of information to take into account is daunting, and it is not really laid out in a way that's easy to read. With practice, however, it gets easier to breed the changes you want into your family, even if you don't ultimately like every consequence. Just like in real life, traits can skip generations, and a mom's or dad's genes could become more dominant or recessive than the other. The son of an expert archer might sometimes end up with terrible aim. Marrying a demure-looking dancer to a fierce warrior god could result in a high-stat badass daughter. Sometimes, well, you just plain end up with ugly kids, but even then, a dumb, clumsy child who's not learning the family trade fast enough can be trained by his or her parent (rendering her unusable in dungeons that month) for a massive jump in stats. There's a staggering number of stats, affinities, and personalities to be found, and so far, I've yet to run into a combination, even among siblings and direct descendants, that cloned someone I'd seen before, even while keeping so much other info from their ancestors.
Trying to hit a cloud. Nobody said these kids were smart.
Perhaps the most fun, useful, and contextually powerful mechanic in the game, however, is the heirloom system. Putting enough money into a weapons shop allows you to invite a craftsman to your town who can make heirloom weapons and armor made that can be passed down generation to generation as long as the family member carries on the name of the one who commissioned it. The initial piece is typically one of the lowest-stat items in the game. However, every time it's held by a descendant and the descendant levels up, the item's stats go up with it. After being passed down a few generations, in the case of, say, a sword, the owner may learn a new skill. Even more surprising, any time that descendant is up against a much stronger enemy or your party is outnumbered, the spirit of one of his or her ancestors may show up on the field to imbue the weapon's next action with a spectacular new power--just when you need it most. Even when the list of available classes opens up even further, the game rewards keeping the family business alive, and it inspires loyalty in the player--if not to specific people, then to the name and the item he or she passes on.
Throughout Oreshika, that quote from Kill Bill about revenge not being a straight line but a forest you get lost in came to mind. After a few generations, my family in Oreshika had already become as large and diverse as any real family I'd ever witnessed. Kids would run off and start families in other areas; daughters of other clans would marry into mine. Dark-skinned cousins would become invaluable experts in guncraft who worshipped a stern-faced, strong-willed, fiery bull god and strictly come to destroy bosses. The sudden passing of the head of the family ahead of their 24-month expectancy would feel like a genuine loss, and the family's status in other lands would suffer for it.
Though Oreshika isn't the first to try and make an old-school RPG feel new or to make customizable characters feel like a family affair--Fire Emblem: Awakening tried something similar on a smaller scale, for example--it does feel like the first to completely bet the farm on that idea and succeed. You're compelled to take inexperienced children through an old dungeon to get them learning new skills. You're compelled to spite disloyal teenagers by letting them leave, casting them out, or marrying them off. You're compelled to have a dying mother train her child before the curse takes its toll. And when you're strong enough, you're compelled to take a family into the fray and lay waste to your enemies like no generation had prior. The Vita isn't dead yet. Turn-based RPGs aren't dead yet. Oreshika makes the strongest argument in a long time that developers should be taking advantage of those two facts.

Wednesday

Oblitus Review


Parvus, from the Latin for "little," is such an apt name for the hero of Oblitus. He spends his waking hours tossing sticks at beasties the size of small buildings, and his jaunts take him among household items such as pots and jars that are so comically oversized he might as well be walking through a Claes Oldenburg exhibit. It's possible, too, to read a bit of self-deprecation on the part of one-man development team Connor Ullmann, who's been saying for two years now that his little 2D sidescrolling rogue owes heavy debts to Dark Souls. Parvus' journey is fraught with failures, restarts, and seemingly insurmountable challenges. Thus, his journey echoes the creative trials of a developer who knows he has massive boots to fill.
Generally, Oblitus succeeds, in spirit if not in presentation. The influence of Dark Souls doesn't beat you over the head as it did in last year's Lords of the Fallen; instead, it reveals itself in subtler ways, such as how the reason behind our masked hero's existence reveals itself chiefly through gameplay rather than storytelling. You see it when poor Parvus can't sustain more than a few blows before the words "You Have Died" fill the screen and reset your progress, or how darkness and shadows cover so much of Parvus' world. It's a beautiful world, and while Oblitus opts for an attractive hand-painted aesthetic that evokes a gritty reboot of Castle Crashers, it's possible to catch echoes of Blighttown and Darkroot Garden reverberating throughout its interiors and forested paths.
Killing enemies wins Parvus back some health, but the benefit is so small that you'll barely notice the difference.
The nods to Souls carry over to the combat, with the key difference that this is a fast-paced game that better resembles Mega Man or more contemporary platformers like Outland. It's intuitive stuff, for the most part, and a quick prompt when the game first boots up bidding you to mirror the action keys for either a gamepad or keyboard serves as all the tutorial you need. There's a sense, though, that Ullman tried too zealously to Souls-ify his game. Parvus can parry and block with his shield by activating the left bumper and trigger of a gamepad, for instance, but the option never feels anywhere as useful as his ability to roll through most adversaries, swatting them with his trusty wooden spear before rolling swiftly to the other side.
Small collision issues complicate the matter because it's not always clear if our little warrior can block an attack at a particular angle or even if his jabs will hit. Parvus is thus much more effective when fighting on the move, jumping Mario-style over lumbering bog monsters and lizard men rather than staring them down behind a shield or using the option to throw Parvus' spear across the map (and suffering a slight spear respawn delay if you miss). Oblitus' very design tends to confirm this bias, as the combat upgrades Parvus picks up focus far more on options such as gaining invincibility while rolling and jumping higher than on employing our little hero's rickety shield.
Be sure to explore, as ridiculously helpful powerups sometimes hide in the strangest places.
In less capable hands, such challenges might be overcome by simply memorizing where Oblitus' monsters enter and exit, and recalling precisely when to make various jumps. But this is Oblitus, a name that means "forgotten." Ullman's game escapes such predictability through the roguelike elements of its gameplay, which shakes up the locations and types of upgrades, health renewal boosts, and even a few of the enemies after each death to ensure that each playthrough differs from another. Even the map itself isn't entirely safe, as elements such as corridors and platforms sometimes subtly extend to make room for more foes. The upshot is that each of Parvus' forays into his strange world is fraught with an exciting urgency that's absent in 2D games relying on extra lives and self-sacrifice for the sake of experimentation. When you risk losing everything, Oblitus says, everything starts to count.
That's a lot of abuse to hurl at players, particularly when it also means that some playthroughs will inevitably be easier than others. However, Oblitus keeps it manageable with zones that feel just large enough to deliver a satisfying sense of exploration while remaining compact enough to keep replays worthwhile. (There's even an achievement for beating the game within 25 minutes.) Elsewhere, enemies' deaths reward you with a near-imperceptible bit of replenished health. The handful of bosses, while massive enough to take up huge chunks of the screen, usually require simple (although sometimes not immediately obvious) strategies that assuage the pain of repetition in the case of almost certain failure. What's more, they blessfully stay despawned after they have been beat, if you fail later on and need to start over. It's like the kid on the playground who's just mean enough to start scuffles with you but is never quite unbearable enough to drive you away. Indeed, my main complaint throughout had little to do with the moment-to-moment gameplay but rather with the way the world is filled with too many surfaces that look like they should be walkable but aren't.
Boss fights aren't forgiving of slips, but most of them rely on manageable strategies.
Ullman does his game a bit of a disservice by so vocally trumpeting the influence of Dark Souls; this is something different and attractively brutal, although its component elements are familiar enough to make it accessible to almost everyone. (And if the considerable appeal of Volgarr the Viking proves anything, it's that publisher Adult Swim has a soft spot for punishing platformers.)
But there's plenty of pleasure in this pain, and it reveals itself in not only the richly imagined bosses and enemies but also Josh Whelchel's haunting soundtrack, which fares just as well off the screen as it does when Parvus is busy stabbing creatures of the dark. If you're up for some pretty punishment, Oblitus provides an experience that you won't soon forget.

Republique Review


It begins with a plea for help, a closeup of a teenage girl's panicked face, clandestinely whispering about being "erased." Her name is Hope. You don't know why she's called you. You can't quite tell where she is. But you know she's frightened, and everything is horribly wrong.
We know this not because some omniscient narrator fills us in on the world in Republique's opening in-engine scene but in the same way you get all your information in Republique, a way that few games offer: you observe. You explore. The truth about Hope's new surroundings is out there, on the walls, in the newspapers, in the voicemails scattered around the game. Either the future or we're at least in a place with the future's technology. A foreboding "headmaster" sees all, assuring an unseen populace that all is still right with the world. Except clearly it isn't since you're surrounded by guards, people are smacking our girl around, blathering on about manifestos, the dangers of information, and the poisonous influence of a dead rebel named Daniel Zager, who sets the tone at the game's outset during the developer logos even more succinctly and ominously with a single quote: "I used to be angry at my government because I thought they weren't listening. Now I'm angry because I know they are." We are in a world of lavish accommodations, a place that resembles Xavier's School for the Gifted more than any sort of prison, and yet all the other telltale signs of a stone-cold prison are inescapable and in full view.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
And so begins Republique, with a sense of supreme disquiet and a constant, ongoing bewilderment. It's that bewilderment that drives the game onward and keeps you guessing episode after episode through a mystery that's all too reluctant to hand out easy answers.
The dystopian nightmare is a compelling veneer for a rather simple stealth game when it comes down to brass tacks, though. Once you break Hope out of her initial confinement cell, your task is simply to keep her out of the hands of the Prizrak, the private security stooges milling about, keeping Pre-Cals--that is, the children of Republique--in their place, locked up, and under control. You do this by hijacking the thousands of surveillance devices scattered around the place, Watch Dogs style, and guide Hope from hiding place to hiding place, just beyond the sight of the Prizrak, hacking every piece of electronic equipment you can find, occasionally managing to improve your door access in the process. Republique's lineage shows here. Developer Camouflaj has a few Metal Gear Solid veterans working under its roof, and that game's stealth pedigree shows in the patrol patterns, Hope's hiding spots, and the more advanced reactions when the Prizrak spot Hope and give chase. The difference is that Hope doesn't have Snake's arsenal--or anything much at all, really. Hope can pick up pepper spray, tasers, and a landmine that puts the Prizrak to sleep. She can even pickpocket them from the Prisrak if she's clever. But for every item Hope picks up to just barely fend off being caught, the Prizrak get taser-proof armor and nerve gas. It's in character for the game at least since Hope is definitely shown to be a naïve character who wouldn't know anything about the subtle arts of murder and persuasion. But it means often feeling like Hope is hideously outnumbered and outgunned.
I used to be angry at my government because I thought they weren't listening. Now I'm angry because I know they are.

Or at least it would if getting caught meant death or punishment or higher security. Instead, losing means being marched, hands up, to the nearest confinement cell (these are, essentially, the game's save rooms), waiting for the guard to leave so you can bust Hope out. For a place that seemingly wants Hope dead and has no problem putting the boots to anyone who disobeys, they seem to handle Hope the way you would a bratty four-year-old, and it works every time. It doesn't make the stealthing around any less fun, and arguably, the infinite retries are often a blessing, considering the amount of Metroid-ish backtracking that you already have to do, but it does mess with the game's immersion.
Indeed, breaking the hypnotic, curious spell that the game can cast when it's doling out more of the mystery is its biggest problem. When jumping from camera to camera, you have the ability to read detailed files on each of the guards, which would be a nifty touch, one that pays off in spades in the third episode, if not for the fact that most of the guards' files have a giant "Kickstarter backer" stamp under their country's flag and often reference their gamer identities. Early on, you start getting additional assistance from another Prizrak guard who calls and offers advice and information in emojis and a Stephen Hawking voice. He's a strong character, whose role in the facility is pieced together bit by bit and who just so happens to have floppy disks referencing fellow indie developers scattered all around the place as collectables. The game certainly has supporters in high places who deserve tips of the hat, but placing those smirking nods so shortly after Hope sees her first dead body or after watching Republique's media branch destroy a man's reputation feels wholly out of place.
The inquisition's here and it's here to stay.
It's only a stumbling block considering how great a job the game does of world-building for such extended periods. For most of Republique, our eyes and ears are just as innocent as Hope's, and every new room is ripe with opportunities to learn something new, to find a new piece of the puzzle of what we know about the Headmaster's plans and ambitions, the rampant, terrifying censorship and moralizing, the journalism-turned-propaganda-machine, the failed, or the hostile attempts by the Republique brass to engage the leaders of the free world. The stellar voice cast keeps us engaged from minute one, with every hackable device giving us brief, audio-only glimpses of the outside world and Republique's black-hat inner workings.
At the center of it all, literally and metaphorically, there's just Hope, a frightened girl who just wants to see the world outside Republique, and we can already tell that she is in for some hard times if she ever does. Episode 3 drops a few major bombs as to who and what Hope might be, and it's worrisome stuff that threatens to absolutely ruin a girl we're already forced to tread lightly with. One of the only moral choices in the game involves that very idea of how much of the world's worst lies on her shoulders. Where Republique's gameplay is satisfyingly simple, the plot driving it on is anything but.
The dystopian nightmare is a compelling veneer for a rather simple stealth game.

Needless to say, despite its mobile game roots, the world of Republique is meant to immerse, to beckon the your curiosity, and to involve you enough in the city-state's ins and outs to get Hope, our frightened girl, out of danger. The good news is that, in transitioning to PC, the game remains largely successful. All that remains is for the game's two remaining episodes to stick what is undoubtedly going to be a rough landing for everyone involved.

Words Block! Answers Level 26-50 (2/4)




Words Block! is a brand new game for android, exclusively. It is a fun new game where your screen gets filled with all these letters, and you have to figure out the word. Sounds easy? Maybe in the beginning, but it gets harder as you progress. It's nice to have a guide for all the levels like this one, isn't it? Anyways, I hope you got the help you needed!

WORDS BLOCK! LEVEL 26-50:

25: Nip, Basket, Sour, Odd
26: Win, Nuclear, Solar
27: Crow, Low, Eagle, Hawk
28: Run, Dot, Nose, Air, Fly
29: Bastille, Haim, Iggy
30: Lime, Vinegar, Lemon
31: Twig, Leaf, Bark, Wood
32: Petunia, Daisy, Lily
33: Shriek, Scream, Yell
34: Shame, Rage, Passion
35: Soy, Chili, Hot, Salsa
36: Witch, Spell, Wizard
37: Fib, Fake, Deceit, Lie
38: Atlantis, Fish, Moss
39: Rubbish, Trash, Junk
40: Castle, Hands, Float
41: Martial, Arts, Mixed
42: Exam, Freshman, Prom, Class, Grad
43: Goat, Rabbit, Giraffe, Elephant
44: Honey, Paste, Glue, Flypaper, Gum
45: Staywithme, Chandelier, Fancy
46: Folk, Boogie, Swing, Disco, Tango
47: Yawn, Burp, Hiccup, Cough, Sneeze
48: Turtle, Badger, Squirrel, Snake
49: Cake, Pizza, String, Paper, Toast
50: Beagle, Chihuahua, Pug, Maltese

Monday

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 - Episode One Review


The premiere episode of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 kicks things off in a decent way, but it's also an inconsistent experience that's plagued by issues during the first half of the game. Dialogue is poorly written, and you feel like a chump when you tackle yet another fetch quest disguised as a puzzle. However, there are moments that leave you on edge, and the mysteries keep piling up until the very end, stoking your curiosity to want to know more. If you tend to loathe action sequences in Resident Evil games, you may be put off to know there are a few in Revelations 2, but rest assured they're delivered with tact this time, sandwiched between foreboding moments of tension that set your pulse racing before you're thrown into the fray.
Though Revelations 2 starts with a whimper, at least it doesn't waste any time getting you into the game. Right as they were starting to enjoy a swanky company party, Resident Evil hall-of-famer Claire Redfield, and her co-worker, young Moira Burton, are kidnapped at gunpoint and shipped off to a wretched penal colony on a remote island. The game begins when Claire awakens in a damp cell, and the mystery kicks off when the door opens moments later, seemingly on its own. Their imprisonment is clearly the work of someone who fancies control as they're taunted over the PA system by a mysterious overseer. She speaks in very vague terms, introducing more questions than answers. By and large, Revelations 2 likes to keep you guessing.
It's about to get ugly.
Moira's father, the ever memorable Barry Burton from the original Resident Evil, attempts to come to Moira and Claire's rescue. With the help of a young companion, the mysterious Natalia, he searches the same prison, but the enemies he faces are quite different, acting more like classic zombies as they shuffle along, rather than the speedy juggernauts that hunt Claire and Moira. This setup affords you two points of view within the same nightmare, and slightly different gameplay experiences, but not all things are created equal. Barry's act is far stronger than Claire's, not only because it offers the best moments of tension, but because his companion is a far better compliment than Moira ever is to Claire.
Working in tandem is at the heart of everything you do in Revelations 2, for better and for worse. You can switch between your two characters on the fly, and sometimes you must in order to solve simple environmental puzzles. Moira's flashlight may uncover a hidden item that you need to proceed, and Natalia can go places that Barry can't thanks to her small stature.
Unfortunately for Claire, Moira's not much use outside of a few strict scenarios that call upon her unique abilities. She looks capable of manning a gun, but a tragic event from her past conveniently prevents her from doing so here. She comes in handy when she pries open a rare door or blinds an occasional enemy, but she's otherwise dead weight and a near constant source of bad dialog as she spouts vulgarity after vulgarity. It's not hard to take in because it's offensive; it's obvious that she's meant to sound young and brash. However, she comes off as an exaggerated caricature that sticks out like a sore thumb.
You can always count on Clair to say what we're all thinking.
Outside of a few important plot points, the only helpful thing Moira brings to the table is a flashlight, but Natalia has a subtle personality that comes across as a breath of fresh air and she's far more useful during tense situations. She can sneak by enemies undetected and crawl into tight spaces. If Barry is low on health, Natalia is a solid backup, trading head-on action for simple but effective stealth. Though she lacks the firepower, Natalia proves to be even more useful than her caretaker at times, so long as she remains undetected by the bad guys.
Natalia and Barry's stint is the best source of tension in the game by a long shot. For the most part, Claire and Moira are stuck inside their prison, which is predictable and boring. On the contrary, Barry and Natalia spend a lot of time outside, and in the middle of the night, with only a few light sources off in the distance, a sense of dread creeps in when you wander into the unknown. Natalia is the best candidate for the job given her ability to spot enemies from a distance, but you always know in the back of your mind that she's practically incapable of defending herself apart from throwing a brick at an enemy, yet there you are, meters deep into a dark forest teeming with horrific abominations that want nothing more than to eat you alive. When an enemy takes multiple rounds from a gun to stagger, a brick offers little solace.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 shines when Barry and Natalia are at the Helm.
You can tackle the campaign via local co-op with a friend if you're so inclined, but your teammate has to come to terms with the fact that they're playing second fiddle. Teaming up is an effective means of getting through the campaign quickly because you aren't reliant on AI to watch your back, and you have the ability to multitask, but the split screen view and real world chatter can dilute the tension. If you're looking to get scared, playing solo is the only way to go.
There are a few puzzles to solve during each scenario that are reminiscent of classic Resident Evil moments, but instead of having to consider all of your options and search for a solution, it's given to you in the form of a simple task. Ultimately, these moments feel like chores rather than puzzle solving opportunities. Moira's asked to point a flashlight around a room to find a key, for example, testing your patience rather than your intellect. If anything, these quandaries feel like justifications for having a sidekick. Perhaps it's good that it's not as obtuse as some games in the series' past, but the formula has been simplified too much for its own good.
Classic Claire!
If you find your trigger finger itching after beating the first episode, you can hop into the optional and oddly enjoyable raid mode. This arcade-like experience pits you against small armies of enemies in various environments from this and future episodes, and you're encouraged to take advantage of your firepower. The more enemies you kill and the more efficient you are at doing so, the better rewards you receive, often in the form of additional weapons. It's a very different experience than the main game, especially with it's initially jarring dance soundtrack, but it's a fun diversion that gives you plenty to do once the rather short campaign comes to an end.
Though you have to wade through mediocre puzzles and endure cringe-worthy dialogue and references to past games, episode one successfully entices you to look forward to the next episode. Just before you feel like its antics are wearing you down, it commands your attention by redeeming itself during the second half, just before sealing the deal with an impactful cliffhanger. With tastes of both classic and modern Resident Evil, Revelations 2 has something for everyone, but it would be served better if it was a little more focused and had a little less Moira.

Words Block! Answers Level 1-25 (1/4)




Words Block! is a brand new game for android, exclusively. It is a fun new game where your screen gets filled with all these letters, and you have to figure out the word. Sounds easy? Maybe in the beginning, but it gets harder as you progress. It's nice to have a guide for all the levels like this one, isn't it? Anyways, I hope you get the help you needed!

WORDS BLOCK! LEVEL 1-25:

1: Cat, Dog, Cow
2: Jam, Pie, Tea
3: Sun, Sea, Hot
4: Who, How, Why
5: Simple, Fun
6: Tall, Short
7: Brain, Keep, Working
8: Butter, Cream, Bread
9: Pooh, Tigger, Piglet
10: Gollum, Jason, Joker
11: Jelly, Sweets, Candy
12: Air, Door, Mind, Mouth
13: Bacon, Toast, Cereal
14: Voice, Youth, Wallet
15: Ebola, Sars, Malaria
16: Glacier, Polar, Bear
17: Table, Channel, Page
18: Cloudy, Humid, Clear
19: Lip, Rose, Elmo, Blood
20: Burrito, Nacho, Taco
21: Hula, Waikiki, Aloha
22: Unicorn, Dragon, Elf
23: Newton, Law, Gravity
24: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon
25: Sour, Basket, Nip, Odd




Guess the GIF Android Answers Level 176-200 (8/8)




Is it pronounced gif or jif? I'm not sure, but I'm sticking with jif for now, at least. Anyways, welcome to the Guess the GIF Android Walkthrough! In this guide, you'll get all the answers to all the levels in the game. There is in total 200 levels in the entire game. Guess the GIF is a very unique game. It uses the traditional "guess the *insert noun here*, however, instead of pictures, the game uses GIFs! You know, those pictures that move, like a video, just without sound.


GUESS THE GIF ANSWERS LEVEL 176-200:

Level 176: Johnny Cash
Level 177: Clint Eastwood
Level 178: Life Cereal
Level 179: Alf
Level 180: Tiger Woods
Level 181: Mary Poppins
Level 182: Doom
Level 183: Airplane
Level 184: Mark Zuckerberg
Level 185: Family Matters
Level 186: Kool Aid
Level 187: American Idol
Level 188: The A Team
Level 189: Mortal Kombat
Level 190: Spartacus
Level 191: Charlie Sheen
Level 192: Cash Cab
Level 193: Deal Or No Deal
Level 194: Gone With The Wind
Level 195: Legolas
Level 196: Coneheads
Level 197: Mr Ed
Level 198: Dennis The Menace
Level 199: Mork And Mindy
Level 200: Small Wonder


Aaru's Awakening Review


Some say that there is no such thing as love at first sight--that initial attraction and infatuation appeal only to our aesthetic pleasures, and that true love only rises when passion no longer clouds our judgment. Romantics and idealists may dismiss the notion, but the deep-rooted frustrations of Aaru's Awakening may drive them to reconsider their sentiment. This unusual game craves your affection, each of its radiant hand-drawn environments singing love songs until you're entranced. You may initially fall for this superficial beauty, but the game soon reveals its true form as a vindictive suitor, grossly untrustworthy in its controls and devoid of the fundamental assets of any good platformer. I am sorry, Aaru's Awakening, but I must cut this relationship short, and I am afraid it's not me: it's you.
I offer no insight into Aaru Awakening's actual development process, but it's easy to assume that visuals were prized over all other elements. Even the hub from which you access the game's levels is ravishing. It exquisitely represents the passage of time from dawn to night, each quadrant of a central orb depicting an abstract landscape that looks drawn by colored pencil. Within the side-scrolling stages, cross-hatching and asymmetrical markings provide texture and depth, while moving elements like lava floes and falling rocks are drawn frame by frame. It is through these techniques that Aaru's world comes to life underneath its unnatural magenta skies.
What a phenemonal-looking boss. What a tedious level.
The playable hero is Dawn's champion Aaru, a bearlike creature with a mane that stretches from head to tail, and he, too, moves with a charming hand-drawn inelegance that befits his illustrated world. Alas, the gracelessness of movement that makes Aaru initially joyous to watch in action becomes the game's most prominent failing. When a platformer requires finesse and quick response, as Aaru's Awakening frequently does, fluid animations and controls are vital. Aaru is anything but fluid, however, changing positions mid-air with all the precision of a sloth that has been dropped from a fourth-floor window. Aaru would be a delightful hero in a meandering adventure, but Super Meat Boy he is most certainly not.
As if to make up for his lack of leaping prowess, Aaru can rush ahead in a single whoosh, and can also propel an orb from his body that he can teleport to--and it is around these two mechanics that most of Aaru's Awakening's maddening puzzles are formulated. Navigating the game's spaces is a trial in and of itself, due to a wholesale absence of genre basics--the kind of basics we take for granted in the best platformers because of their ubiquity and necessity. We expect to be able to quickly identify what objects are collidable and which are background art, for instance, particularly when we need to make snap mid-air decisions. Here, the foreground and background blend with the gameplay layer. Is that branch sticking outwards a platform, or just a visual detail? Will I pass in front of that barrier, or will I collide? That Aaru's Awakening requires you to even ask such a question rather than for you to immediately know is a colossal problem.
The writing is lovely, but the narrator slurs her words in odd ways.
Without the fundamentals in place, any cleverness apparent in Aaru's Awakening's platforming challenges dissipate. What the challenges may even be is often a secret until you are dropping from a great height when the platform beneath you crumbles, or when a ramp has propelled you forward. You may not be able to tell whether you will fall to safety, or impale yourself on a bed of spiked rocks, until gravity makes the decision for you and the spikes rise into view, too late for you to do anything but succumb to death. Now you know for the next time--but when you bear the burden of this game's inconsistent movement and clumsy animations, it's difficult to build enthusiasm for a next time. And that's an issue: Aaru's Awakening is, by design, a trial-and-error platformer in which you shave off as many seconds from your completion time as possible. Your reward for success is the chance to show off your skill on the game's online leaderboards. I might have enjo yed chasing the competition had the challenge been to overcome tricky puzzles and perform perilous leaps, rather than to wrestle with my controller.
Putting down the controller is an option, though it's natural to reach for a gamepad when playing a platformer. Aaru's Awakening's controller support is not ideal, however, assigning the default jump move to an analog stick rather than a button. You must also activate the controller in the menus before you can use it, and should you unplug it during play, the game may stop responding to any input, even if you plug the controller back in. Regardless of your control method, the maddening levels may drive you to smash your hardware. The Dusk boss fight, for instance, requires that you rush across a series of platforms, some of which crumble, and some of which drop and then rise towards the spiked ceiling. You must teleport into the globes that float in this stage as well as avoid the poisonous river that waits for you at the bottom of the screen. Aaru's awkwardness turns what might have been an exciting sequence into a mess, during which you must perfectly execute your dashes and perfectly aim your teleport orbs at the proper angle within unimaginably narrow time gaps. There's no fun in the trying, and thus no fun in the succeeding.
Those are the kinds of goo-falls that don't hurt you.
Yet Aaru's Awakening hints at fun. You fire your teleport orb past a beam of scorching light, teleport again by angling your orb into a thin, winding passage, and an arcing ramp flings you into the sky. What a rush this moment is--a rush then halted when you land in the pool of lava that didn't appear until you were six inches above it. You destroy a hideous colossal housefly by teleporting inside of it--what a fantastic idea!--only to drown moments later because you must blindly teleport, not knowing what you might find until you've closed the deal. Aaru's Awakening is a dreamy display of artistic imagination that yanks you back to waking life with every awkward leap and every ill-conceived level.

Wednesday

Lost Control Review




Amidst the millions of games flooding the Android market, occasionally we try to sift through the mess and bring you some notable gems. This week, I bring you "Lost Control", a simple but rewarding endless driving game by Gamers Frontier, which consists of three veteran developers from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This is their first attempt at a mobile game, so obviously, there are many kinks to work out, but they have promised future patches that fixes bugs and introduce more cars and unlockables.
From the outset, it is clear that the gameplay is inspired by the likes of Flappy Bird or Crossy Road. You maneuver your car in between other cars and each car you pass adds to your score. Near misses will even earn you extra points! At the end of the day, your goal is simply to beat your current top score. If there is one thing the aforementioned games taught us, it's that this type of high-score chase has proven to be a psychologically-addictive success formula.
In Lost Control, you have "lost control" of the car and is stuck in a persistent drift. You tap once to change the direction of the drift and hold to perform a quick drift that serves as an emergency move. The single-input control scheme takes a while to get used to – which is ironic because you can't get any simpler than that – but once you get the hang of it, the drifting is fluid and challenging.

Unlike Flappy Bird and Crossy Road though, this game offers second and third chances to continue increasing your high score. This unique feature is particularly useful because there are over 7 cities to drive through, and you also earn coins on the road while avoiding incoming traffic. At the moment, these coins can only be used to unlock several different cars but, according to the developer, they are working on adding more vehicles to that list. It would be nice if, in addition to buying new cars, you could upgrade your car to handle a bit better or provide power-ups like a temporary shield or boosts.


Unfortunately, multiplayer integration is not available at this time of writing. I would love to be able to compare high scores with my Facebook friends or in a global leaderboard.
It is definitely a decent game to play for short bursts, such as when your girlfriend is in the changing room trying on 7 different dresses, or while you are answering nature's call (No. 2, not No. 1) in the toilet. It is free after all, so you have no excuse not to give it a test drive!
Review score: 3.75 / 5
More developer info:
In addition to Lost Control, Gamers Frontier has also modified the popular UltimateFPS kit for Unity to increase mobility and freedom of movement to create their next game ASCEND. No release date has been given for the new game, but sources say it will be an action packed free-running tactical FPS similar in vein to the critically acclaimed Mirror's Edge.