Epic Spoon

Paul Zero

The Maw (website) is an unusually impressive new 3D game on the Xbox Live Arcade.  It has all the feel of a late-1990s big studio 3D platforming game (Banjo-Kazooie, Spyro), and graphics that are well beyond its price at $10.  The Maw also delivers a shocking amount of fun for so simple a game.  In fact, I don’t usually buy full games on the Xbox Live Arcade.  I usually play demos and then delete them.  Not Maw.

The Maw is about a goofy little alien and his hungry, hungry pet.  Each stage is a sort of level puzzle, where you hunt down Yums and other delicious creatures.  When Maw becomes big enough, you’ve beat the level.

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Paul Zero

Time for another spotlight on music.  This time it’s Day & Age, by The Killers.  This is the band’s fourth album, although the previous one was not a studio album, it was a live/rare/b-sides album (and was also very good; that was Sawdust).  The Killers have a way of bringing a strong presence to their music, in a way that alternative rock had been missing.  And I think it’s impressive that they’ve outdone themselves with each successive album.

The Killers Day & Age

Day & Age is a slow, pensive album that seems to take a powerful look at society itself.  It doesn’t challenge our day and age, but instead seems to draw attention to the state of our people.  Songs like “Spaceman” carry catchy lyrics, but also a deeper meaning.  A friend of mine suggested that the song was about a near-death experience, but I think it’s more a drug overdose and the hospital visit that follows, and how the character in the song deals with what comes after.

The album, which was released in late November of last year, is a very modern piece.  It is talking about the state of things as they are now, and I would recommend it for anyone who likes alternative rock, who liked Hot Fuss, or who wants to take a deeper look at society.

Personally, I hope to see more from The Killers.  They’ve released an album a year for four years, which is impressive.  They are the great rock band of our time, and I can’t wait to see them on stage in April.

Paul Zero

I mentioned a while back that I play World of Warcraft (website) on Thursday nights with a group of friends.  Like I said last time, we all have characters that we only play together, and we usually only do instance dungeons.  This is a lot of fun because we get to see all the game’s best content (particularly the parts you don’t see solo), but it doesn’t consume a lot of time.  It’s a four-hour time commitment each week.

I thought I’d give an update this morning: We’re level 54 now.  These are characters we started in July, so that’s not a fast progression.  On the other hand, for only four hours a week, it’s not slow.  My Retribution Paladin deals a LOT of damage, and I have a lot of fun playing him.  Sometimes, party members even let me resurrect them.  And on the very, very rare occasion that our tank drops or our healer runs out of mana, I step in and pretend to fill those roles until it’s all better tadacip cipla.

This is a very fun way to play World of Warcraft, and I’m excited to be hitting the 50s-level dungeons, because they are places I didn’t get a lot of when my Rogue was this level.  I definitely recommend a friendly Warcraft group to anybody.

Paul Zero

CNN reports that the Army is using a complex video game setup, which simulates combat, to entice people to join the military.  It’s called the Army Experience Center, and it’s in Philadelphia.  The article describes a high-tech setup that includes games for kids of varying ages.  This adds new questions to the controversy over a link between video games and violence.

I’ll start with my own opinions on this.  I have vivid memories of playing violent video games in my teenage years, including the Mortal Kombat series (arcade), and GoldenEye 007 (N64).  Mortal Kombat never made me feel violent or made me want to commit violence.  I played it for the cool special moves.  I should also note that the first game in the series came out when I was 10, and I played the series in the arcade through MK4.

GoldenEye 007, on the other hand, came out for the N64 when I was 15 and I probably bought it around 16.  I played countless hours of this game, often trying to find new and interesting ways to kill the enemy.  This game did make me feel violent.  In fact, I listened to so much music by Sublime while playing it that even now, a decade later, the sound of Sublime still makes me feel aggressive.

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Paul Zero

I rented Bully: Scholarship Edition (website) from GameFly and I think I was surprised by both the good parts, and the bad parts of the game.  Overall, I’d say it’s worth playing only if you like games that are like GTA, but you don’t like them for the auto theft.  This is a good game for taking out some aggression, since you can beat up dozens of innocent school children.  But what drags away from that is repetitive tasks and a lack of strong plot.

Since you play a student in a private school, it might be tempting to call this a kid’s version of Grand Theft Auto.  But the character you play can be a merciless bully who beats and humiliates everyone he comes across.  It’s not a children’s game.  This game is for people who were picked on in high school and need to execute their revenge without leaving mom and dad’s basement.

Things I liked about Bully:

The classroom mini-games were a lot of fun.  They’re optional, but the rewards are usually worth the effort.  These include simple games like button matching, and also variants on classic computer games.

The graphics are well done.  Or, at least, the graphical style they chose is good http://www.kamagraoraljelly247.com/.

The controls were much better than most games.  But these people have adapted a GTA-style interface, so I expect nothing less.

There is a lot of content.

Unfortunately there was also something I didn’t like:

The content is all the same.  Every errand, every mission felt like I was doing the same things over and over again.  This would be a great game if not for that.

Final score: C+

You’ll like it if you’re into GTA (unless you just like stealing cars).  You’ll also like it if you feel the need to abuse simulated school kids.  Neither of those are really reasons to play it, though

Paul Zero

I know this is a video game blog, but most gamers turn off the games at some point and listen to music from a disc that has no games on it.  (Or, more likely, from the iTunes store.)  The Flaming Lips (website) is a band that has been around for more than two decades, but they don’t enjoy mainstream success (because they are not mainstream music) and that doesn’t mean they’re bad.  Their music has a lot of random sounds and electronic noises interspersed with strong vocals and great instruments.  The themes of their albums range from the absurd to the political.  It’s trippy whether or not you’re tripping.  I had loved their Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but this post is about a new favorite: At War with the Mystics.

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Paul Zero

I have my Xbox 360 set to download trials of arcade games automatically, but it’s rare that I go through them and try them out.  It’s rarer that I find one I really like, and rarer still that I pay for one.  But when it happens, it’s because the game is truly awesome.  This is the story of N+ (website).

N+ is a multiplayer puzzle-platformer where you solve level after level of jumping, dodging, wall-climbing games with your band of pixellated ninjas.  It has solo levels and levels that require several people.  Each is different, but each requires the same basic set of game skills.  It’s a simple game that you can play for level after level.  And many of you will end up screaming when you’re about to make an epic jump to finish the level and you explode!

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Paul Zero

Sony Online Entertainment has announced this week that it purchased PoxNora from Octopi, LLC.  This news is all over gaming blogs and gaming news, but I wanted to write a little about it because I’m a former employee.  I worked on the original PoxNora server team.

I always liked the idea of PoxNora, which made it fun to work on.  And writing game logic is always a blast.  During my time there, I also wrote a lot of in-game text because, as a former Magic: the Gathering player, I liked clarity in the rules.  Interesting note: another Octopi developer, Art Griffiths, once told me that the name PoxNora came from the words pox (“curse”) and nora (“honor”), which he interpreted to mean Cursed Honor.  In-game, we used the word “pox” to refer to the set of runes (cards) and “nora” is mana.

Sony Online Entertainment buying Octopi is certainly a big step for the employees there.  It’s not the first time Octopi has been sold to a larger company, but this puts a serious name on it.  Hopefully this also means PoxNora will be around for a long time.  I mean, even though I don’t play the game, and even though they took most of the names out of the credits, it still feels good to have something I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code for, still going.

So rock on, Octopi.  Or SOE Tucson.  Or whatever you call it.

Paul Zero

If you read the first few posts on this blog, you already know I love Fable II (website).  But I’ve been trying to play other games, too, so I was surprised when I saw featured new downloadable content for the game.  But I immediately downloaded the Knothole Island pack priced at $10, and loaded it up.

The short version is: I’m impressed.

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Paul Zero

I’ve come up with something that combines my love of making food (or things you eat) with my penchant for ridiculous.  That’s right, I’m talking about deep-fried s’mores.  S’mores have been a campfire tradition ever since somebody discovered that chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers are made for each other.  The only thing missing was the bucket of grease.

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