Akinator is a Goddamn Wizard (Genie)

If you've ever played Twenty Questions with a friend or a relative to pass the time, or even because, in certain conditions, it's fun, then you can only consider that training versus the evil known as the Akinator.  This thing takes Twenty Questions and turns it not into a challenge, but a goddamn blood sport because it's so good at it.  Rest assured, that smug face of the genie will haunt your dreams should you dare challenge him because, in all likelihood, he will chew you up and spit you out the first few times you try and go up against him.

You go in and think, "Psh, this thing probably doesn't know all that much" and figure on a character from a video game that you're either playing currently or have played recently.  The first ten questions go by with no real incident, all fairly generic questions really.  No way in hell this genie could possibly be able to guess by question twenty that you're thinking of Cole MacGrath from inFamous, right?  I mean, it's a Playstation 3 exclusive game, albeit a popular one, and it hasn't even asked if your character is a super hero.  Question two was just, "Does your character wear shoes?" for crying out loud.  Maybe it'll get closer on, like, question 24 or something, but right now?  Psh.  Not even close.

And then, on question thirteen, Akinator stares into the depths of your soul with the smuggest grin you've ever seen and says, "Does your character produce electricity?"

WHAT.

You have no choice, of course, but to answer "Yes." and then question fourteen just cements it:  "Does your character climb walls?"  ".......yes."

"You were thinking of.....Cole MacGrath!"

Yes, Akinator, thank you.  I was thinking of Cole MacGrath and the fact that you figured that out in thirteen questions has me questioning just about everything I believe in, honestly.  In submitting to the fact that he is, indeed, correct, there is a moment of gloating before you see the "Play Again" button shining like a beacon.  CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, Akinator.

This time I bust out the, quote-unquote 'big guns' as I am wont to do, with Caim.  (Who, in general terms of sheer murder levels, could always be considered the big guns, of course.  Unfortunately, this is not a murder scenario.)  All the questions go fairly smoothly, and he even looks a bit frustrated to learn that my character is not blonde and not from the Final Fantasy series.  But as soon as he learns my character has a sister, that smugness is back, and after the twentieth question is done and answered, the image of Caim, sticking his tongue out to show his pact mark, slowly fades into focus on the screen.  Appropriate, really.

This happens again and again, I try Father from Nier, Trogdor (because honestly, that's been, what, six years ago now?  More?), Afro Samurai, over and over again, I try to stump this genie, a task that is not impossible as I've done it before in the past.  But this time....this time, victory eludes me.  But I have to try at least once more.  Unable to think of anything but Valkyria Chronicles for some reason, I make a decision for my next, and final, character.

Marion Seigbahn, possibly the best character from Valkyria Chronicles 2, is likely an easy pick, but she's my favorite, so let's try it anyway.  Defeated at this point, I slog through the questions, figuring he'll pick it up fairly easily and when his first guess at question twenty is Edy Nelson, I go, "well, this shouldn't be much longer".  But, in a strange twist, his line of questioning branches off in such a way that suggests, perhaps, the first twenty questions have been ignored or something.  When the second guess, at question thirty is some character from Trauma Center (the game), I have to wonder just what the hell happened.  Revitalized, I continue all the way to question forty, answering as honestly as possible when it finally comes to the last guess.

Once again, it was close, but no cigar.  Alicia Melchiott is not Marion Siegbahn, Akinantor!  IN YOUR FACE!  After a graceful loss, he bids you to inform him of your character, and as such I did.  No doubt some time in the future this will come back to haunt me and others, but for tonight, I taste victory once again.

And that's what I did tonight instead of anything important.

Weekly Wrap-Up in Gaming - July 31 - August 6

Some of you (Chance) might remember waaaay back in January when I made a post of games that weren't my GotY contenders for whatever reasons, Darksiders was featured prominently under the label of "No Time", as I bought the game in December, but just couldn't get to it before years-end.  And clearly, that was no empty statement as it wasn't until this week that I cleared out enough of my backlog that I decided it was Darksiders time.  And as I started playing, there was only one thought going through my head.

"This is good.  This is damn good."

Now, the game has quite a bit of praise abound, both from proper reviewers and just people whose opinions I can trust, but I like to at least try going into every game with no expectations, or at the very least, willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt.  It generally allows me to enjoy whatever I play in one way or another, even if I do eventually draw some parallels to other games to compare it to.  So despite the praise and the good things I've heard, I went in expecting nothing and managed to get blown away.

I don't believe I'm very far into it, as I've only taken down one big boss, but there's just so many good things to be said about this game - chiefly, the spectacular voice cast that the game possesses.  So far, the most prominent voices of the game are those of Liam O'Brien, Mark Hamill and Phil LaMarr, any one of those being enough to drive near any gamer wild with excitement, not to mention the effect all three have.  And while I can't confirm this, I swear one of the smaller bosses that I fought was voiced by TC Carson, better known to most by his most prominent role as Kratos from the God of War series.  I could be wrong, of course, but I really don't think I am.

Regardless, thankfully the voice cast is just the most prominent positive the game offers, rather than being the only one, as the gameplay itself is quite fun and familiar.  I, as many others have noticed that the gameplay seems like it cherry-picks the best elements from a few other games to push it all together into something fantastic, and while we may complain about this very thing in other games, there's no real complaint for it here with Darksiders.  I'm not sure what it is; maybe that it takes just a little from multiple games, rather than clones itself to just one or two, or maybe it's just the rest of the game being fantastic that lets us not worry about it so much, but the truth is the truth:  Darksiders, for me so far, is definitely Devil May Zelda of War and you know what?

Good.

It's by no means a mark against the game and only enhances what is already a more-than-competent work so much so that I am actually kicking myself a little for waiting this long to play the game.  But that's been remedied and hopefully my playthrough of the game will continue to be as fantastic as it started.

It's always strange to play the sequel to a game before playing the first in the series, and it's something I like to avoid at all costs since it usually results in wondering just how the first game spawned a sequel, since the gameplay of said sequel usually outclasses the first in every way.  Which, that's kind of what's supposed to happen, of course.  Though there's always exceptions to this, where a sequel seems more like a step to the side rather than a clear rise up (Resistance and Resistance 2 being my prime examples of thise) the case is that usually people are vocal enough about what they like and dislike about a game that the developers know what to improve on.

So it's no surprise that when I started playing Phantasy Star Portable 1 this week, I was..a little less than enthused.  It's definitely earlier PSP work; the game looks a bit muddier, fighting is a little stiffer and under-realised, and there's just a lot of things that I miss dearly from the sequel that I can't blame on the game itself, since they were clearly ideas that spawned from the release of this game.  But I kept with it taking Tenzin, my Beast Hunter (As in a Hunter who is a Beast, not someone who hunts Beasts) through the first story missions and a few open missions here and there and I'll say I've gotten pretty used to it.  Things are clearly different, but I've found a way to work around them and enjoy.

And I must say, despite some of the characters looking like feet (more design than graphical capability issues) that I'm enjoying the story, possibly even more than the one the sequel holds.  Phantasy Star Portable 2's story was, honestly, not really much to write home about when I think back on it.  Not bad, but not great, just enough to service the game from Point A to Point B while forgetting that there has to be an escalated sense of scale somewhere and deciding to throw it in right at the end. 

The story of Phantasy Star Portable 1, playing through it now, does seem to step up here and there, but a lot of it is unfortunately wasted on me.  You see, Phantasy Star Portable 1&2 both rely on the canon of Phantasy Star Universe which I never played as the main story placed you with a fixed character, leaving the multiplayer as the only place where you could make your own, and considering my PC couldn't handle the game, my PS2 wasn't internet-ready and I had no 360 to speak of (much less the proper internet, as I stated earlier), I felt it was a safe pass.  Previously, my only exposure to the series, especially this 'branch' of it, was Phantasy Star Online, so I was very attached to the idea of making my own character.

So when the game trots out obviously important characters from PSU, expecting a gasp or a surprise reaction from series players, I just sort of recognize that they used to be important and brush them off, not really caring about them or having an attachment whatsoever.  And what's humorous is that the game also trots out characters that I already know from the sequel, who I would actually like to like, but the ones I've run across so far are so damn terrible yet (because they haven't been, y'know, matured through the story) that I just don't care about them either.  Still, characters are by no means the only important part of a story, so for what it lacks there, it still makes up for with the general plot.  While it's nothing too grand yet, it's involving enough to keep me going out of interest, rather than simply completionism.

As far as I can think of, those are the only two notables in my gaming this week, but I'm sure we can all agree they were note-worthy enough to talk about.  So until the next one of these (I should probably stop calling it Weekly, huh?), that's it for now!

A Look Ahead - Phantasy Star Online 2

Now, after the praise I've showered on Phantasy Star Online (through Phantasy Star Portable 2's praise), it should come as no surprise that the announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 at E3 was one of the highlights for me, even though I may have neglected to mention it.  Basically, the only issues with it so far is that A) it's for PC, and B) until recently, that's all we knew.  So now that some info has come out, I think we can overlook the first deficiency and talk about it for a bit.  (Well, apparently this information was known at announcement?  I missed it.)

Anyways!  I should let the recently shown off Concept Movie explain the changes, and I'll recap after.



Good show, Sega.

Er, anyways, probably the biggest new thing that was pointed out in the movie is the fact that you'll be able to jump.  And not only jump, but jump attack.  That's two different innovations at the same time.  They're learning, I suppose.  There's something distinctly awkward about thinking about Phantasy Star Online with jumping, since it wasn't in any game as a function to this point, but I'm sure it'll work out.  I'm certainly not adverse to being able to jump in a game, even if it takes over rolling as a basic function.  Though, I'm sure we'll still be able to roll as well.  (I'm trying to remember if Rolling was even in PSO, and I'm not sure.  I don't think so.)

Something else that'll be quite noticeable is the inclusion of other NPCs in the field.  Apparently, you can sometimes come across 'mini-events' in the field, some of which would be, like running into another party of folks (I'm guessing NPCs, though maybe Parties of PCs) and joining forces.  Up to twelve characters can be in the same field at once time, which is more than the 4 standard for every game from PSO on.  This one'll be much more tolerable, I'm sure, and it might even just mean that if you have five friends, you won't have to shuffle people around, or form two teams of three and just imagine how cool it would be if you were all playing together, as in previous times.

Apparently, the guns in the game will offer a more traditional Third-Person Shooter aiming system instead of a stand and aim or walk and point in the same direction, hoping to hit (or lock on and hit) system, which, again, will be an awkward, but welcome change.  At some point we all have to remember that Nostalgia is nice and all, but good gameplay is something that's first and foremost important to the lot of us, and what good gameplay is changes faster than any of us really realize.  But once it's sufficiently outdated, it becomes a little painful to really return to.

I should say one of the more impressive changes would be the in-depth character creator.  If there's anything the Phantasy Star Online/Portable/Universe games have been good about, it's about offering ways to make your character yours, though some quite less so than others.  (Looking at you, Phantasy Star Zero.  Stupid Template builds.)  PSO's was good, PSP2's was good, and it looks like PSO2 intends on blowing them both out of the water; if what appearances let on, of course.  While fairly few people actually want to sit down and spend hours painstakingly crafting a character, as if from marble, to get the perfect visage at least the option to do so is there.  Honestly, character creation has been rather nice in recent games from what I've noticed, so this isn't so much of a surprise.

Thankfully (or not), Phantasy Star Online 2 isn't scheduled to be out anytime soon, as they haven't even entered Alpha Testing yet, (or if they have, it's fairly recent) so I have plenty of time to try and get my hands on a computer that will play this.  And in the meantime, I can hope upon hope that it won't be subscription-based, as I'm not actually sure if I'm capable of playing a Pay-Per-Month game; if simply because my gaming tastes tend to shift and I can't see myself finding the playtime value in a game.  What amount of gaming hours constitutes $14.99 a month (the figure that comes to my mind, at least, for pay/month subs), after all?  Everyone's opinion on that will vary, and it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately with Star Wars:  The Old Republic looming.  But that's a different story for a different post.

Flash Games - Tower Defense Edition

Now, I'm not much of a Tower Defense fan.  But I can begrudgingly admit that they're not terrible games, and that the strategies are rather nice.  My problem usually rests in the slight random chances that lie into them, and the feeling that I get that there's sometimes no way to 100% of the time, finish a level perfectly.  It always seems like there's that -one- wave towards the start where you're like "I NEED MORE TOWERS" but you just don't have the gold for it.  And there's really no way you could -have- the gold unless you've found the magical layout that ensures efficiency.

Regardless, they're effective little time-wasters as games, and I would even call some of them fun, but most of them seem mostly there as a challenge than....well, something fun.  Still, I have played a few that I would be able to recommend.  Even if 'tower defense' is sort of a stretched term for one of them.

First up is Cursed Gems: Don't Touch My Stuff, which I just spent the last hour and a half playing when I became aware of the fact that playing some Kongregate games gets you points for your Powered Up Rewards, apparently.  Get a badge, get GameStop points that will likely sit in your account forever because the rewards either suck or are presented at a radical price increase.  But hey, you get Badges and Points!  Win-Win, kind of!

Er, anyways, right the game.  It's pretty much your standard fare, waves launch your towers kill, magic happens.  Where it changes the 'formula' is that it gives you different terrain types on a map, and your three towers can only be built on specific ones, one each.  Your grass lands are your Orc Huts which are basically arrow towers.  Mountainous regions only support.....y'know, I forget.  They fire a continuous stream laser.  And your snowy regions are your Crypts, which fire magical bolts that I don't know what to liken them to.  Homing missiles?  Yeah, let's go with that.

That level of difference adds something to the gameplay, and they add another depth with Magic and, of all things, Trees.  The trees fill up parts of the map that you have to use one of your spells to clear out, if you want to place a tower there.  This is almost universally unnecessary, unless the trees are covering a mana font, which, placing a tower on it will increase your mana recovery.  Or the entire map is covered with trees.  But, as noted, there are some times when it's a necessity.

Of your other two spells, one increases the speed with which your towers fire for a couple volleys, and the other is a Meteor spell that deals big damage to an area.  The former is almost never needed, as the only reason your towers aren't doing the job is because they're not properly condensed/upgraded, and is never something a Meteor can't take care of.  The Meteor also being useful for Goddamn Ninjas and your large, boss characters helps speak for its value.

It quickly starts to feel like they're just throwing entirely too many waves of enemies at you, but proper upgrading and masterful use of both the "Skip to next wave" and "Double-Time" buttons make it go by at a much nicer speed for those who just want to finish the engagements.  And it's practically for those reasons only that I can safely say it's a pretty alright game, since most TD games (at least ones I've played) don't have that and almost always get a little down-timey unless they just really destroy you with the amounts of enemies in waves.

The next game, Desktop TD Pro is actually pretty neat in its presentation and execution both.  Now, I'm not quite sure how it was thought up, but if you start thinking about an ARI Glasses version of the game (considering the Desktop layout) it gets so much neater.  Of course, this is still just played on a computer screen, but, still, it makes you think about these things and these things are pretty cool.  There I go, talking about things that are -not the game-.

Anyways, what I like about the game, aside from the thoughts it gives me, is the fact that it gives you a flat board (Sometimes it puts towers in for you to start) and lets you set your own paths that the enemies have to survive through.  So you always think of the best way to make this winding, painful conga line of death scenario, and the fact that you actually can do it is refreshing, as opposed to other games giving you the routes and you having to place within those confines.

Of course, eventually, they include enemies that completely ignore your confines and fly over the towers, but before then, oh boy, do you feel like you are some sort of tactical genius.  And once again, there is the much appreciated "Next Wave" button.  Maybe it's actually standard fare and I just completely miss it every time?

Now, this next one might be stretching the term a bit, but I still consider it to count:  The Last Stand. Your towers, of course in this, being your fellow survivors that you recruit.  But that might be getting ahead of myself in stating that.  The Last Stand, unsurprisingly, is about the main character's last stand against waves and waves of Zombies.  It plays out like a more hands-on Tower Defense game, you have your barricade line that you have to stop zombies from reaching and, upon failing that, stop them from wrecking it outright.

They come in waves through the night portion of the game, rationalizing the daytime section of the game is you dividing your remaining hours among yourself and any survivors you might have to repair the barricade, look for weapons, and look for other survivors.  The latter two have a chance of losing someone along the way, which will often happen at the -worst possible moment-, but the rewards for searching for weapons are great, as the Pistol outgrows its usefulness....rather quickly.

Enemies upgrade just like any other Tower Defense game; they get faster, and they get hardier.  Both running zombies and zombie dogs are added for the fast requirement, and Swat/Army zombies for the hardier; both require headshots, but the Army zombies also have helmets on, which means faceshots.  And if you don't pick up any survivors to help you blast the undead, you'll likely get overrun.  Even if you get the best weapons, if it's just you, it likely ain't enough.

So there are a few Tower Defense games that I've enjoyed, or at least can recommend to people who enjoy the genre.  Certainly those of us reigned into it by PixelJunk Monsters need another outlet here and there, one that doesn't have the goddamn spiders of PJM, at least.

Goddamn Spiders.

Weekly Wrap-Up in Gaming - Feb. 21-27

I meant to do this post yesterday, but Mother Nature stepped in and gave me some nice thunderstorms all night, so I didn't really get a chance.  For future reference, all "Weekly Wrap-Up" posts like these will be on Sundays since well, that's the end of the week.  And I might not do one every week, since my gaming tends to keep similar every couple weeks.

So, I've been finishing up Dynasty Warriors:  Strikeforce on PS3 this week.  I say finishing up because I've finished Wu's story and I'm not too sure there's a lot much else to do aside from finish the other two stories that I'm not too keen on doing, getting the last of the trophies, which will take forever, and some MP shenannigans, which I can do whenever.  So by being done, I'll likely take it out of my rotation for something else.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the game.  It does a lot of things well, like the battle system...when you get a handle on it.  There's absolutely no tutorial on it from what I can tell, but it's pretty intuitive.  In a lot of ways, it's like the Gundam games in that the dash attacks are vital to your success.  And fury mode is a genuinely interesting little feature even if it's practically ripped off of every action anime that ripped it off of every other action anime before it.  Also the sub-weapon mechanic (Which is clearly here to stay) is a few installments overdue, and I hope it continues to get refined.

But what the game does poorly, it does so in spades.  So much so that I don't quite know where to st-oh wait yes I do.  Those giant beast enemies you see in all the previews and the like?  Fuck those things.  At their best, they're annoying as hell and take forever to kill.  At their worst, like goddamn Death Tiger, they're deadly at the drop of a hat.  Level 50 (which is the max level) with fairly good Defense that I imagine I could only further increase with the in-game wheel of destiny thing, and that damn thing would take forever to whittle down while being an idiot the whole time.  And then, as soon as it was left with about a third of a health?  It would turn (By turn, I mean instantly be facing me.  There's actually no turning animation, so it just kind of changes direction) to me, charge attack and even with full health, instant death.  For the curious who pick up this game, the key to defeating Death Tiger is to stock up on Windstone +s, kill Diao Chan, and throw every Windstone into the tiger's face until it dies.  The face is key.

Speaking of things that take forever to kill, what the hell were you thinking, KOEI?  I mean, if it took forever to kill Lu Bu or Guan Yu or even Zhao Yun, I'd understand.  But the strategists?  What?!  That doesn't even make sense, since they're more likely to be fragile.  Yet fighting Sima Yi, Zhuge Liang, Da Ji (in her one crossover mission) and some generic strats with staves and bows was a chore beyond anything else the game had to offer.  In general, fighting officers is a crapshoot, since they all have the ability to enter a "No-Sell State" (wrestling fans will get that, but for the uninitiated) which means they'll take your attack, take the damage, but they won't be stagger'd at all until that barrier breaks, which does so with a set amount of damage.  Charge attacks are better for that.

And the grind.  Oh lord, the grind.  Everything takes so many materials and so many materials are things you can only get here from specific people and blah blah blah.  You've heard it before in just about every RPG or even most MMOs, usually as a time-padding mechanism and it's here with a vengeance.  Weapons, Orbs, Chi, they all require materials that you have to specifically get at one point or another if you're intending on getting everything, which, for the trophy/achievement whores means literally everything.  Every Weapon, every orb, every chi and every Officer Card (Which is not something that you have any control over getting in any way, shape or form) needs to be obtained for the 100%/Platinum, as well as knowing ten other people who play the game on your platform of choice.

Still for all its bad, there is good, as I said and even though I harped more on the bad than anything, the good is there, and it's something you mostly have to feel out than be told about.

Is there much else I can say about Valkyria Chronicles 2, really?  I've made at least half a dozen blog posts about the game, which is a clear testament to how much I like it, even if my overall criticisms of it come out more than anything else.  I've put over 100 hours into it, and honestly, I'm not even burnt out by playing the game.  What I am burnt out on is going up against the goddamn boss characters.  It's December, I know I'm going to have two boss fights, and I just don't want to do them.  So I haven't.  But I also haven't been able to progress through the game, either.  Which I want to do, since I want to sink my teeth into Post Game.  It's a pretty rough place to be in, so all of my playing has been grinding for some EXP (Which is better done in the Post game, of course) to get my Scouts and ATs up closer to my Godlike (but really not) Shocks.

Surprisingly enough, I decided to add a little more playtime to my Patchwork Heroes file, completely out of the blue.  And all of a sudden, I remembered why I liked the game in the first place when I completed a mission on my first try by starting out with cutting an airship right in half before chunking it down further from there.  Immediately after, I remembered why I fell out of love with the game when I had to retry a level five times since I kept getting one of my people killed by one of the myriad enemies the level held.  Also once because a guy was in the bottom part of a chunk and I didn't see it right away and cut the chunk right off.  =|

On the Flash Game front, I put some time into Boxhead: 2Play Rooms which, while being a fun concept and actually a fairly alright time-waster, I ended up leaving with a sour taste in my mouth from it because of rather shoddy (understatement) programming.  I admit that I am a pretty big Trophy whore which carries over into Kongregate with badges.  I don't know why, but I guess I just like having that to show off to....absolutely nobody.  Shut up.

Anyways, the problem with the game was that you got a badge from making it to level 42.  Which isn't a problem in itself, but the problem lied with the game not properly registering what level you were on in relation to earning the badge.  Looking over at the completion thing when I had made it to 42 made me double-take, as it informed me that, regardless of what the screen had just told me, I was on stage 24.  Uhh?  No, game.  No I was not.  Reading the comments, the advised course of action was to, of course, just wait for the game to catch up.

It took three hours.

So, yeah, if you're looking for badges, don't play that game. 

Also played this week was Thing Thing Arena 2, an off-shoot of the main series of Thing Thing games.  I have absolutely no clue how they got their names, but the premise is basically that you play the Thing of a main character who is apparently a former test subject as he kills pretty much everything in his path for some reason.  At first it was to escape, and I guess that's still the case, but in later Thing Thing games, it might have ended up being a vengeance mission.  Anyways, that's not the important part.

The important part is that the Thing Thing games are pretty fun!  For the simple art direction, they definitely did a lot of detail work, both on the scenery and the gore, which, essentially, is all the game has to offer.  It's a side-scrolling affair where you get a lot of guns and shoot other people who are less equipped than you.  And then eventually equipped just like you are.  I mean, it doesn't get much more simple than that, yet it still manages to scratch that gaming itch every now and again.

So that's been my week in gaming in a nutshell!  I swear the next time I do this, I will not be playing DW:  Strikeforce or VC2 again.  Or at least, I won't bring them up yet again.

Flash Games - Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar

If you think you read the title wrong, go ahead and read it again.  Savor it.  Because you read it correctly.

I implore you to Play This Game Right now.

Go on.  This will be here when you get back.

...

...

...

That was Awesome, right?  Yeah, I know.  For those of you who didn't play it for whatever reason (Maybe your have a crappy computer like me which can barely stand the game.  Or something.  It's okay, I understand.) let me give you an idea on what the game is.

Unsurprisingly, it is about two Robot Dinosaurs that crash land in a meteor/spaceship (apparently), who, upon landing, emerge to declare that they are low on Dinoforce.  Which means they have to spring into action immediately.  Springing into action apparently means taking flight and blowing up a bunch of things with laser roars that wouldn't be in the real world but who cares.  It's a fairly standard sidescroller/shooter and doesn't last long even if you go through it again as whatever character you didn't pick the first go around, but while it lasts, oh boy, is it good.

Honestly, there's not a lot to say about it other than what's right there; there are Robot Dinosaurs, they shoot laser beams when they roar.  What more could you want?

And upon winning, you're given quite possibly one of the most badass images ever.

So, really.  Just....go play it.  For your own sake.

Flash Games - Sniper Game Edition

So, I don't know what it is about Sniper games that makes me sit there and have to play them, even when they're honestly not all that good.  I guess it invokes that feeling of when everything comes together to one specific point, in this case, the assassination, and succeeds.  That culmination of all the planning behind this sort of thing (even though there is none in these games) paying off.  Face it, if you ever read The Day of the Jackal, you know who you were rooting for by the end.  For whatever reason, there's that satisfaction there in bite-sized portions known as flash games.

First up is Smoking Kills, a rather satirical take on the whole of sniper games.  From the inexplicable mission briefings from indistinguishable 'bosses', to eventually poking fun at the idea of such games having anything resembling a plot, it's built from the ground-up to be half-funny and half-shooty, and does that fairly well, especially with the bonus mission.  As an added challenge, it offers a few 'power-ups', one of which being the Sunglasses.  While it makes every hit slightly more difficult by making everything darker, you look like a badass doing it*, because, well, shades.

*You may not actually see yourself looking badass or not.

Next up is Scope: First Blood, which, while not necessarily intended to be satirical also doesn't try to take itself seriously by any means, offering such missions as making a cheating girlfriend's lover, er, pay, and scaring off a mob of smokers from in front of a building by shooting out their cigarettes.  Still, a few of the missions are pretty neat once you finally understand what you're supposed to do (the construction site, namely, also the one pictured) and it's a quick fix game for your Sniping urges.

Finally, we have Tactical Assassin which is the first in a rather good series and is by far the most serious of the games offered here today.  Listening to the music, you get a really good Metal Gear Solid vibe, which I imagine is intentional, given that there's a Tactical Assassin: Substratum game out there as well from the same creator.  There's no upgrades in this one, no switching, just get your mission and execute it.  As simple as the other two games, but infinitely more detailed and, because of that, I'd say better.

There's not a lot I can say about these games; you point, click, and a stick figure dies.  It's really the easiest form of flash game out there (or one of them), but for some reason, I can't help but like them and actually actively seek them out.  The only other type of Flash game I try that with are Escape the Room games which...I'll go into another time.

By the way, some might have noticed that this post went up early and unfinished; that's my bad.  I hit publish when I meant to click "Save as Draft" and, well.  I just went into edit right after to finish it up, so I might be unnecessarily pointing it out.   But there it is, just in case anyone noticed and wondered what that was all about.

Flash Games Part 2: Live Free or Flash Hard

So, finding myself at a complete lack of anything else to talk about, I decided to make another post about Flash games because, hey, there's plenty of them.  I'll show off a couple I've played and enjoyed and make sure to provide links so you can partake as well!  First up..

We have Fancy Pants Adventure which, for those not in the know, is going to be a PSN/XBLA game with new content and all that stuff.  What Fancy Pants Adventure is, is a really neat little platformer that sort of reminds me of the early Sonic games, in that it really takes speed into account and you're going to be jumping on a lot of things to get rid of them (even though that's more of just an early platformer/side-scroller trait).  All the while, collecting "Scribbles" and collectibles and the like.  There's not a lot in way of narration, but there really doesn't need to be; it's fairly obvious where you need to go, and how to do it.  The positive part is that it's fairly enjoyable to do.

Next up is Little Wheel, a game that I'd be surprised if you hadn't heard of.  Maybe.  As you can see, the art style and direction are rather striking, and add to the charm of the game which, (un)fortunately is about 85% of the game.  Straight-forward is a little forgiving; if you start the game, you're going to finish it, and finish it quickly.  The puzzles are hardly such, but at the very least, you don't spend a lot of time clicking and pixel-hunting to search for the next one.  I'm not sure you can even 'lose', honestly, but that doesn't make getting to the ending any less satisfying.  While short and something you likely won't replay, it's wonderful to watch, and you'll likely enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

And lastly, and the one that's probably the most puzzling for me, is I Am An Insane Rogue AI.  How could you -not- be drawn to the game with that sort of title?  Put into the role of, well, An Insane Rogue AI, your whole job is to hack computers in laboratories to gain more and more power and dominance.  Unfortunately, the human race doesn't want this to happen, and will stop you at every turn.  Scientists can stop your hacking, but they can be chased away by creeping them out or outright killing them.  After all, can't fix a computer if you're dead, now can you?  It steps up the game, of course; turning out lights to scare away scientists just attracts handymen who turn them back on, locking doors to keep scientists off of a floor just, once again, attracts the handymen to unlock them.  And they don't scare that easily either.

After a certain point in the game, you'll come to realize that you simply can't allow a lot of the humans to live; and this is reflected in most of the upgrades you receive, as they tend to be on the more lethal sides of things.  Of course, you do get the ability to pulse out lights (which is dangerous but hardly deadly to humans) and increased hacking speed and the like, but more valuable will be the ability to make doors lock longer and then unleashing a level-long poison gas to a floor, slowly killing everyone there.  Faster still if they're panicking as well, which, short of Scientists, will likely be rough-trying.  The human types get more and more varied as the game goes on, and the only advice I can offer is that they all suck and deserve death.  Mostly the hackers.

Especially the Hackers.

Flash Games, and Oh, hey, remember that time...

...I said all I had to do was get sick to have the fun trifecta of crap?

Welp.  I'm not really bad; just fairly mucus-y and I've had a headache since I woke up.  No fever, no chills, nothing like that.  Not especially lethargic.  Nothing else is really bothering me.  Fingers crossed!

This is going to go into Quick Note territory rather quickly though, but I'll let you know what I've been doing today aside from playing Valkyria Chronicles 2, (and making Marion a Command finally.  Hell yeah.) and enjoying some TV.

Pictured is the iPhone version, hence the higher amount of possible Elements.

First off, I played Doodle God, a rather inappropriately named puzzle game.  Basically, you step into the role of a God who just wants to create.  You've already created the four essential elements of Fire, Water, Air and Earth (Yes, yes, we all thought it here.) and now, hey, it's time to make more.  In the online version of it, there's 115 elements that can be made through simple trial and error.  It's not really fun, but once you start it, you probably won't be able to stop until you've found them all.  The Hint button helps, but I know I ended up looking up a FAQ for about 30 of them or so.  (In case you need one as well.)  It's kind of nonsensical why some things are in there, yet others aren't, and there's a couple that are outright completely inappropriate, but the name drew me in, as I was expecting solving puzzles with doodles, and I ended up staying because of OCD, I guess.  (I also got a badge.)

Yeah, this is not even complicated by the game's standards.

Next up was Electric Box 2, another Puzzle game, a legitimate one this time.  The mechanics are pretty simple; you have a power button, tools, and a target that you have to provide energy to.  The trial puzzle, for example, entails putting a fan on the cable attached to the power source, and an air-or-water Power Generator to the cable attached to the target.  The fan blows the Power Generator, the generator comes to life and creates energy for the target.  Level complete!  It gets ridiculously complicated from there, over the course of 40 levels and once again, I found that I had to use a FAQ to beat it, but only for the last ten or so levels.  Well, I didn't have to use the FAQ; I could have figured it out eventually.  But I didn't because I didn't really want to put that much thought out into games tonight.  If you need a FAQ, just throw the game's name into youtube for level solutions and the like.

This is nice for this game.

While I didn't play it today, I still do want to bring up You Find Yourself in a Room, because it's absolutely wonderful.  I can't say too much without ruining it, but suffice to say that it's really difficult to lose it, and you just have to stick with it to really see the beauty of it.  If you like Mind-screws, at least.  Basically, just play it; it takes about 20 minutes, and is an experience that's hard to find, well, anywhere else.  It's got some harsh language in it, though, in case that's something you object to or intend on playing it around those who might.  But it's not too much of an issue.

There's plenty of other great flash games out there that I might play/have already played, but those are two I went at tonight, and a third I can't help but recommend.  Give them a shot if you are so inclined!