It’s an Indie Bonanza!

I recently picked up the latest Humble Bundle, and just last night, the Indie Royale‘s Difficult 2nd Bundle.

Today, I saw a note on Twitter about more games being added to the Humble Bundle, and sure enough, there were more games listed on the page!  Lexaloffle, developer of Voxatron, has added three of their older games to the pack as a bonus: Jasper’s Journeys, with exploration, jumping and monster bashing, sliding block puzzle Chocolate Castle, and Zen Puzzle Garden, which I suspect will be anything but Zen after a while 😉

That’s not all, though.. they’ve also added a “developer bonus”, GISH, a side-scrolling platformer featuring a large ball of tar.. who goes underground to rescue his friend.  I actually had this game already, having picked it up as part of a huge bundle on Steam, but haven’t got any further in than the first few levels.  I loved the idea, but found the jumping and sticking mechanic fiddly, especially when trying to collect the little bonus blobs.

Over on the Indie Royale website, I found there was even more win.. DLC for Red Redemption’s Fate of the World: the Extras Pack DLC, Denial DLC and Migration DLC.  All these are set for download on Steam now.. while I go off to play more Gears!

Halloween Goodness!

Halloween.. time to celebrate zombies and undead things.. and time to check out the awesome extras added to certain games! 🙂

A friend pointed me towards TF2, and the Halloween map, the Eyeaduct!
This is a modified version of Viaduct, with pumpkins, candy, and ghosts roaming the map.. get too close, and you end up “Scared Stiff”!

There were freebies too: I was given a Seal Mask and Dr Gogglestache.. there were some new achievements to grab.. and there was also a boss to fight!

Monoculus spawns randomly in the map once there are enough human players, and sets about firing eyeball rockets at the players, who have a minute and a half to kill him before he leaves for another realm.  He seems to have a lot of health, and he hits hard.. I only saw him killed a few times during the hours we played, versus the hundreds of times he killed me.

While alive, Monoculus moves around the map leaving behind a purple vortex which grants access to the Underworld.. a special map where you take constant damage until you escape via the second portal.  Players escaping the Underworld get invulnerability and a brief crit boost.. and Monoculus gets stunned in the process, thereby helping to bring him down.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet grabbed the Bombinomicon..
When Monoculus is defeated he drops an open Bombinomicon, granting access to Loot Island for those fast enough, and a copy of the Bombinomicon.

Last night, I had a decent run with the Demoman.. finding Stickybombs a lot of fun 😉
Tonight’s game included a bit of Heavy and Medic power, which was working out rather well between Monoculus’ appearances.. but again, I think I should play more TF2 🙂

Dungeon Defenders was the second game with Halloween additions, in the form of free DLC.. a Halloween-themed map for high level players, and some unlockable outfits.  The Tavern was also decorated for the occasion 🙂

The Halloween map is available to all, but as I found, it’s far too difficult for low level players.. there are three Eternia Crystals to guard, and the enemies are very strong.  I lasted a whole 48 seconds! 🙂

Sanctum got Updates!

FPS Tower Defense game Sanctum received some updates recently, adding new maps and towers!

Some of these updates are free, both others are via paid DLC..

Annoyingly, I see a lof of moaning on the Steam forums by ungrateful people who expect to be handed more content and not pay another penny.. despite some of these people only having picked the game up cheap in a Steam sale!  What they’re missing is that if the devs continue to work on the game, they need to continue to pay their bills and have some kind of income.. and optional DLC allows for this. I’m sure the whiners would absolutely love to go to work for nothing.. 😉

We went for a quick game or two to take a look.. it seemed that Sanctum had took a leaf out of BulletStorm’s book as we had the Penetrator and Violator in the mix, along with the rather interesting Holo and Ampfield ‘towers’, which allowed for more damage to be dealt to mobs.

I especially liked the Holo tower, which we paired with Gatlings or Penetrators.. and with the right positioning, players can shoot through the tower for a damage boost too 🙂

There was also a new weapon.. a Shotgun, which could be used for single shots, or by holding down the right mouse button, all shots could be fired at once for a rather powerful blast!  I loved this weapon, but haven’t decided which weapon is best to switch out with.  The Assault gun has the grenade alt-fire, while the Sniper allows you to hurt airborne enemies, and the Freeze gun is useful if a pack of mobs seem to be escaping the kill zone.. I guess it has to come down to balance.

ScampLAN

Instead of going to Multiplay’s messed up i43, we’ve gone for a smaller, friends-only LAN at home.. in our newly decorated lounge 😀

So far we’ve mostly played singleplayer games, with the guys nagging me to complete Crysis 2.. which I’ve now done, though I was shown up by Ali completing both Bulletstorm and Red Faction: Armageddon in two days!

The demo for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine made an appearance too..

Yay for lots of dead Orks!  I found the first level harder than the second, with many retries of the last room.. the big Orks were a bit painful.  The second level was much easier as the Jump Pack meant that for quite a way, all I needed to do was land on enemies to kill them 🙂

This game is now on the wanted list.. along with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Gears of War 3..

I’ve also tried out DC Universe Online, but I’m not going to rush to buy it.  Although what I played was quite fun, I think the appeal may run out after a while.. from what I’ve heard, there isn’t a lot to do at max level, and unless I had friends playing too, I can’t see that I’d want to run around doing the same thing too many times.  Maybe if the game turns up cheap..

We’ve also picked up the DLC for Borderlands, as it was cheap on Steam.. though we now have to get on with our game sometime!

Steam Summer Camp Sale

After an amazing week away in Madeira, I returned to find Steam has yet another crazy sale going on, with lots of games at very low prices.  Should I fear for my bank balance now?

Friends have bought me a few games: Star Wars – Battlefront II, SpaceChem and my own copy of Oblivion 🙂

I’ve added to this with two tower defense style game: Sanctum and Atom Zombie Smasher, as well as a rather large bundle of Paradox Interactive games.  The Paradox Fantasy Pack got my interest because of Majesty 2, which I tried a long while back.. along with DLC for this plus the original game, it also contains a strategy game called Elven Legacy, plus follow-ups.  As Majesty 2 itself cost £5.35, and the bundle £5.89, this was pretty much a no-brainer!

Along with the Summer Camp Sale, there are a large number of “Camp Activities”, which basically amount to earning specific achievements in a variety of games to earn tickets which allow you entry into the Grand Prize Giveaway, where 100 people will win the top 10 games on their wishlist.  The tickets can also be spent on random in-game content, including map packs, extra characters, missions or vanity gear such as the Sunny Shades for TF2.  I’m only now up to 7 tickets, with a good number of achievements to get.. the HOARD one in particular is eluding me!

As for TF2.. this game has now become free, which has meant a lot more people playing!  We now even have somewhere good to play, as Jason set up his Closed on Sundays TF2 server, complete with silly Roll the Dice mod 😉
So far, the server has filled up quickly whenever we’ve played, which has meant a few good games.  Roll on the weekend!

Fable III

My current options for 360 and PS3 games are playing via an old PC with an old capture card (low quality image), or playing on the TV in the lounge (noisy for Tim, and no contact with my friends who are on the PC).

I’d been trying to resist starting on Fable III until I had a HDMI capture card in my PC.. however, the lure was too strong..  I absolutely loved Fable II, as I had the Black & White games, also from Lionhead Studios, so I knew I would love playing this one too.. even if it meant taking over the lounge!

As with the other games, you are given a choice when responding to quests.. allowing you to become good or evil as you wish.  Your morality affects your appearance, with NPCs you come across reacting to you with either greetings or.. well, I’ve not played an evil character long enough to see them yet 😉

Abilities are upgraded through Guild Seals, which you earn for completing quests, defeating enemies and interacting with NPCs.  The seals can be then used to purchase the abilities you want in the “The Road to Rule”; a ghostly path where we meet the awesomely voiced Blind Seer from Fable II.

So.. I start off as a princess, wandering around the castle gardens, grabbing people by the hand and making them run along with me, just because it’s funny to see.. then I find out that my older brother, Logan, is up to no good.

People across Albion are starving, and some of them have decided to protest.. Logan has decided that this will be solved by killing some of the protestors.  I’m supposed to try to convince him to play nice, but Logan forces me to choose between my childhood sweetheart, Elliot, and the protesting villagers.  I save the villagers (Sorry Elliot, but it was never going to work..), then flee the castle with the assistance of my loyal friends; Sir Walter, and the butler, Jasper.

We need to take Logan out, but first we need support, and we start off in a freezing camp in the mountains, where we’re tasked with finding an artifact to prove my Hero status, getting rid of Saker, the leader of a band of mercenaries, and getting neighbouring Brightwall to send food.

In addition to completing quests, support can be gained by making the people in each area like you.. if you were evil, I suppose this would require people to fear you.  Unlike in Fable II, you can only impress one person at a time, by interacting with them and choosing the relevant action.. after a while they will ask you to run an errand for them; if you do it, they will then be your friend.

Once you have made friends with an NPC, you can also take it a bit further.. I appear to have attracted the attentions of Alice the Housewife, who wants me to take her on a date..
As you have to build up your relationship with an NPC before further options appear, I think this means there will be no repeat of my accidental cheating on one of my Fable II husbands, which happened when I clicked on the wrong NPC to follow me to bed.. my Fable II character was a bigamist slut! 😉

Although running errands takes up time running to one location only to run back again, it does provide you with Guild Seals and presents from those NPCs you have made friends with.  To save time, you can always teleport into the Sanctuary to use the map for fast travel.  You’ll also want to visit the Sanctuary to open your presents, or to mess around with your clothing and such, although Jasper will nudge you towards the DLC from time to time.  Some of the DLC is free, which would gain Lionhead some brownie points if not for the fact that some of the paid DLC was on the disk at launch.. that’s a topic for another time, though.

Shops close at night, and tonight this got me into trouble while befriending a shopkeeper at closing-time.. a guard came in, demanding that I leave.. by the time my rather long interaction finished, he had run out of patience and charged me with trespassing 🙁

When convicted of a crime you have two options: community service or resisting arrest.
As I’m a good girl, I chose to do community service and ended up making pies.. one of the various little mini-game jobs you can do around most towns.  Making pies consists of hitting A and X when prompted, while your character rolls out pastry and sticks it on the top of a pie.. the other jobs are blacksmithing and lute playing, which also attracts a crowd of people who cheer along while you play, but boo if you mis-click.

Screenshots will be added once I have my HDMI capture card 😉

Sacrifice and Mutation

I had been looking forward to the ‘Sacrifice’ since ‘The Passing’ was released for L4d2, especially as it would feature my favourite survivors, the originals.  I was also fairly pleased it was being released for both L4d and L4d2, and getting it on PC meant it was free.  The launch came with a lot of problems, though..

While my download came quickly for the original game, it took two days for my Left 4 Dead 2 download to come down.. crawling along at amazing speeds of 4kb/s.  When it finally finished downloading, it then refused to work.

However, I was in a better position than others.  Heavy traffic like this always seems to lead to authentication problems and issues with other games on Steam, getting “game unavailable” messages.   While I could at least play l4d, Tim’s machine didn’t even start downloading any updates for two days, and he couldn’t play any of his other Steam games because of… “Game Unavailable”.  Not good.

My first play through of the DLC was therefore with just one friend instead of a full human team 😉

Having Bill sacrifice himself and save the team as per the story wasn’t as easy as expected, though we had two bots with us.  After our sacrifice kept being beaten by the rush of zombies, we found the best method involved jumping back down the ladder early.

In this version, the achievement only comes for the Sacrifice instead of the whole team, but it’s easy enough to play through again.

I was slightly disappointed at the way the sacrifice ends.. once you hit the generator it’s all over.
I would rather have liked a Last Stand style effect, just to see how long I could hold out, or even a cutscene with a tank appearing and throwing Bill to his proper resting place in the smaller room.

Due to playing rather a lot of WoW and Minecraft, I’ve sadly let the mutations slip by in recent weeks.  The TAAANNNKK! mutation came this week.. and if you picked the right map and avoided the bugs, it was a lot of fun.

Bugs?  Oh yes..

On the No Mercy map, we found ourselves trapped as tanks on the wrong side of a fence, with no way of getting to the survivors.  We ended up trying to kill each other in hopes of spawning elsewhere, which worked after a few deaths, but by this time the survivors were too far along.  Another game was weirdly imbalanced; on one level my team was held back from spawning for a good while longer than the other team.. and then as survivors we faced three witches where the other team got none.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game that skewed before!

Despite the bugs I would love this to be added as a permanent mode; being the tank feels brilliantly powerful, and it’s a great feeling if you manage to get away as the survivor too.  Just.. maybe fix the bugs, huh Valve?