ThinkEdem Blog

Welcome Asa, my 100th resident! Yay! From now on the option to improve transport network is available. Remeber, every day you can choose either to raise population, open factories to reduce unemployment, or improve the traffic network.

No, it’s not the most important thing in my life. It’s just something to take my mind off things I can’t do anything with. Like my crush on a dutch girl, or how I became the opposite of a patriot of this country, or how I’d love to help some of my friends but I’m simply unable, or how yesterday when Ida called me and told me what she did hasn’t affected me. I’ll talk about them when I sorted them somehow.

My brother has lent me three games for the PS2: Need For Speed Carbon, Burnout 3 and Lord of the Rings 2.

I’ve started with NFS Carbon. I kinda liked the third and 6th episode of that series: Hot Pursuit and Hot Pursuit 2. It was arcade enough (cars didn’t damage), and I loved the atmosphere. My favourite tracks were Redrock Ridge and Lost Canyons (though I really loved all of them). I loved slaloming in the canyons while the sun shone on the top of the sky, or sometimes it got cloudy, or started raining… it was awesome. It was so good when in Summit I started going downhill, both sides of the road covered in snow. It was fun in Atlantica to see the guys entering the dome while I was speeding out of it. Even when you drove at night, you could see where you were.

In NFS Carbon, forget it. You drive in a city at night, everything’s full of neons and lights and… where’s the road? It’s just a plastic crap. Really. Sure, there’s a career mode and such – but honestly, I tried two stages, then erased the game data. The game sucks hard. It lacks the magic of the game. I don’t like driving in a blurred heap of neon lights, following the other cars and the big blinking arrows in the middle of the darn city, not having a clue where the road goes. Also, the camera position sucks, and you CAN’T CHANGE IT INGAME. You have to go to the main menu, and select it in the options menu… How lame is that?

This game was a big letdown. I guess there would be some fun and positive things in it – that team system sounds good. But if a game can’t get me in the first half an hour, it won’t get me at all.

Just compare:

NFS Carbon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjYTPsswsI…

…or watch it here ▼

NFS: Hot Pursuit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw-XAqz6DE…

…or watch it here ▼

I’ve posted an audiosurf recording to youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdDH2wQxlak…

…or watch it here ▼

There’s a new game out. New, as in it was released on 18th February, 2008. It’s a very unique logic-skill game. The main game element is to catch and match coloured blocks. If you connect at least three of the same colour, they get removed and you get points. How come it’s different from the tons of similar games?

First, the visuals and controls. You control a small “space ship” flying over a 3-4 lane path (usually with two “shoulders”), the blocks are on the road, the ones you hit will be put on your “table” where you have to connect and match them, without letting a coloumn overflow. The stage curls and twists, goes up and down, and you speed up and slow dow.

Second, the game modes. There are several game modes, some are slight variations of the others, some are major. The three very basic are: mono, pointman and double vision. I’ll talk about them a bit later.

Third, and the most important… it uses your MP3s. That means, when you play, you select a game type, then browse one of your mp3s (or oggs, or I think, wmas), and teh game will calculate the stage from it. That means, the layout of the stage, the actual speed at each point, the way the blocks come, usually even the backgroudn colour, is based on the mp3. If you use a slow, mellow track, you’ll get a slow uphill stage. Choose a fast paced techno one, you get a fast downhill stage with a lot of blocks. Choose one with a lot of speed vibration, and you get a very tricky bumpy one. And of course the background music is the song you choose.

Audiosurf: Blur – Song 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EsVyEnhxWY…

…or watch it here ▼

And all is only $9.95 plus tax… that is, $11.45. That’s roughly 2.080 Hungarian Forint. Nice!

Mono is simple. There are two types of blocks: coloured ones, and gray ones. The coloured ones are always the same colour. Collect the coloured ones, avoid the gray ones, because they stay in your field for a while. There’s some bonus if you collect 85% of the coloured ones, and also a bonus if you don’t hit any gray ones at all.

Pointman is the multicoloured one. Red and yellow give more bonus (they come at faster paced parts), cold coloured ones give less bonus. There are powerups which pours some blocks on your table, or paint all blocks on your table to a given colour. You usually have a special power, like to pick up one block that you can insert to any of your coloumns any time, or to reshuffle your table, in hope that will connect some of your stuff, or just get rid of one given colour, or the ability to “push” your blocks from one lane to the other when picking up.

Double vision can be a two player mode, or a single player two hand mode. There’s four lanes with two cars – one car for two lanes. One car is controlled with the mouse, the other with the keyboard. The goal is the same as with the pointman types.

But enough about me. Download the demo from the game’s site, and try it. It has a tutorial (you choose a song as well), and three modes to try – unfortunately it has a song limit (that is, you can only try 5-6 songs before it expires), and you have to install the steam client, but I think it really worth it.

(The pictures are from the wikipedia)