The best  thing Valve have done lately is add the Space Core from Portal 2 to Skyrim. Amazing.

I’ve been playing this free Android game for the past day, almost non-stop. It’s a puzzle game in which you build a town by matching three items on a six by six grid. Three clumps of grass make a bush, three bushes a tree, three trees a house, and so on. The game is over when all the spaces are full.

I have no idea why I love it so much, but I seldom can pinpoint exact reasons why certain mobile games just seem to hit the right nerve with me.

I haven’t done this in a while, so excuse the quality of the gameplay, and the overall video. It was more of a “reintroduction” for myself to the world of TF2 and it’s replay functions.

What we have here is some gameplay where I try the Phlogistinator, a new Pyro flamethrower to come out of the Australian Christmas 2011 Update. It’s a simple weapon, in exchange for losing the ability to airblast, the Pyro gains the MMMPH bar. The bar charges with all fire damage done, and when full can be deployed with the right click. When deployed the Pyro is instantly healed, and gets critical flames for a limited amount of time.
I’ve been testing out how it works for the past week, learning where it would benefit me as a Pyro, where it fails, when to use it, and so on. It’s taught me I rely far too much on airblast and that sometimes W+M1¹ can be a legitimate and worthwhile tactic, not to mention fun.

In the above video, I kill two enemies, who fill my MMMPH enough for me to deploy it and wipe out three more. Fun stuff (For me anyway, doubt it was as fun for the others involved).

1. W+M1: The act of running straight forward and attacking.

When I was a kid playing Pokemon Blue, there were lots of supposed cheats. The only three that turned out to be true were the duplication cheat using trading, the MissingNo. cheat¹, and by extension the multiply-item cheat.
One of the most prolific “cheats” was the one to catch Mew. There had to be about a hundred different cheats that were meant to get you one, one of them quite ingeniously getting you behind the SS Anne, but doing little else.

Today, I’ve stumbled across one on Reddit which details a way I have never heard of, but is apparently backed up with evidence. Frankly, it sounds legit. This excites me, but does anyone know if it actually works?
If it does, well fuck me. I had to work my ass off negotiating terms with a kid in primary school who was lucky enough to have a Mew. From there, I used the duplication cheat to make a whole heap which I then sold to other kids. It was awesome. However, to know I could have skipped that first step and gotten my own, well that would have helped a lot.

1. That is an error pokemon you could catch, essentially

I’ve been getting back into Team Fortress 2 the last couple of weeks. This is just a death cam of a camping Demoman who I killed, but who got me with a lucky pipe bomb. Still felt good, and I quite like the above image.

This is a screenshot from Quake Live, a fast paced multiplayer FPS. I just wanted to showcase an excellent form of monetizing that is seldom seen in gaming. It’s not intrusive, I can ignore it and treat it as part of the scenery, but it still gets seen. Furthermore, the developers get money from it and therefore keep making content.

While “billboard” advertising isn’t for every game, it’s good to see it being utilized effectively.

Steam recently announced the official Steam app for Android and iOS, which unlike the unofficial versions has everything from chat to being able to buy games.
I don’t know how common the beta keys are, but I’ve been lucky enough to score access to the program. I’m not sure if there’s much use for it for me outside of being able to chat with people away from the computer, but we’ll see.

Did you know that there is a side scrolling Half Life game on Steam? Neither did I! Turns out there is though, hidden away. In a Reddit thread discussing how far Steam has come since it’s initial release, someone revealed exactly how to obtain this blast from the past.

To get the game -titled Codename Gordon- you merely have to have Steam installed, and click on this link. Curiously, it shows screenshots of the game on the Steam Game Info screen, which is odd. Why would someone go to the trouble of doing that for a game that doesn’t seem to be readily available, and as far as I know hasn’t been for years. Strange.

It’s nice to have some different Half Life content, and it’s definitely fun. I don’t understand why it’s not still advertised or listed on Steam at all; I’d pay money for it.
I know one thing; I’ll be installing it when I get home.

I made a bitizen version of myself. Absolutely no reason really, but it was fun. If you’re a fan of Tiny Tower, you can make one using the BitBuilder.

I have been playing a fun game on my phone called Tiny Tower. You build up a tower, opening different services on each floor, from apartments (which house your “bitizens”, who you can then employ in other areas of the tower), to shops and even a casino. It’s fun, and the pixel art style makes the thing enjoyable to look at.
The independent game developers, NimbleBit, have made quite a few fun games in the past, but to see them create such a chart topper in mobile gaming is a real testament to their skills.

Where things get sour is of course where Zynga comes in. After trying to buy NimbleBit (And being denied), they’ve come out with a brand new game.
The name? Dream Heights.
What’s it about? Exactly the same thing as Tiny Tower.

Indeed, as the screenshot below (borrowed from NimbleBit’s larger complete image) shows, the games share an awful lot of similarities. It’s obvious that Zynga merely copied the game and gave it a facelift and maybe tweaked one or two things, in an attempt to make it “better” than the original. People are outraged that a company with thousands of employees would line up all three members of NimbleBit and kick them in the groin.

I’m significantly less concerned, or angry. The reason behind my feelings is that anyone who is aware of Zynga knows they’ve been doing this exact sort of thing forever. Whether it be Farmville, Cafe World, or any of the other casual Facebook games they have “made”, most of the concepts are borrowed or shamelessly ripped from other developer’s already released games.

Yes, it’s fucked up that they can do this, but it’s just how game clones work. If we didn’t have game clones, we wouldn’t have half of the games we love today. Even Minecraft is a clone of another previously released game. Don’t believe me? Look up Infiniminer.

It’s terrible that Zynga are doing things like this, but at least they aren’t hypocritically suing people in this situation.