Tonight1 was Joypad –a monthly event involving chiptunes, retro games and alcohol. I played lots of Tetris, listened to music by the genius Xandox (He makes and plays his music on old gaming machines, the is nothing not epic about this man.), and had drinks. Overall, night was awesome.
I am undefeated at Tetris2.
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Looks odd, doesn’t it? The Binding of Isaac is a new (two week old) game from Edmund Mcmillan (one half of Team Meat) and Florian Himsl (A guy I have never heard of, but I suspect he wears shoes).
Looking at the art, it’s possible to see one of the many similarities it has to Super Meat Boy. However, while there are a few similarities, it’s a completely different game. Where SMB was a platformer, The Binding of Isaac is a top down “Action RPG”, with a rather dark storyline which goes as follows-
When Isaac’s mother starts hearing the voice of God demanding a sacrifice be made to prove her faith, Isaac escapes into the basement facing droves of deranged enemies, lost brothers and sisters, his fears, and eventually his mother.
With that information, you’re thrown into the basement as Isaac to face enemies that consist of other siblings (who have become warped over time), sins, flies, maggots, leeches, and many other disgusting creatures.
Your primary defence is your tears, which you project at the various enemies in the game. Along with the tears, there are collectable items rewarded for various reasons. These reasons can be for killing a boss or mini boss (or just a “special” enemy), and can range from bombs and keys to usable items and passive improvements to Isaac’s stats and attacks.
Besides the art style, the other massive similarity between this game and Super Meat Boy is the dedication to making the game as hard as possible. It is a guarantee that you will die. A lot. While the first level or two are fairly reasonable, later levels can find you overwhelmed by the various harder enemies, making the collection of items throughout the earlier levels a requirement if Isaac is to survive more than thirty seconds.
Like Super Meat Boy, death isn’t something that will make you quit in a rage. While you are forced to start the entire game again, the dungeon is randomized again, meaning the rooms, enemies, and power ups will all be different again. Because of room design and the extremely large variation of enemies and items there are in the game1, there’s always something new to find.
It’s also amusing seeing the way items transform Isaac from innocent child to…whatever that thing is. Every time a non-consumable item is collected, along with the stats and abilities it rewards the player, there’s a visual indicator of that item present on the playable character2. Since every game has different items drop at different times, you’re almost guaranteed to have your character evolve differently as you play, provided of course you survive long enough.
I don’t expect you to be convinced about the game by just my ramblings (Which sum up to “It’s a good game just fucking buy it it’s only five dollars don’t be a stingy bastard.”), so here’s a link to the official demo, which lets you play two full levels of the game in a flash-based environment.
Did I mention it has an awesome soundtrack too? No? Well it does.
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My favourite would have to be a fantastic title called Beat Hazard. The game plays a lot like the classic Asteroids game, but uses music chosen by the player to create the level. The player’s attack power is based on the volume of the music and collectable power ups. Additionally, depending on difficulty and the song, the level is filled with colours that react to things you destroy and the like. On harder difficulties this can lead to very distracting challenges.
The player has to last until the end of the song, dodging and destroying asteroids, enemy ships, and boss ships.
As levels are finished, points are transferred to experience points, and there is a levelling system. As levels are unlocked the player receives more bonuses that make the game easier.
It’s an amazing fun indie game to invest a few minutes at a time into. I love boobies.
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My favourite fighting game isn’t actually a game as such. It’s actually a mission come mini-game available in Spyro: Year Of The Dragon1, in which the character Bentley boxes with a Yeti.
Got to love pixels. While at first the Yeti is AI controlled, after the initial mission has been won, there’s an interesting thing I guess you could call an easter egg. If you plug in a second controller, the Yeti becomes controllable by a second person, making this the only two player part of the entire game. Why this is the case is odd, but it’s amazing.
I have memories of spending hours playing this particular mission with my brother over and over again. It was great to be able to play such an excellent platformer with a second person, even if it only was a fighting mini game.
All this talk of Spyro and Crash Team Racing has me wanting to reinstall a Playstation emulator. Might do that today.
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Today Mr Pedlar and I made an epic journey to Port Germein to walk along Australia’s longest wooden jetty. I had never been to Port Germein, and although Paul had been once before, he had never walked the full length of it’s jetty. The jetty itself is one mile long, or 1.6 kilometres in real measurements, and was a bitch to walk along in the heat. There’s even a fucking dirt road of sorts for a while before you even hit the jetty!
One we got to the end however, the view was amazing. You could see the schools of fish swimming around in the water, and the smell was intoxicating.
Paul even got some video, which can be watched by harnessing the power of the you tubes. What it doesn’t show though, was how much of a pain it was walking back. The jetty needed a) golf carts that gave lifts back to shore, and b) a vending machine at the end of the jetty (possibly powered by solar panels).
The whole day was fun even if we copped a bit of sunburn. I loved it. To finish up, some more random photos from the day.
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It seems all my screenshots of the game Team Fortress 2 are taken on the GameArena #15 server (IP Address: 203.46.105.16:21000). The only reason I can think of is because this server is just so fucking funny most of the time. Tonight, Brittany and I started up a picnic party on the server. At first it was just us two; a couple of gentlemanly Heavys enjoying a meal together. Next thing we know there’s several of us, from both teams, jumping around, eating. There were Disco Engineers, Gentleheavys, and even a couple of rare Civilian Soldiers.
Here are a few screenshots of the event. Unfortunately there was one Demoman1 being a dick and ruining the party. There’s always one I guess.
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I’ve made a short video (my first and so far only attempt at recording in game) of silly goings on in Team Fortress 2 before, but today I want to share with you a few random screenshots of what started off as me dicking around as an Engineer, and turning into everyone building a fort in our bases foyer. All the while people were micspamming. It was hilarious and fun.
Of course, click any image to see a beefed up version of it.
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The other night we had my friend’s 22nd birthday pub crawl, which involved many a fun time. It was fairly short, with everyone reportedly leaving by 2am, but still, enjoyment was had. Here’s a few photos I’ve stolen from another partygoer, depicting me in all my glory.
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Already done my next challenge, posted to me on my FormSpring page.
I challenge you to film yourself doing that trick where you hold a broom, look at the top of it, spin around 20 times, throw it on the ground, and jump over it. Also, I will have your running away from the camera photo by Friday night. I will write it down. Sorry for the lateness!
It sounds confusing, but after looking at a reference video, I was set to do it.
Challenge done! It was really fun to do. Of course, my sister did the filming. Thanks for the challenge, Craig.
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Team Fortress 2 has released a teaser update prior to the it’s next set of class upgrades. Only three classes haven’t had an update complete with unlockables yet, and now Valve are rolling out two of them; Soldier and Demoman.
To do this, they’ve set up a story about the RED team’s demoman and the BLU soldier forming a strong bond of friendship, and the admin behind the scenes of the war don’t like it. To separate them, some healthy competition is unveiled.
The storyline directly impacts gameplay, as how soldiers and demomen perform in game will decide how the update pans out. As a soldier, the more demomen you kill, the more likely the soldier update will be better (and vice versa). There’ll be more achievements, weapons and sounds for both classes, but in the end the one with the most kills will get an extra weapons.
Now, I’ve never played much of either class, if any (seriously, only about 5 minutes for the demoman, but hours and hours on other classes), but I’d been thinking that I should try getting better at either of them and this update gives me that final shove.
I can’t wait until the final update comes out; I’d love to see what comes of this.
Update: Ok I just gave the game an hour of my time, and well, it is interesting. As I should of realized, now that this is out; everyone is spamming as these classes. Going onto my usual servers, teams were made up almost completely of soldiers and demomen, with maybe one or two medics. The gameplay is a flurry of grenade and rocket spam, and no-one cares about the actual objectives. “Get the briefcase? FUCK OFF, throwing random grenades over this wall in hopes of killing a soldier is much more invigorating.”
Kind of sucks, but it’s a little funny at the same time. If you play Team Fortress 2, what do YOU think of the new updates that are rolling out? Good or bad?
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