From videogames

Good Review:

G4tv’s review of Punch Out!! hits on all the major features you looks for in a review. It touches on all the new aspects of the game, including all the game modes. It goes through all the control options, as well as talking about the difficulty of the different aspects of the game, complete with details. Of all the reviews, this one best breaks down the game play once you load the disc. Yes, the pink track suit remains the same. The review emphasizes the difficulty of the game, and how it differs from other game options available today. It makes old gamers want to buy it to reminisce about how a game is supposed to be, and makes new gamers want to buy it to prove the new gamer is as skilled as the old.

Bad Review:

1UP’s review of Punch Out!! covers most of the major points, but it goes into detail about specific animation details to make an overall point about nostalgia that is out of place in a review. If you ignore the opening tag line, the first three paragraphs are taken up talking about video game remakes, and how Punch Out!! is one of the best. The reviewer has chosen to compare the new game not to the original, but to the nostalgia-enhanced version in his head. That the game even stood up to that level of scrutiny does say a lot for it. It’s not until near the end of the review that we get some real detail about the new features of the game and how the different modes work. Unfortunately, it’s only two short paragraphs sandwiching an embedded video. Watching the video gave me a better feel for the game than anything else on the page.

Extra:

destructoid.com provides the best, and the most, screen shots of the game, although none of them show me the only new boxer, Disco Kid.

Almost every review agrees that while using the Wii Balance Board to dodge is pretty cool, it’s not fast enough to use when playing the more difficult fighters.

After hearing this, I could not resist but to put it on the blog…listen and enjoy!

In the middle of creating my second major webgame, SimDerby, I am finding the challenges to be much different than SimYard.  This time around, the balancing act is in creating a schedule of races that has a variation to it that matches as closely as possible the variation of horses.  If there are only three 2-year-olds in the game which can run at a mile and a quarter, then there shouldn’t be any of those races on the schedule, for example.

I’m finding that successfully mastering a task like this all comes down to having the right tools.  It all seems easy looking at it from the other site now that these tools have been built, but it was rough trying to figure out what they needed to look like before they were built.  They tell me which races are being canceled because there aren’t enough horses so I can remove them from the schedule.  They tell me a cross-section breakdown of horses which went a whole day without running in a single race so I know to schedule more races of those types.  They show me the schedule of races for each track and allow me to fill in the missing races with the types that I need.

Currently, there are seven tracks in the SimDerby universe.  Each of these tracks will have a race every five minutes and the schedule will be the same every day.  That’s over 2,000 races a day that need to be hand-crafted to match the balance of horses that can run, and there will probably be more tracks added.  This seems like a daunting task, but ultimately this schedule will be what horse breeders and owners interact with.  More importantly, computer horses running on this schedule will represent the claims pool that owners will choose from to begin breeding.

I expect these numbers to only grow.  It’s a good thing I have these great tools to help, because they sure do save time.  The schedule is one of the most important parts of the game, and it’s deserving of lots of attention.

I love the Foxy Sniper Series.  I was even more estatic when I saw that Foxy Sniper 2 came out!  What to do?  Write a walkthrough of course!

Foxy Sniper 2

mission 1

Look at the house where the party is.  Shoot the guy in the third window from left to right

Mission 2 – LAUNDRY MAN

Shoot the guy in the trench coat walking on the sidewalk.  He will be walking behind 3 other guys ahead of him.

Mission 3 – THREESOME GRUESOME

Shoot the guy in the car first, then the guy that runs up, then the guy that runs down.  head shots are not important.  I also speht time in the shooting range and bought the 2000 dollar scope.  It helped.

Mission 4 – Train Pain

Shoot the third carrage.  Aim for the tracks and not the carrage.

Mission 5 – PIMP MY RIDE

The van is coming from the tunnel.  Shoot both wheels on the right side of it.

Mission 6 – FLY TRAP

Manuver through the crowd and get to the payphone

Mission 7 – unknown

Look for a white male with organe shorts and a metal detector

Mission 8 – CITY CRAWLER

PENDING

Bad Review: IGN

Longwinded. Reads like a disgruntled programmer who wishes he was developing for this game. The review is too nitpicky with relatively minor features, or small glitches in animation and display. It spends too much time on features the reviewer personally feels should be fixed and updated, rather than the progress made in development. I don’t need a play-by-play analysis of every thought the reviewer had as he played through the game. The review even ends saying it’s a nice bridge to ‘10 the Show, which at best is in the beginning stages of design. It fails to address the features mentioned in the ads for the game that might have drawn a reader to the site to read a review on it until the third page,when most readers have either already decided what they think of this game.

Good Review: Gamer 2.0

This is medium sized review that specifically compares this year’s game against last year’s, which is a major part of a buyers decision to buy basically the same sports game every year. It can be too easy for developers to focus on one small improvement, and basically release the same product. The review provides a fair comparison, and suggests that the developers did a good job on making a game that is better than the version already collecting dust on your shelf from last year. It does hit on some of the less polished features too, but overall comes out positive. The review doesn’t contain overly flowery writing with silly references to MLB like “MLB ‘09: The Show hits it out of the park!” Readers, even baseball fan readers, are reading this review for it’s gaming aspects, not for another jab about A-Roid.

Synopsis:

The first review had my eyes glazed over before I got halfway through. It felt like I was reading the transcript of the reviewers thoughts as he played the game. The Gamer 2.0 review was much better, hitting the major points of interest of the game and comparing it to past versions so I could make a proper decision on buying it.

I have recently been into Wii Fit and heavily beenn playing the boxing game.  Here are a few tips that I have noticed.

1. time your punches..  If you hit the bag right when he says right or left, you receive 2 points intead of 1.  The hit mark will display bigger as well.

2. When you do the step forward, and backwards pattern.  If you use the right  leg to step forward, the left leg will step back.  You still start the punch with right.  Sadly, it took me a few times to get  a handle on that.

3. Stay with it.  After about a week, it gets a big boring, but you are doing it for your health right?!

Really, you don’t need a walkthrough for this game, but it was cute and figured, I might as well write something about it…

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/483080

With that said, here are the following commands you can do:

Z – jump

X – follow me

C – toggle between people

Billy – slow and stupid?

Sarah – runs like hell…

Basically, if you need to go fast, use Sarah, if you need a lump with no special abilities, use Billy!

This is a new test which is pretty short and fairly easy.  Here are all the answers to the test.  If you want to play it, here it is on AddictingGames.com:

http://www.addictinggames.com/testyourpatience.html

1. 178

2. Click on the numerical “1″ in the upper right.

3. Click, move your mouse outside of the flash area to the other dot, and click again.

4. The one on the left.

5. 5

6. Click the button, then don’t do anything.  Click when it says “Next Question”.

7. 7

8. Not at all

9. Follow the path.  You cannot go outside the flash area – this is all about having a steady hand.

10. 17

I’ve been waiting for this game to come out since I beat Sonny.  Here it is, SONNY 2!!!

I am writing this walkthough as I play the game so if you have gotten farther than I, feel free to add your tactics to the comments.  My tactics are not always the most efficient…

Zone 1 – New Alcatraz

Use brute force to win over these stages

Zone 2 – Oberursel

I still use brute force.  When there are three guys, I tended to use this strategy once I got Roald.

Put Roald on complete aggression.  This will attack the weakest characters.  Have Veradux on

defensive until at least one of the enemies has been defeated.

Cult leader
I found that dispelling all of his focus helped a lot in this battle.  It is the first thing that I

did so I am not sure if it truly helped or not.  He has 300 focus, so I am assuming he has some good

shit.  I then just beat the crap out of him until he is no more.  Keep an eye on his focus levels and

dispel when needed.  I maxed my magic on dispel.  Also notice when he casts the reverse magic and

put your guys on defend.  This way, attacking him does not heal him.

Baron

Defeating him is easy.  Just keep dispelling his focus.  He casts a magic that regenerates focus

through burning health.  He will keep regening focus (for the most part) and still receive more

focus.  He continues to lose health until he dies.

ZPCI + 2 Wolves

Put Veradux on defensive mode.  Every time I played this level, they went after (and killed) him

first.  Have Roald on offensive.  Use dispel to take away the wolves focus and break when the ZPCI

soldier uses the 400+ strength.  Repeat until defeated

Captain Hunt and 2 snipers

While this may not be the best strategy, it works.  Attack Captain hunt until the shields wear off

for the snipers.  Have Veradux on defensive mode.  Have Roald on pure aggression.  At some point, a

shield will be cast on Captain hunt.  Around the same time, the shields will fail for the snipers.

If you are decent with life, put Veradux on aggression as well to quickly knock out the snipers.

Around this time, the shield for hunt should wear off and start attacking him.

Zone 3 – Ivory Line: The Train

Use brute force to defeat first rounds of enemies

The Host – Use disrupt on him to take away all of his focus.  He will recover focus and waste a turn

Clemons The Deceiver – clear out the focus and brute force works for me!  He will heal himself, just keep slamming him until he falls.

Zone 4 Labyrinth

Again brute force for the first few levels never hurt anyone

Vivian Vixen – Ideally you should kill this while it has 300 hit points. I wasn’t able to acheive this, so it transformed into a wolf.  Once done, I was able to do actual hit points and brute force is the way for me…

Gregor – Silly bug keeps healing itself.  At this point, I felt the need to do some training.  At the moment, I am a level 15 and will train until my team has enough equipment/levels to deal more than 900 per turn.  I have leveled up to 18 and re-equipped my team members.  I then used break to slow the ability to heal himself for a round.  Next, I dispelled his focus and continued to beat him down.  Eventually you will squash this bug!

Shunny – brute force worked well for me

Mokoshotar – Wait for him to bite you which will turn whoever into a wolf.  Put them to aggressive mode which will do 6k worth of damage.  Once transformed back, put to appropiate level.

Bunny – Set both to aggressive when the bunny blows himself up.  He is weaker during this time.

The Hydra and the fire claws – I set the medic to defensive and Roald to full agression.  I went after the hydra since he was acceptable to more damage.  I also had healing set for when the medic got stunned or overwelmed.  It took an eternity but I finally overcame the hydras.

Zone  – Hew: The Dystopia

Use brute force to defeat the first few levels

Police Colonel – when he turns blue, he is reloading.  Slam him with everyone as the most amount of points are dealt out.  Once he is ready to attack after reload, use break to stun him for this turn.  Repeat and you are golden

A brand new online poker game will be coming soon to a browser near you.  Bluff This is in beta testing right now, and is an RPG poker game.  Your characters will start at level 1 and gain skills in reading, bluffing, and slow playing.  Money is distributed through Penny Ante games which will ensure value.

Bluff This will not allow you to play for real money.  It’s illegal in the United States, so that can’t be done.  Bluff This uses play money.  The real problem with that is that people will discard the value of play money because they can always just reload, so the poker game suffers.  This is not true on Bluff This.  Bluff This uses a Penny Ante game to distribute money.  In Penny Ante there is no blinds, only a $0.01 ante for each player.  If you have no money, you are given this $0.01 for free and placed all-in.  This is a fair system and means that losing all of your money pays a real penalty.  You have to wait until you win a hand at the Penny Ante table, and then make use of those winnings before you get ante’d out.  Once you graduate up to the next table, there will be real games going on.

In Bluff This, you gain experience points every time you show a hand at the end.  You also get additional experience points if you beat someone who shows their hand.  As you move up levels, you get skill which allow you to get reads on other players, or notice when other players are getting reads.  A tiny sweat drop appears on a player when they have a worse hand than you, or a plus sign when their hand is better.  A small eye appears when that player gets a read on another player.  Of course, your skills and attributes (instinct, game, awareness, poise) help prevent others from getting reads on you.  As you get skills, you also unlock additional skills, like being able to read if a player caught the river or flopped a set.

If you want to help Beta Test the game, point your browser to beta (dot) bluffthis (dot) com.  I do not want to link this online because I don’t want Google to crawl it just yet.  See you at the tables!