Thrifty Thursday: Jewel Up

Sorry it’s been a while since the last post. It must have been a gap of about two weeks or so. But now that Christmas and New Year’s is all over, I can resume the normal routine again.

I discovered this little game while browsing through Big Download – one of my fave blogs seeing as it’s dedicated to PC gaming. After posting the download link to the NAG DVD suggestion forum thread, I downloaded it myself over New Year’s.

I got a chance to sit down and actually install and play it recently.

Jewel Up is a free game that was made available recently at Clintwood’s website. You can also download it at the App Store for use on your iPhone.

You’d expect it to be very similar to another favourite casual game of years past, namely Bejeweled. And you’d probably be right, seeing as it play a lot like said game.

So once the game is fired up, you arrive at the main menu. If you go to the Options menu, you can select your board style, or background, your style of gem (there are always four different games no matter which style), as well as whether you will receive any hints in-game. Then there’s also the sounds and music volumes too, if you don’t want those to play during the game. The music isn’t bad though, speaking of which.

Getting on to actually playing the game now, you can select one of three game modes: these are “Overcharge”, “Time Attack”, and “Endless” (or freeplay). This last mode is no doubt my favourite.

Overcharge sees you fighting against the clock, but the main aim other than this is to charge the chargers present on the board. Time Attack means you obviously have to also play against the clock, and it seems as though you have limited time that cannot be incremented no matter what you do. I said it seems this way – maybe it isn't so.

The only mode that really appeals to me is the Endless or freeplay mode. There’s no time limit, and you can just keep playing and levelling up all day long if you want.

In all game modes, the objective, just like in Bejeweled, is to link a number of gems together to score points. The minimum chain you can have is three. This is worth 40 points. Four gems in a chain is worth 75; Five gems is 120; Six gems is 175 points.

Then the game borrows a bit from the likes of Unreal Tournament it seems, when at 7 gems you get the announcer, who says “Impressive!”. At 8 gems in a chain, you get “Excellent!” – very Mortal Kombat. At 9 gems it’s “Awesome”, and at 10 gems, which is the most you can have it seems, you get “Godlike!”

After building a big enough chain, usually six or more gems, you get a bomb which will drop on the board. If you can build a chain of gems close enough to it, then the bomb will explode, taking out all the gems in a particular row or column (rows are across, columns are down).

At the end of each play on the first two modes, Overcharge and Time Attack, you will get to see all of the statistics, and awards achieved during the session.

Overall, a nice way to pass some time. Two game modes don’t appeal to me, but one largely does. It may not be Bejeweled, but it is free, and it’s fun - and that’s what matters here.

Download it:

http://clintwoodgames.com/iphone/games/jewel_up_free_pc [PC version]

http://itunes.apple.com/app/jewelup/id394420210?mt=8 [iPhone version]

Thrifty Thursday: Jewel Up

Thrifty Thursday: Trials Legends

This last issue of NAG’s Cover DVD arrived in stores on Christmas Eve just lately, and naturally, I picked it up, along with something else called a magazine. On there was the usual stuff, but under free games I saw that there was a title by the name of Trials: Legends.

I’ve played one or two of these games in the past, most recently Trials HD, which looked a hell of a lot better graphically.

This Trials: Legends “celebrates the early years of RedLynx Trials”, from 2000 to 2005. I have had a on and off love affair with games involving FMX and the likes, including MotoRacer and Motocross Mania, and so I obviously couldn’t wait to try it out. Legends was released in November 2010.

Do you remember playing a game years ago called Elastomania? Trials is essentially like that game – just as mad and probably a little on the unrealistic side at the very least, but still fun as hell.

Trials pops under the Thrifty Thursday column seeing as it’s completely free. It’s basically a compilation of 33 tracks released in previous Trials games over the years. Not only this, but it comes with six different bikes, as well as a track creator. There’s also 15 ranks to go through before finally reaching the ultimate status of “Legend” – this happens when you beat all 33 tracks and the 3 marathon campaigns which each take place over 12 tracks. After you do all that, you can also compete in the online leaderboards for the fastest time achieved on a track, so there’s quite a bit to do then.

You obviously take control of a bike, which has some exaggerated suspension. And it’s your task to take on some challenging courses filled with frustrating obstacles, as you try to conquer them with the power of physics. Depending on the bike you pick, these courses can be easy, or they can be a nightmare. The best bike I find is the fifth one, which is the heaviest and the fastest too. I was able to complete most tracks with it. It has the power to climb up steep slopes, and more often than not can bypass several obstacles in your path with one big jump. It does have a tendency to be twitchy and can be a bit overpowered in some places. All the bikes have their strengths and weaknesses.

The sounds in the game are a bit repetitive and annoying, with the manager shouting commands at you sounding quite funny. I wish there was a way to jump off the track and crush him. The sounds of the various bikes are convincing enough though.

Graphically, it’s dated. The riders look blocky and comical-looking, and the animation is rather poor. It’s all 2D as well, which does make it look as though it belongs in the 1990’s instead. But the backgrounds are quite detailed, and remind one of pre-rendered backgrounds you might have seen in some games – even more modern ones. It doesn’t hold a candle to the more beautiful Trials HD, but it’s what one would expect more or less for a free game.

                     Proof that I did it! I did it! It drove me crazy, but I did it! 

After several hours of play over a period of 3 days or so I as able to reach this coveted spot. Now it’s on to the track creator! This is easier said and done though as the “editor” will make you work more within an external image editing program, such as PhotoShop, to create tracks. But you can make them out of almost anything, including photos or screenshots from other games! In fact, as I think more and more about it, Trials Legends almost reminds me of Worms, for some odd reason.

You can also go onto the Trials: Legends forums and download all the fan-made tracks that have been uploaded, too. My advice is to try your hand at making some, because I’ve tried some of those tracks, and they’re nowhere near as good as the ones that come with the game… yet.

Overall Rating:

/ 8/10

Thrifty Thursday: Trials Legends

Theory: Blood may have had more Influence than you Thought

     

These three seemingly very different games might have more in common than once thought

To many, Duke Nukem 3D was the most popular build engine game ever made, even though there were several others out there from the mid to late 90’s. Blood was one of these build engine cousins of the Duke, and for the most part probably wasn’t played by as many people. It did establish what one would refer to as a cult following though.

I was one of those types who only got around to dabbling in the rest of the build “big four” years after they were released. Not that it wasn’t fun playing catch-up. I love the era of sprites in games from the 90’s, when it was then cutting-edge technology, or at least dated but still awesome towards the later half of the decade.

But I was playing through Blood again recently, a couple of years since my first playthrough, and I came to some rather shocking conclusions. Blood may have been more influential on later games than even I thought.

Two games come to mind when I play through the game. First off, there’s another forgotten title from that decade named Nocturne. I’ve played both, and I see some mighty large similarities between the two. In both, you have a sinister protagonist clad in a trench coat and hat, armed to the teeth, who hunts demons, zombies, and the like. Let’s also not forget the train level (third mission of the first episode) in Blood, and how a similar mission took place in Nocturne (first section of the second chapter).

Both games at one point also featured delving deep into crypts and the underground as well, and both took place in Western themed universes, at about the same time (Blood’s 1928 versus Nocturne’s 1928 – 1935).

The second game I think of when I play Blood is System Shock II. Granted, the two don’t have a lot in common. Blood is a bare bones, all out FPS, while System Shock II is a classic hybrid title, featuring FPS and RPG gameplay. But one level in Blood certainly did remind me SS2, which came out more than two years later – and that was the “inside the body” level. You remember in System Shock II you had the creepy level called “Body of the Many”, which took place in a disgusting setting which looked like the stomach or digestive tract of a huge creature?

Blood did that. Blood had a level near the end of the fourth episode, called “In The Flesh”, which also saw Caleb enter inside what looked to be the same sort of environment. There were also bodies of water, except not toxic like in SS2, as well as teeth, but not as lethal as SS2, but not any less scary.

Yeah, Blood may well have taken inspiration from other games and even movies, but I think that in Blood’s case, it possibly inspired at least the two above-mentioned games too. I mean when you think back, Blood was one of the first games to have alternate fire modes with weapons, much like Marathon and Dark Forces before it.

Not many people would have played games like Nocturne or even Blood, and so probably won’t care much about all this, but still… I guess the point is that there’s always a game that did it first before it became cool and people gushed about it.

Theory: Blood may have had more Influence than you Thought

NAG January 2011 Issue Out This Week

You’d expect the last issue of NAG of the year to arrive on the last Thursday of not only the month, but the year – which would be the 30th of December. But it isn’t coming on that date. It’s coming this week instead – on Christmas Eve in fact! Yes, on the 24th of December, as usual NAG will arrive just before Christmas day.
Looking at the write-up on the site and in the contents, I can can tell you that the issue will feature the likes of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (good) and Fallout: New Vegas (great), as well as some other game like the new Need For Speed (meh), and James Bond: Blood Stone (lol).

Worthwhile stuff on the DVD includes System Shock Portable v 1.2 – suggested by yours truly months back. What SSP is, is a launcher or port of sorts for modern systems to run System Shock, the classic game from 1994, and prequel to its perhaps more well-known sequel: System Shock 2. SSP comes packed with the game itself too, seeing as it’s abandonware and it’s okay to distribute that sort of thing (sarcasm). There’s also a free game by the name of Trials: Legends. Trials is a motocross title similar to the likes of Elastomania, but much better looking.

Then, there’s the usual hundreds of videos on there too – but you’d know this by now if you buy the magazine regularly. I tried to decipher some of the other stuff that was on the Cover DVD by looking at the contents PDF, but it looks really sh!te for some reason. I can hardly read it.

By the way, the February Issue DVD suggestion thread is now open as well. So if there’s something you want to see on the next DVD, then post it there. You have to register though.

Sources:
NAG January 2011 issue
[NAG] January 2011 issue
[DVD] February DVD Suggestion Thread

NAG January 2011 Issue Out This Week

Classic Game Collecting: December Edition

The other day I was in Tygervalley Shopping Centre once again, on a mission to get a replacement debit card, and to deal with this Rica registration business before the cut-off date, which is the end of this month.

After all that was done, I had some time to browse through some of local stores which stock video games. So it was off to Game, CNA, and then eventually Musica.

So there I was at Musica, which is probably one of my favourite places to look for classic games that I so love doing – despite the apparent fact that the PC games selection keeps getting smaller each year. It was here that I came across some good compilations as well as a real rarity too.

One of these was Tomb Raider: The Greatest Raids, which is a compilation consisting of the first four TR games in the original series. Anybody who has played any of these knows that Tomb Raider I and II are the best. This was priced at R199.

Then another compilation was Prince of Persia Trilogy, which had three PoP titles, Sands of Time, Forgotten Sands, and The Warrior Within. This was significantly cheaper than the Tomb Raider anthology previously mentioned – priced at R59.

But the greatest find was seeing this game: Commandos 2. That’s right, it’s been a good 9 years since its release, and yet there it was, Commandos 2: Men Of Courage. For R59, I was almost tempted to buy it, but I all ready have the game as it is, and I’m not sure it would even run on my system. I’ve had some bad luck with some classics that I’ve bought in the past.

It’s rare to see games that old in stores anyway, unless you’re talking about Deus Ex or something. I rarely come across anything older than 10 years (released in 2000).

Classic Game Collecting: December Edition

The Last Episode of The Verge for 2010

I just looked through my news feed on Facebook, and saw a post from The Verge’s Facebook wall. It declared that tonight, the 15th of December is the last live episode of The Verge for this year.

Now they say it’s the last live episode, but the show will continue to run until next year when live shows will resume I suppose. Pippa says that they’re recorded and are new ones especially for when The Verge is off the air. As for PlayR, that isn’t a live show, but a recorded or taped one (and actually my favourite one at that – less slip ups and so on from Pippa).

As for tonight’s episode, it’ll feature Red Dead Redemption’s DLC, Undead Nightmare, and NFS Hot Pursuit.

The Verge will resume its live shows on the 17th of January 2011.

- The Verge currently runs from 10:30 PM for a half hour, Mondays and Wednesdays. PlayR is on Thursdays.

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Source: The Verge on Facebook

The Last Episode of The Verge for 2010

Chaos Computers’ Candy Store Competition

Don’t you just love it when you get added to a company’s newsletter list without asking for it? Well, in this case I suppose I am kind of chuffed seeing as I received an email from Chaos Computers last week, telling me about a special competition that’s arrived just in time for Christmas.

This is their Candy Store Competition. Every day Chaos will send one of their “sweet deals” to everyone who has signed up to their newsletter. If you are on the newsletter mailing list as well as a member on their Facebook page, you qualify to win a grand prize, which is a Samsung Galaxy Tab.

So, sign up for the newsletter, like them on Facebook, receive the emails, and you may or may not choose to buy one of the specials, and automatically get entered into a competition to win a prize, even if you don’t buy anything!

Source: Chaos Computers

Chaos Computers’ Candy Store Competition