Today I Smiled: Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day all (yeah I'm probably one day early)! :P Regardless if you are spending this with someone or on your own I hope to have something in today's post that will get everyone smiling. I figure I may as well start with "things cats do that'd be creepy if you did them".

Not a cat person? Well, how about learning of the people volunteering for a one way trip to Mars? Honestly, a few years ago when I first heard of this mission, I would have loved to be one of them.

On to game related vids, I'm not sure if you saw my Attack on Titan game tutorial compilation post but this opening, made from Feng Lee's tribute game is pretty damn cool. Another game that seems to have been getting upgrades without my attention is ye olde Sherwood Dungeon! I remember trying to reach the bottom with Juris via running - obviously we never made it. :P

As usual, I have to have a paragraph about music in here since it is one of my passions and I was super pleased to hear that Australia is joining Eurovision this year as a contestant. Also I've recently come across a strange instrument called a hang drum (because I don't get out much) and thought I'd share this clip of it in a solo by Daniel Waples.

If that's too zen for you then I also have a newly released piano solo by Animenz of "Unravel" from Tokyo Ghoul. No idea what Tokyo Ghoul is, but man does that look hard to play. And if that looked tough, here's one more appropriate for today... Animenz's "My Dearest" from Guilty Crown.

Anywho, that's it for me - hope you all have a wonderful day! :)

Blood and Jade

If you want an MMO where the game will literally play itself for you, look no further than Blood and Jade! This free to play browser based game is 2.5D, which I think means they had 3D models that they flattened into sprites. The result isn't bad but with very few animation frames everything feels a bit robotic. Indeed, after awhile you too will feel like a robot! Quests are super grindy but feature an interesting mechanism where you can instantly teleport to the bunch of baddies you need to kill (if they are in a different zone).

Targetting manually is woeful and there seems to be no reason to explore at all but why do you need to? Just press a button and let autopilot take over. There seems to be a story behind it too but I didn't bother reading any of the quest text since the game simply teaches you to click and forget, making you take a very passive role in the whole thing. You can even garden, play a slot machine and sell stuff directly from your inventory (to who, I am not sure). In my first, brief session I reached level 40 and didn't die once while half the time not even paying attention to the screen.

Pretty much the only thing it has going for it.

Honestly though, I would give this one a miss. If you really, really, really want a browser based MMO that is F2P then you should try Sherwood Dungeon instead. The graphics may not be as swishy or sexy there but it is certainly more fun. Not bad for something made by one person.