Today I Smiled: Quiet Easterling

Hi all! It's going to be quiet here for a few days over the Easter weekend as I'm off on a small holiday! Hope you have a safe and happy one! Since you took the time to stop by, here are some random links for your amusement until I return:

Space X's reusable rockets!
Earth Wind Fire Map.
Jetsun Pema, currently the world's youngest queen.
Trump Criticizes himself (without realizing) on reddit.
Sir Nils Olav. He probably outranks you. He's also a penguin.
Honey Badgers are resistant to machetes, spears and arrows.
"Don't just stand there, come in!" Ants play Stalker too.
Chipmusic from Toni Leys - "Through a cardboard World".

Scanners

The ones before Professor X.

While the lack luster title doesn't really allude to much, this old movie is actually a story about telepaths and relies a lot on the acting, regularly reused props and deafening, off setting sounds to tell the story.

This is a particularly memorable scene.

There's no CGI here, but the special effects are fun when they happen (and gory... ultra gory). Despite a few question marks in the plot, it's an entertaining enough tale and a nice reminder of how things were done.

Alas the main character is a bit drab, but a young Michael Ironside and an elderly Patrick McGoohan make it very watchable. If you are in the mood for something a bit different, old fashioned, with just a tad of horror, this one might be worth a peek. I give it 2 security cameras out of 5.

Lethal League

A fantastic take of a fighting game.

Firstly, I must give thanks to Wrothak who got me a key to this for free because it is hands down one of the most enjoyable and most addictive "fighting" games I have ever played. Think King of Fighters, but instead of martial arts you fight using an anti-gravity ball that gets faster and faster.

Each match can host two to four players (or AI) and you are free to assign teams or just go free for all. Yes, you can have cooperative matches! For solo players there is also a 10 stage challenge mode. I'm currently stuck at stage 5. Fricking Candy Man (who happens to also be my fav character).

When it goes fast enough, the ball looks more like a laser.

The BEST part is that getting hit by the ball is an instant KO. If only one team remains standing, then the stage is reset and play resumes until all opponents have used up all their "lives". This is so refreshing coming from games where you just attack attack attack and slowly whittle down an enemies HP.

The controls are simple, the music is groovy, the art is good, and the game is fun. Sure there are few characters and no real story but this one is definitely worth a try. As I'm not yet done with it, I currently give Lethal League 3.5 home runs out of 5.

Neverwinter Online: The Lost City of Omu

Apparently less dinos = more fun.

The Omu ruins is a pretty good Chult map after Soshenstar, especially since there are far less dinosaurs waiting to pounce on you from annoying aggro ranges. Their replacements, the normal aggro range gorillas, aren't so bad provided you know how to side step.

King Kong makes a cameo.

Also great is the Undercity with its short cuts and shrines. It's a fun though claustrophobic place to explore and each entrance comes with a campfire. This makes channel hopping (which brings you to the last campfire you visited) a most viable "recall" travel method. You'd probably do it anyway just to chase the hourly Tyrant HE around.

I've now finished the middle tree of the campaign progression which means I have access to all the weeklies - most of which are easily completable. The Fane isn't that tough (definitely not as bad as Ras Nsi's first encounter), but it is moderately lengthy.

A new, old friend shows up unexpectedly too.

Anyway, I've a bit more to go with boons and hunts to unlock. The hunt drops here seem quite scarce, but I haven't been actively pursuing them enough to compare with the previous area. I'll let you know how that goes

Dragonsphere

A good mascot for "Too Much Information".

An evil magician threatens the kingdom and you must stop him in this very verbose point and click adventure. While dated graphics wise, the animations are quite fluid and the story is good, with a decent twist near the midpoint(?).

All spoken lines are voiced (not very well), and the detail on every scene is extreme; and this is part of the problem. With every mundane object being "active" it is easy to get overwhelemed by information, especially with all the pixel hunting going on.

I almost quit here. Effing sprites.

It doesn't help that you have 10 default different actions such as "Look, Take, Throw, Put, Open, Talk to..." and have additional ones for each item you pick up. You can "shine" a ring or "lick" a dead rat. A sword can "attack, thrust or carve up".

Said actions are also not interchangeable. You can't "put" acid on the floor or "throw" acid on the floor or "use" acid on the floor but you can use "pour contents of beaker" on the floor. Irritating is an understatement.

Set in a magical, fantasy land also makes it hard to use logic to progress. Do you know that tentacles can physically grab a teleporter and let you carry it around if you get no hints? No? Lucky I just told you then because the game certainly won't! Good luck assembling mystical artifacts too.
 
It's like it was designed be unfair, and for that reason alone I give it 1 bullshitting sprite out of 5. If you are after a dated point and click adventure, go with Beneath a Steel Sky instead.

Command and Conquer

Where engineers are your most deadly weapon!

You'd think that the Earth being invaded by alien fauna called Tiberium might unite mankind but no, this game is all about the war between the Global Defense Force Initiative (GDI) and brotherhood of Nod terrorists (or just Nod) and you get to play commander for their forces.

Now, I'm terrible at RTS games so I found this really challenging from the get go. There are no difficulty options either, just a slowly expanding arsenal array to build and deal with on the field. Really, it's more like a puzzle game because if you don't do the "right" moves fast enough, then you are put into an unrecoverable losing state.

I really hate those obelisks.

While it's easy enough to load when you find yourself there, the AI doesn't ever surrender - meaning even it will try waste as much of your time as possible with its last unit/building before you get a "Mission Accomplished".

Other than that, game play wise is mostly fine (though I don't get why aircraft can't scout). It has an easy to understand HUD, entertaining (though poorly acted) mission briefing videos and music track, and delivers good challenges. Good to see that the commandos are also almost as OP as the guy in Renegade.

The Command and Conquer: The Covert Operations expansion just adds more missions for each side rather than story, and feels like they just wanted to have more skirmishes with both sides accessing their full tech trees which in the original game only happens right at the last 2-3 missions.

While I did finish the original GDI campaign, I couldn't fight through the expansion as I got tired of being nuked. Only so much fun can be had from loading a saved game after all. :P

That's my big problem with it. It's fun but only to a certain degree due to the required repetition to get things "just right". I give it 2 engineer rushes out of 5 and can only recommend it to RTS fanatics.

Treasure Adventure Game

Enjoyable and fun, until it starts to kill you! :P

While the advertised quest is to simply collect 12 treasures, the story and world in this pixel platformer has some surprising depth and decent game play, featuring a good variety of 8-bit music, puzzles, and boss fights.

The talking animals are a cute idea too.

Its also quite lengthy thanks to all the parts where you will undoubtedly get stuck and go backtracking. Fortunately, travel methods improve in speed as the game progresses.

Lastly, while not as hard as Super Meat Boy or IWBTG, there is still a fair amount of difficulty in this game, enough for me to wave off anyone who isn't into platformers. For everyone else though, this itself is quite a treasure. I give it 3 bumbling henchmen out of 5.

Note: Treasure Adventure World, the reimagining of this game, has better graphics if the pixel stuff bugs you too much. You can get it on Steam. :)