jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2728 Posts

I've been thinking of dedicating a day of the week to a game topic close to my heart. I think Tuesday works because its a pretty boring week day in need of some love. I hereby dub Tuesdays "Retro Tuesdays and as such, each Tuesday I will write about a sweet game of yesteryear that I love or hate and was iconic for me in some way. I would be awesome if others grabbed some good or ill feeling out your mind and posted it on Tuesdays as well. See how that goes.

Without further ado..... "RETRO TUESDAY POST NUMBER A!"

Super Mario Brothers 2 is a game I will never stop loving. First off if you compare it to the rest of the original Super Mario Brothers games its a total odd duck. It did things in a Mario game few games continued and compared to Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario World. Some of us know Super Mario Brothers 2 is actually Doki, Doki Panic rebranded. For more information on the history of Super Mario Brothers 2 read this(I heartily recommend it, its quite interesting):

http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._2

Nintendo released Super Mario Brothers 2 as we played in the USA because the original was seen as too difficult. Whatever the reason I am glad they shipped the game as I played it because the game is wonderful. The art style is very good, the music is iconic and the story is the best from my memory for a Mario game. Super Mario Brothers 2 shrugged off the princess saving in favor of saving the world of Subcon from the evil Wart. Right, Super Mario Brothers 2 didn't feature Bowser as the badguy.

Super Mario Brothers 2 went so far as to allow you to jump on a bad guy(which didn't kill them) pick them up and toss them as a weapon. I also loved the magic potion that allowed you to enter a special dark world where you could find mushrooms to allow you more life and collect coins and enter warp zones.

Super Mario Brothers 2 also allowed you to pick what who the main character was. In Mario games typically you could only be Mario unless you were player 2 or in later Mario games 2-4. Super Mario Brothers 2 allowed you a choice between Mario, Luigi, Toad and the Princess. This is the only game to my memory where Mario was the worst character to chose as all the others were better in some way. To my memory Mario was kind of average, Luigi could jump very high, Toad was fast and the Princess could float. The character I picked 99% of the time was the Princess, she was mad overpowered and the game was so much easier when you played with her.

I recently went back to Super Mario Brothers and played the Super Mario All Stars version.

http://media.nintendo.com/nintendo/bin/KIXfK5Jg9lJrscFJmuyV_NH6eE_7i3jS/ISF4ETU5TyKHOMd7dYdBo6ZXeaDQR28C.jpg

Basically, All Stars is Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario Brothers the Lost Levels. The SNES style graphics really make those games shine plus they add a save feature the original NES versions lacked.

When I think about awesome games that I love Super Mario Brothers 2 often comes to mind. I've played it recently so I know it still holds up well for me now. I often wish a modern Mario would pull elements from Mario 2 but it seems that Mario 2 will be off on its own which is just fine to me. I know others share my love for this game because of its uniqueness but we are a rare breed. A few years ago I took my love to another level and purchased this shirt. Yeah, I love the game that much.

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-Bros-Mens-T-Shirt/dp/B0045OWO3S


http://i.imgur.com/7w2Qs.jpg
Ruh roh!


http://i.imgur.com/7yJwL.png
What can I say about Diablo 3 that hasn't been said already? Is it a fantastic game? Yep. Is it beautiful? Yep. Do I think they improved on the hack n slash game formula they already solidified in Diablo and Diablo 2? Yep. Is the story great? Its fine. Do you feel like a bad-ass in the game? Yep.

So that ends my formal review of the game. I guess it goes without saying that I don't like formal reviews of the game that go over how I rate certain aspects of the game. I think its more interesting for me to know what actual people think about a game and if this site is proof, people seem to really love Diablo 3.

That all said, there are a few things I haven't seen talked about too much online so ill bite. Someone has to do the good work of talking about every nuance of great games and I don't mind batting clean up.

People say that Diablo 3's online requirement is DRM. I becry foul. If it came with a monthly fee no one would claim it has DRM. Yes its annoying to have a server outage but its awesome to have a game as connected to your friends and the world as Diablo 3. One such feature I love is that my games travel with me. This weekend I went to Idaho to visit family and I took my Macbook. My Diablo 3 character travelled with me and I didn't miss a killing beat.

The auction house seems a little overpowered. For instance, a few days ago I purchased 4-5 perfect square gems for around 2k a piece. These gems are WAY outside my range to craft and I purchased them to increase my gear attributes. Seems a little out of balance to do be able to do that. Then again, I chose to purchase and socket my weapons. You could take a more pure path. All that said, I haven't purchased any gear at the auction house but I imagine its just as easy to get great gear too. I wonder how the real money auction house will change things after it drops?

My second play through is more interesting than I thought it would be. Finding myself taking even more time and spending it grinding or trying out new Witch Doctor builds. Currently I am way less pet focused and more spell focused. Its an interesting style that is doing pretty well. Seem to be levelling much faster in Nightmare too. Appreciating how much more challenging the game is and how much more gold drops. Blizzard did a good job with repeatability, I can see myself playing this game much more than the typical faire.


Dungeon Twister is an awesome 2 player board game. Recently I heard it was coming to the PS3 and am pretty interested in checking it out. I am not sure the game will translate well to a video game as the trailer makes it look pretty complicated compared to the board game which is fairly simple. At least thats what hit me about watching that video, playing it might be different.

Dungeon Twister stands above your average dungeon crawler board game because its basically a two player head-to-head experience. The goal is to acquire the most points and you can do that by killing the other players characters or having one of your characters exit the dungeon. Nothing is random and everything is strategic. The game omits dice and does so to avoid any random encounter.

My wife and I play it often and are adapting new strategies to outwit the other. Very fun to play and can be done in an hour or so per game.


http://www.justd3.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/diablo3screen6.jpg
I am going to pack a few things into this post. I couldn't go too long without talking about Diablo III!

"Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that as of the first 24 hours of Diablo® III’s release, more than 3.5 million copies had been sold, setting the new all-time record for fastest-selling PC game. That number does not include the more than 1.2 million players who received Diablo III as part of signing up for the World of Warcraft® Annual Pass promotion. Altogether, more than 4.7 million gamers around the world were poised to storm Sanctuary on day 1 of Diablo III’s release -- representing the biggest PC-game launch in history."

Wow. Thats pretty impressive. I guess all the PC haters that said it was a dead platform are all wrong as 4.7 million purchases is huge for any system. Thats just the first week as well, Blizzard games often sell way beyond their release date. I wonder when stores will stop selling the Starcraft battle chest? When it stops selling I imagine.

Oh and I beat Diablo III last night. Woooohooo and all that. It was a fun moment. Act IV was the best paced act in the game and it was a fun way to end it off. I didn't really think the ending story part of cinematic really left me with a epic sense of closure but it was better than the Borderlands ending for sure. I am going to save my "Diablo III" review for a later post, but I felt it worth noting that I beat the game. It took me about 29 hours to complete as the Witch Doctor class.

Have you beat D3 yet? How did you feel the ending was if you did? Try to keep the comments spoiler free if you can. You on to nightmare now or are you giving yourself a bit of a break?

-

http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20120523005532/en/Blizzard/Diablo/Entertainment


I first heard about Kingdom Rush in an episode of the Totally Rad Show about games they were playing on the iPad. They mentioned that Kingdom Rush started as a Flash based browser game and I kind of shrugged it off as I don't typically play browser games. A week ago I decided to give it a try and I was blown away with how good of a game it was.

We have mostly all played Tower Defense games like Plants VS Zombies or DoTA. Kingdom Rush is a game similar in nature but has its own spin on the genre. One thing I really latched on to was the unique art style of the game. Another rad thing it does is allow you to upgrade the kinds of towers you want to use. Many bad guys require certain towers to kill, but if you want focus your play style some, you can.

The game is also challenging. Its not frustrating but it will challenge you. I love Plants VS Zombies but really didn't feel like it was very challenging. In Kingdom Rush you can't stick with the same strategy you must adapt to new bad guys the game tosses your way. I guess ultimately Kingdom Rush does very similar things that most other tower defense games it just does it so well it stands above some others ive played.

If I ever get an iPad I will pick this game up but until then I can play it for free in my browser. Yay!

http://www.kingdomrush.com


Some arranged Radiohead's "OK Computer" and "Kid A" as 8 bit recordings and released the entire albums on YouTube and download. YouTuber QuintonSung has them available for YouTube streaming:

OK Computer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxLnu4PhQNQ
http://www.mediafire.com/?k19e847uw1wb5wl [MP3 download]

Kid A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFUIeDjo2dA
http://www.mediafire.com/?i1fjgryo63czhhg [MP3 download]

Listened to it today and they are both really cool. Like how he puts in Zelda and Mario sound effects from time to time.


http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/pictures/borderlands2collectors_616.jpg
I love Borderlands and as such am very excited about Borderlands 2. More gun collecting RPG shooter mayhem? More guns? Going more places than just the desert? Uhm.... Totally in. So totally in.

When I love a game++ I am drawn to pre-order it. Often times I buy the collectors edition. What can I say? I am sucker when people say "game, art book and soundtrack." I just have to pay more because I love that kind of stuff. Borderlands 2 seems willing to indulge me with pre-ordering and they upped the ante with TWO collectors editions.

I am going to pre-order the game I am just not sure what version of the game I will actually buy. To my eye there are actually 4 different versions you need to discern between. Ill drop you to the site so you can check it out:

http://www.borderlands2.com/preorder/

So basically, you have the pre-order game that comes with a crap load-o-dlc. I think rewarding your biggest fans is a great thing. I got a few special bits with my Diablo 3 Collectors Edition(ill post about that in the future). Thing is, its not quite that simple.

Every pre-order gets the same DLC except Game Stop. Game Stop's pre-order nabs you all the DLC goodness AND the "Creature Slaughter Dome" and a special rocket launcher. Honestly that sounds like a really great pre-order bonus that everyone should get. I don't dislike Game Stop, I just don't like special retailer only pre-order bonuses. I also don't like special console only DLC. That said, you know about it now so plan accordingly.

The other two versions of the game are the collectors edition and they seem fun save one critical thing I would love. A soundtrack. I LOVE GAME SOUNDTRACKS! I may very well be in the minority here, but when a collectors edition includes the soundtrack I get much more interested in purchasing it. Toss in a making of or behind the scenes DVD and you have my money in your hand. Both Borderlands 2 collectors editions seem to omit both. That said, they are both pretty hefty and the $150 collectors edition includes a loot chest that looks pretty epic.

I am leaning to the pre-order at Game Stop on the PS3 for the "plain Jane" game itself as the collectors editions are not really compelling me right this minute. Are you going to pre-order Borderlands 2? Do you buy collectors editions? Do you like retailer specific DLC? Did you enjoy SkiFree on Windows 3.1?

Let me know in the comments.


http://hellyeahcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/HellYeah_Release_en.jpg
This is kind of how I feel right now. Ill coin a new phrase here, I am "Diablo tired." So very tired.....

http://hellyeahcomics.com/finally/


http://i.imgur.com/lL2LT.jpg
This post isn't really a D3 review, I just want to share my current character as he sits today.

I typically like the summons classes so the Witch Doctor seemed like a no brainer to me. The above image is "SnuggyBunny" as he sits right this second. My current skills for SnuggyBunny are: darts, zombie arms, spider queen, poison zombie dogs and horrify. The slowdown that occurs when you zombie arm/eel an area is the basis of how I play the Witch Doctor. Basically I try to get the enemies into a choke-point or slow them such that I can pick them off from a distance. When they are slowed, I toss in the Spider Queen and then start to use the poison darts. My zombie dogs train the mobs so they don't focus on me. Horrify if they get too close and I hit them as they run.

My current skill tree and attributes:

http://i.imgur.com/ZR9Nk.jpg

At the start of act II I got a pretty sweet legendary drop:

http://i.imgur.com/dI9ai.jpg

So far I know only one other person that got legendary gear, so that's kind of awesome I have some. Will be hard to let it go when I get something better. I imagine I can sell it at the auction house for a few gold.

Speaking of auction house, if I can't give my old yellow gear to the Enchantress, Templar or Thief I sell it at the auction house. So far I can generally pull in 5x the in game sale price. I am not into MMO's so this is the first real experience I have with an auction house, so far so good.

Haven't really unlocked a ton of achievements yet, but I open a few each game it seems.

http://i.imgur.com/n1JjM.jpg

One of the interesting things about Diablo 3 is the major amount of achievements the game has. Some achievements require a ton of gameplay to get, some are fairly easy. I believe one requires you to max level both class sexes? I wonder how many hours one would need to spend to unlock that?

All that to say, I really like the Witch Doctor character. I like how he talks and I like the kind of person he is. Odd to say that, but Blizzard did a great job fleshing him out as a person. The back and forth dialog he has with the Templar is really cool. The Templar is essentially a religious zealot and the Witch Doctor is spiritual. The contrast between those two types of personalities is very interesting as many times the Witch Doctor tries to offer a different perspective to the Templar's pretty intense dogma. I won't spoil the communication direction between the characters, but its a really interesting side story and I hope it continues to open up over the course of the game.

If you are looking for a class where you get a ton of pets to start, the Witch Doctor will not satisfy you. But, as you progress in levels you can focus on abilities that gradually allow him an army of pets and poison attacks.