Chalk

The premise of Chalk is brilliant but simple. On a chalkboard come to life, you must guide the heroes Line and Target through six intense stages filled with monsters and environmental challenges, facing off against mini bosses to earn checkpoints and fighting incredibly imaginative end level bosses in each stage. You do all of this by left-clicking and holding while moving the mouse to draw lines through points on objects, between enemy shots and the enemies themselves to reflect the shots back, and various other actions which I won't spoil, as it's fun figuring this sort of thing out on your own. It's a beautiful but largely monochromatic game, keeping in theme with the setting, and all the artwork has a suitably hand drawn feel to it. The music is simple but upbeat, and the controls are perfect. I would pay money for this game on WiiWare. It's free for download on the website, and I can't think of a better way to idly spend 30 minutes than with this game.

Doctor Who: The Land of the Dead

The Land of the Dead (2000) is one of the first Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish Productions. This series, now counting well over a hundred stories, features Doctors Five through Eight in their ongoing adventures through time and space. This particular story involving the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and his companion Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) is set in contemporary Alaska and takes place between seasons 19 and 20 of the original BBC television series.

I would be lying if I said I was a fan of Peter Davison’s Doctor. In fact, when asked to put the Doctors in order of preference (and, trust me, this is a challenge no hardcore Who fan can resist), I find that Davison is nearly always dead last on my list. That’s because he comes across as an ineffectual, namby-pamby, vanilla-flavored ninny who spends more time running about with his hands in his pockets and looking exasperated at his companions than he does in getting the job done. Say what you will about the Sixth Doctor’s garish costume, but at least when push comes to shove he’s…well, he’s willing to do either!

Nevertheless, I’m one of those Doctor Who fans who still enjoys watching all of the Doctors, if not all of their stories. I’m moderately fond of The Visitation, Mawdryn Undead, and The Caves of Androzani, but even these stories I feel I enjoy more for the sake of completion rather than true admiration. I tried to pretend it was the tacky 80s clothing or the annoying gaggle of companions that so turned me away from the Fifth Doctor’s era, but in the end I say the buck stops with the Doctor. If he doesn’t strike the right chord, then it’s all off.

Now, I’m not going to say it’s all Peter Davison’s fault. A lot of his Doctor’s laissez-faire approach is in the scripts themselves, but there is something so unassuming and apologetic in Davison’s very nature that he often comes across as dreadfully ordinary. He is strictly white-bread-with-the-crusts-cut-off Doctor material and doesn’t seem to have the gravitas for the role. His era, that of the early 80s, also sees some of the gaudiest costumes and unconvincing studio sets of the shows original run.

Thankfully, The Land of the Dead doesn’t have to deal with either of those problems. Davison has grown as an actor in the 20 years since his debut as the Doctor and a lack of visuals is vastly superior to conspicuously bad visuals. While it’s obvious that both he and Sutton (returning as my favorite Fifth Doctor companion, Nyssa) have aged, I think it actually benefits them both tremendously. They’re joined by a cast of five Brits I’ve never heard of, but most of them do a decent job. It’s always funny hearing the British do American accents, but everyone here is still more convincing than Nicola Bryant was at Peri’s American accent back in the original show…even the guy playing a Native American. Admittedly, he sometimes sounds like Tonto, but I guess some stereotyping is required considering we need to be able to tell everyone apart by voice alone.

The story here is really quite good, though to reveal too much would greatly reduce the mystique of the early episodes. It features an ancient life-form, older than the dinosaurs, awakened by an affluent eccentric through his macabre obsession of turning his home into a shrine to his dead father. The creatures themselves are really quite unique in that they do not speak and are more like a sort of supernatural raptor when we first come across them. They absorb the abilities and characteristics of whatever they eat and the Doctor and company are on the menu. It’s nice to see the Doctor (this one in particular) faced with an animalistic foe for a change. This is an adversary he can’t reason with or talk his way past. So, what does he do? Well, mostly he runs away. But it’s an understandable sort of running away that’s actually quite entertaining in a Jurassic Park sort of way.

I have to admit I was thrown off by listening to Doctor Who at first. I’m too young to remember when radio dramas were even available, let alone popular, and I found myself having to concentrate while the story played rather than let my eyes and mind wander. Towards the end I decided to listen to it in the dark and I have to say that it helped tremendously. Probably the best thing this story has going for it is its sense of atmosphere and the sound effects are fantastic; they're far more effective if you’re not trying to do too many things at once.

There’s also more to this story than just the central plot of the Doctor versus monsters. The mysterious tragedy that binds two key characters together is well explored and reaches a satisfactory conclusion. A healthy dose of Native American mythology and archaeology brings an added level of complexity to what could otherwise be a rather sterile setting. There’s even a hint of moral environmentalism thrown in for good measure. All things considered The Land of the Dead is a solid, straightforward Doctor Who story that feels far more fresh than nostalgic. More importantly, perhaps, it’s renewed my faith in the Fifth Doctor and gotten me excited about the dozens of other audio stories that remain ahead!


4 Daleks (out of 5)

Mirror's Edge (2D)

Who needs a silly Xbox 360? Mirror's Edge 2D is a free, fast paced recreation of the 3D platformer released earlier this year by Electronic Arts. Made in cooperation with Brad Borne, creator of the cool side-scroller Fancy Pants Adventures, ME2D controls much the same way, with fluid animation and great controls. Faith leaps from building tops, slides along floors and even runs along walls while trying to collect suitcases and other goodies while heading toward the end of each level. I hear it's very authentic in terms of capturing the feel of the original, and I had a lot of fun with it. The game is still in it's beta phase while some bugs are being worked out, but EA plans on expanding the content with new levels and time trials later on. It's rare for a company to sink this much time and money into a Flash game of this sort, and if it's a marketing ploy, which I'm sure it is, then it's a successful one--playing this made me wish I could play the original.

Flow

In Flow, you play as a microscopic organism trying to survive in a seemingly primordial environment by devouring other creatures and filling up your health meter, represented by body segments, in order to increase your size and evolve. Certain "boss" organisms, for lack of a better term, leave behind special pieces of themselves that cause you to evolve in specific ways, possibly taking on characteristics of the creatures themselves. You pass through multiple levels of the watery environment and into darkness by devouring a red organism to go deeper, and a blue to go back up. This is a beautifully done game, with a clean, simple art style that makes it easy to figure out what you have to do next. Everything has a soft glow about it that looks even cooler as you progress into the darker levels of the environment. The music is ambient and sets the tone of the game very well, and is quite relaxing, even when things get hectic as you eat and try to avoid being eaten by some of the game's larger creatures. It might take you 30 minutes or so to reach the bottom, and once you do, your creature ascends to the topmost layer and evolves into a completely different form, allowing you to play through the game again, which is a very different, and much more challenging experience. One of the most impressive in-browser Flash games I've played, it's also available for a free download to play directly from your desktop if you have a slower connection speed.

Xiao Xiao

Xiao Xiao combines two of the best things ever, stick figures and kung fu into a series of short (but awesome) flash movies and interactive games designed by the infamous Zhu Zhiqiang. I remember seeing his work in one of my early Flash classes in college, shown as an example of just how fluid animation could be using the software. While all of the animated shorts a great, with each one exploring the software and premise a little more (the 7th and 8th shorts are actually a two-parter featuring *gasp* 3-d effects), the interactive games are hit and miss. Xiao Xiao No. 4 is definitely the best of these, as it mixes things up with on-rails shooter gameplay similar to Virtua Cop. A great way to kill a few minutes.

365 Days of Dudes

This guy Andy is drawing a dude a day. A noble effort! Be sure to check out his comic, Barbarian Diary.

Jumpman

Jumpman is an old school (and by old school, I mean Atari era) style platformer where you play as the titular hero, striving for the exit. This is not as easy as it seems, as the game is full of perils--large yellow bouncy balls, green beasties, and "lava" are out to ruin your day, and it doesn't help that Jumpman runs like he's on ice all the time. Along with running and jumping, you can rotate the level itself; timing jumps to coincide with level rotation later becomes necessary to complete levels, and the difficulty ramps up as the game gets trippier, and the enemies more prevelant. Just when you become used to the rules, it throws new ones at you; the game is divided up into sections, with each one bringing a different set of rules and obstacles for you to contend with, which is nice. Another cool feature is that you can see all of the levels in a particular section stacked behind the level you're currently on, with monsters and everyhting. I managed to kill about three hours in one go without even realizing it, dying dozens of times in this one particular level before figuring out what I needed to do. Overall a great challenging little game, and at free, the price is right.

The Several Journeys of Reemus

Actually, there are only two chapters and a prologue so far, but what's there is great. Reemus lives in the bizarre fantasy land of Fredericus, looks like a washed-up Motorhead roadie, and travels with his sidekick, a purple bear named Liam. Bad things are afoot in the kingdom, and it is up to the pair of exterminators to make things right, or better yet, survive.
This is a very simple flash based point and click adventure similar to Zeebarf's previous game, the brief but wonderful The Visitor. You check for hotspots, and click to interact with objects. Solving puzzles boils down to clicking on things in the right order, and for the most part the puzzles will be common sense, with a few places where you might have to experiment a bit to figure out what you're supposed to do. Nothing's very difficult though, and like in most adventure games, it's usually something you missed. There is no inventory, and no list of actions to select from--once an object is selected, Reemus or Liam will automatically perform the neccesary action to solve that part of the puzzle. You can also click on each character to gain a vague hint about what you're supposed to do in each area.
The art style is great, with everything handrawn and animated, and the soundtrack is excellent, ranging from hair metal to spooky ambience. The adventure won't take you long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes for each episode, but it's very funny throughout, and with a little more time and some money behind it, could rival a some commercial releases available in the genre today.

I Fell In Love With The Majesty of Colors

The Majesty of Colors by Gregory Weir is a pixel based Flash game where you play through a dream as a Lovecraftian horror who is just seeing the world's surface for the first time. The goal, ultimately, is to let your curiosity and your own sense of morality determine the decisions you make when interacting with the tiny pixelated humans the creature encounters. There are 5 different endings to see depending on how you choose to act, ranging from tragedie to something a bit happier, all played out though colorful sprites. The text is short but well written, and you can tell alot of thought went into the story and game design. There isn't really anything to win in this game, no boss to fight, and no high score to beat, and you'll be done with everything in less than 10 minutes, but I found myself thinking about the game well after I had seen all the endings.

Secrets

There's really no better way to lure in a roleplayer than to smack the word "secrets" somewhere in the title of the book. Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) knows this better than just about anybody (with the possible exception of White Wolf). Best known for their asian fantasy themed Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) collectible card game and roleplaying game, AEG put out an entire line of splatbooks called "Secrets of the [insert samurai clan here]" several years back and, living up to expectations as a good consumer, I bought every single one.

In 2001 AEG was trying something different. Partnering up with Wizards of the Coast (WotC), innovators behind the extremely successful d20 System (also known as Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition), they released L5R in a dual-system format. That is to say each book contained two sets of rules: the first for players of the original L5R system and the second for players of the extremely successful d20 System. The idea was to cater to both audiences, but it ultimately failed as players on both sides of the aisle felt as if they were paying for a whole book and only getting half of one. Regardless of whether the experiment failed or not, it did get AEG in the business of producing a lot of third-party products for the d20 System and one of the very best is Secrets.

There was no shortage of d20 books in 2004. In fact, the market was veritably glutted with them. It got to the point that there were only so many books one could afford and many of them slipped through the cracks. Secrets is one of those books. I only got around to purchasing it a couple of months ago and I'm really glad I did. This book does something rather unique in the world of D&D, providing the reader with alternate explanations for the various mysteries within a traditional fantasy setting. It does this by setting up a premise behind the tome's origin and presenting the material as if it came from various chronicles of sages and scholars.

The brief introduction sets all of this in order by including a letter of an adventurer who has spent a good chunk of his life tracking down the chapters contained within the book. He's done this not for his own curiosity or amusement, but at the behest of his master, all the while trying to keep one step ahead of someone he refers to only as "The Adversary". Fearing for his life, he's bundled up the scrolls and notes he's managed to collect, hastily written his letter and sent them to his lord. There's also some brief business about each chapter and what was necessary to win the works away from their guardians. All in all, it's a very stirring introduction and makes you really want to dive in right away.

The organization of the book is intentionally (and sometimes unintentionally) slipshod with some chapters missing and others out of order. In truth, each chapter is a short work unto itself and so there is no reason to read the book in any particular order. It's all done to make the book feel more like a real tome and less like a long list of rules or bland descriptions. AEG has always had a bit of a problem with editing, however, and so you'll find some fairly amusing sentences at times: "...[they] wear the finest silken blood silken red robes to signal they are followers of the god of retribution." Oh, really? If you're the sort who finds this sort of thing infuriating, then you'd probably be better off avoiding most of AEG's books. I personally think the quality of the ideas and the presentation more than makes up for some minor proofing errors.

There are seven main chapters, each with an evocative title like "Veritas Majere" or "The Mad Ravings of Gilibran the Old." They're all set up in generally the same way, a bit of fiction that speaks to the origin of the work or the fictional author thereof followed by the new concept or secret in question and, finally, rules for including this new knowledge in the game itself. The information may take the form of something vaguely familiar, such as a new race, class, spell or feat or it might be something entirely unheard of in the tradtional setting before.

I'm reluctant to give away too much of what the book offers because, hey, it's called Secrets for a reason! This is definitely a book for the Dungeon Master (DM) to keep away from the players because much of the information loses its appeal once the cat is out of the bag. However, this wouldn't be much of a review if I didn't reveal a few details, so here's some of what you'll find within:

*The Secret of Dwarf Children: In this tale, one Fazzil ibn Kardun discovers why he's never seen a dwarven child or a female dwarf for that matter (obviously this is using a very Tolkienesque approach to dwarves, because there are plenty of female dwarves in D&D art these days). While visiting a dwarven city under siege his hosts reluctantly evacuate him through a strange underground chamber filled with dwarf shaped rocks and statues. Indeed, he realizes then that dwarves are not born at all, but form out of the earth itself and when the time comes, emerge from the stone cocoon as fully grown dwarves! There's some follow-up information on certain dwarven priests whose entire duty lies in seeking out these dwarven stones and bringing them back to hidden grottos beneath dwarven cities so that the dwarves within might emerge in safety.

*Another chapter offers up the philosophical concept that the world we percieve is but an illusion and, by knowing this ultimate truth, great power can be attained by dedicated students. Included are eight levels of awareness called The High Aethyrs that represent various dimensions of "reality" and how one can transcend them. There's even a class called the Soldier of Truth who can perform the most amazing stunts based on his/her understanding of reality as illusion. Some pretty deep stuff for D&D!

*There's also a group of dedicated (and perhaps mad) paladins and clerics who believe they have discovered the source of all evil and seek to eridicate it entirely. While this might sound like something every good soul would be in favor of, the ramifications are astounding. Destroying evil entirely would end the delicate balance of the material world and likely be end of everything. Whether the order is aware of this and actively seeks to usher in the apocalypse or if they are simply ignorant in their fanaticism is difficult to say. They would make an interesting twist for the villians of a campaign in that they are, essentially, good men dedicated to a cause.

Those are but a taste of the new ideas presented in Secrets. For those of you more interested in "crunch," you won't find this book lacking, either. The book contains about a dozen classes, most of them variations on the core classes. The Seasonal Druid, whose power waxes with their chosen season and wanes during it's opposite, and the Chaplain, a Cleric variant for a setting where the gods do not exist, are among my favorites. Scores of feats are available, including an entirely new kind of feat called Past Life feats. These allow a character to gain various abilities based on the knowledge of previous incarnations or ancestors. If, for example, a character was a barbarian in a past life, he/she might have their ability to rage in this life, even though he/she is now of a different class.

There's plenty more I haven't even touched on here...from 10th level spells (traditionally in D&D the most powerful spells are 9th level) to ley lines and from the dragons of the nine rings of hell to the real truth about immortality, Secrets is brimming with new ideas and ways to shake up those players who've seen it all before. What the book offers is quite inspiring and it goes a long way in reintroducing mystique to fantasy settings where things can become fairly bland after a player has killed his/her hundredth orc. Even if you go through all of the ideas in the main chapters, there are a couple of handy tables in the appendix offering 100 more secrets and those who keep them.

The interior artwork, mostly by the amazing Amandine Labarre, is splendid; the cover by Matt Cavotta is one of his best and particularly fitting for a book of this kind. Despite the niggling detail of some poor proofreading and editing, Secrets is a success. It uses the same approach that fills almost every World of Darkness book, that of combining gaming ideas with fiction, but it benefits from being completely self-contained and not heavy-handed in it's approach. This is a book every d20 System (or Pathfinder) DM should own and every player should leave on the shelf. Trust me...you'll thank me later.

4 Dusty Tomes (out of 5)

Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror

Turns out, they weren't kidding with that title. The mirror actually does smoke a little toward the end there.

This is a good game. A cheap game. And it does alot of things that many who have been burned by adventure games in the past will probably appreciate, maybe.

There are two main characters in the game you play as, George the American who may in fact be a patent lawyer, which does not explain why he has such crazy adventures, and Nico, the saucy French reporter. You know she's French, cuz she has that thick accent. You bounce back and forth between the two as you travel from France, to the Caribbean to South America, trying to solve some sort of mystery. Just trust me, it's a good story.

This is a very linear game. While some areas are larger than others, maybe 3 or 4 screens, wherever you happen to be, the solution is nearby. Most of the puzzles make "real world" sense, but when stuck, you can always just try using every item in your inventory on something until it works, and then you'll be like "Ahhhh!" and feel dumb, cuz it would have actually made sense if you were good at adventure games. I got through approximately 13/16 of the game without having to resort to some sort of walkthrough, which made me feel proud--and it made my mom proud too.

I din't really get enough sleep last night, I think. I laid down around 10:30pm, and just sort of hovered between sleep and wakefulness until well after midnight. Then I tossed and turned alot, and woke up sometime before 7am. What a bunch of horseshit.

So the game's not too hard. It's got a refreshing, different kind of story--it's not your typical
Sci-fi or Fantasy setting. And, it's $5.99 at Good Old Games, and it will run on most old computers, assuming they aren't broken. So...

F*ck Computers.

This Wednesday, I added an extra gig of RAM to my PC, then everything went to shit.

Mourning the loss of me not being able to play TF2 for hours on end, I decided another stick of memory was in order for my B-day, especially since McAfee hogs more than a third of the miniscule gig I already had installed. The package finally arrived this Wednesday, and I tore that shit open and popped it in, re-installed TF2, and damn if it didn't run. In fact, Counterstrike Source didn't work either, or any Source related thing I tried to run, or anything 3-fucking-D (except PA:ORSPD), so I was right pissed.

I ran diagnostic programs, thinking it my be a driver problem in the videocard. In my foolish optimism, I had updated the whole Catalyst software package (I'm running an ATI 9600 pro),
as well as the latest version of DirectX. I downloaded a program to sweep the registry of any display drivers, and then reinstalled the ATI software, just to be sure there weren't multiple drivers causing a conflict--nope. I updated the chipset drivers on my motherboard, which I hadn't done, ever, and was actually a good idea--nope. I scoured the Steam support forums, looking for anything--I ran another diagnostic on the processor to see if it was still compatible with the source engine (a lot of changes have been made)--nope. I mean, yeah, it was. That wasn't the problem though.

I was feeling thoroughly fucked at this point. I had spent at six hours shining a turd, and for what? I checked more forums, and finally came upon the idea of running a diagnostic of DirectX itself. Turns out, some thing, some option for rendering Direct 3d, was turned off by default when I last updated the software. Never did that before! Anyway, I reinstalled TF2, and it sill ran like crap, so I give up. Whatever. At least Diablo 2 runs better now. :P

Mega Man 2

I recently threw down $5 on the Wii Virtual Console for Mega Man 2, and after randomly picking one of the 8 robot masters to challenge, I played for about 10 seconds before thinking I had made a mistake. Suddenly I remembered my 12 year old self throwing the remote to the floor in frustration after trying so many times to get past that stupid dragon in the first stage of Dr. Wily's fortress, and I was expecting the same thing to happen all over again, so I chose to play another game instead and Mega Man 2 “collected dust” on the Wii's flash drive. It wasn't until an afternoon about 3 months later that I played the game again out of boredom, and found it was just as hard as I remembered it—but out of shear spite, I kept playing until I had beaten the level, and a feeling of real accomplishment came over me.

I spent the next few days picking at the game, and after beating it, went through the game again. After Mega Man beats a boss, he gains their powers, and as each boss is weak to another boss weapon, figuring out which works best for each makes the game a lot easier than it was the first time around, where I went through half the game using only the P-shooter. On my third attempt at the game I beat it in just under 45 minutes, and have been working my way through Mega Man 3 in the same way. It's almost as good as 2, but the series declines sharply from there. Mega Man 2 is a labor of love—Capcom had no plans to do a second game after the first one sold poorly, but the game's director begged for another go, and he was allowed to make the game only if it didn't affect his regular work, which means this game was essentially made off the clock, and it shows. This is the peak of the series, and a better game didn't come along for the system until Super Mario Bros. 3 . The levels are challenging and clever, the bosses are creative, and it's more accessible than other games in the series: it's the only 8 bit Mega Man game with 2 selectable difficulty levels: normal (hard) and hard (harder).