Some of you may be looking for a genuinely spooky horror game for Halloween.  It's for that reason that I decided to review Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game that's being called just that.  Amnesia (developed by Frictional Games, developers of Penumbra) is available for PC, Mac, and Linux, and it's part of Steam's Halloween sale of horrifically good values!  [Edit: Redditor BBQBaconBurger pointed out that the game is actually available for less on Frictional's website, if you prefer to buy it direct.  Also, there's a demo on Steam's page.]

I'm not a fan of most horror games.  Why?  They often fail to provide exactly the element that they're supposed to: horror.  They rely on cheap scares to startle you, but those don't produce genuine horror in the player.  They rely on weird scenarios built around supernatural events and creatures, but those aren't really frightening, either.  Why would something completely implausible be frightening?  If you saw these creatures outside of the dark, shadowy hallways of the game, their design would just look goofy.  There's no need to turn to making ridiculous stuff up to scare anyone.  There's plenty of creepy and authentically frightening things to draw from in real life.  Simply dropping you into a dark room with some bizarre creatures isn't enough; there needs to be a certain atmosphere, and a situation that offers something to really frighten the player.  Additionally, my suspension of disbelief is interrupted the moment that irritating game mechanics creep in or clunky control schemes start making progress difficult.  Making a game challenging with unnecessarily difficult controls is another trick that comes off as cheap.  To make a horror game realistic, it has to feel seamless.  You have to get drawn into your character, and forget momentarily that you're just playing a game.

Amneisa: feels like a psychological horror film.

Survival horror is difficult to do right, but Amnesia succeeds.  The game starts up with some suggestions for how to get the most out of the game: play without distractions, immerse yourself, and don't play to win.  Play to explore and unlock the mystery.  You see the world through a first-person viewpoint, and you're instantly clued-in to the fact that something is very wrong with this world -- and your character -- when everything starts tilting crazily and you hallucinate.  You don't remember anything except that you're a man named Daniel, from London, and you must explore a castle that you're trapped within to discover why.  But you feel that there is a creeping shadow that's pursuing you, and the darker it gets, the more your insanity rises.  You're not alone in the castle, either; the voices and footsteps of others seem to pursue you.  You half-glimpse someone around the corner.   As you get deeper into this world, you discover just what horrible things went on within the castle.

Amnesia succeeds in putting you in the right frame of mind to be scared by setting an eerie mood with dynamic lighting, sound, and camera-effects.  The graphics are quite high-resolution, the world is exquisitely detailed, and the physics and game mechanics are well done.  This all adds up to a nearly flawless and very immersing experience.  The story is set in the 19th century, and it's very reminiscent of older horror films in how it tries to thrill you with atmosphere and imagination, as opposed to gratuitous violence, gore, and cheap tricks.  Amnesia also succeeded in making the thrills fun.  It wasn't so scary that I wanted to put it down, but it was genuinely and enjoyable spooky.  The mysterious environment drew me in, and I really, really wanted to keep playing.  If you enjoy classic horror movies and novels, and want a game that captures that feel, then I highly recommend Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Happy Halloween!

Microsoft is looking to make more headway into the PC game digital distribution market by redesigning it's Games for Windows Marketplace and offering more titles, starting November 15th.  It seems that they're hoping that the recognizability of the Microsoft name will be enough to convince consumers to choose them over the current digital market leader, Steam.  As of today, no revolutionary changes to their service have been proposed. According to Kotaku, Microsoft's Kevin Unangst states that, "by integrating with our existing Xbox LIVE and Windows Live services, we've made it easier than ever for millions of gamers to see for themselves how easy buying PC games can be."  I would guess over 30 million Steam users already do see how easy it is with Valve's service.  Previous users of Games for Windows Live may recall the relative difficulty of purchasing from Microsoft with points, rather than the credit card or Paypal options that competitors offer.   Microsoft is eliminating the requirement of using the points system (although points will still be redeemable), introducing sales (a popular feature of Steam's store), and adding about 40 more games to the current offering of 60, but will that be enough?  Will buyers have any incentive to switch?

Although Microsoft has obviously been a name in PC gaming for many years due to their creation of the DirectX application programming interfaces that are used by most developers today, they are a late-comer to digital distribution.  They've published PC ports of many of their popular Xbox titles, such as Fable, Gears of War, and Halo, that were distributed through traditional retail methods.  They offered DLCs for PC games such as Fallout 3 through Games for Windows Live.  However, they've ignored early opportunities to become more involved in the profitable and forward-thinking field of digital distribution for PC games, instead focusing on the Xbox 360.  This left plenty of room for competitors to become leaders in the market.  It's notable that Fallout: New Vegas is not part of Games for Windows Live as its predecessor was, and that it is now exclusively associated with Steam (where Fallout 3 is also available).  If Microsoft simply continues business as usual with it's new Marketplace, or attempts to clone pioneers like Steam, it is unlikely to win over many consumers.  Banking on their name alone probably won't be enough.

If the new Games for Windows Marketplace really wishes to be competitive, it must offer PC gamers something that they cannot currently find elsewhere.  Perhaps the success of Xbox Live Arcade will inspire Microsoft to add many of its popular -- and exclusive -- titles to its PC game store.  It's difficult to compete with Steam's selection of over 1,200 games, almost 800 of which are under $10.  The offering of some desirable and high-profile games that are Microsoft exclusives may be enough to attract attention, and Microsoft has the publishing clout to keep getting more exclusives.  Additionally, they could introduce more social features, such as the 3D avatars that are currently available for Xbox users.  However, gimmicks alone will not be enough if Microsoft can't offer titles that get people to stay.

Most of the stories surrounding Bethesda Softworks recently have revolved around the problematic release of Fallout: New Vegas, a game that is still plagued with serious technical issues over a week from release date.  These early problems with Fallout: New Vegas have resulted in understandably negative reviews and questions of Bethesda's judgment in tarnishing the release of such an anticipated project by selling an obviously unpolished product.  There have also been allegations that Bethesda tried to squash negative reviews by using their ad-campaign money to strong-arm media outlets.  However, an even worse allegation has also emerged recently.

According to an Edge interview with Interplay president Eric Caen over the ongoing legal battle between his company and Bethesda, it's possible that Bethesda meant to profit from Interplay's troubles by taking the full rights to the Fallout MMO from them for less than it was worth.

The problems between the two companies started when Bethesda purchased full rights to the Fallout IP in 2007, and that same year, sued Interplay for potentially violating their purchase agreement by distributing the original Fallout trilogy without first seeking approval from Bethesda.  The aim of this suit was to halt sales of the earlier Fallout games, and Interplay alleges that the suit was dragged out by Bethesda to try to take advantage of Interplay's financial problems.  Bethesda also made Interplay the licensee for development of a Fallout MMO that Interplay had already been working on since 2004.  According to Caen, Bethesda agreed to let Interplay develop the MMO in order to avoid paying the $50 million that Interplay wanted for the rights to what it believed to be a highly profitable project.  The terms of the agreement were that Interplay must be in full-production of the Fallout MMO by a certain date; Interplay claims that it complied, but Bethesda still sued in 2009.  It is this latest case that has led to Interplay's allegations that Bethesda intended for Interplay to fail so that it could terminate the license for the MMO.

If Bethesda were to successfully terminate the agreement, it would indeed mean that they took full rights to the Fallout IP for far less than its estimated worth.  If these allegations of such legal exploitation on Bethesda's part are true, this would be yet another questionable decision to come from one of PC gaming's most talked-about developers.

Iceland's officials have recently announced that they want their nation to become a center for online freedom of speech, meaning that anyone may host data in a server based in their country without fear of legal action being taken against them.  "Iceland's information haven," as it's called in a recent Marketplace report.  This could be a great step forward for freedom of speech on the Internet and in the international community as a whole.  Most discussions of Iceland's plans have focused on what this will mean for journalists and operations such as Wikileaks.  But, as a gamer, you're probably wondering something else: what might this mean for media piracy?  Would Iceland become a haven for this type of "freedom of speech" as well?

Nation Red


Zombie Driver



Just in time for Halloween weekend (and Steam's sale), we're featuring two zombie killin' PC games: Nation Red (by DiezelPower) and Zombie Driver (by EXOR Studios).

Nation Red is not about Soviet zombies. From Joamm Tall.

Nation Red is a fast-paced, arena-style, top-down perspective, zombie shoot 'em up game.  Set in a vague midwestern desert, you play a trucker-like character that goes around picking up weapons and killing zombies.  That's all there is to it.  Confined to either a small arena or forced to guard a barricade, you must face wave after wave of zombies of various speeds and abilities, some of which wield weapons ranging from simple blades to a buzzsaw. There are over fifty pick-ups that can be found, providing different melee, ranged, and explosive weapons.  There are single-player missions, as well as local and online co-op game modes.  The goal is to rack up points, level up, and earn a spot on the leaderboard.  Although it is not initially mentioned in the game's options, you can plug in the Xbox 360 controller and play the game as a dual-joystick shooter.  Playing with the mouse seemed to offer better control, however, but the option is there to play this game in a more arcade-like style by using the gamepad.  If you just want to have some fun competing with some friends to slaughter the most zombies, then this is your game.  A discounted four-pack is available from Steam.

Department of Zombie Disposal.  From mutednarayan.

Zombie Driver is an overhead-view game of vehicular zombicide and ferrying survivors around by taxi.  As a taxi-driver trapped in a city overrun by the zombie hordes, your goal is to navigate the city, mow down as many zombies as possible with your vehicle or weapons, rescue the remaining humans before they get overrun, and carry them to a safe house.  And you get paid taxi fares for doing it.  You start with your standard yellow taxi, but can unlock other vehicles, ranging from an ambulance to a limousine.  Ammo caches are hidden throughout the city, and weapon and armor upgrades can be purchased.  There are two game types: story mode, which is a series of missions revolving around finding survivors and unlocking new vehicles, and slaughter mode, in which you drive around a small arena killing ever-increasing numbers of zombies to earn points and unlock achievements.  There isn't a multiplayer mode, but you can compete on the universal leaderboard.

For some arcade-style zombie-slaughtering fun, we recommend both of these games.  Our rating: ARRRRRAAARRRRGH!

A note and a correction: take a look at this thread for more on the easily-solved technical issue I mentioned in the Nation Red video.  Also, I misspoke about the lack of a leaderboard in Zombie Driver; it's there under the menu for Slaughter.

Update: I take a look at the free expansion, Zombie Driver: Blood Race, in this post.

The only way to win is to die the least.

DEFCON is a minimalist RTS game from indie developer Introversion Software (available from their site and Steam, and as part of the Introversion Anthology; demo available here). Described as "The world's first genocide 'em up," it is the strategy game where everyone loses, but the goal is to win by receiving the least amount of damage. The game's look is very WarGames-inspired, with a stylized start-screen that brings vintage computers to mind, and a vector-style map rotating in the background. This theme is kept up with the look of the gameplay, as you see tiny glowing warhead shapes and dotted-line trajectories crisscrossing the map, tracking launches of missiles.

Each player starts out controlling one of six territories, and with a set number of units to place and no options for upgrades. These units include both conventional military forces such as airbases, battleships, carriers, bombers, and fighters, as well as missile silos and submarines with nuclear options. You can attack opponents' military targets, intercept their attacks, or launch directly at their cities and see the death-toll rise by the millions.  The territories are not identical, just as they're not in reality.  Some are larger, some are isolated, some are bordered by enemies, and some are set on two oceans.  You can see how this opens up a variety of strategies to try out, and how each territory likely suits a different playing style.  Some, like the Americas, are separated from all targets by vast distances, allowing a long time to see incoming launches -- but also allowing other territories to intercept your launches.  Others, such as Asia and Europe, are going to have opportunities to easily attack on multiple fronts, in addition to being similarly vulnerable.

Working out the best tactics for each territory can become an involved endeavor in itself; or you can just have fun trying to launch nukes before your opponents do when the game timer reaches defcon 1.  With a variety of game types, from speed defcon to office mode, diplomacy to tournament, there is no shortage of replayability.  Multiplayer allows up to six human or CPU players, and alliances can be formed.  However, only one territory can be declared winner at the end, so those alliances are made to be broken.  As quoted in DEFCON's Wikipedia entry, Chris Delay explains the alliance dynamic:

We've seen alliance members shooting overhead friendly planes down because they believed the planes were scouting the area for targets in preparation for a strike. This results in arguments in the chat channels, followed by skirmishes at sea, followed by retaliation, before finally the whole alliance collapses and everyone starts nuking the hell out of each other. It's awesome.

Yes, it is.

The straightforward simplicity of this RTS is inviting and makes it easy to jump into a game, but the range of tactical possibilities means that there's plenty to master.  The game's style perfectly creates the atmosphere it's going for, with glowing green vector-lines, eerie ambient music, and subtle sound-effects of war and death.  Additionally, Introversion designed one of the best manuals I've seen for DEFCON.  They deserve bonus points for this.  Our rating: 22,600 weapons of mass destruction.

Take a look at the video for a sample of the gameplay.

Enjoy your nuclear holocaust.  That was the phrase I was searching for!

Correction: you cannot play as Australia or the Pacific islands.  Why?  Guess they're just not that into nuclear war.

Will Elvis make it through this episode alive and without the Wasteland crashing? Watch part three of the Fallout: New Vegas playthrough to find out! Hint: there will be crashes.



Due to the technical issues, the audio became out of sync on the latter portions of the recording. I apologize for the imperfect re-syncing.

If you're visiting for the first time, here are parts one and two.

Continue on to part four.

Proud dogfighter.  From MichaelHays' Flickr.

If you're aware of DogFighter, you've probably heard about the promotion that's going on right now, and you're curious.  They've added new content to the game, and from 10/25/10 through 11/01/10, Dark Water Studios' indie arena-aerial-combat game is on sale on Steam for only $1.50 for a single copy, or $4.50 for a four-pack.  If you miss the sale, the price of the game is also supposed to be permanently lowered to less than $10.

Taking them up on this great value, we gave the game a try.  Our verdict: we definitely recommend it.  DogFighter takes everything that is fun about aerial combat, but leaves out the often-frustrating flight-simulator elements that are present in some other games.  There are eight planes, six maps, and a variety of single-player, multiplayer, and even co-op modes.  The feeling of flight is realistic enough to be thrilling and a little dizzying when you're doing loop after loop.  The game is relatively easy to just pick up and play with either the keyboard or a game controller, but challenging enough to stay interesting after several rounds.  Our only complaints: the repetitive music, some trouble connecting to the multiplayer servers, and there doesn't seem to be enough buttons on the Xbox 360 game controller for the amount of actions the game has (but the keyboard and controller can be used at the same time to help remedy that).  For the price, this game is definitely worth giving a try, and giving to all of your friends.  Our rating: we give DogFighter a five-winged aircraft! 

We're also happy to announce that we're having our first giveaway.  I bought a four-pack for the review, and will be giving away three copies to viewers to thank you for watching and to help promote the game.  To participate, watch the video and count how many times I died!  Or just take a guess.  Send an email to charlaxy@gmail.com, put the word "Giveaway" and the number of times I died in the subject line, and your Steam ID in the body of the email.  I'll randomly select three winners from those who send in the correct number.  Deadline is 10am PDT, 10/29/10.  Winners will be notified that day.  Good luck, enjoy the review, and give DogFighter a try.

Excerpt from part two of the Fallout: New Vegas playthrough.  Please take a look at those videos if you're interested in seeing more.  Here's part one.

The polygon hurricane is over, but what other bizarre and horrific glitches await Elvis in the Wasteland? Watch Part 2 of the Fallout: New Vegas playthrough to find out.



If you missed part one, watch it here. Part three is here.

Bugs are fun when they don't break the game.

If you liked Fallout 3, you're probably already planning to play Fallout: New Vegas (available for the PC on Steam, and also on Xbox 360 and PS3).  It's not exactly more of the same, although that's not a bad thing when "the same" is good.  It's hard to improve upon that.   New Vegas is all of the stuff that made Fallout 3 the thoroughly entertaining and engrossing experience that it was, but with more.  There are new features that sound very promising, and one First Impression video isn't enough to cover them all.  We went almost to the one-hour mark, and were still just getting started. Playing Bethesda's Fallout series can be like that.  I played Fallout 3 for hours at a time, and well over 100 hours total.

What made Fallout 3 so amazing was the story, the atmosphere, the exploration, and just the entire Wasteland experience, which meant taking nearly an hour to get into the setting, set up your character, and get on your way when you first begin.  New Vegas is adding to that in-depth experience by adding survival features to make your game more realistic, including a "hardcore mode" in which your character must do all the human things that someone actually living in the Wasteland would do, such as drinking water, eating food, and sleeping.

The story is looking like it will be both hilarious and serious, and starts out with you already deep into a rich, substantive world, just as you would expect. The world and game engine have been expanded and improved, but this isn't without it's snags: this game's mechanics still have issues.   Lots of them.  If you've been keeping up with the news on Fallout, you've probably seen one or two.  We ran into another interesting one toward the end of our video, which caused us to have to stop.   For now.  All we can recommend at this time is that you might want to wait for these issues to be fixed before you get deep into New Vegas, as some game-breaking ones may still pop up.   However, patches are supposed to be released soon, so things may get better quickly.  And the overall experience is so enjoyable that we're willing to tolerate a bug or two, as long as the game remains playable.

Our First Impression isn't over.  We're coming back for a second part, since the gameplay is just now starting. But we won't stop at that point, either. We're going to do a complete playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas.  So, if you want to ride along for the full journey, with all its twists and turns and glitches, keep watching!

Part Two

Like stepping into a fantasy painting.

In Trine, (developed by Frozenbyte, available on Steam and PSN) you play three characters in a medieval-fantasy themed world: the thief, the wizard, and the knight.  They have been bound together by magic, and now this odd-threesome have to share an apartment in this season's hot new sitcom!  Sorry.  Actually, the three work together to explore, battle enemies, and solve puzzles.  Each one of the trio has unique talents, and to best make your way through each map in the single-player mode (in which you only control one at a time), you have to quickly switch between them.  You only see one on screen at a time, and the other two are apparently hitching a ride in that one's body.  Trine is also designed for local co-op play for up to three people, where each person takes possession of a particular character and all work together.

There's not a lot more to say about Trine, except that it's a fun, fantasy-themed puzzle game.  It's best to just show it (which is, of course, the point of this series).  The only big issue that I had with the game was that the menus (such as the inventory) were counter-intuitive in some respects.  The strong points of the game are its fast-paced puzzles with multiple solutions, rich soundtrack, and colorful, detailed visuals.  Story is not it's strong point; it's just a means for setting up the gameplay concept, and it gets our of your way pretty quickly.  It's humorously ridiculous, and it intentionally doesn't take itself seriously.  But a serious story is not necessary to enjoy the experience.  It's all about creating entertaining and challenging gameplay with physics, puzzles, a pretty theme, and likable characters.  The mechanic of quickly switching between characters to navigate through levels is creative, flows well, and sets this game apart from similar indie puzzlers.  If it sounds intriguing to you, and you're not put off by the medieval-fantasy theme, then you will probably enjoy this game.  We certainly did.  Our rating: three multiple personality disorders.

Hilarious hijinks in Bone: Out from Boneville!

Released in 2005, Bone: Out from Boneville is one of Telltale's earlier point-and-click action/adventure games. I should say, alleged action/adventure, as I'm not sure there's much of either. And you can tell it's one of Telltale's earlier games. They have certainly improved since the release of this game, and you should not let it color your opinion of them as a developer. However, if you are a fan of Telltale, you may not want to play any of the now-seemingly-abandoned Bone series.

Bone: Out from Boneville is based upon a comic of the same title (yes, it is for children, though I'm sure you're not surprised). Written by Jeff Smith and released in the early 90s, it continues to enjoy some popularity, although it is hard to see why, if the story is anything like that of the game. To sum it up: you play some cartoon characters that seem to be anthropomorphous bones. They come from a place called Boneville. They were banned. They want to go back, but Mim only knows why, if they were banned from there. There's some expository story about the mythology of the apparent dreamworld that Bone takes place in, which has nothing to do with the first episode in the game, and will likely never be wrapped up, since no new episodes have been released since 2006. The bones have some inane and nonsensical adventures in which they encounter creatures more bizarre than them. There's literally a couple of puzzles to solve. The bones meet a human girl and her cow-racing grandmother. Generic fantasy comic tropes ensue.

The whole thing will probably take you less than two hours to play. But not to worry; now you you don't have to! If you're really curious about Bone, you can watch it all in our playthrough video, plus our commentary. Since this game is so short and the only thing to enjoy about it is the story (if there is anything to enjoy about it), rather than doing a 30-40 minute First Impression, we decided to turn this video into a roughly two-hour complete look at the game from start screen to end. Enjoy.

Our consensus on Out from Boneville: we can't recommend this game for anyone. Not even for fans of Bone. Not even for laughs. It's simply too boring. The gameplay is tedious and uncreative. It wasn't even particularly inspired in its creepiness or bad plot. The controls (which there aren't much of) can be unresponsive and slow, and there are a few obvious glitches. Visuals are mediocre at best. The story is generic, with the most fundamental elements of it containing plotholes (I'm not familiar enough with the comics to know if they're the same way). It was not unplayably awful, and it was at least mercifully short (although we feel cheated; similarly priced Telltale games have over twice as much content), but there is just nothing that stands out about this game. It's above-average in its level of averageness. Our rating: one dollar.

Let's just be honest: this is a bad attempt to narrate the highlights of an unremarkable children's comic using Telltale's game engine. It doesn't work. It ends up making all parties involved look bad. The only positive to it is that Telltale's other games look better in comparison -- but it puts an unfavorable light on their game engine in the process, due to how slow and dull the gameplay is. It was not a good use of their story-telling tools. They seem to have given up on this title, and you should, too. The good news is that Telltale has acquired some more interesting intellectual properties (Back to the Future and Jurassic Park), and that their games seem to have improved a lot since this one came out. I can definitely recommend their Strong Bad series. We have high hopes for them in the future and will keep reviewing their work.

However, you can definitely skip Bone. See why in the video.

We apologize for the echo on some of the audio. We ran into some odd audio issues that delayed our recording of the game. This was the best we were able to do at the time.

Now through 10/31/10, Telltale has a sale on their good games.

If you're really curious, here is a link to Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume (Vol 1).

I always appreciate feedback of a thoughtful nature, whether it is negative or positive. My goal here isn't to just record myself playing a game with inane commentary just for the sake of having commentary. I know that some people do that. I know that they discourage comments or just don't really care, and that the environment of reviewing might be suffering because of that. Many feel like it's useless to give feedback if even the positive and constructive kind is going to be responded to with venom and bile. I don't want to do that here, and I will be receptive to any criticism. I'm not going to belittle or fight with anyone. It's not my goal to stroke my ego by showing that I can out-type someone else.

It is my goal to improve as a reviewer and video-maker. I am working actively to improve my craft and to be a credit to the internet reviewer/commentator/videographer team. I want to improve my site, improve my production value, improve my videos, and improve my reviews. I want you, the visitor, to come away feeling like you learned something or were at least entertained. I want it to be an enjoyable experience. I want it to be an ameliorating experience for all involved.

And that is why I am putting up this post that I hope is the blog equivalent of a neon "Comments Welcome and Encouraged" sign. I want to offer what makes for the best experience for visitors, and that's where you can help, by letting me know what your thoughts are about my work. Tell me what you like and don't like in reviews, and your suggestions for what you want to see in the future. It'll help me and future viewers, and I'm making the site for both.

Thank you.

Gish is a happy fellow.

Gish (published by Cryptic Sea, available on Steam for PC; Mac and Linux versions available elsewhere) is full of oily, gelatinous, 2D side-scrolling, physics-based-gameplay goodness. You play as a ball of tar, named Gish, who must rescue his friend from another tar-creature. You bounce and slide and squish your way through 34+ levels of puzzles and fun. You start out navigating your way through a sewer while fighting giant, legged-mouths full of teeth. You collect "amber" (which we suspect isn't really amber), and bits of tar to add to your tar-ball. There is a mention of honey buckets. My companion says that it's all very disturbing.

I struggled with the controls, but loved this game for the dark style, shiny graphics, fun liquid physics, and the challenge of the puzzles. We give this one a rating of 600 pieces of honey bucket amber.

Gish is also available as a mobile game. And if you enjoy Gish, you might want to check out The Balls, a free game that I mention in the video, also developed by Cryptic Sea (here's their blog).

Part 1




Part 2

The sea is a very scary place.

The sea in Aquaria is deceptive. You start out in a cave where everything is peaceful and lovely music plays. Your surroundings seem colorful and sweet and innocent. As you leave this safe little environment, you begin to find a few hazards and strange things, but nothing major. But then your character is jarred out of her blissful amnesia as a specter appears and apparently awakens her memory. She then remembers why it was that she retreated to that little cave: everything in the ocean is trying to kill you.

The game becomes progressively more challenging as the story becomes more interesting. Aquaria is serene and surreal and meditative, and it's also a brutally difficult action/adventure game. It does a good job of putting the player in the perspective of one little humanoid fish in a big-wide ocean full of creatures that want to eat you. If you suffer from a xenophobic paranoia of the dark, caliginous, abyssal ocean because of all the ancient, gigantic, tentacled monstrosities that await you in it, you may experience a little anxiety while playing this game. Our rating: 175 sealoafs.

Aquaria is developed by Bit Blot and is available on Steam for PC.

Part 1 covers the intro to the game, where your fish learns whom she is, how to sing, and what to do. Starting in part 2, she lights up the ocean with her shooting ability, and then the real challenge (and horror) starts.

My first sci-fi book review! In this video, I give a brief summary and discussion of Poul Anderson's Starfarers. The novel was wonderful, and I recommend that you take a look at the works of this underrated author. I'll certainly be reading (and reviewing) more in the future.

Starfarers is available on Amazon.com.

This part looks amazing.

I went into playing Mr. Robot (developed by Moonpod) knowing nothing about it.  The images I saw of it on Steam looked fantastic.  I thought it would be a sci-fi themed puzzle game with robots.  And it was, for the first few rooms.  I was a robot named 1138, whose job apparently consisted of moving boxes for the shipboard computer, HEL.  I met other robots with endearingly quirky and cheesy personalities.  I pushed stuff around to solve problems.  I learned how to hack!  And then...  Suddenly, I'm entering into turn-based combat against computer viruses.  What the heck?  You tricked me, game!  I was not expecting this to suddenly go all RPG!

Well, even if you're not an RPG fan (like me), you may still enjoy this game for the robots and retro feel.  We rate it a THX out of 2001.

Getting down with the real Mr. Robot.

I apologize on behalf of this image.

AaaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (published by Dejobaan, available on Steam as AaAaAA!!!) is as quirky as it sounds.  I was initially skeptical of the concept (some games that bill themselves as extreme, aren't), but I wasn't disappointed with this playthrough.  The gameplay is actually exhilirating, and although it's very straightforward (you jump off of things), the large variety of levels keep it challenging and never repetitive.  The game's sense of humor keeps things interesting as well.  This is a single-player future-sports game that I highly recommend.  We give this game a rating of 1,503,489 teeth.

Check out our video for a look at the gameplay and more commentary.

Cassette tapes in space in Plain Sight.

Plain Sight (published by Beatnik Games) is just a lot of straightforward fun.  You're a robot with a katana.  You jump around on moons and ships and the hulls of giant robots in space.  You kill other robots.  You become more powerful.  You blow yourself up.  YEAH!

Available on Steam for PC, Plain Sight is great multiplayer fun.  A large game can get crazy as you leap through space, chase other robots around everything from abstract shapes to giant cassette tapes, and finally detonate in a glorious explosion.

I made an error when I stated the rating in the video.  Actual rating: 101010!

Part 1


Part 2

Madballs stickers. "Catch them if you dare!"

Just in time for Halloween, we take a look at Madballs in... Babo Invasion! (Available on Steam, along with several skin packs that may or may not be unlockable in game). Some may initially be skeptical of this game due to the rather silly theme -- or it may give you nostalgic feelings, if you grew up with Madballs (they're still for sale!). Even if you never owned one, you might remember the Madballs commercials or Madballs cartoon. They came at a time when there was a trend for toys to attempt to out-gross each other to win a place in the hearts of less-squeamish kids, while rousing the ire of their parents. According to the Madballs game trailer, they were even banned in some schools. If that isn't publicity that gets kids' attention, I don't know what is.

However you may feel about the Madballs brand, this game is worth taking a look at due to a co-op mode that looks promising (although there was no one playing at the time of recording), and some creative online-multiplayer features, such the Invasion mode where teams can compete in building a map, then play it. There's also the baffling addition of a very Bejeweled-like game that the Babos have invaded, for those of you who are fans of that. Despite its initial goofiness, this game is probably a little underappreciated, as it offers some decent multiplayer value. Charlaxy and Companion agree that this game deserves a 903.18 out of 1021.5! (This game rating scale may not be linear.)

Part 1 is a look at the basic features of the game in a tutorial mode. Part 2 delves into multiplayer and all the rest. Enjoy!

Deer God of The Endless Forest, from Rah-Bop's DeviantArt.

For the subject of our first video review, we decided to pick something off the beaten path.  You may have heard of this interesting free game, The Endless Forest.  In it, you take control of a deer with a rather (creepy) anthropomorphic face and explore a world of endless wonder and fun.  For a more serious review, check out INDIECADE.  They describe the game thusly:

The Endless Forest is a sublime and ethereal multiplayer fairytale world in which players are presented as human-faced deer who communicate only through gesture and sound. Tale of Tales, the creators of The Endless Forest, describe their latest work as a “multiplayer online game and social screensaver."  . . . Defying the conventional definitions of “game” at every turn, The Endless Forest has garnered a small but ardent base of fans who have fallen under its spell.

Yes, it certainly does defy those conventions.  It might just be your thing, though.  Take a look at our video tour through The Endless Forest and judge for yourself.

My apologies for the audio not coming out too well. We're working on improving that for the next video.

I want to start out by thanking all the Reddit readers that have been visiting my blog.  Thanks to a friend's suggestion, I submitted a couple of blog posts to Reddit, and got many more visitors in a single day than this blog has had in its short lifetime.  I hope that you continue finding the blog interesting and come back.

Some notes on the blog: although I have been writing an awful lot about self-employment lately, that is not the purpose of the blog.  The purpose was to be a creative outlet for me, as a writer, on topics that I hope will be of interest to you, the reader.  Most blogs fall into two categories: personal or profit.  They're either written about the writer's personal life or business for the gratification of the writer, or they're written like a magazine, focusing on a certain genre and topic, and written specifically to keep drawing readers in.

I hope to find something in the middle-ground.  I want to write what is of interest to me that is also interesting for others to read.  I want to keep it at a level that is between business and personal, and hope that readers meet me there.

Personal blogs are very rarely interesting, unless you know the person.  However, it's generally not a good idea to write about your personal dramas and dribbulations and then invite strangers or friends (especially friends) to comment on it.  I've seen many fights manifest and friendships disintegrate because someone wrote about a touchy incident or controversial subject on their personal LJ, and then invited friends to comment on it.  Writing a personal journal is good for expressing things that you don't want to tell others, keeping a record of your history and thoughts and ideas as they happen, or mapping your own development over time.  This kind of journal should be kept private.  It's also great to have a journal for sharing your experiences with friends and family without having to separately talk and send photos to each one of them.  But this is not the spot for airing personal grievances or ranting on controversial topics.  It's a family and friends blog, and you shouldn't say anything that you wouldn't tell them face-to-face.

Blogging as a tool to promote a business is only interesting to people that are interested in that business.  If you talk about nothing but what you're selling, it's going to look exactly like what it is: a dry collection of advertising.  There is a place for this, but it's not anything that's going to excite most people and keep them coming back.

Blogging as a business, such as news or special topics blogs, is well and good, but it lacks the personal touch and breadth of topics that makes a lot of more opinionated blogs interesting.  Often, there is a team of paid journalists maintaining those sites.  They may or may not have a passion for what they're writing.  If they do, the site will usually be fantastic.

My goal is to write on a variety of topics.  I originally called this a polymath blog, before deciding that sounded more academic and pretentious than I intended.  So, now it's the exploration of Earth culture.  Sometimes I wish it could be from an outsider's more objective perspective, but it's not.  I'm going to be opinionated and probably even biased at times.  I'm going to write on a bunch of different subjects that are interesting to me and that I hope are at least enjoyable, if not educational, to readers.  It's going to be general interest, so maybe it won't have as strong of an audience as a blog that focuses on a specific topic.  Since my goal isn't to turn this into an online magazine, and to keep it a semi-personal outlet, then I'm fine with that.

I write on topics that I find personally interesting, because one writes best on what one not only knows, but finds interesting.  If I'm thinking about a subject, I'm researching it, I'm talking to people about it, and I'm making notes on my findings.  I enjoy completing that process by putting all of this into words, in an essay that I hope is enjoyable to read.

As I already said, this isn't going to be a business blog.  I will post on here about other projects of mine as they manifest, and I hope to use the blog as a way to inform people about them.  If you'd like to know more about my projects, visit my goal statement page.  However, the sole focus of this blog will be trying to entertain others with what I find entertaining.

If you've visited this blog for a while, you may have noticed that there are now Amazon ads.  I'm not trying to overrun it with them, but rather trying to present ads that I think might be relevant to your interests, because they're the ones I find most interesting.  I buy products from Amazon, and I go there to browse often.  They sell things that I buy, like books, games, movies, and music.  I hope that they are actually of interest or assistance to my readers.  The other ads seem to just be comically random.

If you're going to be buying something from Amazon anyway, I ask that you use the Amazon searchbar on this site, or consider clicking one of the ads.  If it's not inconvenient for you, bookmark this site, come back and use it for doing your Amazon searches.  Any time you look at Amazon through my affiliate ads, it helps me.

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to comment or email me (charlaxy@gmail.com) with your thoughts or suggestions.

Continued from Part I and Part II.

In response to a question that I received on whether the self-employed pay into social security, I want to link this official SSA article that probably explains it as clearly as it can be explained: ssa.gov: If You are Self-Employed.  In short: yes, you do pay into it, but there are exemptions.  The amount that is paid in is not as great as what you and your employer pay in if you are working for someone else.  Theoretically, if you earned as much for your work as your employer earns for it, then you would be saving money, because the self-employed do not have to pay as much into social security as the employer and employee combined do.  If you are a financial expert and I am reading this wrong (as I may well be), then please let me know and I will post a clarification.

For previous part, see: part I.

As a jumping off point, here is an article that I happened upon on the advantages/disadvantages of self-employment.  The gist of the disadvantages (and what I feel is the source of many of the myths surrounding this issue) is that no one is taking care of you.  However, I have news for those that think that you are being taken care of if you work for a company: you're not.  They're not paying you so that they can take care of you.  They are paying you so that you can take care of them, so that you can make the company's projects happen.  They may give you some assistance in hard times, but only as far as you are still of value to them.  It is unreasonable to expect them to take a loss on you unless they believe that it is an investment that will pay off for them.  In other words: No one is taking care of you anyway.

But they provide insurance and retirement for you, you might say.  Yes, that is true, but it comes at a price.  Employers do not magically conjure up free insurance for you.  It is a benefit that they pay for you to enjoy, and that pay comes out of and is considered part of your salary.  In fact, they pay quite a bit of money for that, because insurance is very expensive.  Many employers prefer to hire people part-time because of this, as well as the money that they have to pay toward unemployment, retirement, and social security benefits.  Imagine if you employed yourself and earned the same amount of money as your employer would earn for your work, but you didn't pay for all of these "benefits" that you may never enjoy -- many people don't live to retirement age and do not receive their social security benefits.  In fact, the government is betting that you won't live long enough past the age of retirement to draw a lot of social security, and that it will keep (or spend) most of the money that you pay in.

Imagine getting to keep all of that money, save it for your own use later, or put it into some safe investments (as opposed to the risky ones that many companies gambled away their employees' retirement savings with).  Not everyone is in a line of work where they can make as much on their own as an employer might be paid for that person's work.  But if you are, if it were feasible to do that, just think about the amount of money that you would be able to save in the bank for self-insurance, instead of having a company spend that on "benefits" for you that you may never use.

See part III here.

In an earlier post on the greater potential for income equality through certain means of working online, I mentioned one of my reasons for wanting to be self-employed.  Namely, that I wanted greater potential for income equality based purely upon the merit of my work.  Here's a bit more about self-employment and it's "opposite," the-regular-old-employment-for-somebody-else.

First, doesn't it seem a bit strange that there is a special term for self-employment?  Is it really something so strange and counter-intuitive that the word self must be specified?  Is not all employment a form of working for the self, e.g. working for self-edification?  Giving self-employment a special category seems like a symptom of alienation from one's work, or a demonization of work, or alienation from or demonization of the source of income, or a diminishing of the self, or something.  Pragmatically, I know "self-employment" is just used to delineate that one is not directly in the employ of another person, because this is not the most common case, although one is obviously being paid by others in either case.  In the realm of theory, though, the idea that it is considered the unusual case and that most regard it with suspicion (namely, the suspicion that it will inevitably fail, whereas employment by others is obviously safe forever and you will never be fired or unable to find further employment, right?) does bother me on some level.

By writing all of this, I do not mean to encourage everyone to be self-employed.  Obviously, there is not anything that is for everyone (except breathing, maybe).  It's not for everyone, and shouldn't be.  Some enjoy a more highly social environment (if you believe the workplace is more social; more on that later).  Some enjoy having an office and co-workers and a boss and employees and all the other things that come with their workplace.  Some just want to do something that is not easily done outside of a corporation or institution, such as perform surgery, work on a nuclear reactor, supervise the incarceration of inmates, or teach university students.  So, no, not everyone should try to be self-employed.

I have a bad habit of trying to judge whether or not I should do something based upon the practicality of everyone doing it.  I should stop that, right now.  This line of thought typically goes something like this: "What if everyone tried to do [something that I want to do]?  If it's impractical for everyone to do it, then it might be greedy/immoral/just-plain-wrong for me to try to do it as well, and thus I should reconsider it."  This line of reasoning does work in some cases pertaining to moral issues.  If everyone went out and murdered someone everyday, obviously, this would not be sustainable (not that I've ever seriously considered proposing that we should all do this, or wanted to do it myself).  But for subjective issues of one's employment preference, it does not work, because there is no job that all of us can do.

I've sometimes heard it argued that only those with good self-discipline can be self-employed.  I've sometimes heard someone give this argument as a reason for why he or she would not ever seek self-employment.  This bothers me as well, because it implies that everyone who seeks outside-employment is an aimless imbecile that needs someone to crack the whip to get going.  Not only is that highly insulting, it is simply not true.  Goodness knows you do have to have some sort of self-control and self-motivation just to land a job in the first place, and you have to continually demonstrate it if you want to keep your job and move up in rank.  You have to have talent and knowledge just to seek out employment and be seriously considered.  They just don't hand jobs out willy-nilly to everyone who needs something to do.  "Oh, looks like you have not even a modicum of self-discipline and no idea whatsoever what you want out of life, here is a job for you because you can obviously handle it and you deserve one just for existing."  No. It doesn't work like that, and we would all be in trouble if it did.

This is getting long, and I could go on, and I will.  I'll write more on this subject, particularly more myths pertaining to self-employment, in upcoming posts.

See part II here,  part III, and part IV.