Those damned humans, with their… revolutioning. Why they gotta be all up in our business with their revolutions? And… their… human… ness? You may not know this, but Tap-Repeatedly has a YouTube Channel. It’s currently quite sparse. And what you’ll find below doesn’t do much to enrich it, to be honest, but as I mention in the video I have a terrible cold and I’m just not in the mood to be profound.
Of the few forums I follow with fervor, I happened to be at the Maniaplanet Forums at exactly the right time when one of the devs started playing the dev-titled “stupid games” to give out beta keys to test Trackmania²: Canyon (“Canyon”). It was really a fluke, and as I entered the first beta round I knew I was an interloper. I have beta tested countless MMOs. This was different. I felt instantly out of my …
The Nod Problem: if God is all-powerful, can God create something too heavy for God to lift? I’m nearly finished with From Dust, so once again I violate the implications of our “First Impressions” category, but I didn’t want to shoulder in on any other writers in case they wanted to do some impressions. So here are mine.
I have this old Acer netbook that’s paid its dues. Now it lives by the sofa, out in the living room. I use it to see if that actress has done nudity order food, check my email during TV Time, that sort of thing. In hearty spirit of our (my) recent Game of Thrones world, the Netbook By The Sofa can be seen as my Barristan Selmy, my old knight that’s done its duty and should …
If you have been hanging around around the Steam catalog lately, you’ve probably seen this indie game from Zachtronics Industries. The Steam action catalog seems pretty thin right now and my son and I have been playing a handful of manual puzzle games recently. Sink or Swim, Rush Hour, Alcatraz, TipOver, and River Crossing have got me in the mood for puzzle games.
Is it fair to be doing first impressions of a game I’ve already finished? Should I not be reviewing it instead? Maybe. And shouldn’t I be pretty hard, even in first impressions, on a game I bought for $49.99 on Friday night and finished Saturday afternoon? Finished in probably… three hours, if I’m counting generously?
You’d think so. Under normal circumstances, almost certainly. But Child of Eden is not normal. It’s scarcely a game, and in it, “finish” does not necessarily equal “end.” While it will hold far from universal appeal, Child of Eden envelops the senses in ways few games can: not merely luminous but numinous, a dance of magical light and sound so precious and so sensually immortal it defies description.
Poor Alice. Years pass and the pain of tragedy diminishes with time, but neither shame nor guilt nor madness ever leave us. And for Alice Liddell, once-bold Wonderland explorer, madness has returned with a vengeance.
American McGee’s Alice was under-appreciated; I appreciated it – at length, and reprise that appreciation with an expanded version of the same article for the upcoming Well Played 3.0 – but most people didn’t get it. Too many jumping puzzles, too difficult, too long, too packed with disturbing imagery deemed unsuitable for the world of Wonderland. The game sold okay but didn’t do well critically, and it took eleven years for EA to allow a sequel. Still led by American McGee, that Terry Gilliam of video games, Alice: Madness Returns is upon us.
Today is my birthday – thirty-six, if you must know – and my brother Marcus (whose fifth novel comes out on June 9, don’t forget!) loaded me down with a mountain of treasures, including CD Projekt’s latest, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. I own the original Witcher, on account of a Steam sale, but I never got more than ten minutes into it. Many a positive review of this sequel landed it on my …
I’ve been dreaming of Love for days now. There’s an insatiable desire to stay in the surreal world I’ve come to inhabit. I find myself distracted, eager to return to the moving picture of fantasy, colour and light. To star gaze as the night draws in and to revel in the spectacle…
Where to begin? Stupidest game ever? Most obnoxiously altered voiceover? Highest quotient of clicking? If the open beta available on Steam is any indication, DarkSpore – the pathetic grasp at success so profoundly failed with the medicority of Will Wright’s original Spore – this is not one you’ll want to spend your Galleons on. Why? Because IT SUCKS. Not offensively so, oh no. It sucks in a sad gasp at sucking. It doesn’t even bother …
In a bid to shake off the weariness induced by Grim Fandango, Hailey and I decided to play the first two available chapters of Cockroach Inc.’s The Dream Machine, a gorgeous point and click browser-based adventure game split into five chapters. The Dream Machine tells the story of Victor and Alicia, a young couple who have just moved into an old apartment block. After spending their first night in their new home, the two begin …
I’ve been feeling particularly old within the last week. Maybe it’s down to the harsh realities of adulthood. I’m due to complete the purchase of my first home within the next two weeks and will be a married man in just under three months. As wonderful and exciting as those two events are, they can also be pretty daunting; as I’m sure any married homeowners who read Tap-Repeatedly may attest to. Perhaps however it’s also because the Pokémon …
Another day, another obnoxious PS3 system update. Seriously, since when did my PC become a more convenient system to use than a console? It wouldn’t be so bad if they downloaded and installed in the background but oh-no, merely downloading them requires the full attention of my system locking me out until they’re finished. I’ve got patience, I really have, but when you’ve got a measly 1.2mb connection and just want to sign in to …
“Kill with skill,” advises Bulletstorm’s ad copy. That rhymes so it makes a nice tagline. “Kill as brutally and hideously as you possibly can within only the loosest confines of physics” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily.
Bulletstorm is exactly what it wants to be: a zany, foulmouthed, crass, absurdly violent fiesta of carnage. And everything about it appears crafted to suit this. Polish developer People Can Fly, working with Epic, have brought their considerable talents for atmosphere, outlandishness, and gleefully gory over-the-topism to bear yet again in a game that really does kind of remind us that “mindless” is not only sometimes a good thing, it can actually be a personality trait.
As my second piece of news, also Steam related, SEGA of America, Inc. and SEGA Europe Ltd have today announced that Total War: Shogun 2, will be available on Steam on February 22. The press release goes on to state: SEGA and The Creative Assembly are proud to let gamers everywhere know that a demo for Total War: Shogun 2 will soon be available on Steam. The demo will allow all armchair samurai to test their skills …