Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Unemployed, broke, hungry and home alone most days, I find myself idling.  Not today, no sir!  Today I finish up the rather elaborate quest of one Nathan Drake.  As part of my "Only playing cheap games" hobby, this is the first game I feel like talking about of the many that I have obtained since Christmas.  For those of you still on the fence to buy a PS3, now is the time to invest.  Some great games are now around 20 bucks which means you can save money!  (If you're cheap like me).


Drake's Fortune has impressive visuals and smooth frame rates.  Some of the animations look...oh pretty foliage how I love you.  Nice green leafy foliage is so pretty...Anyhow, the animation is cool but...Wow such pretty water and look how it splish-splashes and when Nate gets all wet and...Animations are sometimes goofy.  That's exactly what I was going to say but every other pretty thing just destroys my adult ADD.  The game has some snazzy visuals and for one of the first releases for the PS3, it does a great job looking pretty.  Kind of like Ben Roethlisberger does a great job of staying out of jail.

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!

The graphics tend to mask the idea that all of the enemies that are placed in the sights of a limited amount of firearms may be legitimately retarded.  While the AI lacks, the game does try to do some things that I personally have never seen in a game (Well, if I had played it back in 2007).  If you take Gears of War and punch it in the face with Assassin's Creed, and the winner of that tussle makes love to Indiana Jones, then you sort of get the the gist of what this game is.  Action adventure with quite a bit of platforming and puzzles, all pointed toward an end goal:  finding El Dorado.

I love the way the game plays, but there are some moments that made me want to rage throw my dual shock through the TV.  There are moments where you must use the dreaded six asses control scheme that Sony thought was a great idea...

Yes, imagine controlling six of these.

The sound effects are pretty good.  At one point I really felt like I was a Guerrilla running through a Colombian rain forest as I trafficked a few kilos up to Mexico (Hey, I play my games differently).  From birds to insects to things falling on your face and bullets hurling wildly past you (but never into you), the sound effects crew really did a great job.  It compliments the music which is well done.  I won't go into how the music sets the tone of the game and how it expertly raises when action happens and stops when you put the cap on the last halfbreed trying to kill you. 

So, we have shooting, climbing, puzzles and treasures.  What about other features? Well, if you like actually trophy farming it looks like the game has 1000 points worth of trophies to get, from killing a certain number of imbeciles with certain weapons to finding the games hidden treasures (60 in all).  Once you finish this game you will get access to many special features such as behind the scenes footage and movies that you can watch over and over because Elena Fisher is hot. 

Even though she has the eyes of a corpse...

Poppin' Bloons and ... What?

I love tower defense games. This spawns from something I and a friend used to do over a dial-up connection while playing Command and Conquer: Red Alert.  We would create a map with an elaborate choke point and then we would surround it with Tesla coils.  The hilarity ensued as the AI players constantly sent battallion after battalion of tanks, artillery, and infantrymen to a grisly and shocking demise.  I think he grew out of that joyous feeling, but I never did.  Here I am today, playing games that echo that carnal desire to destroy things with no point other than to just destroy things.  Now I bring to you Bloons Tower Defense (BTD) created by the independent developer, Ninja Kiwi, who created the more popular Bloons.  Tower defense games are the ultimate time wasters, almost as much as playing bejewelled or something that doesn't allow you to kill innocent balloons.

To understand BTD you really need to understand the concept of tower defense.  The player is given the ability to build towers along a path.  Enemies run this path from one end to the other, and your towers attack them and try to prevent them from making it to the end.  If they make it, you lose, or you may get to "leak" a few until you run out of lives.  BTD is a very difficult and frustrating game, but it is extremely fun.  Now that you know how a basic tower defense game works, we can now talk specifics!

Yep, this is the title screen.

BTD is a crudely designed game, and it definitely looks and plays like it.  It is still addictive, but when you move on to newer iterations of the game, you realize that the first game is really haggard.  With a whopping one map and a measly five towers, BTD does not offer much more than a good time.  That's all we need, right?  The map is pretty cool too, allowing players to cleverly construct different defenses.

Pretty simply layout, eh?  Well the game is difficult so you have to put all  the bends and long stretches to the best use.  The idea here is to buy towers with money you make from popping the bloons.  Each tower does its own special thing, and since I am in the mood to write, I will make a brief instruction manual about this game and you can use it however you like.  Just note that my opinions will be rampant, because this is a review of some sorts, with some form of strategic hand-holding.

The Dart Tower

• This is the basic tower, so it comes in handy early on.
• Upgrade the range so that it can attack farther.  (Yes, upgrading is an important part of many tower defense games)
• Upgrade it to piercing darts so that each dart can pop more than one balloon.
• Always make sure that you place these in a place where it can attack multiple parts of the path.

The Tack Tower

• What's a balloon's worst enemy?  A tack of course!  These are useful to thin out the herd.
• Always upgrade the speed of these first.  Improved speed is invaluable.
• Upgrade the range second so that they reach farther. 
• Tack towers work good in the U-bends on the map, and they work great in clusters.  In fact, you can stuff 6 of them in the very first bend for maximum balloon raping.

The Ice Tower

• The ice tower freezes balloons, which stops them dead.  Unfortunately, frozen balloons can only be killed by explosions, which kind of sucks and makes them sort of useless unless you want to experiment.
• You can upgrade to a longer freeze time, which makes them invaluable, of course.
• You also need to improve the radius of your ice tower, which is vital.
• Be sure to have some bombs close by.

The Bomb Tower

• The bomb tower is a cool tower because it does splash damage, and it kills frozen balloons like penicillin kills the clap.
• You can upgrade the range of the tower, which is useful, just remember to put it where it can attack multiple parts of the path.
• You can upgrade the explosive power of the bomb, giving it a bigger splash area of effect.  This means that you pop more balloons.

Super Monkey

• If you really want to recreate a scene of total carnage, if you want to turn the oncoming balloons into the allied forces on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day, then make a few of these bad boys.  The only thing is, this time the allied forces have no chance.  Or something.
• You can upgrade the range and this gives the Super Monkey access to the majority of the map.
• He shoots a continuous stream of darts.  The only difficult thing about these guys is the price, they run a smooth $4,000.  Once you get a few, however, you can sit back and relax because they are awesome.

Now, to tell you a little about the balloons.  The balloons are unique because as they get stronger, you have to hit them more.  Each balloon goes down to a weaker form with each hit, so a yellow balloon will go down to a green balloon, then to a blue balloon, then to a red one, then to a pile of shredded balloon guts! 

• Red - Weakest balloon.
• Blue - Takes two hits.
• Green - Takes three hits and moves noticeably faster.
• Yellow - Takes four hits and faster than Steven Seagal chasing crackheads.
• Black - I think these are lead balloons, they move really slow.
• White - Strongest balloons, but slow.

After trying and failing miserably, you could go to this page for an excellent walkthrough on how to finish the game (and get that damn achievement on Kongregate).  Note that this is not the only way to win, but it is a sure way to win without leaking any balloons.

I love this game, and with a little patience you may grow to love it as well.  You can find it on Kongregate and see that it is popular among its users.  If you do not know what Kongregate is, well, it's where most of the free flash games go for people to play whenever they like.  Also, here is a video strategy of Youtube for those of you who need to see things moving around or something.

With this being said, Bloons gets a 5 balloons out of 10!

Feast Your Eyes on Sentret, My First Pokemon!

I managed, as broke college kids tend to fail at doing, to find a hobby that does not require fat stacks of cash or credit, and it is one that pays off pretty well in the end, even if that pay is just the feeling of accomplishment.  That hobby is the art of papercraft and it has won me over quite handily.  I have made several models, and right now I am going to share with you my first Pokemon model, Sentret.

#161 - Sentret

Type: Normal

Species: Scout Pokémon

Height: 0.6m (2'07")

Weight: 6.0 kg (13.2 lbs.)

Interesting Facts: Sentret are able to stand on their tails. They do this to find out whether there is any danger nearby and also to warn others of possible danger. Their shrieks will warn all Pokémon in the area of any possible danger. Sentret has a very nervous and cautious behavior, constantly fearing for its safety. It never lives alone - while one member of its group sleeps, another watches out for danger. Sentret evolves into Furret starting at level 15.

Now, we know about Sentret, what did I do that was so unique? Well, Here you go!

This is the entire critter, so it looks like a rabbit that had "relations" with a raccoon and a flying squirrel.  This was actually an easy model to build, and to make it worth the effort, I actually painted it with acrylic paint.  It looks sort of weird, but it is very vivid.

This is a close up of his rabbit ears.  They were kind of difficult to make, but they were even harder to put on straight.  Also, you can really see how crappy I am with acrylic paint.

This is one of the arm/wings for Sentret. I painted black lines on his fist to give him fingers or claws or whatever, I really like this picture.  It is pretty detailed!

This was a NIGHTMARE!  You notice the imperfections?  Yeah, I had to do some surgery.  This is actually why I decided to paint these guys, because it is hard to make one perfect.

Yes, those feet were difficult to create, to attach evenly and painting them was very difficult.

His stomach.  The body was difficult to get right, and it was difficult to paint this ring.  I want to find some masking tape that is paper friendly for my next project.  As you can see, I really globbed the paint on there.

 

How did I make him stand?  I glued a nickel inside of his tail.  It was heavy enough to make him stand rather tall and solidly.  He does not fall.  Next Pokemon that I will go over with you guys, and I have finished it, is a very psychedelic looking six legged spider.  So, what do you guys think of this one?

If you like this papercraft, you can can go find it at Paperpokes, where I have found quite a collection of different models.