Category: General

Stacking is an easy, family-friendly puzzle game themed around stacking dolls. Each doll has an ability, and you use those to solve the puzzles. It comes from the fine people at Double Fine. A 100% playthrough is in the 8-12 hour range; if you go straight through without fiddling with the optional content, probably half of that. This includes the DLC that is included with the PC version on Steam.

The puzzles are simple. You can usually solve them with a doll immediately at hand. They are also well designed in that they have multiple solutions and some of those solutions have multiple options. The introductory challenge has three ways to get past it, and one of those ways can be implemented in at least two ways. I solved some puzzles accidentally just by seeing what the various dolls in the rooms could do. If you are having trouble, the game has a built-in hint system with increasingly explicit instructions as you ask for more hints. You will likely need it for a 100% completion. Some of the solutions exhibit a bit of adventure game logic, and sometimes you might not guess which variations count as one or more solutions. For example, in the DLC, two ways of fighting off the ghouls count as the same solution, but another way is a separate one; there are several soup- and disease-involved ways to make a guard sick, and they count as three solutions. Also good luck guessing how to get some of the “hi jinks”; the common problem of “right idea, slightly off” arises.

The story involves saving Charlie’s family, which has been forced into child labor by the dastardly baron. It has a Victorian tone and takes a lighthearted approach to child labor, indentured servitude, industrial pollution, homelessness, and poverty. Seriously, it’s really cheerful despite the setting, kind of the opposite of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Stiff upper lip, no worries, our can-do spirit will see us through!

You will be spending a lot of time in cut scenes. It takes a while for there to be much gameplay, rather than a series of introductory stories. Every scene changes has a cut scene or two. They are done as silent films: dolls emoting while instrumental music plays in the background, and then a card with their dialogue. It is timed for a low grade level’s reading speed.

Fun, flexible, and silly. Largely worth the time, if you enjoy this sort of thing. Your price point may be below the $15 retail; I got it on a Steam sale. If you do not have any Double Fine games, there are frequent sales on the three-pack, and their next game is ever in the works.

: Zubon

If you liked Portal’s gameplay, you will like QUBE’s at least 75% as much. The developer video included with Portal 2 explains their original plan: no portals, no Chell, no GLaDOS. QUBE is that, also with no story. What QUBE does have is about 4 hours of puzzles in an environment that feels a bit like running through Aperture Science.

QUBE stands for Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion. The first puzzles relate to colored blocks that do different things. Later puzzles start rotating rooms, using light and magnets, and letting you decide which color boxes should be.

The puzzles are not enormously difficult. Most of the time, once you understand what the tools in a room do, the solution is intuitively obvious. The more interesting puzzles come at the end of a sector, when you get complex interactions instead of new tools.

It can be glitchy. I had boxes teleport, spring away, and disappear entirely. One point requires precision platforming in the dark. About 90% worked as intended for me, and the rest eventually worked.

There is no story and only hints of a setting. There are no words. If you loved Portal for the humor and tone, this will not do anything for you. It just has puzzles in a 3D environment.

: Zubon

As near as I can tell, this summer’s Steam sale is less about making money and more about economic experiments. Sure, the revenue is nice, but the long-term value to Valve will come from seeing how people react and buy. There are flash sales, community choice, today’s deals, pack deals, and a few other ways to see sales. They vary in discount, placement, and duration, but you’ll see the same sales appearing multiple times in multiple places. Missed that flash sale? No problem, it’s tomorrow’s daily deal, and you’ll get a chance to vote to bring it back in a few days.

It is a real time experiment in marketing with millions of people paying to participate.

: Zubon

Without a doubt, DayZ is a very challenging game to get started in.   This initial experience can be very frustrating if you don’t have voice coms with a group of players to ask questions of, so I thought I would throw some initial pointers out there for our readers who might be interested in giving the mod a try.

Continue reading [DayZ] The Newbie Experience

Hey, I just met you,

And this is DayZ…

Zombies are everywhere,

So crawl to me, maybe?

 

~Cyndre

There is no point to DayZ.  

There are no objectives.   You can’t win, nor progress, nor develop any significant power advantage over the environment, PvE, or other players.   You invest hours on end only to lose it all in the blink of an eye.  

All you can do is try to survive. 

You never thrive in DayZ.   You are always one meal away from death. Around every bend in the road, in every building,  every step you take brings you closer to your eventual demise.   You will die.  There is no survival.

Why then do I find myself on the tail end of a ten-hour DayZ marathon, wishing I could skip sleep and work and log in for another ten?

~Cyndre

The thing about Eve and wormhole space, is that it has large bursts of activity as plans unfold, and long periods of inaction while plans are developed and hatched.

Luckily for the pilots of Surly You’re Joking, Zombies have invaded the DayZ mod of Arma 2, and we have been spending our downtime butchering them and anyone else we can find.

Continue reading Zombie Apocalypse!

I was hesitant when Steam launched. Let me get this straight: I will need a dedicated internet connection to play or access my games, I get no physical media, and if Steam goes away or cuts off my access — best of luck? What’s the upside here?

As it turns out, Steam has been an excellent corporate partner in my life. It has been reliable and has continued to improve over the years. It provides sales, updates, cloud storage, and matchmaking. The biggest downside is that its sales model encourages impulse purchases of marginal quality games. The only time I was not liking Steam was when I damaged a RAM slot on my computer, so everything loaded slowly; Steam pops up advertisements (“Updates”!) when you close a game, so Steam was refusing to close and let me have my computer back until it threw ads at me. Now I prefer digital distribution to physical media, because I lose CDs more often than Valve goes out of business. To the extent that you can say it about a corporation, I trust Valve.

I was hesitant when Blizzard moved everything to BattleNet, for all the same reasons. I might trust Blizzard, but Activision-Blizzard? I refused to buy SC2 until I found a rather good sale, and I do not own D3. I’m still not convinced that golden goose will go un-slain.

Does anyone trust EA? At all? About anything?

: Zubon