GOTTA GO FAST

Today I got a game that just got out of beta and is open to public. Its an arena shooter and its all about going fast. It will also help prepare you for the sci-fi wars of the future.

Its your basic Red verses Blue

Tribes Ascend is the latest game in the Tribes series, which always had game play that was based heavily around team work and momentum, especially for Capture The Flag. You’re basically going skiing with a gun and a jet pack, but its not an awesome future biathlon.

Or a James Bond movie

The older games are considered by many to be among the best multiplayer shooters of their time, and had dedicated fan bases that stuck around for years.

The same main game design points carry over into Ascend. The maps have next to no cover so the best way to stay alive is to go fast and bob and weave, since the shooting is mostly based around  leading your target, aside from a few “hitscan” weapons that don’t need to be lead (which are considered cheap by some of the player base). 

Not an example of good Tribes game play, he clearly needs more speed

There are three different weight classes that generally determine what sort of role you will play as. The light armored players go fast and are typically the ones trying to capture the flag but also have less health than other weight classes. The medium armored  players are obviously the middle of the road in terms of speed and health. While the heavies are the slowest and the hardest to kill, and typically stick to base defense, they don’t have to though.

The game uses a class system that dictates your weapon load out and weight class, rather than letting you choose whatever you want. There is a kind of perk system that you can choose for yourself. However, this leads into the most important part of this post.

HOW THEY GET YOU
Tribes Ascend uses the Free-To-Play model where you start with default classes and gear but you need to unlock the rest. Thankfully, you don’t need to spend money to buy things, you can earn everything you need through game play, nor does Ascend enter Pay-To-Win territory. Obviously this involves some element of grinding, but it never hits “Korean MMO” level. And if you actually find the game enjoyable enough to play consistently it should be that much of an issue

VGS

Tribes Ascend could be a game you pick up for one game then forget about entirely, or you could get sucked in and get turned into a massive fan that sticks around for years. Really the only way to find out yourself is to give the game a shot, but watching some game play wouldn’t hurt either.

The proper video starts after about two minutes of nonsense. This video is also a good example of how Tribes falls under the category of "E-Sports", complete with commentators.

Tribes Ascend is available for download at https://account.hirezstudios.com/tribesascend/
You need an account though.

From Covered Wagons to Station Wagons

You ever play Oregon Trail? If  “No”, then get the hell off your parent’s computer. If “Yes” then you might want to take a look at this right here

That 8-bit dog looks way too calm

A throw back to Oregon Trail, Organ Trail sends your party on a cross country trip towards safety. Of course its obviously not as simple as just jumping into the car and driving there, you need to get and ratio food, fuel, bullets, medical supplies and car parts to make it cross country. And that’s just the basic necessities.

No, you're car isn't as awesome as this, have fun with that Station Wagon

It gets worse. The zombies are an ever present threat, whether you’re driving, scavenging, or trying to hold up in a particularly paranoid survivor stronghold when you have an infected person in your party. Road blocking hordes of zombies replace rivers in Organ Trail, and just like in Oregon Trail you have a couple of options in how you approach the problem.

Pictured: The MANLY way

The game also has the classic Oregon Trail random events that go off as you drive along through the apocalypse, such as poor weather, thieves stealing your stuff, found food and injuries.

He should have

Being based off of Oregon Trail, you shouldn’t expect much in the way of HEART STOPPING ACTION. A lot of the game revolves around scavenging, trading, and husbanding resources so you can make it cross country, because it your car’s battery or tires give out and you don’t have any replacements your stranded and stuck with either scavenging for replacements or trading for them with people passing by.

It only seems easy before the zombies really start coming in

If you’re looking to kill some time, I’d say Organ Trail is worth looking into. If nothing else you can practice trading for food for when society collapses. It also recently did one of those kickstarter things to get an advanced edition working for touch phones, but that probably wont be free so this isn’t about that.



You can play Organ Trail right from your browser at http://hatsproductions.com/organtrail.html

Cavern Tale

When you think “free”, you probably think there’s a catch somewhere. That the game was half assed or it’s actually pay-to-win. I’ve tried to avoid putting those kinds of games up here because they’re typically garbage and not that fun to play. What I’ve got for you today though, goes way past everything I’ve put here so far. Something you NEED to play.

Skip to the bottom for the download link and play it

Cave Story has been described both as a metroidvania style game and a platformer, and it manages to play very well in both respects. You play as a guy named Quote who cant remember how he got where he was at the start of the game, and I’m not saying anything else about the story in case you’re one of the five people on the internet who hasn’t heard of Cave Story. Go play it.

You playing yet?

Over the course of the game you are given a number of weapons to use, and while you’ll obviously find one or more you prefer over the rest, none of them are useless or broken. The bosses are well designed and fun to fight, definitely among the game‘s highlights.  Even fighting the generic enemies is still fun, and the platforming can be challenging but its never truly frustrating, gameplay is undeniably solid.

You playing yet?

The art and music for this game is terrific, each area of the game has its own feel, which becomes more impressive in light of the fact that this game was made by one guy. Cave Story actually got a (poor) port to wiiware, and a better port to the DS. The most recent port is a version on Steam that has a bunch of extra stuff added to it, however the ports aren’t free so its not the subject of this post.

You playing yet?

Everything from start the finish is well put together. From the characters to the music. Even the plot and backstory to the game is interesting, and there's even a True Ending to get and a secret final boss to fight, which is HARD to pull off.  Its hard to properly convey how good this game is without sounding like its all brainless gushing or the same drummed up hype that developers use to advertise their latest generic AAA title, so throwing around words like “masterful“ is a waste of time.

YOU PLAYING YET?

In the end all I can really say is that this game is awesome and that you should be playing it by now, so why arent you?

The original, free version of Cave Story can be downloaded from here
http://www.cavestory.org/downloads_game.php
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WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE? GO PLAY IT.

Lunar Installation Beta

Today I’ve got a shorter post for you, but to make up for that it's something really weird!: MOON BASE ALPHA! And as a bonus, it was made NASA, and that’s awesome.

Your tax dollars at work!

Basically, the point of the game is to repair the various broken things around the lunar station before it runs out of air. You and preferably some friends control astronauts walking around outside the station repairing stuff such as solar panels and power cables.

Your astronaut even moves like he would in a low gravity environment

Much like Façade however, that’s just the “official” part of the game. While you can go about repairing the station, or you could screw around and find out why this is also called “Text to Speech: The Video Game”. Unlike in Façade you don’t even need to pick between playing regularly or fooling around, you can do both at the same time!


That more or less shows why this game is significantly more fun with friends, or even random internet people than it is to play it alone. You can tell that the programmers meant for this to be completely straight and serious space simulator, but even when doing the admittedly repetitive repairs, the text-to-speech can make anything funny.

Pictured: the exciting adventures of a SPACE MECHANIC

If you and preferably some friends feel like killing a couple of hours doing stuff on the moon, or maybe you’re just into stuff about space then Moon Base Alpha might be for you. Even if the game itself isn’t what you’re looking for the text to speech might be funny for awhile.

Gotta learn about living in space before this happens

Moon Base Alpha is available on Steam at
http://store.steampowered.com/app/39000/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

Cereal Journey

Got something different for you this time! it’s the combination of a cereal, and a video game, bet your cant picture that, can you?

Sure I can!

What? No! Why was that even a thing? Anyway that’s not what I meant. What I’m talking about is the game “CHEX QUEST”

Hell yeah! THE 90s!

Chex Quest is a total conversion of the game DOOM that was given away in boxes of Chex cereal. It was actually a pretty successful marketing idea, considering corporate sales had a major increase in the year when they had the promotion. For those who don’t know, a total conversion is when you take a game and change everything except the most basic framework of the game. Though vastly different in terms of art and tone, the gameplay is the same, and the enemies and weapons are reskins of the DOOM originals

MARS BASE! DEMONS! GRRR!

ALTERNATE DIMENSION! SNOT MONSTERS! CHEEEEEEEEEX!

The game itself is actually rather easy for the first two parts that were made during the original run of the promotion. The game was likely meant for kids given the cartoon art used in the game, and the fact that you don’t actually kill anything in the game, the guns you use are actually hand held teleporters used to send the “Flemoids” (yes, they went all out) back to their home dimension. Its all very kid friendly. The third part however was made years later by two members of the original programming team, adding new enemies, environments, and a notably increase in difficulty, making it the most “official“ out of all the fan made endings out there on the internet.

You could probably make a drinking game about all the advertisement in this game

Though easy, technically simple, and jam packed to the brim with adds to Chex, Chex Quest is a nostalgic throw back to classic shooters with secret rooms, colored keys, and levels big enough that you can get lost in. The kind of thing they don’t make anymore, favoring shooters with a more mainstream appeal.

SO REAL

Clearly superior. Ok I’m going to stop now before I get too opinionated.

All three parts of Chex Quest are available at http://www.chucktropolis.com/gamers.htm

Devious subsister

Got something different for you today! It can run on a brick and has the worst graphics out of all the game’s I’ve put on this blog so far! You wont care about the graphics though when you’re trying not to starve or be eaten yourself. I present to you Rogue Survivor!

That's no hobo in the doorway

Rogue Survivor is a roguelike, and for those who don’t know what that is, lets see the wikipedia definition. “The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by level randomization, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics.” That about sums it up. All of these features are implemented in Rogue Survivor, especially the randomization factor.

The classics weren't much to look at but they were still solid games

The goal of Rogue Survivor is (surprise!) survival. The game takes place during a zombie outbreak and you are given the choice of either being a human or one of the undead. Humans are given a choice of traits to choose from, one at the end of character generation, others after the dawn of each new day they survive. The Undead choice gives you a selection of different zombie types to choose from, such as a full on skeleton whose strong suit is speed, or a far more durable zombie master.

Expect a lot of burning cars

Human characters need food and sleep to stay alive. Food, traps, and weapons can be found. Barricades can be built in doors and window frames to keep the undead out. Rather than being entirely on your own there are a number of other survivors in the city that you can trade with, or convince to follow you, or to kill to take their stuff. If you give them a reason such as breaking into their barricaded shelter or hoarding food they will try to kill you.

The survivors arent your main concern however, obviously

As a roguelike, despite it's tiled graphic looks, the game is deeper than it appears. Depending on how bad/good you are, you don’t need to invest that much time into a single character. Play until you die, and then reincarnate or start again from the beginning. A save/load feature is available so you dont need to play your character out in one sitting. Even if you find nothing particularly substantial about it you should be able to get a couple of hours of enjoyment out of it. If nothing else you should pick up a few ideas for your own zombie attack plan

Look at how prepared this guy is. This could be you!

There are quite a few Roguelikes out there on the internet, but I'll try to space them apart so this doesn't become "ROGUELIKE CENTRAL, ASCII GRAPHICS 24/7"

 Rogue Survivor is available at http://roguesurvivor.blogspot.com/

Double trouble! Two games one update

You’d think a game released in 1985 would be completely burnt out by now, that every self imposed challenge run would be done to death and the game wouldn’t have anything else to offer. You’d be wrong! I got two games for you today

Tiny portal gun included

First up is “Mari0”, a game that takes the original super Mario brothers, and adds portal guns and four player coop gameplay. It also has an awesome trailer.

You cant beat that. All of the portal tricks from Portal itself such as the infinite fall and flinging are made to work within the super Mario brothers engine, allowing you to pull off the tricks within the trailer and keeping the portal gameplay itself from feeling tacked on.

Not pictured: me being so bad at Super Mario I cant beat it even with a portal gun

The next game is something called “Super Mario Brothers Crossover”

Its EXACTLY what it looks like

Like the other game, this game ALSO has an awesome trailer


The gimmick behind this game is that instead of being restricted to playing as Mario, you have an assortment of characters to choose from, all of whom play differently. Its not just gameplay and hitboxes that were changed either, each character gets the soundtrack to their own game played instead of the Super Mario one.

Even in a different game entirely: metal blade still kicks the crap out of everything

Both games are well put together and certainly worth a look if you're looking to kill an hour or more. And if you think about it, if you don’t use the portals at all for Mari0 or just use Mario for Super Mario Crossover, its like you have the original game! So really, its like THREE games in one post!

And that's awesome

Mari0 is available for download at http://stabyourself.net/mari0/
Super Mario Crossover is playable right from your web browser at http://www.explodingrabbit.com/games/super-mario-bros-crossover