Showing posts with label of. Show all posts
Showing posts with label of. Show all posts
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Gizmos Spirit Of The Christmas
Gizmos: Spirit Of The Christmas (Video Game) Download
Minimum System Requirements
- OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8
- CPU: Pentium 4 @ 1.6 GHz Processor
- RAM: 1 GB
- Hard Drive: 100 MB Free
- Video Memory: 32 MB
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
- DirectX: 9.0
- Keyboard and Mouse
Screenshots
How to Install?
- Extract the file using Winrar. (Download Winrar)
- Open "Gizmos - Spirit Of The Christmas" >> "Game" folder.
- Then double click on "Gizmos - Spirit Of The Christmas" icon to play the game. Done!
How to Download?
If your dont know how to Download this game, just Click Here!Gizmos: Spirit Of The Christmas Free Download
Click Here to Download This GameGame Size: 90 MB
Password: www.apunkagames.net
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Adventure of the Week Haunted House 1979
Ah, Haunted House. This was actually the first text adventure game I ever played, and as far as I recall the only one that would work on my bare-bones, entry-level 4K TRS-80 Model I with Level I BASIC. It was programmed by Device Oriented Games and published by Tandy Corporation/Radio Shack in 1979. I wrote about Haunted House in passing several years ago, before I started my regular adventure game series, so Im going to cover it properly now.
Because memory was so incredibly tight, Haunted House features minimal descriptive text and a very limited parser dictionary, and even then it had to be loaded in two phases, with the second half of the game running largely independently of the first. Im running a later "fused" version of the original cassette version created by TRS-80 hobbyist "Lord Apollyon" in 1999, using the TRS32 emulator with 16K of memory. This early microcomputer game design has no windowed display, just simple scrolling text like the mainframe teletype interfaces that spawned the earliest adventure games.
Interested readers are always encouraged to play these games for themselves before reading my comments below -- but be warned that, while Haunted House is necessarily short, it can be aggravatingly obtuse. The simple engine provides no list of available exits or any feedback as to whether weve actually gone somewhere or just stayed where we are, which makes mapping a bit of a challenge. So, dear reader, you have my usual urging to play the game, but also my full encouragement to save yourself some frustration and jump straight into the...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****
The game starts without much in the way of orientation -- the title announces itself as "HAUNTED HOUSE!!" (the tight memory budget allowing for two exclamation points, it seems) and we are then informed that were standing outside the house, with a closed front door and a crumpled piece of paper on the ground. The parser is limited to just a few verbs -- TAKE PAPER fails, but GET PAPER works. READ PAPER yields, "MAGIC WORD - PLUGH" -- an homage to the earlier Colossal Cave mainframe text adventure created by Crowther and Woods.
Because memory is tight, room exits are not described, but its not too hard to discover that movement in any direction at this point only brings us back to the same location in front of the house. We have nothing in inventory other than the crumpled paper, so SAY PLUGH is the only available option, and so doing, we now materialize inside the house, at the foyer.
We can go south to the empty den, then east to the kitchen, where we find a bucket of water on the floor. We cant EXAMINE anything in this limited game, but we can GET BUCKET. We can POUR WATER anywhere we like, but the bucket magically refills after wetting the ground.
South of the kitchen is the breakfast room, where AN ANIMATED SUIT OF ARMOUR THROWS YOU OUT! and were back in the kitchen. North is the dining room, from whence we can travel west to the living room, where we see that A KNIFE IS LEVITATING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GROUND, with a mysterious scroll lying on the ground.
Avoiding the knife for the moment and returning to the foyer, we find we can travel west to the east end of the hall, and further west to the west end of the hall, where A LOCKED DOOR BARS THE WAY SOUTH.
North of the west end is the Blue Bedroom, where this sparsely-detailed game mentions that THERES A PANEL ON THE EAST WALL. This appears to complement the panel on the west wall of the Green Bedroom, north of the east end of the hall. We PUSH PANEL and we find ourselves in a secret passage, with a rope nearby.
Now what? We can try to DROP ROPE in the Living Room, but SUDDENLY THE KNIFE WHOOSHES DOWN AND SLITS YOUR THROAT! YOU ARE DEAD. So while this game may be introductory in size, its by no means player-friendly. (This bit of graphic violence raised no public objections at the time, the obscure world of microcomputer games being far removed from the mainstream in 1979.) When we die, the game just freezes and has to be reloaded from scratch (or, more conveniently, from a save state using a modern emulator.)
Trying again, I take a chance (based on faded memories of playing this game more than three decades earlier) and find that, yes, we can just GET KNIFE before it attacks. Now we can READ SCROLL to learn that "THERE IS ESCAPE FROM THE SECOND FLOOR!" So well need to find a way upstairs.
Returning to the breakfast room to see if we can deal with the suit of armour, we are pleased to discover that A SUIT OF ARMOUR HERE FLEES WHEN IT SPOTS YOUR KNIFE. Now we can reach the SERVANTS [sic] QUARTERS, where THERE IS A CABINET ON ONE WALL. But OPEN CABINET notes that its empty, and we cant move it or enter it or even close it.
I seem to be stuck now... trying PLUGH again yields only SORRY, ONLY ONE PLUGH PER CUSTOMER. And now an old, confusing bit of Haunted House lore resurfaces in my memory -- this is a deceptive part of the map, because the Servants Quarters actually occupies two rooms, one north and one south, and theres no way to distinguish the two onscreen. OPEN CABINET in the south end opens an empty cabinet, but at the north end, its a different cabinet that contains a key. (This isnt impossible to discover, as thorough mapping demonstrates that we cant go W from the north end of the room back to the breakfast room -- but I got seriously stuck here as a novice adventure gamer and had to call Tandy to get a hint way back when!)
Now we can go back to the west end of the hall and OPEN DOOR using the key, gaining access to the Master Bedroom, where A WALL OF RAGING FIRE BLOCKS THE WAY EAST. POUR WATER does nothing, nor does THROW WATER or DOUSE FIRE or EXTINGUISH FIRE as none of these verbs are recognized. What we have to do is attempt to go E through the wall of fire, and respond to the cagey "ARE YOU JUST GOING TO WALK RIGHT THROUGH THAT RAGING FIRE?" prompt with a simple YES.
Now were in the Library, where a hole in the ceiling allows us to DROP ROPE -- INSTANTLY THE ROPE UNWINDS AND LEVITATES TO THE HOLE IN THE CEILING! We CLIMB ROPE, and were in Part 2 of the game, having conveniently dropped everything to get up the rope so that the game doesnt have to carry over any state variables from Part 1.
Were now in a dimly lit room with a magic sword, which we can readily GET. South is another dimly lit room, with a ghost. KILL GHOST actually works, as YOUR MAGIC SWORD ENABLES YOU TO KILL THE GHOST! -- though the aftermath is a bit hard to visualize, as we note that THE BODY OF A DEAD GHOST IS ON THE FLOOR. We can do the same in the rooms west and east of the starting point on this floor. Going further west from the western one, we find another ghost -- and this time, THE GHOST IS IMMUNE TO YOUR ATTACK!
The immune ghost doesnt seem to bear us any ill will, but at the same time will not let us pass. READ SWORD indicates AN INSCRIPTION READS, "GHOST KILLER" -- apparently a slightly hyperbolic claim. And even if the immune ghost is not actually a ghost, we discover to no great surprise that YOU CANT KILL A GHOST WITH YOUR BARE HANDS. PLUGH and even XYZZY are of no help.
I didnt remember this part of the game at all, and while there isnt actually very much to do on the second floor compared to the first, solving this puzzle is a bit of a meta-game in the face of the games wall of silence concerning movement. I had to do some experimenting to notice that in the rooms where we can kill the ghost, the ghost WILL NOT LET YOU PASS in any other direction -- but in the room with the immune ghost, we can travel in any direction, we just cant KILL GHOST. And apparently some of the ghosts beyond this room are illusory, as trying to KILL GHOST yields THERES NOT ONE HERE once were past all the real ghosts, even though the room description still indicates the presence of one.
So... we need to kill the ghost immediately to the west of the entry point to the upstairs, then drop the sword, and then do some exploration and optimistic mapping, with a bit of luck perhaps, given that there arent any objects we can carry and drop to distinguish the identically-described rooms. We finally discover that we can go north, then west, then south from the immune ghosts location to arrive at yet another dimly lit room, with no ghost and a rusty sign on the ground.
The sign reads, "THERE ARE THREE EXITS FROM THIS ROOM. ONLY ONE IS TRUE. YOU MUST KNOW, BUT NOT BE BURDENED BY, THIS CLUE!" This is a none-too-subtle hint that if we try to leave with the sign in hand, YOU FALL THROUGH A TRAP DOOR TO YOUR DEATH! Dropping the sign instead and going in any direction out of this room leads to victory!
I once called Haunted House the worst adventure game ever, and having played through it again for the first time in a long while, I have to say that I still think its a pretty poor design. The challenges are linear and rely largely on trial and error, and the engines limitations are too often used to hide valuable information from the player -- for example, not being able to "see" that there are actually two cabinets at opposite ends of a large room is an artificial constraint that doesnt feel like an honest puzzle.
Still, cramming a complete adventure game of any kind into 4096 bytes (okay, 8192 with the dual-load design) of Z-80 code was a technical achievement in its day. And my re-visit to Radio Shacks Haunted House was quite entertaining for me personally, if only as a bit of nostalgia. Call it Prousts take on Sisyphus, if you will, and I hope to be back with something more recommendable next time around.
Read more »
Because memory was so incredibly tight, Haunted House features minimal descriptive text and a very limited parser dictionary, and even then it had to be loaded in two phases, with the second half of the game running largely independently of the first. Im running a later "fused" version of the original cassette version created by TRS-80 hobbyist "Lord Apollyon" in 1999, using the TRS32 emulator with 16K of memory. This early microcomputer game design has no windowed display, just simple scrolling text like the mainframe teletype interfaces that spawned the earliest adventure games.
Interested readers are always encouraged to play these games for themselves before reading my comments below -- but be warned that, while Haunted House is necessarily short, it can be aggravatingly obtuse. The simple engine provides no list of available exits or any feedback as to whether weve actually gone somewhere or just stayed where we are, which makes mapping a bit of a challenge. So, dear reader, you have my usual urging to play the game, but also my full encouragement to save yourself some frustration and jump straight into the...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****
The game starts without much in the way of orientation -- the title announces itself as "HAUNTED HOUSE!!" (the tight memory budget allowing for two exclamation points, it seems) and we are then informed that were standing outside the house, with a closed front door and a crumpled piece of paper on the ground. The parser is limited to just a few verbs -- TAKE PAPER fails, but GET PAPER works. READ PAPER yields, "MAGIC WORD - PLUGH" -- an homage to the earlier Colossal Cave mainframe text adventure created by Crowther and Woods.
Because memory is tight, room exits are not described, but its not too hard to discover that movement in any direction at this point only brings us back to the same location in front of the house. We have nothing in inventory other than the crumpled paper, so SAY PLUGH is the only available option, and so doing, we now materialize inside the house, at the foyer.
We can go south to the empty den, then east to the kitchen, where we find a bucket of water on the floor. We cant EXAMINE anything in this limited game, but we can GET BUCKET. We can POUR WATER anywhere we like, but the bucket magically refills after wetting the ground.
South of the kitchen is the breakfast room, where AN ANIMATED SUIT OF ARMOUR THROWS YOU OUT! and were back in the kitchen. North is the dining room, from whence we can travel west to the living room, where we see that A KNIFE IS LEVITATING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GROUND, with a mysterious scroll lying on the ground.
Avoiding the knife for the moment and returning to the foyer, we find we can travel west to the east end of the hall, and further west to the west end of the hall, where A LOCKED DOOR BARS THE WAY SOUTH.
North of the west end is the Blue Bedroom, where this sparsely-detailed game mentions that THERES A PANEL ON THE EAST WALL. This appears to complement the panel on the west wall of the Green Bedroom, north of the east end of the hall. We PUSH PANEL and we find ourselves in a secret passage, with a rope nearby.
Now what? We can try to DROP ROPE in the Living Room, but SUDDENLY THE KNIFE WHOOSHES DOWN AND SLITS YOUR THROAT! YOU ARE DEAD. So while this game may be introductory in size, its by no means player-friendly. (This bit of graphic violence raised no public objections at the time, the obscure world of microcomputer games being far removed from the mainstream in 1979.) When we die, the game just freezes and has to be reloaded from scratch (or, more conveniently, from a save state using a modern emulator.)
Trying again, I take a chance (based on faded memories of playing this game more than three decades earlier) and find that, yes, we can just GET KNIFE before it attacks. Now we can READ SCROLL to learn that "THERE IS ESCAPE FROM THE SECOND FLOOR!" So well need to find a way upstairs.
Returning to the breakfast room to see if we can deal with the suit of armour, we are pleased to discover that A SUIT OF ARMOUR HERE FLEES WHEN IT SPOTS YOUR KNIFE. Now we can reach the SERVANTS [sic] QUARTERS, where THERE IS A CABINET ON ONE WALL. But OPEN CABINET notes that its empty, and we cant move it or enter it or even close it.
I seem to be stuck now... trying PLUGH again yields only SORRY, ONLY ONE PLUGH PER CUSTOMER. And now an old, confusing bit of Haunted House lore resurfaces in my memory -- this is a deceptive part of the map, because the Servants Quarters actually occupies two rooms, one north and one south, and theres no way to distinguish the two onscreen. OPEN CABINET in the south end opens an empty cabinet, but at the north end, its a different cabinet that contains a key. (This isnt impossible to discover, as thorough mapping demonstrates that we cant go W from the north end of the room back to the breakfast room -- but I got seriously stuck here as a novice adventure gamer and had to call Tandy to get a hint way back when!)
Now we can go back to the west end of the hall and OPEN DOOR using the key, gaining access to the Master Bedroom, where A WALL OF RAGING FIRE BLOCKS THE WAY EAST. POUR WATER does nothing, nor does THROW WATER or DOUSE FIRE or EXTINGUISH FIRE as none of these verbs are recognized. What we have to do is attempt to go E through the wall of fire, and respond to the cagey "ARE YOU JUST GOING TO WALK RIGHT THROUGH THAT RAGING FIRE?" prompt with a simple YES.
Now were in the Library, where a hole in the ceiling allows us to DROP ROPE -- INSTANTLY THE ROPE UNWINDS AND LEVITATES TO THE HOLE IN THE CEILING! We CLIMB ROPE, and were in Part 2 of the game, having conveniently dropped everything to get up the rope so that the game doesnt have to carry over any state variables from Part 1.
Were now in a dimly lit room with a magic sword, which we can readily GET. South is another dimly lit room, with a ghost. KILL GHOST actually works, as YOUR MAGIC SWORD ENABLES YOU TO KILL THE GHOST! -- though the aftermath is a bit hard to visualize, as we note that THE BODY OF A DEAD GHOST IS ON THE FLOOR. We can do the same in the rooms west and east of the starting point on this floor. Going further west from the western one, we find another ghost -- and this time, THE GHOST IS IMMUNE TO YOUR ATTACK!
The immune ghost doesnt seem to bear us any ill will, but at the same time will not let us pass. READ SWORD indicates AN INSCRIPTION READS, "GHOST KILLER" -- apparently a slightly hyperbolic claim. And even if the immune ghost is not actually a ghost, we discover to no great surprise that YOU CANT KILL A GHOST WITH YOUR BARE HANDS. PLUGH and even XYZZY are of no help.
I didnt remember this part of the game at all, and while there isnt actually very much to do on the second floor compared to the first, solving this puzzle is a bit of a meta-game in the face of the games wall of silence concerning movement. I had to do some experimenting to notice that in the rooms where we can kill the ghost, the ghost WILL NOT LET YOU PASS in any other direction -- but in the room with the immune ghost, we can travel in any direction, we just cant KILL GHOST. And apparently some of the ghosts beyond this room are illusory, as trying to KILL GHOST yields THERES NOT ONE HERE once were past all the real ghosts, even though the room description still indicates the presence of one.
So... we need to kill the ghost immediately to the west of the entry point to the upstairs, then drop the sword, and then do some exploration and optimistic mapping, with a bit of luck perhaps, given that there arent any objects we can carry and drop to distinguish the identically-described rooms. We finally discover that we can go north, then west, then south from the immune ghosts location to arrive at yet another dimly lit room, with no ghost and a rusty sign on the ground.
The sign reads, "THERE ARE THREE EXITS FROM THIS ROOM. ONLY ONE IS TRUE. YOU MUST KNOW, BUT NOT BE BURDENED BY, THIS CLUE!" This is a none-too-subtle hint that if we try to leave with the sign in hand, YOU FALL THROUGH A TRAP DOOR TO YOUR DEATH! Dropping the sign instead and going in any direction out of this room leads to victory!
I once called Haunted House the worst adventure game ever, and having played through it again for the first time in a long while, I have to say that I still think its a pretty poor design. The challenges are linear and rely largely on trial and error, and the engines limitations are too often used to hide valuable information from the player -- for example, not being able to "see" that there are actually two cabinets at opposite ends of a large room is an artificial constraint that doesnt feel like an honest puzzle.
Still, cramming a complete adventure game of any kind into 4096 bytes (okay, 8192 with the dual-load design) of Z-80 code was a technical achievement in its day. And my re-visit to Radio Shacks Haunted House was quite entertaining for me personally, if only as a bit of nostalgia. Call it Prousts take on Sisyphus, if you will, and I hope to be back with something more recommendable next time around.
Game 51 Rise of the Dragon Final Rating
By Ilmari
And this is not just the only example. Forgot to take your ID with you and are locked out of your apartment? Don’t worry, you can also short circuit the door. Didn’t buy those roses? Well, you can always just sweet talk yourself to the heart of Karyn. Dynamix really wanted to keep their promise that you cannot deadend yourself just because you forgot some item. I think this deserves a bit higher score than Countdown therefore.
Rating: 4
I’d say that controls of a game should be either so intuitive that the player knows at once how to use them or then the game must at least force the player to use the controls, so that they become intuitive after a while. But an unintuitive control sequence that is used only once or twice is just too ridiculous (lucky it is not necessary even to use it at all). I’d otherwise had given a bit higher score for the interface - the mouse controls in general are smoother than in Countdown (2) or Mean Streets (4), and the inventory system is way better with detailed descriptions of all items. Yet, the small faults deserve a reduction of few points.
Rating: 5
Story and Setting
If you look at the story too closely it might be a bit cliched, as Laukku said, and the mixture of mutant producing drugs and ancient magicians coming back to life and turning into dragons is admittedly a bit corny. Especially compared with Countdown’s (6) intricate plot twists, Rise of the Dragon seems like a cheap B-class movie.
One thing that might raise the score of RoD is the advertised use of alternative plot lines. Unfortunately, there appears to be not that much of them. There are many optional sections in the plot - for instance, if I hadn’t given the candy bar to Jake, he wouldn’t have called me, and I should have seen another battle, only this time at the water reservoir. Still, the only really big question is whether you save Karyn at the end or not. Yes, I might have saved Karyn. Instead of running to his beloved, Blade might have checked out a storage room for a couple of wires and used them to short circuit the mutating machine, in which Karyn was trapped - after that, the Blade and Karyn would have accidentally stumbled in the room with all the criminals. Somehow this alternative feels not so emotionally strong as the ending I found, even if it ends happier.
So, there’s not that much possibility for alternative plotting and the advertisement for an infinitely replayable game was just an ad. Still, even if it is straightforward, the plot is still very effective - and seeing that creepy mayor getting punched in the face was truly a highlight of the day. If Mean Streets with its silly mutants and president Michael J. Fox got 5, then certainly Rise of the Dragon deserves it too.
Score: 5
Sound and Graphics
Graphics are a high point of the game, even if the use of dithering is obvious. It’s perhaps a matter of taste, but if I had to choose between the photorealism of Mean Streets (5) and Countdown (4) and the clearly more hand drawn style of Rise of the Dragon, I’d definitely pick the latter. The backgrounds and items are just gorgeous and the characters really have faces that reflect their personalities and emotions.
As for sounds, there definitely was plenty of it, but none of it was particularly memorable. When it comes to music, couple of place dependent themes varied and were played in repeat. In addition, there were some sound effects, like the sound of electric charge, when you touch the wrong cable. All in all, I must definitely give the game a high score to the overall category, but the blandness of the musical side prevents me from giving the same score as with Monkey Island (8).
Rating: 7
Environment and Atmosphere
Yet another strong category.While Mean Streets (6) and Countdown (6) couldn’t decide whether they wanted to play it straight or go to pure comedy, Rise of the Dragon feels much more balanced in its tone - except for few throwaway lines by Blade, it’s strictly business. This makes the whole Blade Runner imitation seem that much more convincing, although the lack of wireless communication makes the image of the future feel a bit dated.
But what I really like is the variety in the sceneries. Just look at some of the different subway stations.
I noticed that Trickster complained about the emptiness of the city in Mean Streets. L.A. of Rise the Dragon has empty areas too - seemingly abandoned warehouses and water reservoirs. Still, there’s plenty of places with people coming and going or at least just standing around. My special favourite is the pleasure dome, which truly feels like a place with real live people - particularly as you can chat up with some random dudes.
Rating: 7
Dialogue and Acting
This a difficult category to score, especially as in my comparison games the scores are all over (Mean Streets got 6, but Countdown only 4, and I didn’t think they were that different in their dialogue systems). Well, at least Rise of the Dragon has less dialogue than those two games and definitely less characters to speak with. Then again, I think that this might actually be a plus for the RoD, because the few characters I talked with were more believable and rounded persons than any of the x + 1 characters in the Access Software games. This might be more due to the graphics than the actual dialogue - the hand drawn facial expressions of RoD just convey more of the personality of the characters than the photorealistic images of the other games.
One thing that I really liked was the use of dialogue trees, which required true decisions that really affected how the game would unfold. Sure, you could choose to bully people and make them angry in Mean Streets or Countdown, but you would just have to go somewhere and return and all would be forgotten. Not so in RoD. For example, try taking your flirtation with the mayor’s secretary too far and you might really make your girlfriend pissed. Such possibilities make the dialogue seem more lifelike and realistic.
A point of criticism is the use of racial stereotypes in characters. The list of Chinese people doesn’t look good: apart from a drunk and a Yoda-character, all Chinese are evil in the tradition of Fu Manchu. And as for all the Afro-Americans being of a lower social class and using very notable slang… well, we might give the producers the benefit of the doubt and call it clever social criticism.
So, all in all a very mixed bag. I’ll settle for a middle road.
Score: 5
Putting things together we have (4 + 5 + 5 + 7 + 7 + 5)/0,6 = 55. I am also tempted to give the game one bonus point, just because it let the player choose whether he wanted to complete the arcade minigames. So, 56 it is!
Was Rise of the Dragon really that good? I’d definitely affirm it was. It certainly doesn’t have the magical qualities of Monkey Island or Quest for Glory 2, but it is fairly pleasant experience, which looking back was something mostly missing in games of 1990. The nearest guess was Laukku with 55! Here’s the rest of the CAP winners this time:
Cap Distribution
100 CAPs for Ilmari
Read more »
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| All things come to an end |
It’s time to score yet another game. I decided to compare Rise of the Dragon with both Mean Streets and Countdown, since all three are hard-boiled detective games (two of them even share the scifi theme), all of them depend heavily on dialogue, all of them contain action minigames and all of them might perhaps be better called interactive movies. We’ll see how it goes!
Puzzles and Solvability
I started Rise of the Dragon with high expectations. I had good memories of later Dynamix games, and the beginning promised a decent enough plot full of mysteries and serious detective work. The plot indeed flowed forward effortlessly and I became a little bit worried that there might not be any good puzzles to speak of. Then I got to a point where I had nothing else to do but wait - and this is almost all I had to do to get to the ending.
So, long story short - the game feels just a bit too easy. There were just two puzzles that left me scratching my head for a while (finding the right code for Chen’s safe and listening to Johnny Qwong’s phone) and I think this is not enough. Especially the inventory based puzzles were too scarce and bland to be of any interest. This is something Rise of the Dragon shares with the games of Access Software (Mean Streets got 4 and Countdown 3), and a low score on this category would seem to be in order.
Then again, there’s one redeeming quality in the puzzles - alternative solutions. Remember the receptionist I talked to just to find out she’s an old schoolmate of mine? It turns out there’s a completely different way to deal with her. I could have just grabbed my old can of euphory inducing gas and sent her to a personal trip to the seventh heaven.
Puzzles and Solvability
I started Rise of the Dragon with high expectations. I had good memories of later Dynamix games, and the beginning promised a decent enough plot full of mysteries and serious detective work. The plot indeed flowed forward effortlessly and I became a little bit worried that there might not be any good puzzles to speak of. Then I got to a point where I had nothing else to do but wait - and this is almost all I had to do to get to the ending.
So, long story short - the game feels just a bit too easy. There were just two puzzles that left me scratching my head for a while (finding the right code for Chen’s safe and listening to Johnny Qwong’s phone) and I think this is not enough. Especially the inventory based puzzles were too scarce and bland to be of any interest. This is something Rise of the Dragon shares with the games of Access Software (Mean Streets got 4 and Countdown 3), and a low score on this category would seem to be in order.
Then again, there’s one redeeming quality in the puzzles - alternative solutions. Remember the receptionist I talked to just to find out she’s an old schoolmate of mine? It turns out there’s a completely different way to deal with her. I could have just grabbed my old can of euphory inducing gas and sent her to a personal trip to the seventh heaven.
 |
| You can’t get higher than this as a receptionist |
Rating: 4
Interface and Inventory
I’d like to say that the interface is simple and easy to use - left mouse click for action, right mouse click for looking and dragging an object, to the inventory icon, if you want to take it, to something on the screen, if you want to use it. And you can almost get to the end of the game with using only these commands. Yet, some of the rarer actions required rather unintuitive tricks. I struggled at the beginning for a while, just to get my clothes on, because I had no idea how to wear them - it took reading the manual to find out that right-clicking the inventory icon would open a larger inventory screen with Blade’s picture in it. And jumping in the action scenes? Well, perhaps I could have guessed it’s done with ENTER... But the biggest problem I found out after completing the game and heading out to look some walkthroughs.
One FAQ writer suggested that SEGA version of the game differed significantly from the PC version, because only in the former you could gas down the receptionist. I took this as a challenge, and after reading the manual, I was able to do the trick with my trusty PC. I still wasn’t surprised that whoever made the FAQ hadn’t stumbled on this possibility, because the sequence for using the can was so unintuitive. You first had to open up the larger inventory screen, with Blade’s portrait. Then you had to drag the can on the Blade, who would then equip it. Now pressing BACKSPACE allowed me to actually use the can… Wait, what, BACKSPACE? I thought this was a mouse controlled game… and even if you’d had to rely on keyboard, why would you want to use BACKSPACE?
I’d like to say that the interface is simple and easy to use - left mouse click for action, right mouse click for looking and dragging an object, to the inventory icon, if you want to take it, to something on the screen, if you want to use it. And you can almost get to the end of the game with using only these commands. Yet, some of the rarer actions required rather unintuitive tricks. I struggled at the beginning for a while, just to get my clothes on, because I had no idea how to wear them - it took reading the manual to find out that right-clicking the inventory icon would open a larger inventory screen with Blade’s picture in it. And jumping in the action scenes? Well, perhaps I could have guessed it’s done with ENTER... But the biggest problem I found out after completing the game and heading out to look some walkthroughs.
One FAQ writer suggested that SEGA version of the game differed significantly from the PC version, because only in the former you could gas down the receptionist. I took this as a challenge, and after reading the manual, I was able to do the trick with my trusty PC. I still wasn’t surprised that whoever made the FAQ hadn’t stumbled on this possibility, because the sequence for using the can was so unintuitive. You first had to open up the larger inventory screen, with Blade’s portrait. Then you had to drag the can on the Blade, who would then equip it. Now pressing BACKSPACE allowed me to actually use the can… Wait, what, BACKSPACE? I thought this was a mouse controlled game… and even if you’d had to rely on keyboard, why would you want to use BACKSPACE?
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| Yes, it’s in the manual, but still... |
I’d say that controls of a game should be either so intuitive that the player knows at once how to use them or then the game must at least force the player to use the controls, so that they become intuitive after a while. But an unintuitive control sequence that is used only once or twice is just too ridiculous (lucky it is not necessary even to use it at all). I’d otherwise had given a bit higher score for the interface - the mouse controls in general are smoother than in Countdown (2) or Mean Streets (4), and the inventory system is way better with detailed descriptions of all items. Yet, the small faults deserve a reduction of few points.
Rating: 5
Story and Setting
If you look at the story too closely it might be a bit cliched, as Laukku said, and the mixture of mutant producing drugs and ancient magicians coming back to life and turning into dragons is admittedly a bit corny. Especially compared with Countdown’s (6) intricate plot twists, Rise of the Dragon seems like a cheap B-class movie.
One thing that might raise the score of RoD is the advertised use of alternative plot lines. Unfortunately, there appears to be not that much of them. There are many optional sections in the plot - for instance, if I hadn’t given the candy bar to Jake, he wouldn’t have called me, and I should have seen another battle, only this time at the water reservoir. Still, the only really big question is whether you save Karyn at the end or not. Yes, I might have saved Karyn. Instead of running to his beloved, Blade might have checked out a storage room for a couple of wires and used them to short circuit the mutating machine, in which Karyn was trapped - after that, the Blade and Karyn would have accidentally stumbled in the room with all the criminals. Somehow this alternative feels not so emotionally strong as the ending I found, even if it ends happier.
So, there’s not that much possibility for alternative plotting and the advertisement for an infinitely replayable game was just an ad. Still, even if it is straightforward, the plot is still very effective - and seeing that creepy mayor getting punched in the face was truly a highlight of the day. If Mean Streets with its silly mutants and president Michael J. Fox got 5, then certainly Rise of the Dragon deserves it too.
Score: 5
Sound and Graphics
Graphics are a high point of the game, even if the use of dithering is obvious. It’s perhaps a matter of taste, but if I had to choose between the photorealism of Mean Streets (5) and Countdown (4) and the clearly more hand drawn style of Rise of the Dragon, I’d definitely pick the latter. The backgrounds and items are just gorgeous and the characters really have faces that reflect their personalities and emotions.
As for sounds, there definitely was plenty of it, but none of it was particularly memorable. When it comes to music, couple of place dependent themes varied and were played in repeat. In addition, there were some sound effects, like the sound of electric charge, when you touch the wrong cable. All in all, I must definitely give the game a high score to the overall category, but the blandness of the musical side prevents me from giving the same score as with Monkey Island (8).
Rating: 7
Environment and Atmosphere
Yet another strong category.While Mean Streets (6) and Countdown (6) couldn’t decide whether they wanted to play it straight or go to pure comedy, Rise of the Dragon feels much more balanced in its tone - except for few throwaway lines by Blade, it’s strictly business. This makes the whole Blade Runner imitation seem that much more convincing, although the lack of wireless communication makes the image of the future feel a bit dated.
But what I really like is the variety in the sceneries. Just look at some of the different subway stations.
 |
| I never really had a chance to introduce the different subway stations, but here’s a quick sample. |
It would have been easy to make all of them look exactly same, but the developers have added small details that distinguish them from one another - the more well-to-do areas have more guards, while the station near Blade’s home has just a dead or drunk bum etc.
I noticed that Trickster complained about the emptiness of the city in Mean Streets. L.A. of Rise the Dragon has empty areas too - seemingly abandoned warehouses and water reservoirs. Still, there’s plenty of places with people coming and going or at least just standing around. My special favourite is the pleasure dome, which truly feels like a place with real live people - particularly as you can chat up with some random dudes.
 |
| The seedier parts of the city |
 |
| OK, well I shouldn’t call them dudes |
Rating: 7
Dialogue and Acting
This a difficult category to score, especially as in my comparison games the scores are all over (Mean Streets got 6, but Countdown only 4, and I didn’t think they were that different in their dialogue systems). Well, at least Rise of the Dragon has less dialogue than those two games and definitely less characters to speak with. Then again, I think that this might actually be a plus for the RoD, because the few characters I talked with were more believable and rounded persons than any of the x + 1 characters in the Access Software games. This might be more due to the graphics than the actual dialogue - the hand drawn facial expressions of RoD just convey more of the personality of the characters than the photorealistic images of the other games.
One thing that I really liked was the use of dialogue trees, which required true decisions that really affected how the game would unfold. Sure, you could choose to bully people and make them angry in Mean Streets or Countdown, but you would just have to go somewhere and return and all would be forgotten. Not so in RoD. For example, try taking your flirtation with the mayor’s secretary too far and you might really make your girlfriend pissed. Such possibilities make the dialogue seem more lifelike and realistic.
A point of criticism is the use of racial stereotypes in characters. The list of Chinese people doesn’t look good: apart from a drunk and a Yoda-character, all Chinese are evil in the tradition of Fu Manchu. And as for all the Afro-Americans being of a lower social class and using very notable slang… well, we might give the producers the benefit of the doubt and call it clever social criticism.
 |
| You’ve already met Jake, the scrub-boy with a sweet tooth, but here’s Mujalambo, the obese bartender that Blade affectionately calls a rhinoceros. |
So, all in all a very mixed bag. I’ll settle for a middle road.
Score: 5
Putting things together we have (4 + 5 + 5 + 7 + 7 + 5)/0,6 = 55. I am also tempted to give the game one bonus point, just because it let the player choose whether he wanted to complete the arcade minigames. So, 56 it is!
Was Rise of the Dragon really that good? I’d definitely affirm it was. It certainly doesn’t have the magical qualities of Monkey Island or Quest for Glory 2, but it is fairly pleasant experience, which looking back was something mostly missing in games of 1990. The nearest guess was Laukku with 55! Here’s the rest of the CAP winners this time:
Cap Distribution
100 CAPs for Ilmari
- Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging his way through game for our enjoyment
- Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For making the closest guess for the Final Rating
- Eye for the Detail Award - 5 CAPs - For noticing the dithering in the games graphics
- Albert Barille Award - 3 CAPs - For recognising quality edutainment
- Parallel Universe Award - 5 CAPs - For showing the alternative ending
- Real Estate Agent Award - 3 CAPs - For trying to sell Fifth Element as an influence to the game
- Child Genius Award .- 6 CAPs - For more intelligent being me than
- Fisto Award - 3 CAPs - For questioning the sensibility of chocolate bars
- Gas Meter Award - 5 CAPs - For teaching the blogger some hard facts of life
- Fu Bar Award - 5 CAPs - For noticing the obvious acronym
- Genre Support Award - 5 CAPs - For linking to Adventure Gamers -awards of 2014
- Electricity Meter Award - 5 CAPs - For teaching the blogger some hard facts of life
- Everybody Wants Some! Award - 4 CAPs - For appreciating classick rock
- Every Breath You Take Award - 4 CAPs - For an alternative take on police
Monday, April 6, 2015
Screenshot of the Week 7 My nerdy hideout!
As I was expecting when I started playing Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls again, after the release of season patch, it didnt last for long. The game just doesnt offer enough builds or a huge item variety in order to keep me hooked. The Season has no new or different mechanics compared to standard servers and there are so few season only unique items that I can count them on the fingers of my hands and many of them are useless. The 1.2.0 patch didnt bring enough new features to relight the spark of a Hack & Slash game that took some bad steps from its very beginning. The season update seemed rushed to fit with whatever schedule Blizzard had or (maybe?!) the competition.
There is a golden time for singleplayer games at the moment, but I always had at least one online game to play at any given time. My lust for H&S was not satisfied by Diablo 3 RoS, so I came back to my sweet and buggy indie love, Path of Exile, because complexity is what makes PC games great and complexity is at home in this title.
The Forsaken Masters update really put a new spin on the game with new quests, a reputation system, player’s hideout, a crafting system and much more. There is a lot to do in the game and many things to aim for, is hard to get bored in Path of Exile and the developers didnt have to use a carrot on a stick loot system to keep players occupied.
Im enjoying a lot my time spent in this game since I returned to it and I think the new features are well designed and implemented.
Enough said about these games, is time for me to brag about my hideout which I created in less than three days (!):
 |
| A library like I always dreamed to have! |
I hope I can get more farming done before the new wave of singleplayer games kick in, starting with Legend of Grimrock 2 on fifteen of this month.
Screenshot of the Week 9 The end of a Legend!
Since I can’t afford games all the time, this week I had to choose between Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Wolfenstein: The New Order. I didn’t play many FPS games released this year, but not many action games either. I was tempted to go for Wolfenstein, but some unconvincing videos and a last minute deal, made me buy Shadow of Mordor and I can’t say that I regret my decision.
I was skeptical regarding this title and some of my fears proved to be right. It gets repetitive few hours into the game, mainly because of the low variety of enemy and missions. But the game shines on the technical part with crisp graphics and gorgeous animations. The combat system is what should be expected from a good action game, it’s visceral, dynamic and satisfying. You can’t get enough of battling dozens of orcs at once and executing them in a gory fashion.
I would have preferred a different setting than the Middle-Earth, because everything is canon in this universe and the way things were left in the books doesn’t give so much room for creativity, as some might think, without damaging the original story. Despite some interesting way of presenting it, the story is not captivating at all and it didn’t make me feel any attachment to the characters in it or made me curious about what I will find out in the next mission.
Overall Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor looks like a combination of Assassin’s Creed and Batman Arkham series set in Tolkien universe. The game has some interesting ideas in it, but it does lack substance to some degree, mostly because of writing issues and repetitive gameplay.
 |
| Look at his face! I feel so sorry!!! |
Hopefully I will be able to write a review for this game in the following weeks before Dragon Age: Inquisition is released, because I think that game is going to eat all my time.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Play Attack of the Mutant Killer Bingo Wings free online
- Save the earth of the aliens..
- Sauver la terre des extraterrestres..
- أنقذ الأرض من الغزاة القادمين من الفضاء.
Fullscreen - Plein écran - شاشة كبيرة
Go back - Retour - الرجوع للخلف
Go back - Retour - الرجوع للخلف
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Download Transformers Fall of Cybertron SKIDROW 2012
Download Transformers Fall of Cybertron-SKIDROW (2012) -
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron transports you to the final days of the
planet Cybertron where you will experience the darkest hours of the
apocalyptic war between the AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS. Embark on an
adrenaline-fueled journey through a wide range of missions and massive
environments designed around each characters unique abilities. With
the stakes higher than ever before, you play as a variety of
Transformers characters, including Grimlocks nearly indestructible
T-Rex form and the legendary Combaticons forming into the colossal
Bruticus. Fight through both sides of the Transformers most epic
battles leading to their legendary exodus from their homeworld.
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron allows you to go head-to-head as
AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS with its multi-player online mode. Create your
own personalized character and weaponry with the most advanced and in-depth customization ever before seen in a Transformers video game.
Download :
[LINK]
Prince of persia free android games
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Friday, April 3, 2015
God Of War I Download Full Version For Free
God Of War I Download Full Version For Free
God Of War I Download Full Version For Free
Description:God of War I is third person Action & Adventure Game Installed By Sonita Studio. This is published on Sony Computer Entertainment ( SCE ). It is released on March , 2005.The Console of this game is PS2.The First game of its series.This game is based on the Ancient Greeks Thoughts.The Player ( Protagonist ) named Kratos , Following or serving the gods of Olympians.He took mistake in killing the Acres family.Now , he was searching in Pandoras Box (Artifact in Greeks ).Gameplay of this game is combo based.Kratos Learns new combats in the game and gets new achievements after getting the specific number of reddish things. You can see your Achievements in pushing the Select Button.The Main weapon in the Game is the Blade Of Chaos.You have to push (press) the button in a specific duration so that you can defeat the Bosses and Stronger Enemies like in the start to kill the Large Fish.This game contains some Puzzles as well.
Download God Of War I
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Turn your passion of Photography into an e business
Now you can earn money in home easily with job security With job postings still scarce job and wages seemingly stagnant at best, Most of the people want to put their income in safer jobs and to create more security by creating multiple streams of income .
By the same smart strategy, it must be the additional job to you all without any effort. you don’t need to search outside and it is mainly helpful for the women who has kids,simply sit at home and earn money easily or for the retired persons to if you’re stuck at home most of the day, you’ve probably thought about the income side by side to running your own business.
See Also : Delicious Ways to Make Money With Instagram Photos Online
Apart from blogging, affiliate marketing freelancing or gamings, it might be the another interesting new techniques to earn online. You can earn more potential by two ways yet, it is to be remembered now that with the spreading awareness among the potential entrepreneurs, the two stated fields are becoming saturated and complicated.
By this article i don’t want to bore you with same way , to show you some attractive and profitable earning ways Whether you already have a photography website or you’re just starting out, this guide will coach you to create a robust website that supports your photography business online.
Turn your Photography into an e-business!
The Internet has caused an explosion in the demand for stock photography. As the number of media and commercial outlets has increased dramatically with the growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos.Online graphic design portfolios offer limitless opportunity to exhibit your small business.
Using a marketing and advertising plan, you set up your individual website, arranged for bank card and Pay – Pal billing, and took detailed photos from the playhouse. By using digitalization, all of us have got the potential to turn into a photographer and make money by selling high definition pictures online. digitalization is the great boom in photo world. All it needs is a little homework and time to get a hold of the skill.
See Also: How to Make Money Selling Photos Online
Nearly every newspaper, magazine and website will ready to pay you for the images in their post. you don’t need to be a best photographer, all you need is best camera only. For example, they can only increase profits if customers save money; they are able to only reduce overhead in the event the suppliers lower their prices; they are able to only hire high caliber people if they get better job applicants.
If you’re a professional photographer (or even just a hobbyist) you should consider the possibilities of selling stock images online.a potential Photographers can find you and hundreds of other photographers online and peruse through your little piece of the web hoping to find an image that speaks to them. Although you and I might like to think it’s all about the photos, the truth of the matter is that it comes down to a lot more than the image.
Lot of websites are mainly works on the same principle where either few of them sell random pictures from you or place an order to get perfect clicks for them.
Few sites are:
1)Photo Merchant
2)SmugMug
3)Zenfolio
4)ifp3
5)DigiLabs
6)Instaproofs
7)PhotoReflect
See Also: 7 Real Ways to Make Money Online with your Hobbies
Build the homepage of your photography website. Having a professional-looking homepage is essential to building a successful website. You will want to creatively display some of the best pieces of your photography on this page.That way it’s simple! Fast! No-stress!!!!!! And you can be making money with your photos months – maybe even years – faster than you ever would if you tried to figure it all out on your own.
Best Price The ICO Shadow of the Colossus Collection for Sony PS3
The Benefits of Having The ICO && Shadow of the Colossus Collection for Sony PS3
As we all know that right now we are in the era of technology, which means that there are lots of many kinds of product that will be easily done in no time such as The ICO && Shadow of the Colossus Collection for Sony PS3. Almost every product can be done with the great shape and also in the great quality and in the short time. They can multiply the product in the large quantity simply in the short time. Well, here are some benefits of having this product.Besides the person who have The ICO && Shadow of the Colossus Collection for Sony PS3, there some other things that can get the benefit of having this kind of product. Let us just say that when you feel proud then people who support you will also feel the same. Just like a team who won champion in the competition, although they there are some people who are not playing, but still they are winners because they are a team. And still many more benefits that you can get if you have this product, so visit the link in order to find out what the other benefit of having this product.
Monday, March 16, 2015
Notable Game Releases This Week Of May 10th 2010
3D Dot Game Heroes - PlayStation 3
Lost Planet 2 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Skate 3 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 - PSP
Read more »
Lost Planet 2 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Skate 3 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 - PSP
Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns Of The Patriots 3 55 PS3 ISO
Disk ID: BLUS 30109
Region: USAWorks on: CFW 3.55
Link download
HERE Series of HARRY POTTER Ebook is Here!
Here is a series of seven epic fantasy novels of HARRY POTTER written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The series chronicles the adventures of a young wizard, Harry Potter, the titular character, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
1. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
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