Shmee.Me

February 3, 2013

Do you Dare to Enter The Cave?

The Cave is a hybrid Platformer-Adventure game made by Double Fine Game Studios and published by Sega. If you are a fan of platforming games or adventure games, do yourself a favor and check this game out.

The game is about seven adventures that are going to explore The Cave to find what their heart desires most. They all come from different walks of life: a Monk, an Adventure (think female Indiana Jones), a Hillbilly, a Scientist, Twins, a Knight, and a Time-Traveler. Their desires are varied and have twists that you will find out as you play the game.

Double Fine is known for charming games and The Cave continues this tredition. The Cave itself provides the narration, and is very funny, and the explorers all have a fun look and feel even if what they desire is not altruistic.

To play the game you jump up and down in a two-dimensional world, but unlike most platformers timing is rarely difficult. The challenge in this game are the puzzles. Trying to figure out what you need to do to proceed. Each character can hold one item at a time, and you only get three characters per play through, so you can count on having to have them team up to solve the problem. And the puzzles do a great job of being brain teasers but still having common sense based answers, and each play through is about three hours, so it is not as if you are devoting your life to this game, and you can save a quit anywhere.

But really the draw here is the great writing and charm they crammed in to every corner of this game. If you like video games then this is something you should check out. If not, I still think you may want to give it a look.

February 2, 2013May 6, 2015

First Run in Shadowrun!

A few of my buddies, Andy, Shawn, Daniel, and I, got together to play the table-top RPG Shadowrun. For those that don’t know what a table-top RPG is, think D&D or geeks; actually both. So pretty much it is a bunch guys getting together, rolling dice, checking off spreadsheets, and following/creating a story with characters that they have created for this game. If your thinking that sounds awesome, it was. If your thinking, wow nerd overload, then this probably isn’t for you.

Shadowrun takes place in the near future, but the twist is that at the end of the Mayan calender that magic as released in to the world, so now it is full of, Elves, Dwarves, and what-have-you. Also the future is now run by Mega Corporations that use governments as their pawns (so that part is pretty spot on), and ‘Runners’ are their mercenaries that carry out missions for them. So we as the players take the roles of these runners.

Shadowrun was a little daunting at first, due to the sheer amount of customization you can do with your character. Every gun, item of clothing, in game knowledge, skills, and pretty much everything else can be tweaked, but once I got the basic stats down it became a little easier. We also took awhile just to figure out how to play the game, like hit an opponent, and how much damage you do and or take, and since the rule book is 348 pages long, you can see why it took awhile to get it all down. To be fair to the book, there are a lot of examples and short stories in it, so it is not all rules.

But once it got going it was a lot of fun, and like most of these games the reason for that is mostly due to the company you are with. Having a good time will pizza and pop, and little trash talking. I hope we get to play again soon.

February 1, 2013

30Rock Comes to an End

Last night was 30Rock’s final show, and it was sad to see such a funny show leave the air, but if this show was indicative of what the writers had left, then I am glad they decided to call it quits. This episode was not up to the shows usually funny standards. It was meandering and slow, and it only had a few laugh out loud funny moments.

The show was about how when people get their wishes, sometimes it is not as fulfilling as they wanted. Jack is CEO, but bored now that he has accomplished it all. Liz has kids, but being a stay at home mom is unfulfilling, and Lutz is still fighting for his dream of ordering Blimpies subs for lunch. Also Tracy has abandonment issues.

I think the sixty minute run time is what does this episode in. It just lingers on too long and there are too many gaps between jokes. I wish everyone involved with this show a good future and much success, but it was a shame to go out with a whimper.