In order to post something, I would like to present to you, the fabulous:
Dictionary feature of OS X Tiger (and Panther had it too.. I think).
Yeah, if you own this cool OS, you can mouse over any word on Safari, and hold “Command+Ctrl+D”.
This will bring up a very small window (which takes some time to load on my computer) that gives you the meaning of the selected word… if there’s any.
Try it!
Ok, this is a brain exercise.
You must read the next paragraph, and count all of the F’s that are in there:
“I’ve found many dangers through the depths of the ocean.
I’ve fought my way through thousands of gigantic tentacles.
I’ve seen very beautiful treasures lying in the bottom of this yellow field.
But never had I stopped to listen to the beauty of this silence.”
Ok, now put the number of F’s you counted in the protected post below… (be sure to put digits only 0-9, not letters)
If you insert the correct number, the post will unlock, and you will get your “Award”…
If you’re wrong… you should consider reading it again.
Happy counting.
Ever since my brothers and I started our “network-gaming brotherhood” (meaning, since we first played a 2 or more player game over a network), I have had the honor of beating all of my brothers in-game, every time we fought.
But this supremacy (particularly aided by the fact I’m the older brother… the oldest of my brothers has 4 years less than me.) has come to an end.
My brothers have grown up,
surpassing my mind skills, and my game skills in many ways.
I’m still more intelligent than all of them together, of that I’m sure.
But I’m definitely not as smart, or skillful as they are in some areas…
…strategy included.
This makes me totally uncomfortable, and at the same time, makes me happy.
Now that they play well enough to beat me, my games with them become far more interesting, giving me a total “satisfaction” feeling every time I play vs them.
On my won games vs my brothers:
More than I can recall. (No kidding)
On my lost games vs my brothers:
3-5 games lost, and 1 draw in “Tremulous” (and only vs Ed, [4 years’ difference]).
18-20 games lost in “Wesnoth” (mostly because they teamed up vs me).
And, last and most painful for me, is my defeat in “Warcraft III demo” vs Eri (the next brother after Ed… [7 years’ difference]).
I don’t really know what happened. But I got pwned.
My excuse is that I hadn’t played in a LONG while… I started the game on a very average strategy, I totally pwned his hero, I had 2 expansions, and then…
I couldn’t keep the pressure on him, I couldn’t find the way to attack him, so, he took that chance, and turned the tide; since that game I lost, I’ve re-matched him like twice, and I made sure to overwhelm him, and finish him off…
(so I was definitely asleep when I lost)
I’ll be updating the numbers, if there’s any changes.
Elí
Since the beginning of my blogging career, my only wish has been to get comments, feedback, something to rely on to, so that I could keep on writing.
Now, I believe I don’t “need” the comments to write, I write very well on my own without any feedback at all… or, do I?
It has struck me like lightning, that the most successful blogs, have a comment box right at the end of every post, and a line of comments that sometimes runs for so long it needs page 2,3,4,5…
And most of this comments are fan comments… like: WTG!, Great stuff!, I loved this post!, or Keep it on!.
And then… some others are comments that add to the post, sometimes making it into a conversation in which the post is the topic, and that kind of commenting adds up to the post, which makes the post more interesting, and by consequence, more people want to comment on it.
In conclusion: the ability of the reader to comment, is essential for any blog.
That’s why I’ve just changed the commenting rules in my blog, to make commenting much more faster than it was.
Now almost every comment will be added to the post as soon as you click submit “comment”.
I hope you can now comment to your heart’s content.
Elí
My next review is for Kavasoft’s “iConquer”, which is basically: Risk, mac style.
As some of you may know, Risk is a classic (and the most popular) “world-conquer” board game.
Well, Kavasoft managed to bring the board game to the mac, and made a game with all the simplicity a mac implies:
No More Complications
Setting up the game, dice-rolls, card checking, counting countries & troop income, etc. will stop being something to worry about, as the computer will take care of all that for you, so all you have to take care of, is to have fun, and think your strategy. (mine is to make the world look a “uniform green”, if you get what I mean)
No more “Abandoned games”
Yes, that’s right, forget about games lost to time.
In iConquer, you just save them!
No more “I can’t play with you right now”
Well, not actually; people can still reject your playing proposal, but what I mean is that iConquer comes with several different AI’s, that let you play iConquer, with no need of human players. Plus, in the case you had a human player, and he leaves (or bails out), you can change his status, from human to AI. (the same viceversa)
More worlds to conquer
iConquer has more battlegrounds to offer than just our world map.
There’s some spin-off maps from the world map, like a digital-themed world map, or maps of Europe, United states, etc.
And there’s some totally new ideas, like a shattered glass map, solar system, and even tenochtitlán!
Internet features
iConquer features two buttons in it’s game interface: Connect, and Server.
Guess what the buttons do?
Yeah, they connect you to a game in the network, or make you start your own server in the network.
And iConquer uses Bonjour also, thus meaning, that if there’s another mac in the reach of your local network, you can connect to it (or the same way around) without any fuss, just by selecting the mac and clicking connect. And you will find yourself playing in a matter of seconds. (provided both macs have iConquer of course…)
Also, when you start a network game, and enough player join, a feature in iConquer, allows you to communicate with them through iChat. (something I haven’t tried, I guess it has to do with the seldom use I have of iChat, and the fact I don’t have many friends that use their macs to play iConquer, most of them use them to play “developer” and I don’t have that game… ;b)
Things I liked
I really don’t play Risk often, just a small peek at its gameplay every one or two years. (whenever I visit someone that has the game).
So when I wanted to play iConquer, I had some doubts, and when I clicked the Help button, I never expected so many help!
It doesn’t mean I got a scroll of a thousand words, explaining me everything about the game, it was actually only a paragraph or two, aided by some images.
The thing about the help is that it worked contextually, depending on what you where doing (if I was placing armies, it would show me how to place armies, if attacking, it would show me how to attack, etc.), and this kind of help, makes you understand what you are playing, and enjoy it.
The innovative features. Every now and then you find an application with some weird features, and iConquer manages to put together some:
Boss mode: you just hold “apple-command+e” and you change to a nice excel worksheet, which is really a map in disguise. (be warned, this works only if you were playing the default map.) I had seen this feature in “Defcon“, and in “N“.
It’s basically a quick way to hide the fact you were playing, hence the “Boss mode” tag.
It also features some dev packages, that add automatically to your Xcode apple dev tools. (It means you can create AI’s of your own, and maps too… With some editing knowledge.)
Things I didn’t like:
Bugs, of which I’ve found two:
Number one: adding players in the new game setup window will cause weird behavior, I had to do some maneuvering to get 4 players, with their preferred colors and their respective names.
Second and last bug: sometimes, changin a human player to an AI controlled player, will stop the game, like if on pause. No one moves, and no one get’s turn. This fixes if you change the AI back to human, or if you save and quit and then resume the game with the AI’s there.
And no sound…
Yep, this game is MUTE. No sound. At all. I don’t know you, but I would have liked the option to turn on sounds.
Summary:
This game is for the Risk fans, and for those who have longed to play Risk before, but never had time, or a manual to do it.
This game is for the strategic fan, who likes all of his plans to have a probability of failing, to be realistic.
The last thing I can say is, this game is for bringing your friends along, and have a blast (of fun).
It’s like inviting them to play a board game, but it’s far more easy to set up, and pick up.
Hope you liked the review, or that you found it helpful.
This game falls in the puzzle genre, a genre I don’t like as much as I like real-time strategy, turn-based strategy, or first person shooters…
But Pangea really added some immersive detail to this game, and I like it very much.
Enigmo 2 is all about getting different forms of matter (water, laser and plasma, to be precise) into their correspondent container, through the obstacles in the different levels. Manipulating the different forms of matter with some tools, or gadgets (gutters, mirrors, magneto-spheres, etc.), that you are able to move around and position.
This way, you can “guide” the matter into the correspondent container.
Then, the complexity arrives, as all the levels in Enigmo 2 are three-dimensional, thus, meaning that guiding the matter becomes a really hard job, ensuring a really puzzling experience.
Things I liked: All of the surfaces have different effects on the matter (mirrors, or plain surfaces deflect laser, but other things, like a wall of stone, don’t. The same applies for plasma, but water may bounce in the wall. )
You can build your own maps, with the integrated map editor.
There are many different ways to accomplish your mission, you don’t need to think in one particular way.
The music in the background is great.
Things I disliked: The camera is hard to manage, I have a laptop’s one-button mouse, and it’s really hard to move around the levels when they start getting big and three-dimensional.
Consequentially, placing your gadgets in a 3-D level can get very tiresome, as it’s not a very intuitive placement mechanism, you have to correct your gadget placement very often.
Summary: This game is designed to be fun, entertaining, and a challenge to the minds of puzzle-solvers, but even when you are not a puzzle-solver yourself, the immersive detail of the game will have you entertained all the way until you can’t solve the next level (get stuck, and fail, and maybe fall in a gaming depression).
Anyway, hope you find this review entertaining, or helpful.
Elí
P.D. Happy new year! …(couldn’t hold myself.) ;b
Pics:
Trailer:
Mi nuevo sitio para hosting de imágenes.
Es mi galería de fotos.
Saludos!
Elí
This christmas holidays, my family had a different way of wasting the holidays than we are used to…
We stayed home.
We received the guests, instead of being the guests.
Besides that, I had an appointment with the orthodontist on early december, which means I had my braces tightened up, which means I had trouble eating food for the rest of the month… (my teeth get very sensitive, and I can’t chew without feeling pain)
And to crown it all… I caught a cold, which had me partially knocked out for a week (in bed), and it hasn’t really cleared up yet… *achoo!* (he, he)
But in the end, it wasn’t all pain and sickness…
This holidays we had uncle Marco as a guest, we went with him to play soccer at the Tangamanga I, we took him downtown, and we made him a victim of the “common cold”. (in case you don’t know, uncle Marco is my dad’s big brother)
Also, we had the visit of Mom’s parents: Grandpa Chequis, and grandma Lila; we were still sick at that time, so they had to go on downtown without us.
And our efforts to spread the cold to them were an UBBER PHAIL.
Anyway, thanks to the fact I stayed home, I could notice something about christmas:
Yes, I found my way to the “Mac giving tree”.
And I got some cool presents (what can be cooler than mac games?):
The Pangea software: “Enigmo 2″, very good puzzle game, totally immersing.
The Kavasoft “iConquer”, very simple, Mac-style, conquer-the-world game.
And last, but definitely not least: “Lugaru”. From Wolfire Software.
It’s very important to notice that all of this apps are from independent software developers.
Or as many a person calls them: “Indies”.
I’ll write about their games when I get the chance.
On the meantime, I wish you a very happy new year. (when does one stop saying “happy new year”?)
Cheers,
Elí.
P.D. Notice the links to the indie companies? I searched for the way to do that hyper-linking stuff with HTML, and I feel very accomplished because it works. 