Indie 4 You!

Hey guys!

I know it’s been forever! I really do have a hard time keeping a routine, but I count on your great patience to see me through this! Now, let’s get to the good news!

I’m taking part in a project from university that’s called Indie 4 You and I’m having a blast! Basically what we’re doing is talking about Indie games specifically. So, I guess I’ll be focusing a bit more on other games in this blog such as the triple A kind. There, we’ll be writing about them, making let’s play’s and pod-casts (which personally I can’t wait for since I’ve never made one). We haven’t decided on who’s posting what and exactly when they come out, therefore so far it is pretty random during the week! But each one of us will be posting an article every week, and we will try to let out a podcast per week as well. As for let’s play’s, it’ll take a while longer to let them out but we will also hopefully get a routine going. Guess people are going to be refreshing for a while… Help us out by having a look at the blog and posting some feed-back for us, as it is always very appreciated! Hit the like button on facebook

Link to blog:
http://indie4you.com/
Link to facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Indie4You

Thanks for reading, see you guys later!

 

Half Life 2 Let’s play is out!

Hello wonderful people!

The Let’s Play of Half Life 2 is finally out! As I mentioned before, if you’ve read the post I made on it you might not want to see it, but it’s nice to take a closer look at the game in detail. So have a look at it if you’re inclined, because I will be making a full let’s play of it on each chapter of the game! Hope you enjoy it and see you guys later…

Cathy’s Playground Vlog!

Hello my fellow bloggers!

I’ve come back with a surprise (which might not be so surprising)! I have made my very first Vlog on youtube making sort of an intro to all the games I will be playing! Now for those who have read my previous posts, the following video may not apply to you as it will be on Half Life 2 which I’ve already made a blog post on. But for those you who haven’t read and are more inclined to just sit back and just watch it (looking at it in detail), stay tuned! Because I will be putting it up this week(end)! Hope you guys enjoy it, and I’ll see you guys next time!

The Sims Social

Hey there!

Here I am once again doing a post on a facebook game which I thought I wouldn’t be making, but in any case I am to bare its farewell! It’s been a while since I made a post on a game and I found this one to be the most appropriate since its the one I’ve been going back to most… Since it’s the last month of the year, I decided to end it on a Christmas theme note, my favorite time and holiday of the year.

The Sims Social reached facebook with all its might and glory, a place which fit it like a glove as it arrived at its destined place! With The Sims being a well known and top selling game, it has not changed much in its format of building an environment to your taste and dealing with every day challenges in relationships and goals, the big difference however  with The Sims Social (other than the 2D visual), is that it just become a lot more interesting sharing this experience with your friends who appreciate this genre! The popuarity (I believe) is due to its competitive and cooperative nature. There goes long hours spent on a game that was designed to be “antsy” as my boyfriend would say… But as in most facebook games, it does have a catch to it! To get those “special”, prettier items to decorate you and your house, or to have more energy (setting the time limit of the game) to play the game further onwards, you must spend some real cash to experience it. As I mentioned in my post on Restaurant city, this is where I draw the line. Despite me having admittedly enjoyed the game so far, it doesn’t quite satisfy one’s needs fully as its original predecessor. So what’s my call on this? It’s a good game in the right place to be played casually with your friends (because it looses its purpose otherwise), and not for long periods of the day.

Steam Autumn Sale 2011

hey guys hey guys!

I know it’s been a looooong while since I last posted something and posting about this particular sale at this time may not be too appropriate, but in any case I felt in dept! So let me get to it and not make it too long! The Autumn Sale came with all of its little surprises, and it kind of caught me off guard since I’m preparing for a much bigger and exciting sale – the Christmas one which is right around the corner! So, without further ado, I did buy some games, which are:

• Clickr
• Inside a Star Filled Sky
• Blocks that Matter (which I was itching my finger to buy soon).
• TRAUMA

Unfortunately I still haven’t managed to play them until today! I got caught up on some old games and work at college, but I promise promise promise I’ll get right to them so that I can share my thoughts on it with you guys… AND I’m also preparing something special! I’ll give you guys a hint, it starts with v and sort of exposes one’s view like I do here!!! Hope you all had a great Autumn sale, but let’s wish for an even cooler one in Christmas! Don’t forget to leave your comments

Steam Summer Camp Sale 2010

Wow, did not see it coming but I was glad that I had some pennies to spare! With the summer sale, I hoped that my wish list would drastically reduce, and of course I would get the most wanted game of my wish list: Portal 2. But alas it has come to an end and I did not get my most wanted game… Why? Bought a whole bunch of others and felt like the 50% off was not enough, or perhaps I was feeling a bit guilty for spending too much. In any case, here’s a list of games which I bought:

• BIT.TRIP.RUNNER
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Dwarfs!?
• Fate of the World
• Flight Control HD
• Garry’s Mod
• Half-Life: Blue Shift
• King Arthur Collection
• Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West (Four Pack)
• Monday Night Combat
• Rush
• Sanctum

Not much compared to many gamer’s out there, but a couple of the games I bought just to get the tickets to redeem prizes from the booth and of course increase my chances for the great 10 free game prize, for example Rush and Flight Control HD. I’m a sucker for cute games along with the ones that have that pop cap look to them, so I felt it was a good cheap spending. But so far from what I’ve played on the list, most of them are super games which I recommend. From the prize booth I redeemed: Dwarfs!? Carnival DLC, Summer Gear (Monday Night Combat), Summer of Slaughter Map (Zombie driver), The Lonely cruise (Magicka), Denial Campaign (Fate of the World), The Golden ship (Beat Hazard), Goo Gear Snorkels (Portal 2), Resurgence Map Packs (Defense Grid). Hope you all had a great shopping!

Half Life 2: Episode 1

It’s time to bring Gordon Freeman back! I decided to continue writing about the Half Life 2 series, after all the whole series for me was great. After Half Life 2, the main character wakes up at a torn apart Citadel due to the consequences of what happened in the previous game. In this episode, we get a pretty big change where Alyx begins to actually help Gordon in their journey, as they attempt to evacuate the citizens from the area.

But before this starts, the game begins with the G-Man extracting Gordon from the blast of the reactor which we caused in Half Life 2. The Vortigaunts intervene and extract Alyx as well, taking us away from the G-man. I find the G-man part of the game to be sort of puzzling, but I guess it’s explained later in episode 3? The game sets off, Gordon wakes up and Dog rescues you from the rubble. We manage to make contact with Dr. Kleiner and Eli Vance, who have escaped the city, but we are informed that the Citadel’s core can explode at any minute! Are we going to make a run for it? Nope…

We are going in to intervene to gain enough time to evacuate, facing a couple of awful looking stalkers, the combine and zombies once again.

As I mentioned in the previous post of Half Life 2, what I enjoy about this game series is its story, hence why I’m writing about it here. My only complaint about this game, as many others have stated, is its short length! But I guess not much can be done about that, it only suggests how much we liked it. We face three new enemies in this game and the first one we come to contact with is the Stalker in the Citadel. As you can see, it has a pretty grotesque appearance and is not much of a threat as they only posses a laser from their eye panel. They are the ones who once resisted against the combine, but turned into this…

Next stop is the combine advisor, a more unfamiliar life form  looking very alien. The only threat he does is let out some form of energy which we can’t fight against. But on the next episode we see him more often.

Last but not least, we have the combine zombie! Or as Alyx baptized them, the Zombine. Fallen prey to the headcrabs, the Zombine now have extra armour and are a bit faster. They are pretty OK to deal with as well taking a couple more shots than the others, as long as they don’t go suicidal on you with their grenade…

As I mentioned the main objective or story driven aim is to evacuate the citizens from the blast of the Citadel and in order to do so we face these enemies and continue the story. I found some parts of the game to be a lot more interesting with Alyx helping, graphics are a lot better and you’re already familiar with the game play itself. Hope you enjoy this follow up from Half Life 2 and let’s get cracking at Half Life 2: episode 2!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to everyone, for those who celebrate and enjoy the holiday. I for one have to admit my interest is purely for the LOVE of chocolate and I anxiously wait to eat my egg, its the good old Kinder. I currently don’t have much to share in terms of my art, un-fortunetly its been kinda stationary. But on the other hand, I have a couple of games on the list which I want to buy which include:

• The Tiny Bang Story
• Fate of the World
• Portal 2

Portal 2 is the game I’m looking forward to most because I played the game at Nathan’s house and I absolutely loved it! We both beat the game and loved every bit of it. Thus I’ll be making a post on it hopefully pretty soon! Until then, enjoy your eggs!

Spelunky kicks!

Hey guys!

I’ve just made a pair of Spelunky shoes! I made them for my boyfriend, as he was making some pretty shoes for me too (here’s the link to his blog). For those of you who don’t know, Spelunky is a game me and my boyfriend played a lot in the beginning of our relationship, so its pretty dear to us. If you’d like to know more about it, you can have a look at the Spelunky blog post I made about it a while back.

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I enjoyed making these shoes quite a bit and I’m also making another pair for my boyfriend’s brother with a science theme. I had never thought about painting a pair of tennis shoes, but it was a pretty simple and nice idea to do! And you know what? I’m even considering taking commissions! I’m thinking about making some other shoes with other games I like, such as Plants versus Zombies which me and my boyfriend like. So what do you think, should I go for it?

Plants vs Zombies

So I went to the countryside, to what I thought was going to be for a couple of days, but then I recieve the dreadful news that its for more than a week! Ok, what did I have with me, a netbook. With the netbook I thought to myself, I can play platypus (trial), spelunky and minecraft – the low resolution games I knew. But much to my discontent, spelunky would only run without anything open (and I would get saturated), platypus didn’t run, and minecraft lagged like hell! But luckily my dearest boyfriend saved me and gave me Plants vs Zombies! Plants vs Zombies is an adorable game by Pop Cap, due to of course its art concept and easy gameplay. Lets face it, zombies looking like these don’t really look that creepy or threatening… Though they can be quite a pain when they come in hordes and in various kinds of “mutations”. Let’s take a look at them:

The first one is the simple kind, slow and easy to kill with a few hits. The next one, comes with a cone on its head, just a bit harder. But then it becomes difficult, with some having metal buckets on the head, some which come flying in with balloons until we reach zombies such as the footballer. He, unlike the others, is faster and has a tougher “shield”. But with the right combination of plants he can also be taken down pretty well. I had seen the game previously before I traveled and was considering buying it after I had seen my boyfriend play it. When I saw Plants vs Zombies on Steam, an adorable video comes up introducing the game! Have a look:

With this video, it was just irresistible! If you’d like to get a hold of this song you can download it from the Pop Cap site in both the English and Japanese versions. And of course they have franchise for this game too! Some of them are great, others not so much, but have a look at this adorable little sculpture of one of the plants:

At the moment, I found Tradeage selling a couple of these sculptures (not the one in the picture, but also pretty nice) and I have no doubt that there are other places you can also find them. If you’d like to try the game for free, check out this link for the web version, which I have tried out myself. If you’d like to download and buy the game, you can go to this link. Well then,  have a nice day and enjoy yet another great game!