Category: games

After almost a year of waiting, Battlefield Heroes is finally released. At first glance, it's alright - very cartoon-like. It has nice graphics. Great price for the entry level stuff (free) and it's very easy to install and play. Just install the browser plugin for firefox and it will download the game and load it up for you. The game even finds the best server for you to join based on your team selection and experience.

As I've always said with gaming, there's a spectrum that games fit in, with "Fun/Arcade" on one end and "Realistic" on the other. This game is very arcade, moving more in the direction of "zany" and away from any semblance of reality. It's meant to be slapstick and goofy. It's like some of those weird mods people came up with for Battlefield 1942. While it is produced by EA and probably some of the same developers, it's definitely a different animal than previous games in the Battlefield scenery.

Worth mentioning here is how EA plans to make money on something they're giving away for free. EA hopes to entice players to cough up money for addons, power ups and new abilities, and get advertisers to cough up money for in-game advertising. This will be interesting to watch unfold.

For now, check it out - the price it right!

Fantastic Contraption is a great flash-based game. It allows you great flexibility in the design of your contraption. The goal of the game is explained in the tutorial - essentially all you're trying to do is get the pink ball into the pink area. Sounds simple enough, right? Each level gives you a different challenge. Either some pitfall or obstacle is in your way.

Many of you have probably already played, but I'd like to see your contraptions in the comments section of this post.

After reading about the Homebrew Channel for a modified Wii, I was intrigued. In the past I've run linux on a Playstation, soldered modchips into countless Xbox consoles and had quite a blast adding and updating various scripts for the Xbox. I wondered what the Wii could be capable of.

At present there are only a handful of "homebrew" apps you can use on a Wii, but this didn't stop me. The future for Wii homebrew looks bright and it looked so easy I just had to give it a try. I visited the Homebrew Channel homepage which is literally a one-stop shop for modifying a Wii console. All you need is a spare SD card (I used a 2Gb card) and a copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess (I had a free rental credit). In almost no time at all I had the Homebrew Channel (HBC) installed and was quickly accessing homebrew apps.

A video of the Twilight Hack is here and the Homebrew Channel is here.

Currently the most promising app is ScummVM. Many of the supported games I haven't played and those that I have played, I haven't touched in at least 10 years. They were truly groundbreaking titles for the PC gaming industry. Full Throttle, Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island - the big ones. Now, I can continue to play the point-click interface with the Wii controller. Perhaps an official re-release is in order for some old LucasArts games.

It's hard to categorize exactly what Phun is. A game? There's no rules really. You could argue that it's educational, but it's just so darn fun. It's alot like a 2D virual Lego set: stimulating free-form play.

Created by Emil Ernerfeldt for his Master's thesis, Phun is a physics engine with dynamic shapes that can be arranged, moved and associated however you wish. For more info, check out the Phun webpage.

Grendel sez: Here's my first creation. The chain was a doozy to get working right.

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 alot. It's a great game. I enjoy playing just about every class on the game. I play Engineer most of the time, although at times I've been known to completely devour the opposing team as a Sniper.

As I was playing earlier I realized that most Engineers place their teleports near the upstairs spawn point in the 2Fort map (I play 2Fort almost exclusively). It really drives me crazy when I get in some teleporter and it takes me to my teams flag room and not to the enemy base (where all good teleports should go). I decided I needed to make it easier on my teammates to know where my teleport takes them, so I made a spraypaint.

I just made it in MS-Paint, set the canvas to the right dimensions, downloaded the TeamFortress2 Font Pack and voila! I has-got custom spraypaint. So here it is, my simple teleporter label.

Grendel sez: I also enjoy these treats. The Sentry Gun decoy (red, blue) and the crouching sniper decoy (red, blue).