Angry Birds

It’s been a while since my last post, I was travelling this past weekend so not much gaming done then, apart from a fair amount of time with “Angry Birds“. What a great little package that is for the price of $1, on top of that they added more levels for free with an update. I really try to get perspective from 3 different angles when looking at iPhone games. First and most importantly, my own, the game from a gamer’s perspective. I saw an addictive little slingshot puzzler game where you have to beat down enemies using various types of ammo (birds), that have different abilities, while navigating or using obstacles to crush your foe. Since each round only takes 20 seconds at most, it fits the iPhone game formula of pick up and play when you’re standing in line, in-transit, or whatever else (not that it stopped me from spending an hour on the couch with it). All of this tells me that this is a great game. Then I usually like to see what my girl friend thinks of it. She’s not a novice when it comes to gaming, she’ll play as much Mario as she can get her hands on, but her tastes don’t go much beyond that, aside from the occasional iPhone game, Topple, Diner Dash, that sort of thing. She also owns an iPhone, so it takes some of the ‘non-intuitiveness’ of iPhone gaming out of the equation. She agrees that it’s fun… Finally I like to put it into the hands of someone who doesn’t own an iPhone with no instructions just to see how it goes. In this case it was a good 10 minutes before I got my phone back. Needless to say, it’s worth your dollar, and I’d still say it would have been a good game at the $5 price point.

Skate 3

The remaining gaming time I had has been mostly spent waiting for HD Skate 3 clips to render and transfer to EA servers, or almost transfer, then have to render all over again… That could have been handled way better… If a clip is rendered, why not save it in a rendered state before uploading… that way if the upload fails you don’t have to sit there for 15 minutes while it renders again… (all my uploads were in HD, and they take FOREVER) I finished my first go at a compilation reel which I have attached below. I’ve learned that it takes A LOT of clips to fill a 4 minute song, and despite upgrading to the $10 “Filmer Pack” DLC which boosted 5 minutes of storage, they clearly were offering 5 minutes of standard definition recording because I had to clear my profile a couple times to get the footage I needed for the 4 minute sample which I guess is understandable, but still disappointing, for $10 there isn’t much value there.

Montage moved here

This has been a crazy week for games, but sadly, one I’m not really able to participate in. The reason being I’m going on vacation next week, and traveling overseas for two weeks. It’d be sort of silly spend that money on video games I won’t be able to play until I get back anyway so I’m holding off in case those funds are needed elsewhere. I had all but talked myself out of Red Dead Redemption until I started reading the reviews, it is getting some really really high praise so I may have been convinced to pick that up when I get back. I was kind of surprised by the Split/Second scores though, I thought it looked interesting but I thought it was going to come with some kind of major flaw, that doesn’t appear to be the case… so I guess it is up to Blur to determine which of those I grab since I’ve already decided I’m only getting one (if any). And I’m really excited for Prince of Persia regardless of how mediocre the review scores look, the common theme in those reviews are that fan of the franchise (namingly me) are going to enjoy the ‘return to form’ of the best in the franchise (in my opinion).

In any case this will likely be my last post until the middle of June since I won’t be doing any gaming while I’m over there I don’t think, certainly not the console variety, I’d imagine some iPhone, and some DS though (still have bowsers inside story to finish up). Over the next few days I’ll likely be playing Skate though, you’ll likely find some new clips on my skate profile if you’re really interested in keeping tabs on me.