Jetpack Joyride Controls

Jetpack Joyride is a game that I've played a fair amount on my iPhone. It's a fun game of the single-button style where you move up by pressing the button and down by letting go in order to dodge obstacles that travel from right to left on the screen. The bad part about the iPhone version of this game is that the only place they could put the button was on the screen. That means that part of the screen must be covered by your finger in order to control the game, meaning that part of the screen is not visible when you need to interact with the game. That is a problem since the only way of knowing if there is something to dodge is by looking at the screen, some of which is now covered by the controls.

This week, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jetpack Joyride as a free download for my Playstation Vita. I thought, "Perfect! Now I can play this game by pressing a button." It turns out that I was wrong in my thought. The only way to press the button in the PS Vita version of Jetpack Joyride is to touch the rear touch pad. While the rear touchpad is a huge improvement over using the screen to cover up your vision, there exists yet another problem. The problem with the PS Vita controls is that it is nearly impossible to hold the device without accidentally touching the rear touchpad. There is no way to configure the controls to be anything else, and so I am left wondering why they didn't just use the 'x' button, or better yet, allow the player to use any of the buttons they want. It couldn't have been that difficult to allow any of the controller buttons to indicate a desire to move in the game.

Please game developers, don't use touch controls when a button will work better. Let me repeat, do not use touch controls when button inputs will work better. Thank you.

Guild Wars 2

In the last 2 weeks, I have played quite a bit of Guild Wars 2. In my opinion, it is currently the best MMO on the market. This post will just be a few brief words about my first experiences with the game. As my highest level character is only 30 (out of 80 levels) and I've played very little of the PvP or WvW game modes, this should not be considered a comprehensive review.

First, the movement controls in GW2 feel very tight and as I would expect based on my experience in playing World of Warcraft, which has perfect MMO movement controls in my opinion. The abilities are on a hot bar from 1 to 0, with a couple other skills mapped to F1-5 and the ` key depending on the profession (class) you are playing. Unlike most other MMOs, you are restricted to only this number of active skills at any given point in time, making it much less obnoxious in terms of key bindings in comparison to others. Keys 1-5 are based on your currently equipped weapon and profession. Key 6 is a healing ability, 7-9 are basic profession skills, and key 0 is an advanced skill.

Weapon abilities unlock as you use the weapon. When you dual wield, the main hand weapon decides skills 1-3 and the offhand decides 4 and 5, while 2 handed weapons come with all 5 abilities. Every profession starts with a healing ability, and can unlock others as they level. The basic ability slots unlock as you level, with abilities costing skill points to unlock. Skill points are earned on level, and can also be obtained through skill point challenges throughout the world. The advanced skill becomes available at level 30, and you can unlock those skills with a larger number of skill points.

Based on your choices during character creation (and some decisions as you progress through the story), your character develops in a personal story with the major characters in the universe. Almost all of the personal story quests develop through well voice acted sequences, with reasonably well lip-synched characters. Then on top of the personal story, each place you travel to in the world has regular events that you can participate in, or choose to leave on your journey. Your character naturally levels down to whatever area you are in, so adventuring remains a challenge even as you gain levels. This also makes it easy to jump in and quest with a friend who is lower level.

To top this all off, there is no monthly fee and the game can be had right now for only $60. If you know me personally and want to play with me, I'm on the Eredon Terrace World.

How to win the Greeviling

It's been a couple days that I've played the Greeviling in Dota 2, and I've learned a little bit about how the game works. In the Greeviling, the objective is to land the killing blow on 11 greevil camps before the other team does. In the first few rounds of greevils, the camps only have 1 big greevil to kill. However, towards the end, the camps start filling with up to 2 big greevils and 2 little greevils. It's important to remember that all of the greevils count, so you only get credit for the last greevil killing blow, regardless of whether it is a small or big greevil. So be careful about the enemy sweeping in at the last moment, or using long range abilities to steal kills that you did all the damage on.

Another important part of the Greeviling is hero selection. In the Greeviling, items are only granted at random, so there is no way for you to pick which items you want or go shopping. Instead, you have to hope to get items that will be useful to your particular hero of choice. As a result, the safest hero picks are the ones that are not very item dependent. I like to pick heroes with abilities that scale well in damage since items won't affect how useful they are. Stuns and disables, like always, are also very good reasons to select certain heroes. An interesting part of the greeviling, is how you get to select which greevil you want to use in addition to choosing your hero. It's significantly more effort to have all the best greevils available, but I've found my greevil selections to make hero selection less important. Since you can switch to your greevil as often as you want, you should ideally pick a greevil with a stun or disable of some kind. Luckily, most greevils seem to come that way.

Dota 2 Holiday: the Greeviling

So apparently Valve has had a promotional site up for a couple of days advertising something they call Frostivus. Well, today is the 3rd day of the site, and today they announced that Frostivus has been canceled because of something they call the Greeviling. It would appear that the Greeviling will pit players against hoards of Greevils in an effort to recover items which will be gifted to other players. If you weren't aware, a Greevil is a creature that Valve introduced back around Halloween for that special event. In fact, Valve is continuing to sell eggs that will hatch into Greevil couriers, so you can head to the store to purchase them. Hopefully, this event will give us a chance to pick up more essences for our Greevil eggs. Check out the official video if you want some excitement about the event.

Thoughts on farming casual games

I've spent some time tinking lately about farming style games and what I think of them. The basic gameplay in these games is almost exclusively clicking on something once to initiate a timer until you can click on that same thing again. This waiting game naturally provides some excitement as the moment of clicking approaches. Then you get a brief feeling of joy as you click and the reward for the action pops out.

This basic gameplay is actually a fairly good representation for a number of real world activities. For instance, in a real farm, you perform a brief action of planting a seed, then after some much longer period of time, you perform another small action to reap the reward of whatever that plant produced.

However, the vast majority of farming style video games these days seem designed almost entirely to separate the player from their money as efficiently as possible. Many gamers are offended with the genre because of this commercialization, but I don't believe that the design has to be monetized in that way. In fact games like simtower were very similar, but had a more traditional monetization through a one-time purchase.

If I find the time, I may design a game using this play style, but a much more reasonable monetization.

Planetside 2

I recently saw Planetside 2 on Steam and decided to give it a whirl. It turns out, this is the first real MMO-FPS game I've tried and I found it very interesting. First, you choose one of 3 factions on which to fight along with which of the 6-12 (if I remember correctly) servers to play on. Then you choose one of 5 classes to play (flyer, fighter, healer, reloader, sniper) and a spot to spawn on the battlefield. The spawns are almost always right next to some fighting, so you are very quickly placed into some action.

As it was my first experience with the game, I ran around shooting guys and dying a lot. Then I noticed that there are tons of vehicles flying and driving around. It appears that one of the main strategic actions in the game is to take a troop transport vehicle near an opposing base and deploy it to allow your team to spawn there until it gets destroyed. If you are attempting to defend a base, it's almost certainly a good idea to find where those spawning trucks are and destroy them as soon as possible. However, the majority of players really just seem to swarm all over the objectives, spending much of their time shooting the other team in the face.

For a first time player, I like how easily you can get in and play. For extended play, I'm unsure how well upgrades serve to keep the gameplay interesting. I'm also concerned that the weapons and progression may require too much grinding to really make it worth my while to keep playing long term. Still, I think the game is worth a couple play sessions.

Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP

I've been known to buy every humble bundle whenever they come out. I recently bought a nexus 7 and have been able to try out the android humble bundles that I had previously not played. I found a pleasant surprise in a game called Super brothers: Sword and Sorcery EP. It is a point and click (touch) adventure game with old-school pixel graphics. They do an excellent job of using the features of tablet and cell phone devices. Occasionally you rotate your device to switch between movement and combat modes. The game is broken up into a number of segments and they lead to natural stopping points which is good for short play sessions. I haven't yet beaten the game, but I keep wanting to play to learn more about the setting and the story. I recommend that anyone who can, try the game to see what they think. Here are a few screenshots from the game so you can get an impression of what it is like.