Ittl Dew

If you like Zelda games but hate all the time wasted between puzzles. Ittl Dew is the game for you!








It's got pretty good writing that keeps the story going.

And it has signs, where needed.

It's got puzzles galore. Each room is a puzzle. It's got tools you need to solve those puzzles. It has absolutely zero filler. Once you are done with a dungeon, you are done. Don't go back in, nothing to see there. Move on to more puzzles (see above sign)

There are also even more challenging short cuts, which have a posted sign to let you know it's harder than the other room puzzles (with a sign to let you know you're going the hard way)

The combat is a bit off in that enemies are not knocked back, and will walk through your hits to get at you. So you have to hit and run back to avoid getting hit yourself. The enjoyable part is the dynamics between how enemies react with the room puzzles and your tools. It's unbelievable imaginative.



There are even multiple ways to finish the game. You don't need to get all of the items!

I salute you game devs for doing an amazing job, and I apologize for not picking this up earlier  on the OUYA. I ended up getting it on a Humble Bundle sale, and played it on Steam.

If your worried that it will take too long to complete, as I said above, there is no filler to this game. It's all puzzles and progress. I finished it in just over three hours. And I tried to solve every room and puzzle I could. Despite all of that, you can finish the game in under 15 minutes if you know exactly what you're doing. So you have no reason to not beat it!

Anyways, highly, highly recommended. The best Zelda non-Zelda game I've played in a long time.

Borderlands (the first)

So I started this a while back with a few friends at work. It was lot of fun. I started with a soldier, but switched to a berzerker. They were just more fun. I loved the RPG elements they added to guns, also random loot is just sweet!

I stopped playing in August 2011, when my group stopped playing together. I had a level 23 berserker. I picked it up again in December 2013, with my friend Bryan, and we crit path the rest of the game. I think I finished at level 32. Right before the last area, we hacked in a few good weapons to avoid the typical grind of do some damage, die, respawn, repeat. We could have avoided that cycle by leveling and eventually building up to better weapons, but this was faster and less grind-y.

Overall the game is quite fun, so let's end this with a bullet point summary.

Fun things:
* RPG elements throughout
* Playing campaign with coop
* Randomized loot done correctly
* Allowing for different playstyles (classes and their specializations, and guns)

Not fun things:
* Getting stuck in world geometry
* Being underpowered for quests (my own fault)
* Having to compare weapons as find them. It tends to slow the game down quite a bit. This is why hacking a good purple weapon for your level, and then ignoring weapon drops is much better gameplay.

Sadly, I missed the sale for Borderlands 2 by about 20 minutes. So I'll pick it up next time it goes on sale.

Kingdom Rush

I played this on the Android tablet I recently picked up.

Let's start with the good, and end with why I didn't play it into the ground.

The graphics, gameplay, controls, and style are superb. The tower defense genre never gets old, until you realize something is horribly, horribly missing.

Here are the major issues I had with the game, and why I didn't play on past the first major boss.
* You cannot restart any part of the level, it's all or none.
* If you are not a high enough level, you will not be able to beat a level, so you must grind levels.
* You cannot speed up the game speed, so it crawls through each of the rounds (there are upwards of 20 in some levels)

Overall it felt unforgiving and lacking game design polish. They do have purchasable items that you can use to beat the level, but I really don't understand the need to pour gems into beating a level. PvZ2 added the power ups for money, and it always leaves me feeling like a cheater.

To put this into perspective:
* In PvZ2, I'll waste 4-5 minutes before failing a level, and I can always cheap my way through the level with spending money. Most of the time it's a planning failure for why I lost, or pour money into a fix in the last 10 seconds of the last wave.
* In Defense Grid, it's almost always a planning failure for why I lost. I can also speed up time, and back up a few rounds to fix what I messed up
* In Orcs Must Die! 2 you need to learn the rounds, and play against two sides. It's not really fun playing solo, but the failure seems to come faster here at least. So there's less waiting to fail. I also feel very empowered to make a change in the loss that might be coming versus just watching it... slowly... happen...

It's a shame I didn't feel like playing this any more than the first major boss. It had a lot of potential.

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

I'm really enjoyed this one. The upgrade system is excellent, as it was in Wings of Liberty, but with a nice Zerg twist.

I knew the story would have to slip into some way for you to play the Zerg, and I think they did it rather nicely.

The voice acting and cinematics are flawless, as expected.

The controls are superb, and they recently added (or reminded me) that pressing F2 will select your entire army. This is glorious for Zerg swarming.

There was a day I continually lost connection to Battle.net and then almost immediately reconnected. Very odd. Since I was achievement hunting, and those are disabled while you're disconnected that was also sad. It resolved itself quickly though.

The evolution choice missions are really well done. You get to see and play with both choices in action before deciding on one. I didn't see myself picking the non-lurker upgrade to the Hydralisk, but the mission really helped show how it could be used. Sometimes though the upgrades choices are not really choices -- the baneling mutation was one of those cases where one option was clearly better than the other.

The achievements are a nice touch, and some required a few plays to get right. I finished Heart of the Swarm with 76% of the achievements, whereas I only had 44% of the achievements on Wings of Liberty.

I would have to say this was better than Wings of Liberty, and one of the best RTS experiences I've had.

I'm really not good at competitive play, so I'm going to ignore that part of the game. I'm sure it's superb just like Brood War was...

Dragon Age: Awakening and a few other DLC

So, what do you do after you play Dragon Age: Origins for an astonishing 120 hours? Yep, you start on Dragon Age: Awakening, and prepare to spend another 5 solid days of your life playing the next chapter.

I started this in February of 2011, and just now finished it in January of 2014.

Sure, I finished Dragon Age 2 already, but I still want to hear the story, and take my super-pimped rogue through whatever bloodbath they throw my way...

I had already finished Lelianna's Song, Darkspawn Chronicles, and Witch Hunt. All of which were excellent. I had started on Golems of Amgarrak, but realized I was quite under-leveled for it, so Awakening here I come!

I went with the standard party of my awesome rogue, a tank, and a damaging/utility mage, and another DPS. Anders does a great job of filling the damaging/utility mage, his dialog is also hilarious. All is forgiven for the DA2 shenanigans...

I found myself breezing past the fights, just picking up the loots and hungering for more dialog and story. My rogue could pretty much slaughter anything, and I was just playing on normal difficulty, so I wasn't really asking the game to give me a challenge.

I'm glad I came back and finished it. It's also odd to know so many names in the credits.