Oh dear, this is another of those games with the potential to keep you occupied for a long, long time… sorry!

As my daughter keeps discovering, it’s remarkably difficult to corner a cat. No matter how well you think about the situation, those pesky felines always seem to find a way to escape your clutches. I should add, for all you concerned animal lovers, that all my daughter wants to do is stroke her pet. He just remembers her from when she was too little to understand that you don’t sit on cats… they sit on you.

Anyway, here’s a great puzzle game called Chat Noir (or Black Cat) where the idea is to encircle the cat in darker blobs while it tries to make its escape. It can be done but it’s a bit tricky.

You’ll need Flash to play, and there’s no sound this time. Have fun!

–> Click to play <–

In the words of the announcement trailer, “hell, its about time!”… and so here are a few of my first impressions of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. Needless to say these are my views of a game, which is a subjective thing.

After a lengthy install (the single DVD contains PC and Mac, and installs an 8Gb game), it was ready to download a mercifully short patch. After a typically beautiful Blizzard cinematic (most of the game cinematics are in game movies, which really shows the power of this engine) I was greeted by the Battle.net login. The new UI is clean and easy to use, and since I had played with multi-player in the beta, I jumped straight into the story-heavy single player campaign. Thankfully the history of the world and the first game and expansion is given during the install.

I fully expect this to not be the normal length for an RTS (of 40+ hours) but instead around about 20+ hours as they have split the game into 3 instalments – one for each race. The races, for those who don’t know, are Terran (human… not a surprise really), Protoss (think elves, or Eldar from 40k) , and finally the Zerg (alien hive mind creatures and my favourite). There is also the challenges section which I have yet to try but they look like being quite interesting and will add a good few hours to the single player side (as I probably fail repeatedly to try and complete them), as will trying to get all the achievements in the single player missions.

In the actual games, the UI is clean (if a bit big on my older 5:4 monitor), the units react smoothly, it looks gorgeous and clean, and even when the action gets manic you can see whats going on and react. It is wise to learn at least some hot keys and how to bind units/buildings as it does help. I cannot emphasise enough just how well it’s all put together, it may not turn to be the longest RTS ever but its very finely crafted and feels solid.

In-between single player missions there are interactive scenes where you can purchase upgrades, talk to the various characters, and of course select what missions you want to do. Each mission so far has been an increasing challenge and there is a drive to do well as the rewards help fund your research and upgrades. It quickly becomes clear, if you know about the multi-player, that there are more units in single player and they are more powerful to help drive the story and feel of progress.

Then there is of course the multi-player. It cannot be denied that a large amount of time and effort has been put into it (although so far not to the detriment of the single player). Starcraft has such a competitive pro scene that even the beta had large prize money tournaments. It is, in my mind at least, one of the most balanced multi-player RTSs out there, and one that has a constant input from Blizzard to ensure it stays that way and stays fresh, even by tweaking firing rate of units by tenths of seconds.

The multi-player does a good job of taking the newcomer through it and onto the ladder system where you find random players to pit your wits against. There are a lot of issues with the new “Battle.net 2.0” from the lack of chat rooms, no cross region play, and the problems with the real ID system, however these issues (or more accurately niggles) are either being resolved or are not that big. One is however, the lack of LAN play. If you want to have a LAN party with Starcraft 2 you have to do it over Battle.net online. There is, in essence, no offline multi-player.

It’s well worth getting into the multi-player or at the very least watching the numerous commentaries of the pro (and not so pro) level games that abound across the web (my favourites are Husky, HDStarcraft, and Day9 who is also a pro-level player), all of whom give their own unique views on the game. These games go to show the skill and concentration that goes into pro-level gaming, and why e-sports can be as fun to watch as “normal” sports.

Also included is an editor, which allows the creation of not just multi-player maps, but also single player campaigns and almost anything else you can come up with. I have seen side scrolling shoot-em ups, first person shooters, chess… its a surprisingly versatile engine and a powerful, if complicated (for anything other than creating maps) editor.

I’ll admit this post has been a bit meandering, and probably misses out huge chunks, but the game only arrived at my door 12 hours ago, and these are very early thoughts and I wanted to get my “first impressions” early, the first day before I even sleep on it.

So, in conclusion I will say, if you enjoy RTS games, pick it up, ignore the doom sayers (side note, notice how it seems to be an increasing feature of the net that its cool to hate something that’s big/popular for no reason other than they are successful?… I digress), ignore the fan boys, make your own minds up, as for me its shaping up to be a fun, well made, balanced RTS, and what more could I ask for?

So as I sign off, here is the “ghosts of the past” trailer for Starcraft II… nice…

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is out on Mac and PC and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

There’s one style of game I remember with great fondness. Well, actually there are a few, but there’s one that really stands out: point and click adventures. Games like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Beneath a Steel Sky, The Adventures of Sam and Max, and particularly The Secret of Monkey Island. So imagine my joy when I found that The Secret of Monkey Island (can I shorten that to TSoMI? Do you mind? It’s quicker to type) had been given a makeover and released on the Apple app store.

You play aspiring pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who has arrived on Melee Island to seek fame and fortune. Unfortunately, all the local pirates are sitting in dock, scared to venture out because of the ghost pirate Le Chuck. This is a tale of love, adventure, swashbuckling sword fights, and a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.

Controls

The original game was played with the mouse (hence the term “point and click”). You selected various items on the screen, moved around with clicks, and combined items and environment objects to solve puzzles. The iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad version treats the screen a bit like a laptop’s trackpad. Rather than just touching where the pointer should go, you move it around by swiping your finger across the screen. At first that seemed like a ludicrous way of doing things, but it actually makes sense. If you just had to tap some of the puzzles wouldn’t work and you’d be changing the playing experience by a large amount. This way the game still retains the point and click feel, and it starts to feel natural quite quickly.

I did run into a bit of difficulty with telling TSoMI whether I wanted Guybrush to open and close doors or walk through them. It can be done by manually selecting “open” or “walk” but the quicker way is to double click to open and close, and single click to walk through. It seems simple enough now that I write it down, but I kept forgetting it in the game and closing doors I wanted to go through.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics have been updated to make TSoMI look a bit more respectable to today’s game connoisseur and the characters are now fully voice acted and backed by music recorded on real instruments. At the time the original came out, we were still in the days of picking a sound card based on whether you wanted good music or digital sound… not both. So TSoMI (original) just had music on the map screens and subtitles for the dialogue. The voice acting is actually pretty good, and fits the characters well. And the music? It’s unobtrusive (as it should be) but when you pay attention to it you realise it’s scrubbed up a treat as well.

A really nice touch is that you can swipe across the screen and switch to the original version… blocky graphics and hardly any sound. Retro geekiness ahoy!

But is it fun?

What!? You’re asking if Monkey Island is fun!? Well, it takes a certain sense of humour to enjoy it. It helps if you’re a bit unhinged ;) If you enjoy puns, silliness, and good puzzles, then I think this is one for you. There are times when it’s devilishly difficult, times when it’s brilliantly funny, and there are more than a few “aha!” moments as you finally understand what that odd item in your inventory is for.

The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition is available from the Apple app store, and if you want to try before you buy, a lite version is also available. I wholeheartedly recommend that you download it today and enjoy a bit of old skool gaming.

When you were little… did you ever make up scenes from Star Wars using your action figures? No? Er…. me neither. Well, OK, maybe just a little bit.

The guys behind Robot Chicken have taken it a step further though, with stop-motion animated Star Wars scenes that can only be described as insane! Robot Chicken Star Wars: Episode II has just been launched with a special extended edition on adultswim.co.uk. It fits my sense of humour perfectly, but if you’re not sure whether you want to set aside 40 minutes to watch it, check out this excerpt on Facebook. What would have happened if Leia had lied?

Sci Fi? Geek humour? A twist of insanity? What’s not to like?

After last week’s rendition of Still Alive, the end-game credits from Portal, I thought it was high time to revisit the flash version of the game. This isn’t produced by Valve, but it is excellent… and if you don’t have anything that will run a game with spectacular 3D graphics, it’s a good way to get into what Portal is all about.

The basic idea is that you can shoot “portals”. The portals are connected, so if you were to fire an entrance at your feet and another at the ceiling you’d end up falling through it and dropping down from the roof. That’s not entirely practical, but you’ll start to see how to use the effect to solve the puzzles you’re presented with.

You’ll need flash to play, which now that I think of it would be why it’s called “flash version” :)

–> Click to Play <–

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