- And buy Ninjatown - Venan Entertainment’s cute Tower Defense style game on the Nintendo DS. Most of the levels are not that difficult (except a few frustratingly difficult ones, as all TD games) but that shouldn’t bother you at all. I personally love the game’s smooth and relaxed gameplay. It does not come with that much chaos as other Tower Defense games - you can’t build on every single tile of your map and spam a lot of towers. Well actually you can only build one tower and increases your ninja’s line of sight.
In Ninjatown, it’s all about creating ninja “dojos” . There are a lot of different types of dojos and each one houses a specific ninja. Some ninja’s are slower but stronger than their brethren, while others are quick and nimble, but don’t pack that much of a punch. Using the right ninja skill at the right moment is usually the key to victory. You might even be forced to sell dojo’s when the next enemy wave appears to build specific anti-enemy ninja’s (anti-flying, anti-quick units, …). Secondary structures like tea houses (wuh? They help speed up your ninja’s movement, of course) and training dojo’s help incease ninja statistics to nearby dojos.
So what’s so great about this game? Besides style, the clever but simple design and the lovely art style you mean? It’s kind of another indie-game and those people really need your support! At a lot of stores, Ninjatown sells for only £20 or even less, so don’t be a jerk and buy the game. End of announcement.
(Yeah it’s been a while, I guess people who still visit Jefklak’s Codex are out of their mind!)
Getting your hands on retro (PC, obviously) games can be pretty tough nowadays. Remember those big cardboard boxes, containing 10 floppy disks and a huge poster printed on some cloth? If you buy a game today, you get a plastic DVD box with a tiny manual, sometimes even not colored. If you want more swag, you’ll need to buy the collector’s edition, which means things like on-line preordering to be sure you’ve got one of the limited printed boxes, and paying more than $10 extra. At this moment, ebay may offer a solution for you but most games are slightly damaged and more than overpriced.
Great, I can replay Jagged Alliance again!
CD Project offers a solution to the desperate retro gamer; a solution called “Good Old Games” (GOG). Essentially it’s a on-line webstore dedicated to retro and old PC games which are not that easy to find anymore, even in budget edition. You can subscribe to their service and for only $6 download the games. Of course you won’t have the goodies included either, but hey. The project is in open beta phase right now, so go to http://www.gog.com to try it! More information:
When it launches in September, CD Projekt’s Good Old Games will offer cheap, DRM-free digital downloads of long-lost old-school PC titles like Fallout, Fallout 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Sacrifice, Descent 1-3 and Kingpin: Life of Crime, among others.
Priced at either $5.99 or $9.99, these aren’t straight re-releases. CD Projekt has done work to ensure that each game is now compatible with Windows XP and Vista, going so far as to create a custom installer for each game. A closed public beta demonstrating this is set to go live on August 1, with the site currently accepting applications.
Read an interesting interview about piracy concerns and more at shacknews.
Report Content
- Part 1: Irenicus’ Dungeon
- Part 2: The Circus Tent & Slums Slaves
- Part 3: A Tanner & More Slaves
- Part 4: The Astral Prison
- Part 5: Daystar & Mae’Var
- Part 6: Some Beholders & a Lich
- Part 7: Druid Grove & Guarded Compound
- Part 8: Planar Sphere & Kangaxx!
- Part 9: The Shadow Temple
Introduction
With a small group of Forgotten Realms fans at Shrimprefuge, we decided to take on the Baldur’s Gate world using only one character (hence solo). For most of us, this will be the first solo run so I figured we (and other readers) could use a report writeup as the characters progress through the game.
Before picking the class bard and kit blade, I did some basic research on how to play and which strategy should work - and which won’t. The most resourceful report was definatly andijvieschotel’s one from the BioWare forums. Thanks to him, I managed to get through some very otherwise tough portions of the game, especially in the beginning. Let’s get on with it, shall we.
The Blade Kit
For those who are not very familiar with Bards in Baldur’s Gate, here is the official kit description.
The blade is an expert fighter and adventurer, whose bardic acting abilities make him appear more intimidating and fearsome. His fighting style is flashy and entertaining, but is also quite deadly.
Advantages
May use Offensive Spin and Defensive Spin abilities once per day per 4 levels. Offensive Spin lasts 24 seconds, granting the blade +2 to hit, +2 to damage, and an extra attack. As well, all of his attacks do maximum damage for the duration. Defensive Spin lasts 24 seconds, roots him to the spot, but gives -1 AC per level of experience. This armor class bonus does not go over -10.
May place three slots into two-weapon fighting style.
Disadvantages
Only has one-half normal Lore value.
Only has one-half Pick Pockets percentage;
Bard Song does not become better with levels.
Ported to the Nintendo DS
by
TheChuckster, WinterMute, Jefklak
DSDoom is a port of Doom to the Nintendo DS based off the Prboom source tree because of its purity and portability.
PrBoom is a version of the classic 3D shoot’em’up game Doom, originally written by id Software. See the file AUTHORS in this distribution for a list of authors and other contributors, and a history of the projects PrBoom is derived from. dsdoom is made available under the GNU General Public License. See the file COPYING included in this distribution for details.
Important: There will be no more active development. Please do not mail or ask in the comments section about any new version, as there will be none. The source code has been released, feel free to add as many features as you want. I only copied this page from the old Jefklak’s Codex webpage for future reference, nothing more. Please be aware that there are already several newer, ds doom 1.1 spin-offs available on the internet.
There you have it! After the “recent” compatibility update of ScummVM, an adventure game interpreter which is able to run on almost any platform, Goblins 3 is now also supported. You’ll have to download the daily SVN build because release version 0.10.0 is still not fully ready yet. With a little bit of luck, maybe even Woodruff could become playable. That would be awesome, since DOSBox or native running on WinXP gives you a horribly bad resolution. For those of you who never played any Goblin adventure/puzzle game: it’s basically combining and clicking to progress to the next screen, full of more annoying but very humoristic puzzles. Sometimes Blount gets help from Chunk the Parrot (I think it is? Stupid pixels!) or his potential girlfriend.
Another Goblin adventure playable on the DS.
Core mechanics
A concept almost as old as Pong, the Godfather of nowadays gaming. You climb up and down little ladders, collecting various forms of loot. And guess what - you’re being chased by blood thirsty (well yeah, sort of) eurhm, red humanoid shaped *things*. On your way through each puzzle, there are multiple ways of dealing with them. From digging a hole and watching earth grow as fast as it can, squashing the enemy, to picking up little and very big bombs. Of course, the objective in each level is to collect all loot displayed and get the hell outta there.
Simple, yet effective and above all: very addictive if served right. And believe me, this one is. Based on the classic “Lode Runner” principle explained above, Lode Runner: the Legend Returns indeed returns to keep you occupied for as long as needed. The game improves and extends the core game mechanics with extra tools to get rid of enemies (and friends by accident when playing cooperatively, whoops!). Every few levels, the big “tileset theme” changes, together with a very nice soundtrack. The area’s differ from jungle to cave and icy mountains. All enemies stay the same though: red and hungry.
Having trouble tracking down some stupid MIDI files containing the awesomeness of Bobby “Robert” Prince, the composer for many classic DOS games? Worry no more. I finally ripped the Duke Nukem II soundtrack while replaying it via DOSBox. All PCM files have been encoded with the 160kbps lame mp3 codec. My apoligies for sometimes “cutting” it off, as the game has these weird soundtrack loop issues, I had to draw the line somewhere.
Cool? Awesome? Sexy? Oh wait, He’s back!
Bobby, we love you! The Doom I and II soundtracks can be found all over the internet, since there has been an official soundtrack release. Remember downloading those things isn’t exactly called legal. The above is, since I ripped it directly from the game (which I own legally via the Duke3D CD). Enjoy!
Download DukeII Soundtrack here (25.5 MB)
Addendum - level 1 as an example.
Platform games, one of the most dominant game genres in gaming history. They spawned a whole lot of spin-off series (run-and-gun, platform puzzles, Apogee’s shareware system, Mario 64’s 3D platform debut). Platform gaming has been the dominant type on every gaming platform for quite a while, but classic platforming is rarely seen on nowadays computers. Consoles have taken over the 3D platforming aspect while handheld games kept producing 2D variations (Castlevania, Wario Land), but what happened to PC platformers? Try to sum up more than five recent commercial classic 2D platform games. Euurhhghmmmhghyhg… Right.
Unfolding the History of Platform gaming would be rather boring and you can read the details at Wikipedia. So let’s instead try to sum up that list… The first, and most obvious entry would be of course Captain Claw by Monolith, since I’ve mentioned the game more than once before. Being a game from 1997, one can imagine more exciting recent 2D platform games for the Personal Computer.
I’m getting fairly tired of defending Arcanum on various *cough, console lovers* message boards and against friends. Everybody seems to prefer Oblivion-style Roleplaying gameplay mechanics. Fine by me, but don’t try to piss RPG Codex members and me off by complaining about the bug fest in Troika’s games. During my more than 5 playthroughs (admittedly never got to the finish, fooling around with different characters is even funnier), I never encountered a single “bug“. Except the obvious not-so-finished questlines in later stages of the game. Point the finger to the publishers, not to Troika.
Because, in Arcanum, everybody reacts on everything in a unique way. No NPC interactions are scripted (as seen in the NPC Interaction tests)! This makes debugging a more than difficult task of course. Read the interview for details. Here’s the most important part, carefully preserved for future quotage:
I give in already! Four months too late, but whatever: the Wii is mine. The most important question arises: is the Nintendo Wii Wii? If you’re too lazy to read the rest: yes it is. The TV remote shaped controller even calls himself Wiimote, controllers are a mechanic of the past. Thanks to this convenient shape, people who have never played a game before are able to pull off quite impressive moves. In the end, all that is needed is pointing at the screen and sometimes pressing a few buttons - just like a remote. Bad part #1 discovered: the thing requires 2 AA batteries and burns through those quite fast. Combining the Wiimote with the Nunchuck attachment gives most newcomers to gaming a bit of trouble, as the attachment is essentially just an analog stick and two buttons. But wait! The Nunchuck has a built-in separate motion sensor, neat. It takes some time to get used to the separate parts, espacially since in the past two hands hold only one controller.
Me and others have had a lot of fun, tinkering with the console itself, without playing any real games yet. There is a built-in communication system present which enables you to send and receive messages once you’ve added the contact’s friend code to your list and vice versa. You can even send edited pictures made by the Picture Channel, and receive e-mails from other systems. Bad part #2 discovered: oh no, more friends codes! Luckily, there’s only one present per system. For now, since there are no real online play games on the market yet (25 may, Mario Football charged).
- nubs
I am convinced, after playing the game a few times, that the most consistently powerful party...
- Jefklak
I’ve also found the bishop to be one of the best and most powerful classes to use :)...
- angel
The best party you can have in this game, and trust me I have played with a lot of kind of...
- hadjer
je veux jouer avec claw si c’est possible et merçi
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