Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Considering Online Trading as Online Gaming

This game's always been a little daunting to me, but here goes.

It may take a while to get anywhere as there's a pretty steep learning curve, but if I manage to get past it, it could be pretty rewarding. I heard about this game because people talk about it now and then, so I opened an account online and picked up some tutorials.

It does suck to start at the bottom though.

There's a few different servers to choose from, like TSX and NASDAQ, for example. I wonder what the differences are. I'll have to check out a few to get started.

Hopefully with this thinking methodology I've adopted, I can motivate myself. :D

Upsen.

Monday, August 15, 2011

EDF Insect Armageddon

This was a nice little budget title - I didn't expect that I would like it so much, but I do. The game is an excuse to let you shoot giant bugs and robots, and it does so in a really fun way.

I have been playing this for a whole month.

You get 4 different soldier/armour types to do the shooting with, and the game has 3 extended stages broken up into 5 levels each. Each level has multiple objectives in them for you to complete, such as destroying enemy carriers, anthills that spawn infinite numbers of ants or other nasties, and checking on various dropships and friendlies, as you fight the alien bugs.

The four soldiers armours are all pretty different, in effect 4 character classes:
  • Battle - a tank type with good armour, a shield, and crappy weapons.
  • Tactical - a pet type who drops turrets to do part of the fighting for him.
  • Jet - a high mobility type that can hop and zip around the battlefield quickly
  • Trooper - a standard soldier without the above special armours, but can do everything else faster or better -reloading, first-aid revives, running, dodging, bigger weapon selection.

I started off with a Tactical cause I liked the turrets for a bit of automatic firepower, but eventually I found that most of soldiers have some sort of auto-aiming shot anyways, so the turrets weren't really necessary. The first armour I got to level 8 (top level) was the Jet, and the Tactical is only slowly closing in at level 7. The other two I haven' really played much until the last week, but they each have their strengths

The weapons are pretty interesting too - there's all sorts of goodies from shotguns to missile launchers, fitting all sorts of play styles. The most notable of all of them are the Level 8 armour's weapons - they are called Pesticide guns, but they are more like clean nukes - you fire one, and everything in a 2 city block radius is vaporized (including other players) If a rifle does 400pts a shot, and a rocket launcher does 1500, these nukes do 500,000 points. That's enough to one-shot all the sub-boss type enemies, most of the boss enemies, and even the end boss will bite it in one if you manage to hit it between the eyes. (Or in a few shots if you use the nuke's splash radius damage.) This thing even permanently destroys anthills at a distance, when normally you have to fight your way up to a hill and plant an explosive charge on it.

The Battle gets a mortar version (arc fire)
Tactical gets a missile version (lockon)
Jet gets a sniper rifle (zoom in recommended)
Trooper gets a cannon version.

All of them are slow to recharge, and can't be sped up with an active reload.

The downside of this thing though, is that it's very easy to accidentally kill all the players on the map including yourself, resulting in a quick mission fail. The only player who might survive a nuke is the Battle armour tank guy, if he has his energy shield deployed and at full power, which is generally not the case.

Still, lots of fun, especially at it's price point.

Upsen.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

What's coming up:

Traded in a bunch of older games and planning to pick up the following when they are out
  • Catherine (got this now, kind of fun but not as fun as EDF right now)
  • Gears of War 3 (September 20, 2011)
  • Battlefield 3 (October 25, 2011)
  • Modern Warfare 3 (November 8, 2011)
  • Ghost Recon 4 (Some time in Q1 2012, ugh)
edit - wow there are a lot more titles too, though I'm not sure of them:

Guardian Heroes
Dead Island
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine
Gamma World: Alpha Mutation
Rage
Resident Evil 4 and Code Veronica HD
Halo Anniversary



Upsen.