My First Review For Crude Pixel

http://www.crudepixel.com/en/features/spotlight/128-dungeon-run-on-your-desktop\

check it out, Mik took some creative liberties with it but hey, that's his job. My job is to do what i feel i do best, write lovely articles for him to do his job on... =D

p.s. im so chuffed right now ^_^

What will be my first post on CrudePixel

This is a review for Desktop Dungeons, which may feature on crudepixel.com soon. Enjoy

Desktop Dungeons by QCF Design is designed to be a quick ten to fifteen minute game to play over a coffee break but trust me, you can easily get sucked into it for a lot longer than that. I did for sure.

The stream-lined gameplay in Desktop Dungeons makes it a supremely easy game to pick up and play but a very tricky game to master.

You take control of your avatar whom is dictated by the choices you make before you enter the dungeon, there are five races to pick from at the beginning: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling and Gnome. With each race having a bonus for selecting that race. You can unlock an extra two races but I wont ruin the surprise for you as to what they are.

Along with the five races there are four classes you can go at the start, being Fighter, Thief, Priest and Wizard with an abundance of other classes to unlock.

The graphical style of the game is simplistic at best, easily being the game’ biggest downfall, blocky and unappealing art isn’ what you want to be looking at when you are smacking monsters up-side the head but on the other hand, the puddle of blood that is left after you dispatch a monster is rather rewarding. The sound is also rather simplistic also being very brief before cutting out. The audio and graphical style just goes to show that the developers spent more time working on the game than how it looked or sounded.

Every time you enter a new dungeon it is randomly generated which means you will never have the same experience in the game twice, which I find refreshing as spending a lot of time starting a game and being met by the same thing time and time again is not my idea of fun.

There are two goals in Desktop Dungeons and they are to get a supremely high score through a series of goals which in game are known as Conducts, such as killing the boss in normal combat, petrifying a ton of monsters, never taking a health potion, and never dropping below 50% health, doing these things are ridiculously important for getting a high score. The other aim of Desktop Dungeons is to kill the level ten boss in normal combat, you can kill him without ever physically attacking him but to get the conduct bonus for it, you have to physically hit him.

There is an option to pray to Gods throughout the game, each granting you a specific bonus from a plus to strength or a one time resistance to death, but praying at these alters is not a prerequisite to completing the game.

When you first bump into the boss, he will scream all this disturbing stuff at you which is a banter and a half to read. Even when the boss is Frank the Zombie you still get a laugh from him wanting to pry your skull open. It’ all about delivery.

All in all, Desktop Dungeons is an easy game to get lost in and spend a lot of time playing if you like this sort of game, the replay value is immense as it is an ever changing world you will inhabit.
I highly recommend Desktop Dungeons, even if it is just over your next coffee break.

Get Desktop Dungeons here: http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20

Ladies and Mentlegen

SO! it took long enough, all the work has payed off, as of yesterday i am now officially a spotlight writer over at crudepixel.com. you guys happy for me? coz i sure as hell am!!

So, What Do You FiNCK?

FiNCK (Fire Nuclear Crocodile Killer) by Nifflas (Nicklas Nygren) is a two dimensional platform game with a relatively easy to grasp control system and a really quite simple premise.

The control system in FiNCK is quick to get to grips with but not so quick to master if you have played other games with a slightly different control set up you will be constantly messing up, hitting space to jump instead of S then turning into a puff of smoke and ending up back at the start of the zone, or hitting your up arrow key to jump and promptly falling down a hole. These are both things that will happen to you if you even forget for a second that it is the S key to jump and if you are anything like me, this will get you just a bit angry with the game and make you consider quitting out

But don't! Continue playing through the annoyance and you will find a beautifully crafted and designed game that plays like a dream. It's very rare to find a game that can annoy you and that you feel compelled to play at the same time, there are however a few changes I would have made if I were the one designing and developing this game. I would have the jump key on a more widely used key for jumping, as most other games I have played have had the jump action bound to keys such as the up arrow or the space bar. Apart from this little niggle, the rest of the game is pretty pick-up-and-playable, in the tutorial level all the actions that you can do are spelled out to you in a very understandable way which is what you want from a tutorial.

One rather interesting game play element is the birds strewn throughout the levels that come in varying colours. These birds are beneficial to the player either by granting you flight for as long as you hold them or slowing your fall so you can make bigger jumps. As far as I can tell, the aim of the game is to traverse the world and collect the 25 coins that are scattered throughout the world. Don't worry if you can't get to a coin on your first trip through one of the zones as you will more than likely find a door that takes you to where you need to go.

FiNCK has a unique style, it's not every game you see where the hero has a purple face and blue hair, but apart from that, the colour schemes slightly vary per level but ultimately every “rea”has the same general colour scheme, this gives a degree of uniformity to the game and helps keep the player knowing where he is.

As a whole, FiNCK is a genuinely interesting game, easy to play but not so easy to master if you are forgetful and keep hitting space to jump like I do. But I'm sure you aren't like me, so you should have a much easier ride through FiNCK than I have. On the whole, I would recommend FiNCK to every one of you, even if it's just a way to pass time over a lunch break.

Get FiNCK here: http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=FiNCK

When It Rains.. It Pwns

So i log on to my hotmail to find a message from Mik (CrudePixel.com) asking me to write ANOTHER review for a different game... at this point in time I'm not sure if he wants this one for the fourth as well.. its mounting up now and im feeling the pressure. i can see where they are coming from, wanting to make sure the writers fit with the site and everything but now i have (potentially) two days to play this game to death and write a review that will cement my position on CrudePixel... I'm starting to feel that this may have came to late for me to do anything about it. On the bright side though, something that has been continuously complimented is my grasp of the written word and my articles flow... might be light at the end of this up and down rambling after all.. seriously guys, please, keep them crossed for me

Rock Band: Green Day... *rolls eyes*

One of the most depressing games stories of this year, for me at least, has to be the upcoming release of Green Day: Rock Band.

Developed by Harmonix and published by MTV games, this is the latest in the line of rhythm games designed to make you feel like you are a mediocre band.

Don’t get me wrong, Green Day started out pretty good then per American Idiot turned into an overly political disgrace.

The game itself features tracks from a wide variety of the band’s albums ranging from Dookie to the newest release 21^st Century Breakdown, including the obvious American Idiot which saw Green Day rocket out of obscurity and into the mainstream eye.

The track listing makes quite interesting reading, a lot of the songs on this game people who started liking Green Day only after American Idiot won’t very probably wont feel as strongly towards as they do the more recent offerings, some of the tracks may be totally new to the new Green Day audience.

Below is the game’s confirmed track list:

Dookie: Basket Case, 01 Dookie 07 Burnout, 01 Dookie 01 Chump, 01 Dookie 3 Coming Clean,01 Dookie 11  Emenius Sleepus, 01 Dookie 12 F.O.D. 01 Dookie 14  Having a Blast, 01 Dookie 02 In The End, 01 Dookie 13 Longview, 01 Dookie 04 Pulling Teeth, 01 Dookie 06 Sassafrass Roots, 01 Dookie 09 She 01 Dookie 08  Welcome to Paradise, 01 Dookie 05 When I Come Around 01 Dookie 10 

Insomniac: Brain Stew/Jaded, GGGeek Stink Breath02 Insomniac 12 

Nimrod: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), 03 Nimrod 03 Hitchin' a Ride,03 Nimrod 02  Nice Guys Finish Last 03 Nimrod 04 

Warning: Minority, Warning 04 Warning 02 

American Idiot: American Idiot,05 American Idiot 01  Are We the Waiting/St. Jimmy, 05 American Idiot 05 Boulevard of Broken Dreams, 05 American Idiot 04 Extraordinary Girl, 05 American Idiot 09 Give Me Novacaine/She's A Rebel, 05 American Idiot 07 Holiday,05 American Idiot 03  Homecoming 05 American Idiot 12  Jesus of Suburbia, 05 American Idiot 02 Letterbomb05 American Idiot 10 , Wake Me Up When September Ends, 05 American Idiot 11 Whatsername05 American Idiot 13 

21^st Century Breakdown: 21st Century Breakdown, 06 21st Century Breakdown 02 American Eulogy, 06 21st Century Breakdown 11 Breakdown Before the Lobotomy, 06 21st Century Breakdown 03 Horseshoes and Handgrenades, L06 21st Century Breakdown 09 ast Night on Earth, M06 21st Century Breakdown 04 urder City, 06 21st Century Breakdown 06 Peacemaker, 06 21st Century Breakdown 05 Restless Heart Syndrome,, See the Light 06 21st Century Breakdown 12 , Song of the Century, 06 21st Century Breakdown 01 The Static Age, 06 21st Century Breakdown 10 ¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)

While I agree that Green Day have had some good tracks I wouldn’t say that this warrants them having a game made of said tracks and the ones that gave them their fame in the mainstream audience.

If you ask me, this game is just an excuse to make money more than giving the fans something they really want, other bands deserve to have this happen for them so much more than Green Day do, such as Alkaline Trio, HIM, The Used, cKy and Reuben. All those games would be so a big improvement on Green Day.

Green Day: Cash Cow… I mean Rock Band will be released on the 8^th of this month (June)

Expect a lot of teenage girls in tight jeans in the queues.