Deadly Creatures

While I haven't completed Deadly Creatures yet, I have to give a shout out for this Wii game. The game is animated beautifully and very fun. As you traverse the desert in chapters you battle insects, spiders, scorpions, lizards and a variety of other desert creatures. The boss battles are enjoyable and the combat is satisfying.

The controls for Deadly Creatures are pretty solid and make good use of the motion control. Both characters, the spider and scorpion, play a little differently. With both, the control stick is used for movement, A is used for a weak attack, and swinging the remote is a strong attack. The scorpion, which is the tank of the two, can guard against attacks. But, the real joy of the scorpion is in the finishing moves when an enemy gets low in health. You initiate these moves by pressing C and then completing a series of motions and/or button presses. The spider has more mobility as it's faster, can jump, and eventually can shoot webs to reach places. The price of this mobility is that it can't take as many hits and must avoid attacks rather than block them.

The game is probably going to clock in around 10 hours based on how long each chapter is taking me. But, there's replayability with a higher difficulty and replaying missions to collect all the grubs. As you collect grubs you unlock artwork.

In the end, it's a worthy title that anyone who enjoys action titles and owns a Wii should play. And, I would love to see the concept revisited as a sandbox title. Climbing along the walls and ceiling to explore the giant world as the spider would be fantastic.


Hahahaha! Brilliant!

Bit.Trip Beat

It takes a minute before the video gets to any actual gameplay, but how can you not be excited for a game that is rhythm-based pong in all it's retro glory!? The game looks like a blast to play. joystiq.com has a great gameplay video that really shows off the game. I really like how the "boss" battle is breakout.

I only hope this game is successful as the developer has mentioned making other retro rhythm-based games.

Toxic Themed?

Looks like my page was going for a blue theme and then was hit with radioactive vomit. The dark green areas are simply contaminated and the bright green are toxic. Hopefully your mouse doesn't mutate and end up with two balls. Or for the optical mice, two laser-eyes. Trackball mice are freaks and any mutation can only be for the better.

Icky Thump

I realize this song's been out for a couple years, but I love the riff-tastic goodness of it. White Stripes' Icky Thump, NIN's Metal, Ozzy's Perry Mason, and Incubus' Megalomaniac are, for whatever reason, my music picks at the moment. Apparently, I'm all over the place musically the past week or so.

Well, this is mostly just an update of the track to play on my page. Sorry, no linky to a free download this time. But, I think the Hustle Simmons song is still available for download; if you like rap you should check it out.

Auto-Play

While I understand people really, really, really want to share their music with others via the internet; I have to say that it's extremely annoying when music starts playing once the page finishes loading. It's even worse when the player is hidden (whether actually not on the page, or difficult to find), cannot be paused, the volume cannot be modified, and/or the player is so shoddy that pausing doesn't work.

And, it's not just that it's annoying. If I'm listening to music on my computer ( whether streaming online or playing local content), my music now has to compete with yours. And, if I'm singing at the top of my lungs then this can ruin the whole pretending to be a rock star experience.

But, the biggest reason I plead with you to stop is because when I'm done being a rock star I don't always turn the volume down. So, let me paint the setting. I'm sitting at my desk surfing the internet. The only noise is the low hum of the computer, an ocassional click of the mouse, and the rare zipping sound of the scroll wheel as it clicks 3-4 times in rapid succession. Then I go to your page and a cacophony of sound erupts from the speakers causing me to jump and scaring the piss out of me.

So, please, please, I beg you, let me keep my piss until I'm ready release it. Just turn off the auto-play. That way, when should I decide to visit your site I have the option to listen to your music. Not only that, but if you blog about how awesome the song is (instead of forcing me to hear the first 30 seconds before I find a way to stop it playing), I might actually feel like giving it a listen.

I know, I'm a jerk. But, c'mon, I can't be the only person who feels this way. Can I? (Feel free to tell me off in the comments.)

And completely off-topic, do you know how hard it is to go from double-spacing at the end of a sentence to single-spacing at the end of a sentence?