A Little Captain in Your Pocket

Yet another writeup of a game app for the iPhone. Why so many of these you ask? lets be honest, the phone as a handheld game system is limited graphically (as compared to, say the PS3) and since its games are sold as downloads it lends itself to the simpler games, the ones which beckon back to the days this blog remembers so fondly.

In Sea Captain you control a harbor with three distinct docks to which one must navigate boats that appear from offscreen. The boats are of different sizes and speeds (from subs to cruise ships) and their color determines where they must be docked, an operation done by drawing a line from the boat to the appropriate dock. Yes the whole concept is similar to another app called Flight Control but it certainly is not Flight Control "in the fucking ocean".

The game is challenging enough, the amount of boats and their varying speeds make for some clogged maritime routes and you can only crash three boats per round. There are three levels with night and day versions of each (in this version) but there is only one to begin with and the rest are unlocked through achieving set quotas for docked boats. The night missions are especially difficult as they are completely dark save for the light emitting from the center lighthouse, which also acts as an obstacle (together with icebergs and, apparently Pirates!).

Now lets get to the nerd in me. Firstly, I downloaded this thing based on the kickass app icon (and the price and the reviews of course). Its not easy to find a fair priced, fun game in the app store that also has good graphics and generally good art but that New England Captain is a good looking chap. What a great fuckin surprise did I get when I beat the New England stage and moved onto the Arctic where our Captain now sports a hoodie and a rain jacket. Straight out of Deadliest Catch. The lighthouse also changes. See thats the kind of small detail that gets tremendous amounts of points in my book, I cant wait to see what he'll be sporting once I reach the Caribbean.

Get it at the App Store, should still be on introductory sale for a buck.

More Disappointment

Someone leaked 24 more songs from the new Guitar Hero 5. This list sucks even more than the previous one. This one includes some of the artists I was most anxious to find out about, namely MMJ, The White Stripes, Sonic Youth, but the songs for each group leave a lot to be desired. No Wordless Chorus, no Seven Nation Army.

Again, not that these songs suck (at least not most of them) I mean Lithium live? thats gonna be a trip, but if we're gonna get only one song for each band lets get a consensus going, lets get the most representative song. But enough of the bitching, heres the list and heres hoping the next leak will redeem these last two, if not then we'll wait for The Beatles Rockband.

Attack! Attack! UK - "You And Me"
Bon Jovi - "You Give Love A Bad Name"
Darker My Love - "Blue Day"
The Duke Spirit - "Send A Little Love Token"
Elton John - "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)"
Face To Face - "Disconnected"
Garbage - "Only Happy When It Rains"
Kaiser Chiefs - "Never Miss A Beat"
Kiss - "Shout It Out Loud"
Love and Rockets - "Mirror People"
My Morning Jacket - "One Big Holiday"
Nirvana - "Lithium (Live)"
The Police - "So Lonely"
Rammstein – "Du Hast"
The Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil"
Sonic Youth - "Incinerate"
Screaming Trees - "Nearly Lost You"
Sublime - "What I Got"
The Sword - "Maiden, Mother & Crone"
Thin Lizzy - "Jailbreak"
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl"
The White Stripes - "Blue Orchid"

Info, as always, from Kotaku, picture from Flickr.

Picture Post 6

Knowing that there is a game out there in which a girl with an umbrella can fight a guy with a huge sword on a bed of roses makes everything better. Between this and the new KOF it looks like its gonna be a good year.

Review of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger at Kotaku.

A Closer Look at Aladdin

I've been on a Disney kick lately, mostly because I spent two days this week at the happiest place on earth and its smaller, yet surprisingly fun, sister park. When you combine the bombardment of propaganda that place launches at you with my predisposition to accept such propaganda (because I had no childhood you see) the result is a couple of weeks of watching movies, buying merchandise and playing video games.

The last time I talked about Aladdin for the SNES I complained about how difficult yet fun it was. When your technology is limited you overcompensate with difficulty and for a few months, as I refused to play the game, I continued to believe my analysis. I decided to give it a second chance and beat the game in less than an hour.

The game only has six (or seven) stages, unlimited continues (in the form of passwords) and is a pretty standard, solid platformer. Every stage consists of Aladdin jumping on moving, non moving and floating platforms while throwing apples at baddies and collecting some sort of jewels. The two exceptions to this are the magic carpet stages: one that has Aladdin flying through a cavern avoiding obstacles (which defeated me the last time) and a bonus stage in which Aladdin and the Princess ride around at night collecting goodies, to a ringtone version of "A whole new world". There is only one boss and thats Jafar, first in standard issue and then in his badass snake version, as was customary with bosses in the 90's he wasnt much of a challenge.

After that the Genie steps in and theres a final cut scene in which Aladdin proves his sincerity or whatever by wishing for the Genie's freedom (like in the movie!), when all seems lost with Jasmine the Sultan steps in and, because hes a ruthless despot, decrees that there will be a new law that the Princess can now marry whoever she damn well wants. This would be where I take a jab at how "and thats how its been in the Middle East" ever since. But I'm above that so I wont.

So......theres another game beaten, the tally is now at two. Time to get some more games I suppose.

Bonus!
Kotaku has a great story on how Toad likes to flip people off. Link.

List of Songs

The nice people at Guitar Hero have released a preliminary list of songs that will appear in the fifth installment of the series. Now, this player of old video games finds it difficult to get into the new generation games (they're way too complicated) but I have made obvious exceptions for two kinds of games: fighters (which are essentially 2-D anyways) and music games. So the initial announcement of bands to be included in GH V got me way too excited, the list released today? not so much.

The preliminary list of songs is as follows:

Band Of Horses - "Cigarettes, Wedding Bands" ?
Beastie Boys - "Gratitude"
Beck - "Gamma Ray"
Billy Squier - "Lonely Is The Night"
Blur - "Song 2"
Bob Dylan - "All Along The Watchtower"
Children Of Bodom - "Done With Everything, Die For Nothing"
Coldplay - "In My Place"
Darkest Hour - "Demon(s)"
David Bowie - "Fame"
Deep Purple - "Woman From Tokyo ('99 Remix)"
Elliott Smith - "L.A."
Iggy Pop - "Lust For Life (Live)"
Jeff Beck - "Scatterbrain (Live)"
John Mellencamp - "Hurts So Good"
Kings Of Leon - "Sex On Fire"
Queens Of The Stone Age - "Make It Wit Chu"
Rose Hill Drive - "Sneak Out" ?
Santana - "No One To Depend On (Live)"
The Bronx - "Six Days A Week" ?
Thrice - "Deadbolt"
Tom Petty - "Runnin' Down A Dream"
Vampire Weekend - "A-Punk"
Wolfmother - "Back Round"

Not that these songs are horrible (on the contrary) but its a bit disheartening to think that that is the Bob Dylan song, that that is the Blur song, that that is the Bowie song. Guitar Hero has a history of including some deep tracks but when you only get one song per artist one has to hope that its one of the artists top one or two songs. Again, not that All Along the Watchtower and Fame suck but they're most certainly NOT Like a Rolling Stone, Rock n Roll Suicide of Changes.

The list contains a lot of standards as well as songs from bands that apparently are the next big thing (that I havent even heard of to be honest) and it does leave enough room to be hopeful that the White Stripes, My Morning Jacket and Gorillaz songs will be exceptional but it also leaves room for them not, well, not be.

Fourth of July

Its America's birthday and what better way to celebrate than with a picture that encapsulates all its greatness: blatant and excessive nationalism, a reliance on excessive muscle, heavy allegiance to the armed forces and weird hairstyles. All thats missing is some Levis 501s.

REAL soccer (REAL)

I recently got a great tip about a soccer game for the iPhone that is only $.99 cents and actually plays like a soccer game. See I'm always skeptic about iPhone games because a) I dont want to play games on my phone and 2) most games absolutely sucks. But surprise surprise this game is actually pretty good.

Real Soccer 2009, which normally goes for $9.99 on the app store, features over 100 teams (both national and club) as well as real players (for most teams). The "cover" features Arsenal pretty boy Cesc Fabregas. The gameplay is surprisingly fluid, though I'm not surprised nor upset that the characters are a bit blocky they I am surprised at how agile the fuckers are. Teams and players are substantially different from one another: if you pick Kazakhstan and play against Brazil you will get your ass kicked, in effect this is not merely having a bunch of different teams with palette swaps, the little guy labeled as Kaka is Kaka and hes in your iPhone.

Its easy enough, when you dont have a license, to use the flag of, say, Serbia to represent the Serbian national team and RS09 does so as expected. But how do you get around not being able to use club team crests? well you refer to teams by their city (say Roma) and if that becomes confusing you start using colors (Manchester Red). Now that you've solved that problem what do you do about the crests? well you simply use random little flags to represent particular teams. These fake little icons have a certain charm to them too. Oddly enough the game does have a licensing agreement with La Liga La Liga BBVA so all of its teams crests are the real thing (just in case you really wanted to play as Osasuna).

The game also contains a bunch of playable leagues and cups (again, its an iPhone app) including facsimiles of Champions League, Euro, Copa America and so on. There is no American club competition but there are teams from Argentina, Brazil and the U.S (sadly not Mexico) who all participate in the faux CL. Its genius. The many cups arent easy to get (even on easy) thus the game is pretty challenging.

Lastly the controls, I had no iea how I was going to work around the fact that the phone has no physical buttons but that was fixed with the inclusion of a D-Pad and A-B buttons on the screen. This is done on many games for the phone but I had yet to encounter it. Sure its kind of annoying to have your fingers on the playing screen but the thing is responsive enough that one is able to easily play.

And its only 99 cents.