Tradewars Rising v1.1 released

So it looks like all of the crazy costumes are popping out of the woodwork now that Halloween is coming around again. Brain Alien over at What the Photo brings this pic to my attention again. It brings back memories. No, not those of Sith Vixen in her Femtrooper outfit, which by the way is one of my TOP incoming links on Google (currently ranked #1 for image search).

The memories it brings back to me are those of my first Nintendo games. Every once in a while I get nostalgic, and feel the urge to play my old games. Metroid and Legend of Zelda were my first two “console” games. I earned the money for my NES and games through my own sweat (TRUE, I lived in Phoenix, AZ) and blood (not so true) delivering newspapers in the summer during my spare time. OK, that’s a story my wife’s heard way too many times, so I’ll move on. I still have my original NES and all of my games boxed up in long term storage. If I feel the need to play, I whip out my trusty emulator, but not everyone has access to the ROMs or the patience to get and emulator working right.

I knew that a few years ago the Nintendo’s patent on the NES expired in the US around 2006 or so. Since then a site called VirtualNES popped up. I didn’t realize it, but according to some very sound arguments, their site is legal. . Consider it a free online arcade. If you’ve never played Metroid, check it out!

Play Metroid Online — note, requires Java plugin

Controls:

Revenge of the Titans is the best tower defense game I’ve played so far. RotT has skill trees that span about 5 different “worlds”. The game plays differently depending on what skill tree you pick. There is a Campaign, Endless, and Survival mode. One thing I did not pay attention to is that Survival mode uses your research tree from the last level in that world. This can definitely impact your Survival Mode times if you were holding off for something critical like barriers until just after the next world. Anyway, I managed to get the top time on survival and held it for a few weeks. Right now the record is around 3 hours (scratch that, 6 now!), which is super hard to do. No, you don’t have to play a level for 6 hours, you can hold down Tab to fast forward the level. So far I’ve done at least 3 playthroughs. Once just after the Humble Bundle, another a few months later just before tank droids were added, then again just after. (more…)

Welcome to my extremely belated review of Borderlands 2. My quick review for those that liked the original Borderlands: BUY IT! It is bigger, badder, and funnier. That said, this game is rated M for a reason. There’s a lot of gore, crude humor, language, and suggestive themes. This is definitely not a game for the young ones.

Unfortunate for me, Borderlands 2 came out just a month after my daughter was born. Overall, right now I am playing just Borderlands 2 and Battlefield 3 in my spare time. One thing I learned by accident was that a Borderlands 2 session can survive through a standby/hibernation. That has come in handy many times when having to rush to sooth a crying baby.

This game is much more fun playing with friends, however I have had to play most of it solo. So far I’ve really only played the Assassin role, focusing on sniping. Now that I have just made level 42, I am strongly considering starting a different character before I hit 50. I really wanted to avoid “power leveling” my first character. I’ve been told that Soldier is one of the better classes for playing solo. (more…)