The Binding of Isaac

The Binding Of Isaac is a game I have been playing a lot recently.  Picture running through the dungeons of Legend of Zelda, with one constant item and one item you can switch around and you have the basic setup of the game.  You start off by selecting a character which controls your starting stats and items.  Then you enter the first level of the dungeon to start your quest.  Along the way you'll collect money, bombs, and keys which you can use to get into treasure rooms, shops, arcades, secret rooms and more.  At the end of every level is a boss.  What gives the game its great replay-value is that the levels are randomly generated, as are the items you'll encounter, and the bosses are randomly picked from a group of monsters who can show up in the given area.  With over 100 items you'll end up playing through the game very differently depending on what items you can get your hands on.

The controls are very simple: shift to drop a bomb, space to use an item (if you find one that needs activation) and Q to eat a pill/use a tarot card.  Killing all the monsters in a room will give you Tarot cards, bombs, keys, pills, hearts, money, and if you are really lucky a chest.  The tarot cards have mostly good effects.  Pills can add or take away from any of your stats, so be careful with them unless you have the lucky foot or the Ph.D.  Silver chests can contain any of the above pickups including another chest.  Gold chests need a key to open, but can give you an item or a heart container in addition to what a silver chest can hold.

On every floor there should be a treasure room, represented by a crown on the map.  Make sure you save a key to get in because the items are free, and a lot of good items can only be found here.  There is also a shop on every floor, but I'd only enter if you have plenty of keys and at least 15 cents.  The good items cost 15 cents unless they are on sale.  Be prepared going into the shop, because the mini-boss Greed can be waiting inside.  If he shows up, you'll be locked into a fight with him, and will not be able to buy items when you are done.

One of the dangers you can run into are the seven deadly sins.  Acting as mini-bosses they'll randomly show up in an unexplored room to ambush you.  Luckily they aren't that difficult to defeat once you know their moves.  The hardest of them is probably greed, who shoots 3 shots in a spread somewhat randomly and tends to hang out in the shop when you need to buy something the most.

You'll also find secret rooms, challenge rooms, arcades and other interesting rooms and creatures on your journey.  Although the game is simple on the surface, there is a lot going on underneath.  Take money for example.  On the surface you can spend it at the store or gamble in a slot machine.  You'll also find a beggar who you can give it to.  Low on money?  Drop a bomb on the slot machine (or the beggar) to get some money back (hopefully).  Item Synergies are another fun thing to explore as you try and find a working strategy to get past the final bosses.  There are a few items that can instantly kill some troublesome bosses.  The trick is figuring out which ones work where and finding them.

Expect to die many times while you figure out how to get past the monsters, traps, and bosses.  And expect to have a great time doing it.  As you progress further the enemies can get pretty nasty.  But hey, there is a great item that unlocks from dying 100 times, so get to it.

Once you figure out the game, completing the entire game will only take you an hour or so(Before you figure out the game, your games will be much shorter!), but it is still very enjoyable to load up again and again, finding new items every time.  I think a lot of the reason I love it is because I know one game won't be a huge time commitment.

Pros:

List of items that might appear.

The game works on Steam.

Lots of built-in and steam enabled achievements.  The achievements will unlock new items, bosses, and areas, so they are actually worth getting beyond bragging rights.

Multiple characters and a ton of items you can find give a lot of replay value.  There are also a lot of different bosses to fight.(I'm over 60 hours myself and haven't unlocked the last bonus area yet.)

Small time commitment - Completing the entire game will only take an hour or so.

Entertaining references to many other video games such as Super Meat Boy, Legend of Zelda, and more.

Great Soundtrack!  I spent the extra dollar to have the soundtrack.  (You have to go to the steam game folder to find it.)

The game is very reasonably priced at $4.99 when it is not on sale.

Cons:

There are a few bugs with the DLC which cause the game to slow down a bit between levels.  Nothing critical or that caused me to lose my game.

As you might be able to tell from the picture above, the game has disturbing imagery.  It didn't particularly bother me, but I could see it bothering people.

The game is done in Flash and so it doesn't quite work with the steam overlay, meaning you can't upload screenshots directly into steam.

Final Thoughts:

This game is great, and well worth buying at full price.  You can usually get it much cheaper during a steam sale and the winter sale is currently going.  The Best deal for this game right now is at the humble bundle site. Pay whatever you want for BoI and the DLC and other games!

There is a DLC available for this game and it is also great and inexpensive, however, it does make the game harder.  I'd wait until you have beaten the game a few times before adding the DLC.

Highly polished (free) turn based strategy game: The Battle for Wesnoth Review

It has been a long time since I have posted anything here.  A problem that I tend to have is that games that I feel very anxious about reviewing, in the fear that I am not doing them proper justice.  Battle for Wesnoth is a game I have been playing on and off for at least four years.  It is an excellent game, and I feel I finally wrote an excellent review of it.  Enjoy:

The Battle for Wesnoth is a free open-source fantasy turn based strategy game. Players take turns recruiting moving, and attacking units on a hexagonal map. The game allows you to play single player or multi-player with up to 9 players in the same game. You are also able to create your own units, maps, and campaigns. Although each unit can have several abilities, traits, defense values, and alignments, the game is still very easy to learn. Beating the harder campaigns will require some practice however.

Note: Click the images to see the enlargements, especially the ones on the left.

Gameplay:
In Battle for Wesnoth you take control of an army and its leader(marked with a gold crown). The leader is usually a better than average unit that you are unable to recruit. The leader is able to build the rest of your army by standing on a keep and recruiting other units. You are able to recruit units until you run out of gold. The picture below shows a leader in his keep, with two flagged villages south of the river, and some unflagged villages north of the river.

Gold management is an important part of the game, especially in the campaigns. Every unit costs you 1 gold per level per turn unless it has the loyal trait. The only normal way to get gold is to move one of your units onto a village. Once you have flagged a village with your color, it will generate money for you each turn, until someone else moves a unit onto the village. While you can ignore gold once you are done recruiting for the level most campaign levels will let you carry over some gold from the previous level. Not having the gold in the next level might prevent you from recalling key troops and cost you the game.

Villages also are able to heal units for up to 8 hit points (or cure poison). This healing takes place at the beginning of a player's turn so if you see a wounded enemy unit move onto a village, try and take it out or it will eventually regenerate to full strength. Village control is very important, especially if you are playing as a faction without healers. The only other way to heal is to have a unit not move or act, and this will only restore 2 hit points.

The general object of the game is to defeat the opponent's leaders, although many of the campaign maps have alternate goals. You lose the game instantly if you lose your leader, or anyone else deemed important (usually marked with a silver crown). Although your instinct might be to keep them away from combat entirely, this will keep them at low levels and make them very vulnerable near the end of the campaign when units are more powerful and deal more damage.

Units:
The Battle for Wesnoth has over 200 different units you can control, split among the six playable factions and non-factioned monsters and critters. Typically you'll only be able to recruit base level units such as the elvish archer or spearman. You will have to level them up to be able to see the high level units.

As the units do battle with eachother, every participating unit will gain one experience per level of their opponent. There is an additional bonus of 8x the opponents' level for the unit that strikes the killing blow. When a unit levels up they are fully healed, and may be able to become a stronger more specialized unit. 

An example of the in-game help.

The elvish archer for example can become an elvish ranger or an elvish marksman. Both have more life and do more damage than an elvish archer, but the marksman has a bonus to hit enemy units, while the ranger is able to become invisible if it is in a forest and no enemy units are next to it. A good mix of units is essential to making a successful force. When you have the option to upgrade, be sure to click the links to the great in-game help so you can see both possible upgrades.

Units usually have an alignment: Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. Chaotic units fight best at night, Lawful units fight best during the day. Neutral units are unaffected. If you are playing a chaotic army, versus a lawful one, you may want to give ground during the day and reclaim it at night, rather than being exterminated.

To make units a bit more unique, each living unit is assigned up to two traits on creation. Quick is an example trait, it allows the unit one extra move per turn, but reduces maximum hit points by 5%. Undead units usually only get the undead trait, making them immune to poison.

You can rename the units you recruit and as they become more powerful you may become a bit attached to them. Unfortunately, you cannot complete most wars without a few people dying. A good strategy is to always recruit a few base level units on each map. You can use them to screen your elite units so that you lose more base units than elite units.

Combat:

A bowman attacking a thief.

Combat in Wesnoth can be a bit overwhelming, but is pretty simple once you realize a few things. First most units have multiple attacks modes. If you look at the picture to the right, the bowman can select to use his bow or his short sword to attack. Attacking with the short sword will cause the thief to counterattack if he is still alive. Attacking with the bow has the chance to do more damage and will prevent the thief's counterattack since the thief has no ranged weapon. Why wouldn't the bowman always use the bow? Well against a thief it would always do more damage, but you might not want to kill the thief to allow another unit to collect the experience bonus from the killing blow. Also, using a ranged attack against a Grand Mage would be a bad idea, as Grand Mages have very powerful magic attacks at range and weaker melee attacks.

Combat statistics.

In addition to attack modes, units have a defensive value based on the terrain they are in. This is resolved as a chance to be missed. So if you move a bowman into a village that shows 70% over it, that means that enemy units will only be able to hit the bowman 30% of the time. The final factor in combat is resistance, which can increase or decrease the damage a unit takes depending on the attack type. For example, skeletons take less damage from slashing weapons than they do from magic or blunt weapons. Luckily, the game will do the math for you and show you the percentage outcomes of your attacks if you click the Damage Calculations button in the combat screen.

Game Modes:

A list of units available for recall.

Campaign mode is the real draw to the game. They tell epic stories ranging from 3-30+ individual maps with cut-scenes and in map dialogues. It is important to pay attention to the objectives, as not all of them require you to defeat the enemy leaders. Some campaigns will allow you to collect items to further improve whatever unit steps on the item.

Once you are past the first stage of campaign mode, you will have access to the recall command allowing you to bring in any unit you have controlled in any previous stage for 20 gold. These units will keep all of the experience, upgrades, and items they have picked up. This is usually the only way to see the Level 4 and Level 5 units.

Multi-player lets you play with up to 8 other players. You can play on their servers, host your own game, join someone else's game, or play hot-seat on one computer. You can select your faction and leader and other than that it will be a normal game. Has the possibility to be a long game.

Skirmish You can go into multiplayer and play a map against computer players, but with only one map to play through you likely will not be able to advance your units enough to see high levels. Other than being able to choose your faction and leader and to try a new map, there is no reason to play this over the excellent campaigns.

Pros:

An example Cut-scene.

The game comes with an extensive manual, with links between topics reminiscent of wikipedia. All of the information you need is readily available through hyperlinks, with a lot of nice background reading provided if you are interested.

The artwork and music is beautiful and helps build a sense of immersion in the game.

The Artificial Intelligence is very good without cheating. It will prioritize finishing off wounded units, killing your healers, and knocking out units right before you level them up. It is obnoxious, but the challenge makes winning that much better.

Many games advertise themselves as free, but have in game purchases or ads. This game has neither. Everything is actually free, which is very refreshing. (Except for the iphone version, which in fact costs money)

Cons:

Although I love this game and I love being able to play games while I'm not in front of my computer I feel that the iOS version of this game does not work. In some maps you control 30 or more characters, and moving and attacking with them becomes a hassle when you have to tap repeatedly to do it. The tiny view of the large maps becomes an annoyance as well. Although things are likely not as bad on the iPad, I would say avoid purchasing this for iOS. It is much better played on another platform.

May lead to one more turn syndrome.

Although I really love playing the game and would like to make my own campaign, the markup language required to create your own campaigns is overwhelmingly complex to learn.

Final Thoughts:

If you at all interested in turn based strategy games than you should give The Battle of Wesnoth a try. It will not cost you anything (unless you ignore my advice) and you will find epic stories, great music, nice (if dated) graphics, engaging characters, and a ton of replay value. There is a ton of user generated content available for download through the program itself. Extra campaigns, new units, new maps, and a lot more. Again, there is no charge for any of this downloadable content. How many games can say that?

Clockwords: Prelude

Words games are very popular right now. Almost everyone I know plays or has played Words with Friends. Clockwords: Prelude has a similar word making theme with very active, even frantic gameplay.

Well done art in the comic book like intro.

The story starts up with you taking the role of an inventor in Victorian London. Your rival, a fiendish man with a top hat and a mustache, sends mechanized insects to attack your safe and steal your secrets. The art and music of the game are very well done, and make the game that much better.

After watching the intro, the game teaches you how to play. The game is simple to learn, but the later levels become quite complex. The insects that are approaching you can be destroyed by your new invention that converts words into ammunition. Each letter of the word will do one point of damage to the insects. The dark colored letters such as the D in doctored below are iron letters. Each iron letter will do 5 damage per dot underneath the letter. So the D is worth ten damage in this picture. Finally, each word can only be used once. If you attempt to use the same word twice, each letter will count for zero damage, but will still take the time to shoot. The delay of the wasted letters could cost you the game in a panic situation. Adding an "S" is different enough to avoid the penalty, but if you get too many letter "x"s or "z"s, it can be hard to keep placing them.

At the start of the level only one tank (or one special letter) is available, but once you use it you will have two tanks and the ability to use two special letters in a word. If you use all the special letters in the same word, you will unlock the next tank, allowing you to make larger and larger words. Although the bugs start off with low amounts of life, they take more and more effort to kill on each level.

Additionally, if they reach the safe and are killed on the way back, the secrets will drop where they do, allowing the next passing insect to pick it up instead of going all the way down to the safe. The machine will try to fire on the closest insect to the safe, or the insect carrying your secrets, but it will often hit a bug between it and its target, so the best bet is to try and stop the insects before they reach the safe.

After completing a level, whether you pass or fail, you might find some extra letters you can use. Letters are placed into storage until you enter The Boiler, shown below. The boiler screen allows you to manage the special letters that will appear during the game. Letters are given dots based on how hard they are to get into words. The letter A only has one dot (5 damage) while the letter Y has four dots(20 damage). You can place two of the same letter in the green tank where the G is to create a random letter of the next level. (So two Gs might make a M). The trick is to make sure you have a good variety of letters in the boiler to be able to always have something to play.

Once you manage to get two iron letters to level five, you can transmute them to make a level 1 special letter. There are two types of special letters, Jade and Brass. Jade letters make all of your letters do more damage, and Brass letters cause all of your Iron letters to explode, doing damage over a small range. In order to level up the special letters, you'll need to wait until you have two of the same letter and same material. A jade/bronze and an iron will give you a different lettered jade/bronze of the same level as the special.

As you progress you'll be scrambling to think of new words and encountering stronger and more numerous bugs. Although you'll have some trouble as you progress, by continuing to work at your collection in the boiler, you should eventually be able to get past the level giving you trouble. With forty levels, there is a lot of value for your money. Speaking of money, another strong point in Clockwords: Prelude's favor is that it is available to play for free here!

With all that in mind, you should check it out, especially if you like words games.

Dungeon Raid

I actually found out about this game over a week ago and I have been attempting to bring this review to you since then, but this game is very addicting!  On to the review.

Dungeon raid is a puzzle RPG for iOS, but I have to stress, it is not like Puzzle Quest.  In a good way.  (I really liked Puzzle Quest, but the computer cheats.  End of sentence.)  Back to Dungeon raid, the basic game is a matching game, match at least three tiles and something happens.  To match you simply draw a line around the tiles.  As you can see above, diagonals are allowed, and you can even cross the line over itself on a diagonal if you need to.  Matching three tiles gives you the benefits of the tiles you clear, but every tile beyond the third one has a chance to give you an extra tile.  You can increase the percentage to 100% by leveling up in the game.

The catch is that after every match you make, any skulls on the screen attack you.  The skull in the screenshot has 3 numbers next to him from top to bottom that that is his attack, defense, and life.  The combined attack of all skulls on the screen minus your armor comes out of your life which is the red pot in the lower right.  

Here are the different types of tiles that you can match:

• Skulls, matching three or more skulls does your base damage to it. (The number below the skull at the bottom of the screen or 4 in the screenshot)  Skulls are only cleared if you do enough damage to bring its life below zero.  When you clear a skull experience is added to the green bar at the bottom of the screen.
• Swords, by themselves do nothing, but when matched with a skull they add the weapon damage to your attack for each sword in the match. (Weapon damage is the number below the sword at the bottom of the screen or 2 in the screenshot above)  So two skulls and two swords would hit both skulls for 8 damage following the numbers from the screenshot.
• Potions, these restore your life when you match them.
• Coins, which fill up the coin box in the lower left.  When the box is filled you can select one new piece of equipment, which will typically upgrade maximum armor, health, or weapon damage.
• Shields, which replenish you armor to make you take less damage from monster attacks.  Any shields that you pick up when your armor is full start to fill up the blue upgrade bar at the bottom of the screen.  Once this is filled you are able to upgrade one piece of your equipment.  There are many different types of upgrades, including the possibility to upgrade any stat, add life stealing to your attacks, counterattacking the monsters, and more.

As you clear skulls and build experience, you'll level up which will let you pick skills to use.  The skills don't cost anything to use, but after they are used you need to wait for them to become ready for use again.  Picking the same skill multiple times during level ups will reduce the cool-down time by one turn.

The stats on the skulls slowly increase as you play so you need to try and get the most out of every turn or you will be overwhelmed.  The bonus tiles you get from the larger matches will add up quickly into more upgrades, levels, and equipment.

To make things interesting, every so often a super skull will appear with special powers.  These powers range from nice things like being worth tons of money but running away after a few turns, to bad things like freezing tiles so they can't be cleared, to really bad things like preventing damage to all other skulls until its dead, or turning one sword into a skull each round.

Killing these boss skulls can drop trophies which will let you unlock new classes and level up classes.  Classes add a lot of replay value to the game.  Each class has a specific perk and flaw that they start with, a special skill that only they can use, and a new race.  Each race has an ability, and a mortal enemy (One of the special skulls that gets additional powers).  As you advance the class's level, you unlock the ability to add in other class' perks, flaws, and skills.  

Skill choice screen.

The class select screen is shown on the left, and the perk select screen is on the right above here.  As you can see the rogue is level one right now, so I don't have the option to customize anything, but he does get +10% bonus gold chance that the default adventurer wouldn't get.  Unfortunately 3% of the shields that appear will be broken and worthless.  The starting race for the rogue class is very good, and you need to level the class to five to unlock the race to be used in a different class.  The last tab is the skill tab.  The skill showing in the tab is the classes' special skill, it will always appear on the first level up, and cannot be replaced with another skill.  You can unlock it for use in other classes by leveling the class to level 10.  You can also customize which skills appear in the game by dragging them up from the lower bar to replace the ones on the grid.  You gain this option every other level up in the class.

The game has four difficulty levels for you to go through as you become more skilled in the game.  It also has a very through tutorial mode right off of the main menu.  With ten classes, perks, and flaws, and a lot of skills, you can really play this game many different ways.  It is easy enough for a non-gamer to pick up and love, but the harder modes will provide a challenge unless you get a strategy down.

My current favorite strategy is to combine collection skills with Treasure Chamber.  Treasure chamber makes it so that any new tile that falls down is a coin until your next move.  Collection skills pick up all of one type of tile giving you credit for the tile and bonuses, but do not count as a move.  This can lead to getting multiple screens worth of all coins, lots of upgrades, and a good chance of surviving that next Assassin skull that drops down.

Those four skills combo very well.

Summary:  This is easily the best game I have played on my iPhone.  If you play games on your iPhone you should try it.  There is a lite version that you can play for free as well as the full version which costs $2.99.  If you get half as much play out of it as I have, it is worth several times the asking price.  Go get this!

Battleheart

There are an amazing amount of iPhone Games, but most don't end up on my phone.  Battleheart is the first new game (or app) to make it onto my phone in several months.  One of my friends recommended it to me, and I have to say, it is the best iPhone Game I've played this year! (so far) (sample size is also 1).  Without further ado:

Battleheart starts with a little intro on how to play and than its off to the first level with a knight and a healer. The game-play is fun and simple; drag a damage dealer to a monster to get them to attack, and drag a healer onto a party member to heal them.  When a melee monster is hit with a melee attack he will change targets to whoever hit him.  You can use this to keep them from killing off your magic users.  Ranged attackers are uncontrollable, so should generally be taken down first.

After the first level you can use the tavern to hire more party members up to a maximum party size of four.  As you go through the map, your characters gain gold and experience.  The art is very nice, with everything including the monsters looking fairly cute.  Each character also starts with a skill that you can activate by clicking on them and tapping the icon in the upper left corner of the screen. 

Every 5 levels you can assign them a new skill at the Academy.  The skill that the character starts with and the skill at level 25 are chosen for you but for every other skill point you can select one of two choices.  Usually, but not always this is a trade off between damage or support.  One of my favorite parts of the game is that once you make a skill choice, you are *NOT* stuck with it, you can change it at any time and without fee at the Academy.  I cannot stress enough what a welcome change of pace this is from Blizzard's draconian skill policies of the past.  (I'm looking at you Diablo II, World of Warcraft and all the imitators of both)  Moving on.

The money you get can be used to hire new characters at the tavern, buy equipment at the merchant, or upgrade equipment at the armory.  The armory is also where you equip your characters.  Each character can equip a weapon, armor and two accessories.  You can upgrade weapons or armor to the next best item of its class, but it is massively more expensive than buying it at the merchant or finding it after a map.  (You always find one item after each map.)  The only thing is the merchant sells a random mix of items that changes after every battle, so upgrades might be your best bet anyways.

The game has over 30 stages, in which monsters attack you in waves.  These are for the most part easy, until you get to the last 8 or so which are a huge step up in difficulty.  There are five boss fights, and these are anything but easy.  First they are immune to any support skills, they have area of effect attacks in addition to a punishing close range attack, and they all repeatedly call regular monsters in to back them up.

There are also arena stages where you can fight to win rare items.  In my experience this is a waste of time.  If you are having trouble beating a stage, replaying a normal stage will get you gold, experience, and an item.  An arena will only get you an item unless you clear it, and lasts much longer than a normal stage.

One thing I didn't like is that the later stages and the boss fights were very hectic.  (The only thing that comes to mind as a comparison was raiding in World of Warcraft, except you are playing all ten characters yourself.)  At times you need to be moving and using skills with all of your characters at the same time.  And while I found that you can use multiple fingers to do this, my hand makes a better door than a window.  I was a little frustrated with losing a stage due to not being able to input commands fast enough.  A Balder's Gate style combat system (real time but with the ability to pause to enter commands) would have been nice.

No achievement system is in the game yet, but real vampire hunters don't do it for the points.

Final Thoughts:

It took me about 12.5 hours to complete the game and almost all of it was enjoyable.  For four out of the five bosses I had to grind some levels in order to beat them.  Still, it is as I mentioned a lot of fun, and the large amount of characters give the game some replay.    It only costs $2.99, but is a good price for the amount of time it entertains.  Most console games are around 20-30 hours for 20 times the price.

Untitled Monstrosity

This really was supposed to be a post on my favorite Christmas movie.  I'm not really sure what happened, but I apologize anyways.

You may have noticed, but almost certainly did not care that there hasn't been a blog post around here for quite some time.  Originally I was planning on skirting this issue; hoping that a shiny new blog post about my favorite Christmas movie would distract you from my apparent laziness in much the way that shiny things distracts me from updating my blog... wait scratch that last part.  Since you take the time to read this nonsense, I thought I owed it to you to let you know what is really going on here.  The truth is far more terrifying then the pleasant fiction I created in this paragraph, so only continue if you are not easily frightened.

Last month I participated in nanowrimo, which is a fancy word for writing a novel in a month.  Their definition of a novel is any work of fiction of at least 50,000 words.  Nanowrimo is actually a ton of fun, and I highly recommend doing it, but that's a story for another day.  As the month went on, I found it difficult to keep up with the hectic nanowrimo schedule and write here at the same time, but I knew that I could finish the project and come back here.  Or so I thought...

After finishing nanowrimo I proudly printed out what I had written and looked over it.  It needed to be proofread and edited, but I would work on that in January.  Right now I thought I had earned a month off, but I had thought wrong.  In my haste to finish and move on with my life, I had forgotten an important principle Friedrich Nietzsche mentioned: Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.  From this it follows that if you write a book, the book also writes you!  By writing the book I had told it what its world was like, and opened up the door for it to tell me what my world is like. Slowly but surely that manuscript began to exert control over me.

I cursed my blind ambition as the book started controlling my life.  While I longed to tear up the carpet and install a hardwood floor down there, my new overlord would not permit anything of the sort.

"I'm not writing any more words for you this year!" I shouted at it defiantly.

The book stared at me and I was reminded of an unfunny joke I had heard as a child: Where does a 50,000lb  gorilla sit?  The answer is anywhere it wants.  The novel had accumulated a similar bulk and started throwing its weight around to dictate policy.  The untitled monstrosity gave me an ultimatum; if I was not going to update it, then I could do nothing productive at all!  I was forced to play video games, watch movies and catch up on my web comics.  Whenever I would think about defying it, a horrific manifestation of its presence filled my mind, threatening me with its countless words and its endless punctuation marks.  So many words that a mind might break!

I drew a picture of it here so you can see why I have been living in fear of it.  As you can see, an evil face appears to have formed on the back cover.  To intimidate me, the book has placed the skulls of several small horned creatures that it has already killed.  The message is clear, mess with it, and I would be next.  Finally, the book appeared to have a blazing inferno behind it which makes it seem very menacing.  In retrospect, a raging inferno is probably not a good thing to stand in front of if you are made out of paper.  I valiantly shoved  my evil creation into the fire, buying my freedom.

I still cannot sleep soundly, knowing that I must one day complete the manuscript, and print out that dread tome once more.

Doodle Devil

It was brought to my attention that the creators of the Doodle God game has a new game out for Halloween, Doodle Devil.  According to its advertisement in the store, this game will let you destroy everything you created in the Doodle God game.  Well that sounds like a change of pace from the tough element creation plaguing the end of Doodle God.  Let's check it out.  It should be noted that this costs the same amount as Doodle God, $0.99.

Spooky

Does the promise of a new type of game play interest you?  Well don't get your hopes up, because by destroying the world what they actually mean is creating a bunch of new elements.  These elements you are a assured will destroy the world for you.  Gotta watch out for nasty things like Friendship and religion, they will apparently destroy the world.  The point is, if you enjoyed playing the original game, you'll likely enjoy this.

The game play is clicking two elements to create new ones.  Some are logical, such as computer and computer creates internet.  Some are attempted social commentary such as television and human creates zombies.  It does prove that you are better off using the internet than watching television though, you still become a zombie, but you get friendship too!  Some combinations only make sense in hindsight such as human and copyright gives you lawyer.  Some don't make any sense to me whatsoever.  Rat and air creates dove.  I've heard pigeons are the rats of the sky, but I never heard doves lumped into that category.  Hints are obviously really useful in this game as a lot of the combinations did not seem logical to me at all.

Additionally, there is currently as of 11/8/2010 a bug with the hint system.  When I only had two elements left, the hint that shows you some of these elements may combine brought me to two categories full of elements, none of which reacted to form new elements.  I dutifully kept at it, eventually testing them all.  It put me to brute forcing the last combinations though, which isn't a ton of fun.

This game is not connected with an achievement network yet, so there is no way to show off your progress.  You can, however, spam your element creations on Facebook, if your are seeking a way to get your friends to hide your status updates. Clicking extras will let you download two images to your phone.  Under credits you can donate an additional 0.99$ whenever you feel like it.

Final Thoughts:
If you love Doodle God, and want to play what amounts to one chapter of the same game for the price of four with no mini-games or achievements, then this is for you.  In their defense they have promised to update both games, but as of right now, I say just stick with Doodle God.  The mini-games and quests are needed to avoid boredom from setting in.

epicurious

I like to shop for groceries.  I know that's weird, but I enjoy picking out healthy foods that are tasty, and trying to get a good deal as well.  Maybe its the challenge.  In any case, sometimes I get excited and buy food without any clear idea of how I am going to prepare it.  In this example it was Bluefish.  As you can see Wikipedia left me hanging.

Epicurious is a free application to help you find recipes using things you may already have at home.  The recipes are mostly taken from Gourmet magazines and websites including Gourmet magazine, Bon Appetit, and more.  They are all tested out and most of them are reviewed by your peers.

When you first launch the application you'll get some seasonal recipe suggestions, my recommendation is to click the big find a recipe button below these.  This will bring up epicurious' powerful search engine.  You can search for meals by Main Ingredient.  You can search for meals by course which is shown in the picture to the right.  Options include Appetizer, Breakfast, Brunch, Buffet, Dessert, Dinner, First Course, Hors D'Oeuvres, Lunch, Main Course, Side, and Snack.  You can choose by cuisine which will allow you to select every type of food you've heard of, and a few I'm sure you haven't.  The Dietary Considerations can be amazing if you are having guests over that can't eat certain foods.  It lets you filter the recipes gluten free, low sugar, low sodium, kosher, Vegetarian, Vegan, Low Cal, and several others.  Dish type lets you select from Sauce or Soups, Stuffings or Vegetables.  If you are looking for special Valentine's Day or Halloween recipes, Season or Occasion can help.

At the very bottom is a search box, which you can combine with any of the above categories.  I type in Bluefish, with Dinner selected, and peruse the three entries  I find one with a good picture that was rated 96% would make again based on 25 reviews.

Looks Good to me!

Next I click on recipe to look at what ingredients I need to make it as well as how long it takes to make.  I can also read the reviews by clicking reviews (shocking).

Since I like this recipe, I click the plus button and add it to my shopping list.  This gives me a checklist of everything I need to make this recipe.  You can put more than recipe in there at once.  Once you have the information on the list, you can check off the things you already have to prevent double-buying confusion.  You can also email the shopping list to someone if you can manage to get someone else to do the running around for you.  I have never gotten to use that feature myself.

I don't think I need to do Pros and Cons for this one.  Basically its a free application that is really useful.  On the negative side, I've heard some stories of random crashes, but my wife and I have not seen any yet.

Final Thoughts:
Epicurious has a very simple to use interface that connects you with over 25,000 delicious recipes, most of them with pictures and reviews.  Everything that I have made off of this thing has been delicious, and it is very easy to organize shopping trips with the shopping list feature.  Yes, there are ads, but they allow you to get all the above for free.  If you never knew how to prepare a certain ingredient, want to impress guests, or are bored of eating the same old thing, check this application out, because it is great.

Halloween Candy

It was requested that we take a look at the nutritional value of all the Halloween candy you just earned or had left over.  This then will let you know which candy bars are going to give you trans fat, and which have no fat. Also, see if you can guess which candy has as much saturated (bad) fat as eleven strips of bacon.

No you can't you greedy Pirate!

Starting with not-going-to-kill-you-if-you-eat-one and working down, here is a list of my favorites in the Halloween candy field.  I tried to keep my comments and comparisons with steak to a minimum.

Starburst were one of my favorites when I was a kid.  They are tasty and individually wrapped, which can possibly help you control the amount you eat.  Of course each chew is 60% sugar, but one chew is only 5 grams, so if you limit your portions, then you aren't doing too badly.  Another point in Starburst's favor is their complete lack of fat.

A fun size package of Skittles while having 20% of your vitamin C and being coated in insect secretions, also contains 15 grams of sugar in a 20 gram serving equaling a candy that is 75% sugar.  No wonder the rainbow tastes so good.  Skittles are a low fat food for what that's worth.

The miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are only 7grams.  1 gram of that is saturated fat, 3 grams are sugar.  So not great for you, but if you only eat one small one, its a fairly ignorable offense.  You do get 1 gram of protein as well.

Butterfingers never really appealed to me as a kid or an adult.  I hate the sensation of the candy getting stuck in my teeth.  An 18g fun size bar has 8 grams of sugar and 2 grams (10%) of your saturated (bad) fat for the day.

Kit Kat bars taste pretty good and they were at one point my favorite candy bar, but I overdid it on them a long time ago.  Looking at the minis which you can have 5 of, or the snack size, of which you can have 3 (2 bars each), they are both about 42 grams of candy, giving you 210 calories.  Which is a lot, but then we are looking at candy not at granola bars.  One serving has 21 grams of sugar so it is exactly 50% sugar.  They do however contain a large portion of saturated (bad) fat.

Rolo's are a candy that I did enjoy, but they manage to be 60% or more sugar by weight, and they have 35% of your daily saturated (bad) fat.  The ingredient list shows Trans fat as well.  Why do the ones we love hurt us?

Snickers are another candy bar I never really cared for.  In this case not a bad choice.  Snickers fun size bars are 15 grams of which 8 grams are sugar.  They also contain Trans Fat, so steer clear.

My favorite candy is of course the worst candy you can eat, Twix.  As much as I love these bars one 57 gram package has more than half of your days saturated(bad) fat and has the deadly Trans Fat as well.  Twix bars taste great for sure, but ounce for ounce they have more saturated fat then Prime Rib!  Not that I have the option, but I'd rather have the steak, especially since I can skip the trans fat and the 28 grams of sugar.   Apparently you should stay away from caramel in candy bars.

Final Thoughts:
Candy is not healthy, but you should be able to have it in moderation... unless you are eating a Twix bar.  In that case you are better off eating ten strips of bacon because that would have less saturated fat.  (Seriously)  Make sure you read the labels and avoid anything with Partially Hydrogenated anything.

Food: Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut

Once more we look at Nature's Valley Granola bars, this time at their Sweet and Salty Nut bars.  At a simple glance we can see that the bar is coated with a cream reminiscent of the yogurt covered bars we looked at last week.  Those bars were more sugar than anything else, so I am already thinking that this will not be the coveted best snack bar in show.  Let's see what a bar that promises me that it will be "dipped in a delicious peanut, almond, cashew or mixed nut butter coating" can do for my body!

Click for a bigger size

Looking at the nutritional information we can see that the bars both contain Nature Valley's friend High Maltose Corn Syrup.  Since that is apparently not sweet enough for the public to consume, they throw in High Fructose Corn Syrup as well.  For good measure we get table sugar in the ingredient list three times, and fructose as well.    That's quite a few types of sugar which gives the impressive stats of 31% sugar for Peanut and 37% sugar for Pecan.  Based on those facts alone I would think they should be passed, but lets see what other goodies we get from these bars.  The Peanut bar is giving you 4g of Protein, which is nice, but the Pecan bar has a dark secret hiding at the bottom of the ingredient list: Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed oil.  That's right, these bars have Trans Fat!  That's... really sad Nature Valley.


Let's see what hidden treasure we have in the other flavors:
Almond - Just your usual High Maltose Corn Syrup, High Maltose Corn Syrup, and sugar teaming up to get you a bar that's 34% sugar.
Cashew -  Pretty much the same statistics as Almond, but with a different nut obviously.
Roasted Mixed Nut - Another product with Trans fat in it.  Stay away!  Other than that very similar nutritional information to Almond and Cashew.  The real kicker here is that the package actually states "High in protein and absolutely free of trans fat and cholesterol, those bars are the perfect heart-healthy choice to keep you moving."  Right... No trans fat, except for the trans fat.  How responsible.

Final Thoughts:
Just when you thought a bar containing 40% sugar was the bottom of the barrel, you find a granola bar that's somehow worse for you!  Ignore the taste, and think about whether or not you want to increase your risk of coronary heart disease.  (Hint: No you don't)   The worst part is the outright lying on the package of the Roasted Mixed Nut bars.  Sure there is not much of it in there(less than .5g per serving) but any amount is very bad for you.  Staying far away from these bars is my suggestion.

iPhone Apps: Dragon Dictation

I like the iPhone, but trying to type long emails, texts, or novels on it is amazingly irritating.  Between the screen not registering your finger, having to hold down a letter to put an accent mark over it, or auto-correct flavoring your text it can be a major pain to use.  Is Dragon Dictation the app that will end having to go back and edit what you are trying to say before you click send?

In a word, No.  

In a short sentence that may seem like an insult: You talk funny.  

In a paragraph:  Dragon Dictation works well once you train yourself to use it.  Everyone says different words differently, and the software is not smart enough to discover your pronunciation oddities.  You must speak slowly and carefully for it to understand you, and even then it will most likely pick up some words incorrectly.  When we first started using the software, it was entertaining to see just how badly it would mangle what you are saying.

Once you get used to talking to it, it is much faster to record lengthy messages using it then by pecking at the touchscreen and hoping for doesn't get auto-corrected to fir again.  (I guess that's useful if you work with certain species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae.  Most of us probably use the word "for" more often.  Anyways)  

The software launches to a large red button which you tap to start recording.  In the screenshot to the right, the app recognized me saying record and printed it.  From here I can click the red button on the bottom to record more, the keyboard button to edit the recording with the keyboard, or the far right button to open up the paste to menu shown.  Clicking one of the destination buttons will open up the associated application, where you can double tap to get the paste dialog.  Pretty simple and easy to use.

One more feature that is not initially obvious is that you can click on words that it recorded to select other words that sound the same.  So if it hears "load" but you said "little", you might be able to swap the word without typing on the keyboard.

Pros:

• This application is free!
• Eventually it can be a big time saver

Cons:

• Most people will have to learn to speak to it differently to get it to work.
• It cannot recognize every word yet.
• It clears anything you record if you exit the application.

Final Thoughts:

This application is free and has a simple and effective interface.  The app saves you time, so according to that time equals money formula, this is free money.  Its actually nowhere near as good as free money, but it is worth trying for free.

Food: Nature Valley Chewy Granola Bars with Yogurt Coating

Our next Granola bar is another selection from General Mill's Nature Valley series, Chewy Granola Bars with Yogurt Coating.  The short description of these bars is: "Indulge in an extra measure of sweetness - as well as calcium: Nature Valley Chewy Granola Bars with Yogurt Coating."  Extra measure of sweetness?  That might seem a bit unnecessary in a line that's 25% sugars normally.  To the facts!

Looking at this bar we find that it does contain 10% of your daily recommended calcium.  If you ate ten of these, you would be all set on your calcium and carbohydrates for the day.  This bar is smaller for the price then the other bars we have reviewed, weighing in at 35 grams.  This means that the 14 grams of sugar equals 40% of the total weight of the bar.  For reference, one serving of Oreo cookies has a similar ratio of sugar to total size.  Oreo cookies have High Fructose Corn Syrup, these have High Maltose Corn Syrup, which is likely no better.  Two grams of protein and one gram of dietary fiber are half the values present in the Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bars, which we decided aren't that great to begin with!

The granola bars come in three flavors of Yogurt. Vanilla, Strawberry and Blueberry are your flavor choices.  All flavors taste fairly good, but then again they should for their sugar content.  The nutritional information does not significantly differ for any of the flavors I looked at.

Final Thoughts:
This snack is roughly equivalent to one serving of Oreo cookies.  (That's 3 regular cookies or 2 double stuffs for reference.)  The Oreo cookies might even have the same amount of calcium if you are a dunker.  If you are not a dunker, you should consider dunking.  I'm getting a bit off topic, but the point is that  Nature Valley Chewy Granola Bars with Yogurt Coating are not what I would turn to for a healthy snack.

Junk eMail and Mailinator

Everyone wants to send you spam, and it feels like you can't sign up for anything without an email address these days.  Well here are a couple of solutions for this issue.  Your first option is to register a junk email address on one of the main email sites, then give that out to people instead of your real email address.  If you are going to do this, its much easier at hotmail.com then at gmail.com.  That takes too long for me, though.

Mailinator is my go to place when I don't want to give out my email address.  The beauty of this particular webmail  site is that you don't need to setup an email address beforehand.  Just think of a random email address, say GiantSquid.  Next, add it to a mailinator domain like mailinator.com or suremail.info or mailinator2.com.  Now start signing up for things as GiantSquid@mailinator.com.  That's it - no registration or anything!  Then you go to Mailinator, and where it says check your inbox type in you email address.  There is no password, so don't use this for your super secret mail.

Things to consider:

• Your inbox will only hold 10 emails at a time.
• Emails will be deleted after 24 hours.
• Emails cannot contain any attachments.  On the other hand, you won't get viruses from your mail here.
• Anyone who knows your email address can see your email.

Final Thoughts:
Mailinator is great at what it does.  Some places that really want to spam you will not accept mail from mailinator.com  Good thing they have a numerous alternate domains.  Check their main-page to get an alternate domain and a random email address if you are having trouble thinking of one.  They have options for monitoring their mailboxes by RSS, widget, and Google chrome extension.  If you really need added security try checking your inbox on mailinator.  At the top of the screen is an alternate email address.  You can have mail sent to this random jumble or letters and numbers and it will go to your box, but people cannot log on to your box with it.  Still not very safe without a password, but its not trying to replace gmail.

Food: Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bars

Our next stop on the granola bar study is Nature Valley, famous for making several hundred different brands of granola bar.  Nature Valley made the first granola bars I saw in college, these Oats 'n Honey bars.  Since a friend let me try them I started buying them in bulk for random snacks, something I had a lot of since the cafeteria was a horror show.  Was this a healthy decision?

Looking at the Oats 'n Honey bars the first conclusion that can be reached is that typing the apostrophe in Oats 'n Honey is really irritating.  Moving on to the productive part of this program, we can see that this granola bar has no trans fat and no high (insert sugar) corn syrup.  We may notice that sugar is the second ingredient, with honey and brown sugar syrup not too far behind.  Sugars total 12g in a 42 gram serving.  Oats 'n Honey bars are 28.5% sugar and 14.2% fat.  Comparing this to the Fiber One bar we looked at last week we have more sodium (95mg vs160mg) and less dietary fiber (9g vs 2g).  These bars don't taste bad, but they aren't really amazing either.  The only thing this bar has over the Fiber One bar is 2 grams of protein.  In my opinion, not worth what you lose.

Let's see how the other flavors stack up:
Peanut Butter - Trade a gram of sugar for a gram of protein, good trade.  These taste better than the Oats 'n Honey, with a little bit of the creaminess of peanut butter.  Click here for Full Nutritional Information.
Cinnamon - One extra gram of sugar from the Oats 'N Honey, but again a better taste.  Click here for Full Nutritional Information.
Maple Brown Sugar - Oddly enough there isn't more sugar in this despite the name, I guess that's as much a condemnation of the other bar's almost 30% sugar content as a recommendation for this one.  Nothing noteworthy in the flavor department.  Click here for Full Nutritional Information.
Roasted Almond - Has one gram less sugar than Oats 'n Honey, and tastes good.  There's a faintly sweet almond taste, making this one of my favorites.  Click here for Full Nutritional Information.
Apple Crisp - One gram less sugar and one gram less protein.  Click here for Full Nutritional Information.
Pecan Crunch -Same nutritional information as the Oats 'n Honey, slightly tastier. Click here for Full Nutritional Information.

Final Thoughts:  I want to cut these guys some slack for using all natural ingredients, however, General Mills makes it hard by raising the percent of the bar that is pure sugar, and sucking out the fiber as compared to the Fiber One bars.  Not the healthiest snack in the world with nearly 30% sugar.  The search continues.

Bubble Bobble

Two couples are on a double date at a bar, when an overly drunk man-maybe even Super Drunk- kidnaps the two women and turns the guys into bubble-blowing dinosaurs.  Happens all the time and is actually the main reason I try to avoid the bar.  What options do the two brave men have?  Only one:

Their adventures are documented in one of the most popular and entertaining video games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Bubble Bobble.  Bubble Bobble puts you and a friend in the roles of Bub and Bob who have to traverse over 100 rooms to have a chance to rescue their girlfriends.  The game is unashamedly cute, has simple but catchy music, and very addictive game play.  The game starts off extremely easy, but gets quite hard near the end.  On the other hand, I've never seen a game give you such a variety of different power-ups or ways to get an extra life, so you have a fair chance as long as you can learn how to ride on top of the bubbles.  (Hold jump and up).

Each room has a number of enemies in it who must be defeated before you can progress to the next room.  Defeating enemies is as simple as hitting them with a bubble then popping it.  You score exponentially more points for each enemy you pop at the same time.  In each room after the first one, a point item and then a power-up item will appear.  If you don't defeat the enemies quick enough, you get a "Hurry Up!" warning, which makes all the enemies turn angry-red and move faster.  If you take longer than that you encounter the evil invincible white whale.  This guy is scary, he can't be killed, and will stalk you around the level, speeding up until you kill the last normal enemy, or die to his ghostly(or is it bony) maw.

Baron Von Blubba

The levels get harder and harder until you reach the trick level, level 100.  In this level you need to quickly grab the crystal ball, then get to the door which will appear.  If you defeat all the enemies like normal, you'll get a first class ticket back to level 1.  Make sure you die if you miss the crystal or door to prevent an eruption of controller-throwing behavior.  If you manage to get out the secret door, you'll get to play through several bonus levels.

At the very end of these secret levels, Super Drunk(that's actually his name) is waiting for you, giving the game an epic boss fight at the end.  To defeat him you must climb to the top of the room, grab the Thunder Drug which causes you to blow thunder bubbles, and pop them, connecting 60 lightning bolts with Super Drunk.  Meanwhile, he tears around shooting a spread of 6 bottles and only pausing when hit by lightning.  This is a tough fight, and I was never able to bring him to justice as a child.  Since Bub and Bob are such good friends, they wouldn't think about completing the game solo, and so you get a bad ending if you manage to sober up Super Drunk by yourself.  This is very hard!

Luckily this is one of the few games that earned the Wife's Seal of Approval, and so I was able to enlist her help at defeating this foe.  Unfortunately, the high frustration factor of facing off against the drunk caused her to threaten to revoke her seal.  As she explained to me, "This game is about being cute jumping and blowing bubbles, not being killed repeatedly."  Although when she said it, the sentence had a few more colorful metaphors thrown in.  A controller may or may not have been hurled across the room.  To take him down, you need to play defensively, find his pattern, and run under him when you can.  After an hour or so of trying, persistence paid off and Bub, Bob, their anonymous girlfriends, my wife, and I all learned the most important magic in the world.

If you've played this game to death, try it on the Super Game, which is accessed by typing in the password EECFG then selecting 1 or 2 player start.  This causes different enemies to appear on the levels then normal and also gives the Super Drunk an extra 20 life he doesn't need.  It also allows you the real ending pictured above.

Final Thoughts:  I can't imagine a person who would not like this game.  If you haven't played it you really owe it to yourself to give it a try.  It must be mentioned that this is a fantastic 2 player game, and is accessible to non gamers as well.  Something about wading through endless purple whales, space invaders, angry springs, while happy music endlessly plays in the background draws people in.  For a twenty year old game there is a lot to it with hidden levels, multiple endings, and multiple game modes.  Bubble Bobble can be found on many different platforms, including the virtual console on the Nintendo Wii.  Worth every cent of the $5 it now costs!