Day 119: Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam

My extensive research into the British people and their customs (several episodes of Are You Being Served? and a copy of Cricket for Dummies) has led me to conclude that they are a people with a low threshold for excitement. How else can you explain millions of Britons watching three days of batting practice with rapt attention?


Another case in point is Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam, a game that combines beautiful pixel art with steampunk and a giant chain gun but still manages to be a dreadful bore. The main problem is Monty. Monty is the old guy trying to look like Albert Einstein who appears every 10 steps to explain exactly how to get through the next part of the level, completely removing any challenge that might have existed.

The game itself is pretty straightforward. Blast your way through The Baron's giant flying steam fortress, collecting medals which seem to have no defined purpose, and rescuing other British fellows, who cheer and then leap inexplicably to their deaths, before reaching the final battle with The Baron.


The controls are a combination of the arrow keys and the mouse, which is a bit strange since it left me playing the entire game with my left arm stretched across my body. Clearly Dirk Valentine is meant for those who've made the move to laptop computers with their fancy centrally located touchpads.

Dirk Valentine, like all things British, is too polite for its own good. It spends too much time pandering to me and not enough time kicking my ass.

Day 107: Cursor*10

Oh Engrish, how I love thee.

You tell me what to do.


And what not to do.


You never sugar coat the truth.


And you always give me fair warning.


Sometimes you confuse me.


But you keep me informed.


Please don't ever leave me.

Day 88: Ginormo Sword

Ginormo Sword is either a bad dick joke disguised as a bad video game or a bad video game disguised as a bad dick joke. Either way, once you stop giggling over having the blacksmith increase the length and width of your sword, you'll no doubt quickly become bored with what is otherwise a mediocre slash fest.


Each level is made up of several combat areas and one or two shops where you can upgrade your character's weapon or abilities. Once all of the areas are cleared of monsters, the boss appears. All battles are nothing more than a lot of rapid mouse pounding, making Ginormo Sword just another way to exercise your right arm, but with ugly retro video game graphics (what's with the fuchsia armor?) instead of girls making out.

Day 84: Scorching Earth

Scorching Earth combines thinking with destruction, which is a good way to get gamers to think. The goal is to burn every square of land down to ash. It's a lot trickier than it sounds. In fact, each level has only one solution, which makes it exactly the sort of puzzle game I've never much cared for.

Day 67: Dino Run

Dino Run is about 2 things: dinosaurs and running. If you don't like dinosaurs and running, you probably won't like Dino Run, unless you like eating small, defenseless mammals enough to put up with all the dinosaurs and running.

The simple premise, guide your yellow dino through seven increasingly apocalyptic levels before the Wall of Doom swallows him up, allows the game to move at a frantic pace. And the low-fi graphics manage to be cute even as the world is falling apart.

Dino Run is an easy to grasp, fun to play game that reminds of what video games are supposed to be.

Day 63: Meet In

It's been so long since the last time I completed a game that I've forgotten what it feels like. Now that completing a game is more than simply making it to the end. At best, that's the halfway point. New games make me go back and find things I missed or play levels I skipped or, worst of all, make me play the whole game over again to see the "real ending." Princess Peach never seemed to mind before when I would use warps to get to her faster. Seeing the credits roll at the end of a game used to fill me with a sense of accomplishment. Now it makes me dread what there might be left to do.


Meet In is a puzzle game with just one puzzle to solve. Get all four family members to the same central location. Once that happens you're finished forever, if you so choose. There's no need to come back to find some card that can be traded in for a hidden stage that will give you the chance to unlock and extra outfit or some other attempt to artificially create replay value. Finally, I can feel like I've accomplished something.

Day 52: The Naked Game

This is not a screenshot from The Naked Game.


And neither is this.


The Naked Game, in fact, has nothing to do with nudity. It is, or rather, it claims to be "the worlds first piece of online conceptual video game art." Anyone making a claim that bold and pretentious should first learn how to operate apostrophes, but that's just my opinion.

The "naked" part of The Naked Game refers to the code of the simple Pong style game, played by two AI opponents, which is left exposed allowing players to toggle individual lines on and off. While mildly interesting, this does not provide as much in the way of entertainment or greater understanding of the universe around us as I'm sure the creator hoped.


The experience would be much better if the pretense of "art" was dropped, along with the music loop, and players were given more control, like altering the values of the constants to change the size and speed of the ball and paddles, for example. Or allowing two players to compete online, each having to choose to either boost their own abilities or sabotage the other player (while figuring out how to do so).

Hopefully this developer will learn what I learned from The Naked Game, that programmers aren't philosophers, and apply that lesson to his next project.

Day 46: Mekuri Master

I shouldn't be at all surprised that a skirt flipping would be so dull. Adult themed video games have been boring since Custer's Revenge, which asked that players do nothing more than walk across the screen to be rewarded with what, with a little imagination, looked kind of like a cowboy raping an indian.

Mekuri Master asks players to lift the skirts of schoolgirls using the mouse. Fortunately, moving one hand up and down while sitting at a computer is an action very familiar to most of the primary audience for Merkuri Master, so they should have no trouble racking up high scores.


The "hero" needs to see as many panties as possible in the passing period between classes at a school that apparently has no other male students. The better the timing, the better the score. And don't even think about touching the school nurse's skirt unless you enjoy the feeling of a clipboard to the jaw.


And that's the whole game. Five levels of see girl, flick mouse, see girl, flick mouse. And with nothing but a few quick glances of cartoon panties, there's nothing here in either the gameplay or titillation departments to make Mekuri Master worthwhile.