What would you do if you could project your body to another location? That’s the question that this book examines, from scientific background that doesn’t mask the overall story.
Since the opening is set at a funeral there is a good bet that something is going to go wrong at some point but it’s an enjoyable ride finding out exactly what happens and how. The tone starts out quite light (almost a Bertie Wooster style delivery) but as the story unfolds the tone becomes darker.
At one point there’s a reasonably heavy description of the science involved but, once it’s over, it’s not referred to again, so I didn’t need to remember it in order to follow the story.
The shifting narrator perspectives add interest as well as shielding the motives and feelings of the other participants at key moments.
It’s not a long book, but it’s the ideal length to tell its story. My only real irritation was the frequent use of GPS indoors which isn’t possible as far as I know. The book is nicely laid out as a Kindle book, and well edited without the distracting grammatical and spelling issues found in so many Kindle books.
** A free copy of this book was provided for review via NetGalley
Bubble defence is a tower defence game. There are several of these available on the Market and this is one of the simplest looking, if no less addictive for it.
The basic concept is to build up defence towers along a path to try to defeat wave after wave of increasingly armoured bubbles which follow that path.
There are four different kinds of towers:
The Basic Tower – shoots a single shot
The Six Barrel Tower – shoots 6 equally spaced shots at once
The Flame Tower – melts ice balloons
The Transporter – transports balloons back to the beginning of the track
The variety of enemies isn’t huge but it’s an elegant solution. Shooting each enemy removes 1 “layer” of protection until you finally get down to the last layer and destro them
You earn money foe every hit but, unlike many of these games there’s no interest to be earned by saving your cash
These towers are used to defeat the 7 different kinds of enemy. Most of these are basi
There are 7 different path layouts and Five levels of difficulty.
Bubble defence is available as a free ad-supported version or as a full version for 1.99. One thing that annoyed me after buying the full version, and is something I’ve seen in several upgrades of that kind, is that your history of high scores isn’t imported to the full version. It might be a bit of extra work but it would be rewarding for those of us who’d played enough of the free version to cough up the cash.
Battling the Bubbles on the Icy Road
Bubble Defense is a tower defense game. There are several of these available on the Market and this is one of the simplest looking, if no less addictive for it.
The basic concept is to build up defense towers along a path to try to defeat wave after wave of increasingly armoured bubbles which follow that path.
There are four different kinds of towers:
The Basic Tower – shoots a single shot
The Six Barrel Tower – shoots 6 equally spaced shots at once
The Flame Tower – melts ice balloons
The Transporter – transports balloons back to the beginning of the track
These towers are used to defeat the 7 different kinds of enemy. Most of these are basically the same, with different colours and speeds, all nested in one another. Shooting each enemy removes 1 “layer” of protection until you finally get down to the last layer and destroy them. The most difficult enemy shoots back though, so be careful
Some maps have more than one entrance for bubbles
You earn money for every hit but, unlike many similar games there’s no interest to be earned by saving your cash, so feel free to splash out.
There are 7 different path layouts and 5levels of difficulty, leaving quite a lot of variety and replay value.
Bubble defense is available as a free ad-supported version or as a full version for 99 cents. One thing that annoyed me after buying the full version, and is something I’ve seen in several upgrades of that kind, is that your history of high scores isn’t imported to the full version. It might be a bit of extra work but it would be rewarding for those of us who’d played enough of the free version to cough up the cash.
I heard about Peggle (buy Peggle on iTunes) several times before I actually tried it. Being Scottish I can be a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to paying for apps. There a re a good number of high quality apps available for free and the price (£2.99/$5) seemed quite high to me and ignored it. I had even read about the Peggle pricing experiment, found it interesting but not the game itself.
Then I was in an electronics store waiting (quite a while) for something to be brought out to me and they had Peggle running on a PC. I played it without really knowing what it was and became addicted. So i ponied up the money and bought it.
The aim is to knock out all of the orange pegs on the different boards. There are a majority of blue pegs which help your ball to have something to bounce off and the occasional purple score multiplying peg.
The most interesting pegs are the green ones, which offer new “special powers” depending on which level you are on and which of the 10 Peggle masters you are studying under. Among the powers are:
Super Guide – showing you where your ball will go after its first bounce
Space Blast – lights up all nearby pegs
Fireball – blasts its way through pegs instead of bouncing off them.
There is a collector barrel moving from left to right on the bottom of the screen then you are able to re-use the ball (useful when you’re running out)
I’ve played it for hours since I downloaded it and am re-playing it. It’s a great “quick” game, to play in spare minutes, but you could also play for prolonged periods and it’s well recommended.
It does behave very well when I’m listening to my own music, keeping the sound effects but dropping the music (although the “Handel’s Messiah” music when you finish the level is fabulous)
“Day of the Tentacle” is one of my favourite games of all time. I played it through as a teenager and I loved the 3 streams of play.
The basic concept is that you play as 3 friends, all separated by 100 years (Laverne in 2176, BerNARD in 1976 and Hoagie in 1776) and you have to co-operate to make sure that you can all get back to 1976 and defeat the evil Purple Tentacle (as opposed to the good natured Green Tentacle)
For example you Bernard has to retrieve a “help wanted” sign from the present, send it to Hoagie in the past so that he can get a job and deliver a battery to Laverne in the future.
It’s very complicated but wonderfully humourous. you play havoc with time (adding amendments to the US constitution so that everyone has a vacuum cleaner in the basement, just so that you’ll be able to use one in the future) and it can be a bit frustrating trying to work things out but the game is so cleverly written that it’s a joy to play.
I’ve been playing it again recently thanks to my jailbroken iPod. ScummVM is available via Cydia and it has been great playing through this and “Flight of the Amazon Queen” (now available for free!) Next up is “The Secret of Monkey Island!”
I’m under no illusions that android is not (yet?) a gaming platform. I’ve found precious few games which are worth keeping on my phone. However I do have some standards and Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile (Demo) fell far below those standards.
The game weighs in at around 7mb which, for a phone with only 74mb for all applications and operating system, that’s a sizeable chunk. I could forgive this rudeness if it weren’t for the absolutely useless gameplay.
I’ve played Guitar Hero on the PS2 and the Wii, as well as Tap Tap revenge on the iPod Touch so I know what the deal is. The problem with this version is that it’s so jerky and jumpy that it’s impossible to be in time. I tried several times and never made it past 30 seconds into a track. I’m no genius at Guitar Hero but I can usually complete a track on the first few difficulty levels. I made sure that I had nothing big running in the memory and went back to try again – to no avail.
I’d much rather shell out on independent games that are more fun (and significantly cheaper)
Do yourself a favour and don’t bother with this turkey.
In a tower defence game you face waves of enemies, slowly increasing in difficulty while you build up your defences against each wave. There are usually waves with different characteristics (i.e. some can fly so are immune to ground based weapons) and weapons to match lots of characteristics. The idea is to build up a mixture of defences to defeat al enemies.
The premise here is that you are defending the Mars base from invading alien hordes.
One of the things which hits you immediately about Sentinel is the high quality visuals and sound effects. Of all of the games in this genre which I’ve played this is by far the best produced. It’s also one of the most addictive. There are 4 separate layouts to defend, in either assault (90 waves of attack) or endurance (unlimited waves.)
Since the release of Sentinel 2 (review coming soon), Sentinel has been reduced to 99c – well worth the money.
My only bugbear with the game is that it stops whatever you’re listening to when it starts but you can get around that using the double-click trick.
One of my earliest gaming memories is in screaming in rage at this game.
It would say something like “you can see a bent fork.” I would type “Pick up bent fork.” It would say something like “I don’t understand the word “bent.” I would scream.
The game was released in 1893 and I was only just able to read properly when i was playing it so it’s not surprising that i got frustrating.
The basic idea is to move around the island and to try to escape. Part of the joy for me was the time that it took to draw the picture of each scene which you were in. There was new and fairly evocative art for every area and it was the height of excitement back then. It’s an old-skool game though i.e. you can die. There are lots of ways to die and i found most of them.
It’s still available in various spectrum emulator sites and d a “one click” version which plays reggae music during the game, killing the sinister atmosphere.
I’m feeling like a game – hope I can escape the natives!
He writes comedic songs for the most part, many of them off-kilter lovesongs. “Skullcrusher Mountain” is a ballad sung by an evil genius in his mointaintop lair to a woman whom he is holding captive. “Codemonkey” is a song of the unrequited love of a programmer for the company secretary.
I went to a concert which he performed in Glasgow last year and it was just great. He was all on his own but he was clever, accomplished and funny.
Coulton also releases his music under a ccreative commons license which has allowed his fans to go wild on YouTube.
Eye tricks is one of those free apps which I downloaded ages ago and haven’t used much since.
There’s nothing wrong with it but it’s just not that exciting.
It consists of 30 different optical illusions, some animated, some not. The standard is pretty high’ and there are some classics in there, like the “is it a vase or is it 2 faces in profile.
It’s interesting but now that I’ve reviewed it I’ll be deleting it. There’s no real replay value.
One of the first really good free puzzle games I found for the iPod was flood-it (free iTunes download). It’s a simple concept. Your aim is to make all of the board one colour by changing the colour of one segment. For example if the first square is green, and the one next to it is red then you make the first square red and the blocks become a whole. On your next colour change any squares of that colour directly next to your block are added to the whole and it grows and grows.
I may not have explained it very well but it works very well, It’s also a good one handed “thumb” game. the only section of the screen you use is the six coloured circles at the bottom, and there’s no real speed. you can play it while walking around, or sitting on the bus and not worry about jostles and other issues.
The game is ad supported but there is a premium version available for the iPod for 79p (buy from iTunes), which I bought having spent so much time playing the free version. The pay-for version allows you to undo a move, upload online scores, retry a board, etc. Of all of these features I only really find the undo useful and it’s a pity that it doesn’t import the play history form the free version.
If you’re looking for a simple but deep strategy game to while away a couple of minutes (or even a couple of hours, then this comes highly recommend.
One of my earliest gaming memories is in screaming in rage at this game.
