BIT TRIP RUNNER

Bit Trip Runner is a 2D platformer game that is the fourth of six entries in the Bit. Trip series. It was part of the Steam Summer sale a couple weeks ago for like $1.50, so I decided to pick it up and try it out. In the game, you play as Commander Video (awesome name btw!), and play through three different worlds: "Impetus", "Tenacity", and "Triumph". Each world has 11 levels and a boss battle, with each level getting progressively harder to play.

In the game, Commander Video runs automatically from left to right, and to finish the level the player must press certain buttons to make C.V. jump, slide, kick, and shield against obstacles and enemies. If Commander gets hit by any object at all, he is immediately warped back all the way to the beginning of the level to start running again.

As you play through the levels, you learn different moves, and the sequences get progressively tougher. There are three difficulty levels to the game: Easy, Normal, and Perfect. In easy, you simply have to make it all the way to the end of the level by any way you choose. Normal places little gold icons to collect, which gives you more points, and Perfect is the same as normal, although it requires you to collect every gold piece. If you miss a gold piece, it's back to the beginning for ya!

In the levels, there are little icons that kinda look like plus signs in a bubble, which act as a score multiplier that makes your run go from "Hyper" to "Mega", "Super", "Ultra", and finally "Extra". As you get the little plus signs, the background music gets more intense, with increased variations of the different sound effects. Also, Commander Video gains an increasingly intense speed trail as you gain plus signs.

The game is best played with a controller, because there are a lot of actions to do as the levels progress, and you often have to do multiple actions in a very short period of time. I used my wired 360 controller to play, and it worked beautifully. As the game progresses, you learn new moves, and the game uses a picture of a controller to tell you how to do them, which makes a controller even more useful.

The game looks awesome. It's retro-style presentation is fun to look at, it's sound effects and music are some of the coolest I've heard in a game, and the simplistic gameplay is enhanced by the simplistic visuals. I thought the 3D pixelated look of the game was fantastic. It feels and plays like a retro game, but at the same time it still retains a modern feel with it's impressive 3D graphics and unique style.

Overall, the game is fantastic. But, at the same time, it is one of the most patience-destroying games I have ever played! Have you ever played a guitar hero game, or one like it, and tried to get a perfect score? Imagine that, but if you make a mistake, you have to start all the way at the beginning! I mean, the levels aren't nearly as long as a guitar hero song, but the point stands. In some of the later stages, expect to get quite frustrated. But, this is one of the reasons why I like the game as well, it's actually CHALLENGING. The controls are very tight, and the hit detection is almost perfect, which means that if you hit anything, it's because YOU made Commander Video hit it, not the game.

Here is a quick video of me trying to play through a couple levels in the game. The first one is the third to last level of the game, and it is super-hard, so I have to excuse some of the language I ended up using because of it right now haha.

The game is on Steam for $9.99 as of the time of this blog writing, so go pick it up, and have some frustrating fun!

CHUCK APPROVES!

Which

 So, there I was. It was 1 o'clock in the morning, staring at my computer screen after a long night at work, and I decided I wanted to play something scary. Now, when I say scary I don't mean the likes of slasher ultra-violent torture-porn that a lot of people associate with "scary" nowadays. No, I mean something that will mess with my brain, make me get genuinely creeped out.

I have been a long-time fan of game franchises like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame, games that don't rely on violent images or loud noises to get you to JUMP whenever something scary happens. No, these games do what I enjoy most about the horror genre; they let you scare yourself. Through use of creepy music/sounds and unnerving setting they create an atmosphere that makes the player feel uncomfortable and almost unsafe. Psychological horror, I think is what they call it.

Now, I have played pretty much every scary game out there, or so I thought. I made a thread on a gaming website I frequent, asking the community to suggest some scary games to play. Most replied with games I had played before, but there was one that named a game that I had never heard of. The game was called WHICH. It is an independent game, created by one man, and it is free to download. I took the bait, downloaded it, and started to play.

This is where the game starts. No menu, no loading, no nothing. As you move the mouse, you see some writings on the wall next to you that gives you a hint.

This tells you how to move with the arrow keys (or wasd keys I found). After seeing this, I realized that this is how I'm going to find out how to play the game. As I explored a little bit, I found that I was in the lower level of what seemed to be a house. I walked into the kitchen of the house and found another clue.

This means that you interact with things using the left mouse button. As I started to open and search through the various cabinets and cupboards in the kitchen, I found the first key, labeled "1".

I finished searching the kitchen, all the while hearing what sounded like a heart beating, just behind the wall of cupboards. As I left the kitchen and headed up the stairs, I could no longer hear the beating heart.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I walked down a hallway and discovered a series of doors, labeled 1,2,3, and the last had a picture of what looked like a head. I used the key that I had found in the kitchen, and opened door number 1. The first thing I noticed in the room was a rather large drawing on the wall, and the math nerd inside me rejoiced!

After seeing this (not really knowing what it meant at all), I searched the room for a little longer, finding nothing. After exploring the house for about 20 minutes, I was able to find the key to door number 2. All the while searching I thought to myself just what was so scary about this game? Granted, the house gave me the creeps. The only thing I heard was my own footsteps, and the beating heart whenever I'd go into the kitchen. But, if that was all that was going to happen, I was kind of disappointed...

This was soon alleviated by opening door number 2. For those of you who plan on playing this, I will only say that a woman is found inside.

After meeting the woman, exploring the house a bit more, and finding some key items I was able to finish the game. The whole of the game took me just under an hour. But when the closing title showed, I was honestly thoroughly creeped out.

There were parts of the game when I seriously got goose-bumps all down my back. I don't know if it was the fact that it was then about 3 o'clock in the morning and I was playing the game with headphones on and in the dark, but I got what I was looking for. I had to watch an episode of the Simpsons just to get it out of my mind hahaha.

I did find out that the game has multiple endings. I played through another few times and tried to get the other ending, and after quite a while of searching was able to make it happen. After seeing the other ending, the game went from good to fantastic!

I have to thank the creator of the game, Mike Inel. He managed to create a game that was actually successful at being scary. Just goes to show that awesome graphics, a high budget, and a big development team are not needed to make a great game. Can't wait to see what this guy comes up with next. During the game, if you search around you can find a little "easter egg" which tells you who made the game and how he made it.

Even though the game only lasted about an hour (I can get through it in a matter of minutes now that I know where things are), I was very very impressed with it.  To anyone who would like to try it out themselves, here is the free download link. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good genuine scare. Be warned, the violent content does get a bit high towards the end, but nothing too serious.

Chuck DEFINITELY approves.

PS: For those of you that want to see the game in action, I've recorded myself playing quickly through the game. Although, I REALLY recommend trying the game out yourself first, and maybe just use my video as a helpful walkthrough, because the game will lose a lot of it's creepiness if you just watch a video of it. Just download it, turn of the lights, put on some good headphones, and have fun.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Battlefield: Bad Company 2  is the ninth installment in the Battlefield series, and was developed by DICE. The game was published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was announced at one of EA's earnings conferences, and was showcased at E3 2009. It was released worldwide in March 2010. The game is a direct sequel to Battlefield: Bad Company, though it does not continue the story of the original Bad Company, instead creating a new storyline.


Here is a tribute video I made that looks at Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and leads into a look into Battlefield 3, due out this November. Enjoy!

The following is why I LOVE this game.


Singleplayer

     The story, while not very creative or ground-breaking, was enough to make me want to play through it rather quickly. The campaign had a lot of items to collect throughout each mission, such as guns and hidden coms boxes, which motivated me to play through multiple times to be able to collect everything available. While I had to go back and search for the different collectibles, it was surprisingly enjoyable. The main 4 characters in the game were funny and full of witty banter, and the game itself was pretty action-packed. The missions have you playing through jungles, rivers, snow-barren towns, and war-ravaged cities. 

Multiplayer


     The mutiplayer is where it is at in this game. I have, as of this writing, put in just over 400 hours of play-time into just this aspect of the game! While it may sound like a lot, it is haha. The reason I enjoy Bad Company 2's multiplayer over pretty much any other shooter out there at the moment is it's squad-based gameplay. In other shooter games, the focus is on you alone. When you die, you spawn back at the designated spawn point, run in mostly alone, and do what you want. In Bad Company 2, it's a bit of a different story.

     A "squad" consists of a maximum of 4 players. You can be a squad just yourself, or you can group up with up to 3 other players. What's so great about squads is that you become a mini "team" that can work and spawn together. What this means is that as a squad, you move into a base, and as long as at least 1 person is still alive, the rest of the squad can die and spawn on the remaining player. This doesn't sound like much, but just this aspect of the game adds so much strategy and interesting gameplay moments to each battle, and makes each battle different.

    Another aspect of the multiplayer that makes it great is that you can change your loadout quite extensively each time you die. For example, if you were running around with your squad as an engineer (you have a rocket launcher and a short-range uzi let's say) and a certain sniper keeps picking your squad off. When you die, you can become a sniper, equip yourself with a long-barreled M95 sniper rifle with a 12X's scope and a motion-sensor ball, spawn by your squad, and take out the sniper. When you choose your loadout, this is what you can choose from...

* To see my stats for everything in the game Check here
There are many vehicles to play with in the multiplayer. You can pilot T90 tanks and fully-armed Apache helicopters all the way down to four-wheelers. You can get into a UAV, which is a remote-control helicopter that calls in a "hellfire" missile, which dominates pretty much anything you shoot at. The vehicles can make or break a game, and having the skill and knowledge to destroy a vehicle is just as important as being able to use them offensively. The vehicles feel very balanced for the most part, apart from a few players exploiting certain things that potential to ruin the match for everyone they are playing against. 

There are many game modes to play in the multiplayer, but the one that I played significantly the most was the RUSH mode. This mode pitted 2 teams of players against each other. One team was tasked with defending a series of coms station boxes, while the other team was tasked with attacking Attacking consisted of pushing forward into the enemy's base, setting a bomb on the com station box, and defending it for roughly 15 seconds until it blew up. The defenders are able to "disarm" the bombs set by the attackers relatively quickly, so it is not only important to get into the enemy base, but to stay in and defend the bomb you set. 

Well, this is a rough overview of the things that make me love this game. The levels are varied, the graphics are great, and the sound is FANTASTIC. This game possibly has the best sound-design I have ever seen in a game before. If you haven't played this game yet, PLAY IT. Find yourself a small group of friends, squad up, and get ready to get addicted! I'll be playing this game until the next Battlefield game, BATTLEFIELD 3, which comes out this November.