Day Twenty-six

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm back. Had some stuff come up that made this endeavor more difficult than I wanted to put up with, so I took a break for a few days. I still played games, but didn't feel much like writing about it afterwards.

I purchased an Xbox 360 controller today with some Best Buy gift cards I had sitting around. I own several games that play well with a controller, but the old Microsoft Sidewinder game pad I own hooks up to a game port. Yes, kids, a game port. Look it up on your fancy digital encyclopedia.

I played Shatter for a bit with the controller and while it was different than playing on the keyboard, I don't think it was necessarily any better. Then I switched over to Beat Hazard. This game takes your music and dynamically generates levels based on it. And by dynamically generates, I mean rapes your eyelids off with a thousand rainbows of pure fusion power. The game starts with a warning for epileptics and it's clear after about .037 seconds why that is. Good times on the Xbox controller though. If you're in the mood for mindless, shoot the living bejesus out of everything on the screen before it kills you sort of arcade action, you should pick it up.

Games Played: 
Shatter
Beat Hazard

Achievements:
Perfect
1st Track Cleared
Tug of War
Boss Dance
Boss Slayer
Brutal Boss Kill.

Day Twenty-five

DID NOT POST

Day Twenty-four

DID NOT POST

Day Twenty-three

DID NOT POST

Day Twenty-two

Another evening spent with SpaceChem, which has now taken second place in my Steam games list for hours played. While I've probably spent more time with Half Life and Half Life 2 than SpaceChem, Steam didn't used to keep track of time played.

I went back and finished an optional level tonight to earn the achievement. This game has an unusual take on bonus levels in that they exist within each of the various larger worlds, but you can skip right past them. The game has no points other than comparing your score to the score of others, so they're really just there as out of sequence harder levels.

I was off the charts slow on this bonus level. Usually I at least fall in withing the graph for cycles, but this one I was way slow. But that was more or less by design since I wanted to keep the logic easy so I could beat it and move on. There are large pauses in the last reactor so I didn't have to deal with keeping track of two bits running around at once. A fun challenge of a level though.

SpaceChem introduced some new controls in the world I'm on now, but interestingly the first two levels don't require that you use them. I was able to easily pass them using older game play elements that have been around for many levels. Maybe they're key to driving better efficiency on those levels, but unlike the bonus level, I was within normal ranges for both symbols and cycles. Oh well, I'm sure I'll be forced into them soon enough and wish I hadn't asked for it.

Games Played: 
SpaceChem

Achievements:
Junior Permutation Technician.