Shoot… Or Run… Or Melee?

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Another Left 4 Dead 2 post! Today I bring the whats and what nots of fighting our dearest friend, the Tank!

However, before we continue, a note from the star himself, Tank:

Dear Humans. This is Tank. You probably know me from hit Xbox 360 game Left 4 Dead. Well, Tank need to get something off chest.

It make Tank sad that as soon as you see him, you start shooting at him. Tank not mindless killing machine. Sure, Tank enjoy smashing human skulls to paste. What 12-foot tall, 800 pound, horribly mutated creature wouldn’t? But there is another side to Tank. Tank also enjoy stamp collecting, scrapbooking, and updating blog under pen name “Love Muffin”. Tank took origami class once at adult-learning annex, but fingers to big, so Tank smash teacher. Got B-minus.

So, when you see Tank on the streets of city, instead of shooting, try asking Tank how day is going. You may find that you and Tank have more in common than you think. Of course, Tank will still smash you, but you will die having made new friend. And that make Tank happy.

-Tank

If you’re still here and you still want to know how to make sure your skull isn’t turned into a fine paste, read on!

A user on the Steam forums posted this, (Urik) and it looks like it might just do the trick when it comes to facing our next Tank. This shows the amount of bullets, reloads, hits and time it takes for each weapon to kill a tank on Expert mode (click for bigger)! So the next time you look into the night’s sky and see a car rental drifting through the air at high speed toward you, remember – you should have picked up the frying pan. Screw the shotgun. Cook that mother fucker.

Fallout 3 storage. Items disappearing fix.

Image by Cystie via Flickr

I’ve been playing Fallout 3 a little bit lately, and overall it’s a pretty great game. I took the often walked path and dumped all my points into intelligence and hardly any into strength, which means more points when you level but you can carry jack shit when it comes to your back pack. Before I actually figured out you could fast travel (I don’t really get this anyway, does he yell for a non-existent car hire or does it just skip the amount of time it would have taken us to walk there?) after walking from one city to another while over encumbered… Yeah, that took a while. Nice profit though!

So I did what any good gamer would do, look for a place to dump my stash of weapons, ammo and oddly smelling scrap metal.

Without giving you guys any spoilers, one way or another you’re going to end up with your own place to stay in the game – complete with storage! I stuck a load of crap in one of my draws when I got there and happily set off again to find even more useless stuff, but to my surprise, when I got back all my stuff was gone. Had I been robbed? I didn’t even know people could rob my house. My first thought was to kill anyone within a 50 yard radius of my house with a mini nuke… But I decided to check on my mobile broadband first… low and behold, it’s a bug!

Easily fixed though, first check if you own whatever you’re trying to store items in, lets use a desk as an example:

1. Open Console with `
2. Click on the desk
3. Type IsOwner

It should now let you know if you own the desk or not. If you don’t own it, the items that you store inside won’t stay for long. To set yourself as owner, follow these steps:

1. Open Console with `
2. Click on the desk
3. Type SetOwnership

If you want to check if it worked, just type IsOwner again, like you did before.

iDracula, Review

Here’s my view on iDracula for you iPhone mobile broadband users out there.

Alright, so it doesn’t have the most imaginative name in the world, but what’s the game about? Internet Dracula?

The game is (sort of) an overhead shooter, and nothing short of it. You’ll be pitted against a hell of a lot (pun not intended) of monsters and it’s up to you how many you take back to hell with you!

So, let’s take a bit of a more in-depth look.

The Story

Sadly, the only type of story the game has is the introduction:

You are the hunter. Vampire hunter. Well, not quite. In fact, you are being hunted. Or you’re just trying to survive a little more against the horde of Vampires, Werewolves, Witches and Dracula himself.

Can you stand the night? iDracula is an intense survival shooter – the most intense game in the App Store. You begin with a simple gun and slow monsters, but as the time passes, they grow stronger and faster, dropping better weapons. You will also be able to gain “perks”, as you earn enough experience.

You won’t find anything after that. I thought this was a shame, because a story mode with an interesting plot would have made up for some of the repetitiveness later in the game.

The Graphics and Sound

The graphics are actually pretty good for the iPhone and the animation is quite fluid. The main character does seem to stand a bit weirdly with some of the guns, but maybe he likes to stand like that, who am I to question his preferences? I’m happy with the way he stands while firing the chain gun anyway. One thing that might get on your nerves is the music, just one song played over and over, apart from that the sound is pretty good: enemies and weapons sound believable.

The Controls

The controls are touch screen; the movement keys are on the bottom left of the screen while the aiming keys on the bottom right – the main problem with this control interface is that if your character or any of the monsters walk under it, you can’t see them due to your thumbs being over that part of the screen. Something like not being able to see what’s attacking you almost certainly ends in death if you’re quite far into survival mode. Another thing that annoyed me is not being able to aim without shooting.

The Features

Maps

There are only three maps, all of them quite small and the monsters which spawn differ between each area:

1. Grave Park – This is exactly what it sounds like, a graveyard/park type area (First screenshot).
2. Frozen Earth – Snowy type area, even has the fallen autumn leaves (Last screenshot)!
3. Castle Hall – This is the hall of a mean looking castle… What can I say other than… Very red(Second screenshot).

Game Modes

1. Survival – You’ll start off with a handgun and very little opposition. This is a good time to get used to the controls and map. As the mode carries on you’ll get more perks, drops and weapons from dead monsters. The monsters themselves will get stronger and faster, not to mention they’ll multiply like rabbits. This is a you or them type situation, the bus isn’t coming to get you and the car rental is stuck in traffic, you’re in this mode until you bite the dust.
2. Super Survival – Same as survival but with additional drops, like super speed and bombs.
3. Wave Attack – Somewhat like survival, except enemies drop money. You’ll then have some time to buy weapons, ammo and health before starting the next wave of enemies.
4. Rush – Choose your weapon, you’re about to be dropped straight into a ton of enemies. This is like survival mode except… Skipping the build up.

Weapons

1. Handgun
2. Rifle
3. Crossbow
4. Grenade
5. Launcher
6. Machine Gun
7. Blade Ripper
8. Flamethrower
9. BFG – Big Fucking Gun? I prefer Big Friendly Giant.

“Perks”

1. Extra Health – This gives you 30% more HP
2. Crossbow Master – Adds an incredible amount of power to the crossbow, and also makes it shoot in 3 directions.
3. Power Striker – Your guns push back enemies further.
4. Bloodlust – The more HP you lose, the more damage you do.
5. Immortality – Makes you immortal for 20 seconds… but then kills you.
6. Telekinesis – Drags power ups dropped by enemies towards you.
7. New Weapon – Gives you a weapon which is more powerful than the ones you’re already holding, if there is one.
8. Ninja – Gives you a higher chance to dodge attacks (40% or 50%, I’ll have to confirm which one). I can’t say I’ve noticed my character ever dodging any attacks, even with this perk active.
9. Panic – The more HP you lose, the faster you reload.
10. Sniper – Increases the range of your weapons.
11. Bonus finder – Enemies drop more power ups and items.
12. Field Runner – Movement speed is increased.
13. Blood Sacrifice – All enemies in your line of sight will die at the cost of half of your remaining HP.
14. Reloader – Increases the reloading speed of all weapons
15. Score Master – Doubles any score points you receive after using it. This is useful for getting additional perks, as they’re given on random intervals of your score.
16. Bandage – Full heal.

Conclusion

The game contains a small handful of maps and game modes, but plenty of weapons and things to shoot with them. There is also a perk system which lets you choose from 4 random “upgrades” at intervals throughout the game. This adds a little to the usual shoot ’em up theme.

My overall conclusion is that the game is pretty fun. Great to play for ten minutes if you have nothing else to do, after that though, it can become pretty repetitive. It’s worth a buy just for a fun play now and then though, and if don’t get bored, even better. Worth the price? I’d say so.