Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Having enjoyed Black Ops 2 a few weeks back I am now sampling another Call of Duty title I missed first time around: Call of Duty World at War. The game is enjoyable so far and being a World War 2 game it feels closer to the series' roots than the Modern Warfare and Black Ops games. My enjoyment of the game was initially hampered due to my foolishly selecting a high difficulty level. Missions became exercises in repetitive frustration as I died over and over at each choke point. Playing in such a frustrating fashion reveals several of the flaws that have existed in every Call of Duty game since the beginning: The games give you the illusion that you are fighting huge battles along with many of your colleagues but in reality the only person the enemy cares about is you. Every sharpshooter and machine gunner on the opposing side will aim directly at you  a split second after you pop your head up and there is little point trying to manoeuvre to a hidden spot because they instantly k...

I have been over dosing on first person shooting over the last few weeks with  single player runs through Jericho and Timeshift (both from 2007)  along with the more recent Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 (2012 I have written about  Jericho already, a second rate game to be sure but one that I enjoyed none the less. You can read more of my thoughts here:  http://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.ie/2014/04/clive-barkers-jericho-seven-years-on.html Timeshift came out at almost exactly the same time as Jericho to somewhat better reviews. Timeshift does have better graphics and more varied gameplay that Jericho but it wasn't good enough to survive comparison with the ground-breaking Crysis which was released around the same time.  Timeshift's main claim to fame is a suit which allows the player to slow, stop or even run time backwards for a short period. You can use these features anywhere in the game. In theory this would appear to open up all kinds of interesting ...

The increasing use of  highlight aggregators to discover popular content on the internet is on the one hand very convenient and on the other hand a great step backwards towards discrete centralised media  services. I am talking about Google Play News Stand, I am talking about Feedly, I am talking about Mediagazer and other news aggregators but I am also talking about content streaming services like Spotify, Netflix and Youtube. I am even talking about certain aspects of Facebook. All of these services try to address a problem of information overload by providing users with a filtered list of highlights. Of course this is an essential trend because there really is too much content out there and we need some assistance at discovery and selection. However I think it is important to realise that the more we come to rely on aggregators the more blinkered we become. We hand over control of our information inflow to a few hopefully trusted  organisations. In many ways we are...

I am playing and enjoying a game that got dismal reviews when it came out in 2007. To be honest I can understand why Clive Barkers Jericho scored so badly in comparison to other AAA shooters that came out that year including Crysis and Call of Duty 4. Jericho is an on rails shooter with hordes of dumb opponents patrolling generic brown corridors and feels like a game from the late 1990s. Painkiller is perhaps the most flattering comparison but Painkiller was itself considered charmingly retro when it came out in 2004. Happily the passage of time makes Jericho's datedness less relevant and allows one to enjoy the rather clever gameplay. This is squad shooter allowing you to switch on the fly between any one of six warrior mages. Each character wields two conventional weapons mapped to left and right mouse buttons and also has two magic powers. Some of the powers feel a bit redundant but there are gems like the lady who uses blood magic to create a ward which entangles nearby enemi...

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a ...

For the last few weeks I have spent most of my gaming time in Kings Bounty the Legend. I started playing the game back in 2009 and loved it but I managed to burn out fairly quickly. This time I have stuck with it and I have over 70 hours clocked up. I play very slowly so even with this I am only half way through the campaign. The game is wonderful for its art, its humour, its challenging implementation of turn based strategy and for it's ability to keep things varied with a variety of locations, enemies and troops. If you have never tried it I strongly recommend it particularly now that it can be bought for a few euros and is regularly on sale. One feature of the game that has provoked much comment both good and bad from players is the limited availability of troops and the constant need to travel the lands in search of replacements.  I myself have noticed that this one feature has a huge influence on how I play the game and I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the adv...

The rogue-like Enchanted Cave is one of the rare mobile games that caught my attention for more than a few minutes. I liked it because my understanding of the game game organically evolved through several phases each lasting just long enough to keep me from getting boredt:: Stage 1. WTF this game is hard I can't even make it beyond the first few levels without dying. Stage 2. Ah now I see how to make permanent improvements to my character. I can finally begin to make some some progress. Stage 3. I'll grind for a bit now to prepare my character for later levels. Stage 4. Ah, Now I have figured out the the combat model. I see how the numbers work and I can prepare carefully for every battle. The game becomes less random and more puzzle like. Stage 5. Now we are rolling. I am going to make a run for it and see can I get to the final boss and take them down. It is worth noting that the author of the Enchanted Cave has just run a successful Kickstarter campaign for "The...