Our Comfy Chairs

Crushing dreams

Iván — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:08:34 +0000

I’ve been playing some Pokèmon. Yeah, yeah, I know, whatever. I haven’t gotten really far, and I stumble upon this kid NPC that challenges me saying “I’ll beat you using this MAGIKARP my dad gave me!” For those who don’t know what a

This is a Magikarp

Magikarp is well, it’s pretty much the most stupid and useless pokèmon ever. It doesn’t have any kind of attack, so if you decide to use it in a battle… you’re screwed.

But this boy chooses to use it, because he strongly believes that his father gave him a worthy Pokèmon that will guide him to victory. And you are forced to fight him, even though any Pokèmon player knows that Magikarp is useless and you might want to spare this kid the humiliation. But you can’t.

You can’t.

Of course, you pokèmon will beat the crap out of the stupid Magikarp. And the poor kid says “But… this is a pokèmon dad gave me…” and will give you some money. Yes, you will take money from him because you “won” a battle you knew he couldn’t ever win.

And some questions remain: Why would a caring dad give a useless pokèmon to his very own son? Why would a honorable trainer like you abuse of a weak kid?

The pokèmon trainer way is a very tough one.

Fingering Fun!

annoyimousse — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:28:48 +0000

Meet Jam Legend.

I know this kind of game has been around for a while now (years of money printing), but I’m new playing them. Yes, yes… you are wondering why didn’t I play them before… well, I didn’t want to. But they bought a complete Rockband here at the office and I figured what the hell, you know? Turns out, I loved it.

Anyway, Jam Legend doesn’t bring anything new to the button mashing (can I call it Buttong?) mechanic, but it really brings something new to the scene. The game builds a Kongregate-like community around it, and the music comes from indie artists… some of them are really really good.

The place is great to promote your band this day and age. What better way to make your work visible than making people truly interact with it?

That’s it.

Get stoned legally: The Polynomial

Iván — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:06:27 +0000

Drugs can be dangerous: They can get you in jail and mine your health. But the colors… oh, the colors! Anyway, for some weird reason, most independent gaming blogs / sites have missed this release: The Polynomial :: Preview. I found it by chance while checking out linux gaming releases (don’t laugh), so kudos to the author for giving a damn about the penguin-based OS.

The Polynomial is a very basic first person arena shooter where you control something that shoots bullets against hordes of… ehm… flying stuff. But what really got my attention was the fact that pretty much everything you see on screen is precedurally generated. In plain english that means that the 3d models and textures are generated on the fly by the game using somewhat complex algorithms with somewhat random values[1]. That means that, most of the times, you’ll be looking at stuff you’ve never seen before. Neato.

As the author (Dmytry Lavrov) said, this is called “Preview” for a reason: There aren’t a whole lot of gameplay elements here, it currently looks more like a tech demo than a game but, hell, it looks like an awesome tech demo. I’m afraid it isn’t worth twenty bucks for me yet, but I’ll keep an eye on this one.

In any case, you can’t go wrong with the free demo. Now, do yourself a favor and go get it.

[1] If you didn’t get it, please use Google or Wikipedia, thanks.

(F)ridge Racer on PSP

Iván — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:57:55 +0000

Burnin' rubber

ridge: a long narrow natural elevation or striation

Who would have known. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I finally got myself a PSP (sort of, boring story) and decided to play some games. No, I don’t give a rat’s ass about media playback, most movies are longer than the PSP battery life anyway.

I’ve always been a big fan of racing games, specially arcade ones like Ridge Racer, mostly because they don’t make any sense and, thus, are more fun to me. Following the I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-physics formula of its predecessors, Ridge Racer can make any physicist cry with its ridiculous physics model (after some time, you start wondering why your car can be heading backwards and still move forward at 180 mph), featuring insane speeds and even more insane corner drifting. Because that’s the idea, to drift around every corner of the track as fast as you can. Performing a drift is as easy as letting go the gas pedal (button?) and quickly pressing it again: that’ll make your “machine” (the game never calls them “cars”) start drifting.

Nice graphics, great soundtrack and a big deal of depth are a few things of what RR has to offer. The World Tour mode is where the most fun takes place, where you’ll start with three cars and a few tours unlocked to begin playing: To progress through the game you need to complete each tour. The good thing is that you don’t always need to win races to qualify, sometimes arriving fourth is enough to “win” the race. That’s a good thing because, while the game actually starts rather easy, once you get to the Pro tour you’ll find out that hitting a tiny stone, not making a perfect start or even not using the nitro at the right moment often means that you won’t get first anymore. Seriously, the game can get really bitchy sometimes.

All in all, I really enjoyed it, so you should get it. Or rent it, or something. Gran Turismo and Forza fans shouldn’t touch this thing, not even with a ten feet pole.

Also, TITS. Yes, TITS always attract people, specially in the intertubes.

Screenshots are awesome

Feature Tales: Braid’s Fourth Dimension

annoyimousse — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:18:47 +0000

Yes, everybody is talking about Braid. So am I.

Braid rules.

Bye.

The title screen is playable. And there's fire. And shadows.

Braid is a platformer that breaks the mold by adding the fourth dimension as a non-linear (because linear is usually the standard, you retard) variable, and uses it as a puzzle element that encourages lateral thinking a whole fucking lot. In other words, if you press shit shift, time will go back and shit magic (sorry, the keys are to close together and typos happen. Blame qwerty.) will happen.

Kill those fuckers over and over again. Nevermind the box with your picture six feet under the ground... that's what happens when you fuck with quantum. For quantum, You are dead, and you died infinite times. And some retard graffittied a box with your picture and buried it.

I’m not going to discuss how this mechanic affects gameplay, because a curious thing about gameplay mechanics is that they affect gameplay a lot. Dunno why. Happens with other areas as well… storytelling affects the telling of the story a lot. Weird. Anyway, I’m not discussing that because basically this post is written with the sole purpose of sucking Braid’s balls.

It is a great feature, very well used. And you know what else is great? it’s right there from the beginning! you don’t need to find some dagger first…

Have you ever played Choke on my Groundhog, you bastard robots? it’s a beatiful experiment by Petri Purho, with a similar mechanic. Go, play it.

WTF Moments #1: Wii Vitality Sensor

Iván — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:09:38 +0000

Lube not included

C’mon Nintendo! I can think of a few dozen better ways to waste my money. If I think a little (just a little) harder I can even think of actually beneficial ways of spending a few bucks.

This will open a new universe of gameplay possibilities, that’s for sure…

WARNING: Don’t try this at home, you might hurt yourself. If you do, please send pics to this blog so we can laugh our asses off. Thanks.

Soul Calibur 4: It’s all about tits

Iván — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:51:06 +0000

Ivy is a man. A huge titted man

TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS. TITS.

Our new huge-titted overlords

Also, “next-gen” graphics and a revised fighting system. But mostly tits.

Hellooooo miss world!

annoyimousse — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:29:10 +0000

Hi! Welcome to our blog! This is about game reviews and game talk in general.

Expect things like

OMG this game rulez!

and

OMG gay.

also featuring

WTF not a game. Lame.

and weathercasts.

Loving thoughts,
The Comfy Chair team.