Radiant HD: Free App of the Day, Free Addiction of the Day

As a part of my regular daily routine, I check Amazon's free app of the day (great reason to download this!), and this morning I found what was named "Radiant HD", a modern (ish) revamp of Space Invaders. I had my initial doubts, as what shows up as the free app usually isn't anything special.

 I was wrong. (yay!)

Turns out, the game is roughly based on Space Invaders, but only to the extent of the gameplay genre. Your ship automatically fires shots at fixed intervals, and there's only left and right movement. Aliens flow out from all sides of the screen firing lasers as aliens typically do. Every so often, there's a boss level as expected. But that's where the similarities end.

Players are  presented a with an array of around five weapons, each with different characteristics, such as the plasma gun's shotgun-style spread. At the end of each level in casual mode (there's others, just haven't gotten to them yet), a store screen gives the player the ability to buy new lives and upgrade their weapons, something that really adds to the "I need to keep playing" value that makes this game so hard to put down.

The game mode I'm playing through right now is "Casual Mode", which is some sort of campaign mode; there's some dialog in the game that adds a few brief relax moments. Thankfully, the dialog is well-written with  some great humor added in here-and-there; one of the lines made a small reference to the original Space Invaders from the 80's (but you'll just have to play it to find out what it was :P)

I still have yet to play the other modes like Survival as of yet, but from what I can guess, it'll probably be much more similar to the classic arcade version of Space Invaders, with a set number of lives, which when expended will make you restart from zero points.

Radiant HD will be free for the rest of the day (2/26) on Amazon Apps Marketplace, after which it will resume its previous price of $2.00.

The app is also available on Android Marketplace here > https://market.android.com/details?id=net.hexage.radiant.hd&hl=en

Go download it!

A Blast From the Past...

Kinda going off my "What makes a good campaign post" (check it out here>http://communicationblogdown.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-makes-good-campaign.html), I went back into my pile of PC games and pulled out Halo PC, in preparation for the release of a mod many, many years in the works: CMT SPV3

This mod is similar to Halo: Anniversary in that it significantly upgrades the graphics, but different in that it totally revamps the gameplay of the game. New weapons from the other games in the series are added, new sections are added, and new music is added along with BLOOOOOOOM

This generation of games tends to be stuffed full of bloom, and it's one of the main reasons games look as great as they do. If you take all of Halo 3's bloom out, the real age of the game begins to show through; it's all the shininess makes it look comparable to modern games.

Anyways, along with very good dynamic lighting, CMT makes use of a program/app called "Open Sauce" to get at workarounds to the game's 11 year old engine, adding effects such as post-processing and alternative firing modes on the BR55 Battle Rifle (which is also nicely suppressed). This basically makes Halo CE, an 11 year old game, and puts it nearly on par with Anniversary.

I've played through about three times now, noticing different things every time I go through it, such as Easter Egg weapons. My favorite weapon (and only one so far :/) I've found is what's called the "Partygun", which is essentially a confetti gun.

Pics for days.

And this is Halo One (One!)

What Makes a Good Campaign

Boredom has recently driven me to finally play Reach again, which of course means doing all the daily challenges. Needing to kill a few more Covenant leaders, I played the final level, "Lone Wolf". Despite having played Reach multiple, MULTIPLE times, I still can't help but feel sad at the end, where Noble 6 meets his end.

That's right. Feel.

Feeling in a campaign stems from the attachment of characters in the duration of the campaign; Reach does an excellent job of doing this by establishing 6 very different personalities that are very hard to mix up. Each character has their own special role, for example, Jun is the sniper/marksman of the group. By developing a way to differentiate the characters, I can actually tell which characters are dying, as grim as that sounds. The more the player cries when a character dies, the better the game did at creating a connection between the two.

In Hollywood-esque blow-every-single-living-thing-explosions-everywhere type of games (*cough* COD), the focus is diverted from the characters into the massive amounts of boom-booms happening every second. I'm sure that if I was prone to epileptic seizures, games like COD would definitely put me under in less than 5 minutes of playing. Of course, this is generally what drives a large majority of players to play the campaign (few as there are). COD's campaigns usually feature about 3-5 major characters, with more recent COD games staying within the same point-of-view, that is, the same character. Back in the old school COD days before classes were even conceived (or competitive multiplayer in general), COD games would switch from multiple perspectives, switching between different countries fighting WWII. This was a necessary action back then, and this also allowed for lengthier campaigns. However, characters weren't very established; the player's names was rarely mentioned, and I would often be confused if I was being ordered to do something (RAMIREZ! FACE ME WHEN I ADDRESS YOU!).

Despite this lack of colorful characters, the original COD campaigns were considered classics at the time, being actually longer than 6 hours, and having an actual historical background. COD games have seemed to drop into a more unrealistic sense, more and more every year, especially with Black Ops in 2010. What seems interesting about the new COD titles is the growing convoluted-ness of the stories; this doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad, and on the contrary, makes multiple run-throughs a necessity if the campaign is ever to be understood.

More tomorrow, for I am tired, and my wrist is giving me pains....

(-_-) zzzzzzzzzzzz.....

Try Looking Up Next Time...

Just a small recap from the previous post: an app was recently developed that allowed for a transparent phone screen (link in the last post). Although I really wasn't expecting much, I can faithfully say that I'm dissapointed.

One of the major problems with the app is the slow refresh rate of the camera, which projects the image needed to see through the phone; even at the lowest resolution setting on the camera, the picture was very choppy, and altogether not efficient enough to be of regular use. Hopefully in the future, the developer will boost the performance of the app, as im fairly sure that a dual-core 1.2ghz phone is the most powerful phone you'll find on the market right now, which means it should have no problem at all in the current state in development.

The app is still in a relatively early version, so I'll keep the app on my phone for the mean time; the app itself is relatively small, so it shouldn't be a major issue.

See-Through Phone Screens

While reading my blog-feed (is that what it's called?...) I stumbled across this story on TechCrunch...

"I used to scowl when I saw people walking down the street with eyes locked on their phones, but necessity has gotten me in the habit of doing it too. Thanks to a new app called Transparent Screen though, now I can do it free from the fear of falling into an open manhole or into a large fountain."

- (http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/06/transparent-screen-android-app-lets-you-text-and-walk-without-fear/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29)

The app works by projecting an image from the camera onto the screen of the device using it; why this wasn't though of earlier, I have no idea, but I'm not going to complain about it's development.

Unfortunately, using the camera in combination with other applications simultaneously will probably have a negative impact on the battery life. I'm downloading the app right now to do some testing, expect an update in the near future.

App download (free) https://market.android.com/details?id=botweb.transparent.screen&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImJvdHdlYi50cmFuc3BhcmVudC5zY3JlZW4iXQ..

Nostalgia Attaaaaack!11

I don't know why, but while downloading a graphic overhaul mod for Minecraft, I got a little nostalgia from downloading mods for my old PC game days...so now, I reinstalled Battlefront 2, something I never really got to play much on my horrible computer of my childhood. Unfortunately, our Internet's been kinda downgraded, and I made my computer fail at playing Minecraft. Who would've thought that a game made up of blocks could be so CPU-intensive >.<

Dazed and Confused, There's So Many It's Not True....

Alright, live versions time...not quite sure to handle this as I've never done this for live versions, but it seems apropriate due to the large amounts of versions of Dazed and Confused.

I did a search through my albums, and found a total of five versions, plus an extra from the 1970 performance at Royal Albert Hall.

A lot to cover...

It doesn't really help that each song is on average 20 minutes long, so I'll just try to cover some major changes and similarities between the songs.

First and foremost, the version from the album The Song Remains The Same is probably the most recognized; this version is also the longest, at 29 minutes and 18 seconds longs...and you thought 6 minutes was a long song... the beginning starts the same way as the studio, the only notable change being an added high-hat part from Bonham, but nothing really major; after the first few minutes, however, it breaks away into a faster-paced midsection, with new lyrics.

The song evolved gradually as time moved on; new parts were added in, mostly improvised sections. Only the beginning, viola bow secion, and ending have remained the same (insert TSRTS ref here) There, apparently, is a basic outline of the playing:

Stage 1: Bass intro and wah-wah interludes

Stage 2: Main vocal theme

Stage 3: Fast instrumental and 'oriental' riffs

Stage 4: "San Francisco" or "Woodstock"

Stage 5: Violin bow episode including echo-slapping from the guitar; interlude with Plant's 'instrumental voice'; Gustav Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War and return of the rhythm section

Stage 6: Fast guitar solo and battle with Plant

Stage 7: Slower tempo solo and 'funky' moods

Stage 8: Violent breaks and call and response interlude

Stage 9: Faster solo in crescendos and occasional break-up tempo

Stage 10: New arrangement of Mars, the Bringer of War (slow and fast versions) and final frenzy

Stage 11: Return to main theme

Stage 12: Coda. Final instrumental and vocal battle inside syncopated rhythms, drum-solo and final explosion.

I took this off of Wikipedia, but this is publicated from Luis Rey, who published this in an analysis of Zeppelin. At times in the song, other parts of Zeppelin's songs are added in; for example, in the version of Dazed and Confused, parts from "Walter's Walk" and "The Crunge" are added in.

During the live performances of Dazed and Confused, Page generally has a larger section played solo with his bowed-guitar playing, adding a sort of "creeping" feeling when it's done. Delay is added in, as Page slaps the guitar, and in the recording, the sounds flows easily from both ears.

I don't really know what else to really say here, besides that Dazed and Confused is a LONG song to listen to, so if you find yourself with a spare half-hour block in your day, go ahead and listen.