What's Up? - March Edition

Absence makes the heart go younder! Or, you know, whatever.

It's time for yet another edition of What's Up!


So, what is up this month? Some catching up, in the form of playing through the awesomely brutal Darksiders. Like many have said before, the game shares a lot of gameplay elements with the Zelda games, but it presents them in a more gritty, gory fashion. At first, it seems that all those similarities that people talk about were in fact very vague, but as you make your way to your first real mission, it becomes a lot more apparent.

Just a little teaser for what to expect out of Darksiders. Note that the icon hovering above the bad dude means it's time to fucking butcher him.

These shared elements do not, however, make Darksiders feel like a Zelda clone, at all. It's a bloody, fast-paced, hack-n-slash-fest unlike anything I've played before, and I love it!

Other than that, I'm also playing Dead Space 2. Not a lot to say about it, other than that it's a sequel in the simple sense; more of the same and some extra stuff on top and a whole lot more variety in environments. It's a traditional sequel-treatment in the good sense that it's more of the brutal necromorph slaughtering. It's great!

I recently also played the first two episodes from the Back to the Future season, made by none other than the modern point-and-click adventure gurus at Telltale. As I'm struggling to express myself about them, I'll just begin by saying that I'm a huge fucking fan of BTTF. I love the movies and have watched them more times than I can count. As for the games, so far Telltale has given the franchise a more than righteous game treatment, managing to capture that adventurous and even the nostalgic feel you get from the movies. Kudos for that, Telltale! You've given us the BTTF-games that we've waited for so long.

That's all for this time. Keep on gaming!
Marcus out.

Perpetual Diversion and Lack of Checkpoints Rant

Hey all!

Some might've noticed that in the comments for a previous post, I promised Mii that I'd make another blog post before new years. As usual, I'm a bit behind schedule. Sorry about that!

Anyhow, this is mostly gonna be a mirrored post from my recently launched website; Perpetual Diversion! Perpetual Diversion is my sort of professional alias, my 'game company' (although it consists currently of just me alone.) There you'll find my recent projects, such as games or texture work and similar stuff and there's also another blog on there which you can follow. On there, I'll post anything that's related to my projects, or random rants such as the one I posted yesterday. Also, if a blog post from the Perpetual Diversion blog makes for a good mirror post on here, I'll copy it over and vice versa.

Enough chatter though, go visit my website, enjoy the awesomeness, and leave me feedback if you want! I very much appreciate it. Here's the checkpoint rant from yesterday's PerDiv blog post;


I just got back from playing some Pac-Man Championship Edition: DX and some Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1.
PCEDX is a great example of an old game receiving a complete overhaul in design, while still retaining most of the core elements and goals (and adding new ones.) I'll admit that I am a very, very shitty Pac-Man player, but Championship Edition DX is so thoroughly redesigned that you don't need to be good at the original Pac-Man to be pretty decent at scoring a good amount of points. I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking to pick up a Live Arcade game that can be easily picked up and played occasionally, while still being interesting enough to keep you occupied for hours as well.

Sonic 4: Episode 1 on the other hand, goes back to the series' roots and looks to recreate the feeling of the original Mega Drive/Genesis titles while still being a completely new game, and it succeeds at it in most aspects. This is not going to be an in-depth review of it, but there are a few things worthy of mention, those things being awkward movement physics (that are much too different from the physics of the first three/four Sonic games on MD/G) and an awful abuse of phaser-ish synth instruments in the music. Other than the aforementioned flaws, it actually is a good Sonic game. Levels are very well designed and the game is fun to play.

One major point that is bugging me about the time attack mode though (uh-oh, rant incoming), is that there are no checkpoints. To me, as a player, it is a horrible punishment to have to go back from the very start of the level, should I make just one simple mistake in my effort to beat the level as fast as possible. From a designer point of view, I think it is a bit of a poor decision. Having checkpoints and adding five or ten seconds as punishment when you die would be a lot friendlier. Or, why not even just leave the checkpoints in there? If you restart from a checkpoint, you'll be starting at a full stop anyway, so by the time you've accelerated back to full speed, you'll have lost a few seconds time.
A few seconds is all that's needed to be bumped down several spaces on the global leaderboards, so that's a punishment in itself if you're aiming for being nothing but the best. But, if that's your aim, you're already wasting your time, since there are apparently people who've cleared the levels in as little as 0'00''00!

Yes, I do realise that those records are hacked. It's pretty obvious.

Enough ranting though. Now, I'm going to get back to working on my essay on 'implementation of Dungeons & Dragons-systems in officially licensed D&D video games.'
Which basically means that I'll get back to playing Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon and get started with playing Baldur's Gate. Sometimes, homework is kind of awesome.

That's all for now, take care and play games!
/ Marcus

What's Up? - December Edition

Hey dudes and dudettes!
Brace yourselves for another long-ish post, and..!


*drumroll*


A new banner! Well, sort of new anyways. Featuring a pixel representation of yours truly! Sans my messy beard. Enough babble, let's move on!


What's Up is a quick and simple segment where I discuss current games I'm playing and up and coming games that have caught my interest/I probably will buy.


Right Now:
The current constants in my life game-wise this cold December month are; Fallout: New Vegas, Minecraft, Super Meat Boy and Poker Night at the Inventory, all of which are great and fun games.

I'm a bit slow, since I'm still on my first playthrough of New Vegas. That's just the way I roll though, nice and easy is the key. I'm also playing on Hard difficulty, with Hardcore enabled (meaning you have to eat, drink and sleep regularly to avoid a slow and painful death in the wastes.)
It's a great game, I love it and I think it might just snatch the position just above Fallout 3 among my list of favourties (which currently only exists in my head and isn't properly sorted out to be posted yet.)
The only thing bringing the game down is its weird bugs and crashes. Currently I'm having issues with my beloved robot companion, ED-E, whom had accompanied me as a valuable combat buddy for so long. That was, until I upgraded him. For some reason, it seemed to glitch him out, as he will rarely move or attack anymore. It's a sad thing to see him so lifeless, the robot that once was happily playing his pompous war jingles is now just a floating metal ball. Clean and with upgraded armor, but completely lifeless. I miss my old, dirty and rusty ED-E.
Other than that though, it's well worth the money, and every move you make has an impact on what different factions and towns think of you.

Minecraft. Ah yes, the addictive, pixellated blockbuster (oh, the witty pun!) game from the now multi-millionare swede Markus Persson, also known as Notch. It's still in its alpha state, but there's so much fun to be had despite no concrete objective. It's the ultimate sandbox game currently in existence, and I recommend anyone to buy it for its low price of 10€ while it's still in alpha state.


Super Meat Boy is masochistic, to say the very least, but that doesn't stop you from enjoying every minute of it. That is, enjoying it in a very special, tormented manner. It's a trial-and-error, fast-paced, wall-jumping, multi-character, multi-platform platformer like no other. It might leave you frustrated at first, ripping your hair out your head and exclaiming profanity constantly, but the feeling of having completed a really hard world, or a really hard level even, is satisfying as hell.


Poker Night at the Inventory is a poker game from Telltale, the brains behind games such as the Sam & Max-series, Tales of Monkey Island and Puzzle Agent, to name a few. It stars internet/video game celebrities Max from Sam & Max, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, Strong Bad and Tycho from the Penny-Arcade comic. Even if you're not a skilled poker player, the game is more than enjoyable for just listening to all the amusing dialogue the characters share. It's a great crossover game with plenty of visual unlocks such as new card decks and poker tables, and even unlocks for items that you'll get in Team Fortress 2! Ain't that a pretty sweet deal for a five dollar poker game? I'd say!


That's all for this month. No Coming Up-section for this post, as I haven't locked on my sights on any interesting, upcoming releases surfacing this month. If I don't post again this year (I'll try to, no promises though), then I'd like to wish you readers happy holidays and a goddamn fine new year!


Peace and video games!
/ Marcus out.