Play This Now: Zafehouse v1.5

Zafehouse is a very simple game that was created as Kotaku's Game-a-Day event a while back, so the presentation isn't exactly going to blow your pants off, as the screenshot would suggest. But it is a game that I wish we would've seen more of by now: Zombie vstrategy. The goal is to manage a group of survivors until help arrives, and that means finding other survivors, gathering supplies and holding on to safe structures. It's turn-based in a way, where you split survivors up into raiding parties, and those assigned to secure structures, and then let it play out. Each turn represents an hour, with the objective being to survive for 60, and you fail if all survivors die or you lose control of all the buildings. Each structure provides a constant stream of supplies, whether it's medical kits, ammo or water, and the longer individual survivors last they gain perks. Zombies really take a back seat to it being more about party and supply management, but it's a fun and tough little distraction. Now where's my Jagged Alliance game with zombies?

Download, Zafehouse_1.5.zip (65 KB, requires .NET Framework 2.0)

-K.

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Thursday Morning Video - Rockwell Automation's Retro Encabulator

They're ripping up the concrete directly outside our door here at work. These next two days will be maddening.

-K.

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Take a Look at the Lawman Beating Up the Wrong Guy

So because my life is a never-ending rollercoaster of intrigue and danger I spent the weekend watching all sixteen episodes of Life on Mars. Hopefully BBC America will start airing it again this Fall, around about when ABC starts airing the not-so-hot-looking remake of the series, because it's very much worth watching. It's about a present-day detective named Sam Tyler, who gets struck by a speeding car and wakes up in 1973, so it's that old story again. While he's there Sam works alongside his callous and bull-headed superior Gene Hunt, solving crimes that often involve people connected to Sam's life and in some ways represent his struggle to stay alive in the real world. It's styled like a 70's cop show wrapped in a hard sci-fi candy shell, it can get a little sentimental at times, but it's extremely entertaining.
Here's a couple clips, the cold opening to an episode from the second season and the intro itself:



-K.

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Play This Now: DOSBox 0.72

Today was busy, and now I finally have a little time to update, right before I leave.

I've been on a bizarre old game kick lately, and so this week's Play This Now isn't going to highlight one game in particular but rather an application I've been using a lot of recently. DOSBox, in case you aren't aware and as you could probably guess, is a DOS emulator. Many years ago it would've seemed like such a silly concept, but since Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to strip Windows of DOS functionality entirely after the introduction of XP, it's now necessary. Like Mount&Blade it is continuously being updated and improved, with so many classic titles now running at full compatibility. If your knowledge has been lost to time or you never were particularly DOS-savvy, you can make use of a handy front-end like DOSShell to make your retro life a little easier. Now you're ready to play so many of the non-Windows titles a certain site has to offer. Here's a few choice selections:

Strife - A relatively obscure and under-appreciated FPS masterpiece, for the time at least, that had gameplay elements you wouldn't see again until Deus Ex several years later. Mostly it got lost in the tidal wave that was Quake. I don't know why I'm sticking this here, because even though you can run it perfectly fine in DOSBox, it works even better with ZDoom.

System Shock - The forerunner to one of the greatest games of all time, the original might not have aged particularly gracefully, but it's still fun to see what it was like and how much it compares to the sequel. It is, however, a game that was in dire need of being able to edit the controls.

Crusader: No Remorse & Crusader: No Regret - A pair of atmospheric, isometric shooters that puts you in the bright red armor of an elite soldier with vengeance on his mind. The game also encourages you to shoot everything. It's another game where the controls definitely seem antiquated, but get your head around them and you've still got a pair of solid action games.

Quarantine & Quarantine 2: Road Warrior - Before Grand Theft Auto, before Carmageddon, even before Interstate '76, there was Quarantine. The non-linear post-apocalyptic auto-combat cab-driving action game(s) you've always wanted. Press E to eject your passengers.

Wasteland - Another grandfather to an epic franchise, Wasteland was the game that would later spawn the Fallout series. Still fun to play after all these years.

Blood - This shooter was the debut game for Monolith Productions, which established a mix of wanton violence and absurd humor that would sort of become the hallmark of their titles.

Now there's some entertainment.

-K.

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I Throw Away Perfectly Good Money

I just purchased this because I am stupid and I am more than willing to throw heaps of cash for stupid things I don't need that are in addition to a stupid thing I don't need. If there is a Hell I'm sure there is a specific place for special spendthrifts. Those of us who will be huddled together in fear, clutching our Rockstar duffel bags and Big Daddy figurines, eyes wide with terror as they make us tread a never-ending sea of Septim coins. So take note developers: if you want me to spend even more money on a game I have high interest in, include a bunch of silly bullshit.

-K.

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Thursday Morning Video - Talkboy Commercial

This is saying something extremely disparaging about the parents, or really the kids, if the sound of a husky-voiced narcoleptic is enough to fool the young couple.

-K.

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Play This Now: Mount & Blade

If I had to create a list of things that I enjoyed in games the top entires would doubtlessly include big, stupid powerful revolvers, dynamic and easy to use cover systems, and shooting people in the face with a crossbow while on horseback. I realize that last one sounds a bit esoteric, so thank god for a game like Mount & Blade. It has been a long time since I last played this developing indie action/RPG, it has grown quite considerably, and impressively, during the interim as they inch ever closer to version 1.0, and it's more fun than ever. The game begins with creating a character and then you are unceremoniously dumped into the game world on horseback, free to do what you please. Want to roam the countryside looks for bands of murderous nomads to put down? Go ahead. Feel like training and defending a small village from a group of bandits? Sure, Seven Samurai it up. And if you're like me, you'll turn around and pillage and raze it yourself. Want to wander from city to city trading different goods trying to maximize profit? You should probably be playing something else, but you can still do that too. The beta is free and does contain the full game up to this point, but without purchasing a license limits the characters you create to reaching level 8, at which point you will have to create another. But even then you should find more than enough to do with multiple characters and playthroughs.

Link, Mount&Blade download page at Taleworlds.com.

-K.

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Thursday Morning Video: Giant Bomb - It's a Website

It's a website. About video games. Also holy crap this takes up a lot of space, but all I can see from here is a big black box because Giant Bomb is officially blocked here. My attempts to resize it to fit better may be breaking it, but I won't know until I get home.

-K.

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Play This Now: Choke on my Groundhog, YOU ROBOT BASTARDS

With the release of Geometry Wars 2 on XBLA which I've been playing a lot of lately, this similar twin joystick shooter (Or with a mouse and keyboard, should you desire) hit at the right time and has the added bonus of something else I like: killer robots. Being a Doctor Who fan sort of goes hand in hand with enjoying the idea of murderous machines, whether it's the long running Daleks or Cybermen, or simply one-offs like the clockwork droids or the robot from the charmingly awful episode simply titled Robot. Choke on my Groundhog, YOU ROBOT BASTARDS (I think I would've just gone with the latter portion for the title) not only has you annihilating cold, heartless foes but also has a sort of time travel mechanic in which if you die you start back at the beginning but you get a buddy to help you -- yourself. It replays what you did from that previous life, with the benefit being bonus firepower. Check it out, it's free.

Link, groundhog_r05.zip

-K.

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Thursday Morning Video: Monty Python - Mens' Olympic Hide and Seek Final

Another classic Monty Python sketch. Also, please don't look at the comments below, because it will hurt you inside.

Also Rockstar announced that Grand Theft Auto IV will indeed be coming to the PC, and relatively soon, hitting shelves November 18th. I also need to update this with something else.

-K.

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