December 10, 2014 Lyn Plays Santa vs Banker
Of all the games I would consider it hard to ruin, a side scrolling platformer is high on the list. How hard can it be? You make a world, drop a hero in it, throw in some things to avoid or kill and bam – done*. Whoever made this game (and I’ve already uninstalled it so I can’t check that for you) managed to ruin the whole genre as well as the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, the whole genre. It’s ruined now. Spoiled. Broken.
The first thing you notice when you fire up Santa vs Banker is the controls are so sluggish you might as well just close your eyes and mash buttons at random. For such simple controls – it’s a three button game – you don’t actually have much control over ol’Santa. Trying to time a jump to avoid an enemy is useless, you just have to move and hope for the best. The graphics don’t suck too much, so there’s that.
I like a good story in my games, a nice tale to enjoy while I blast things or whatever. The story of this game is pretty simple. Santa, unable to pay his debts, is blasted out of the sky by a banker. Gifts are scattered all over the place, and Santa must collect them up again. Not that he has anywhere to put them as the banker blew up the sleigh.
Couple of points on this. Santa is estimated to be worth “infinite money” according to Forbes (yes really) and could easily pay off any debts. Also debt recovery means you want the items back to sell them and cover some of the debt. Blowing up the items makes no sense. Who gave a banker the means to blow up a sleigh? Why am I putting so much thought into this?
There’s a one hour trial available at Big Fish Games who also allow purchases as a gift if you have someone in your life who’s been pretty horrible to you this year.
*I realise making games is actually a lot harder than that, I was being witty. Very, very witty.
Tags: LynPlays
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December 9, 2014 Tuesday 6: Movies of 1973
I never noticed this before, but the poster contains a pretty major spoiler for the movie.
I may not have seen many movies from this year, but one of them is one of my all-time favorites.
6. The Wicker Man – I have not seen the recent remake that stars Nicolas Cage, which I hear is pretty crazy. Honestly, this version is crazy enough. Very, very odd movie.
5. Robin Hood – This was our family’s favorite Disney movie, mostly because it was the one we saw more than once, I think? It’s pretty much the definitive Robin Hood movie regardless.
4. Live and Let Die – Mmm, pizza.
3. American Graffiti – If this movie didn’t exist it would be willed into existence by national nostalgia. Cruisin’, 50s music, the whole deal.
2. The Sting – Yet I still haven’t seen The Sting 2.
1. Enter the Dragon – Bruce’s daughter Shannon recently did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit, and her answer to “What’s your favorite movie your dad made?” was that Way of the Dragon was the best representation of Bruce but she loved hearing his actual voice in Enter the Dragon. I thought that was pretty neat. This is my favorite Bruce Lee movie and one of my favorite movies of all time.
Movie from this year that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen but literally don’t remember one thing about it:
- Charlotte’s Web
Movies from this year that I haven’t seen but still sort of plan to at some point:
- Soylent Green
- The Exorcist
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December 8, 2014 Music Monday: Unapologetic
Yes, I edited the album cover down. It’s still the raciest picture you’re ever going to see on this site, unless you’re really attracted to Q*bert, I guess.
I bought a Rihanna album last week, my second one. Her music (as a general rule) falls outside my usual tastes, but her voice is beautiful and she has a couple of songs that I just can’t resist. Since Ms. Rihanna is given to much foul language, I tend to buy her albums at Walmart, where I can get edited versions. You can gripe about how it’s not the artist’s “true vision” and whatever else, that won’t bother me much. I prefer to listen to music how I like to, so if there weren’t this version available, I wouldn’t have bought it. I will say that the first song was hard for me to understand, and at first I thought it was just my standard “can’t hear lyrics” problem, but then I realized that so many things were edited from it that the remaining words just sounded weird.
As I’ve done for many aother albums in the past, I purchased Unapologetic specifically for one (maybe two) songs. The idea is that if I like one or two songs that I know from the album, there’s a chance I’ll like something else on it that I would never hear otherwise. For this album the song was “Stay,” which I think is absolutely beautiful. Her voice plus the tune makes this one of my favorite songs of the last five years. I’ve probably listened to it 30 times in the last couple of days.
I also enjoy the song “Diamonds,” but it wasn’t a huge factor in my buying the album. Turns out I like it more than I thought, though, so we’ll go ahead and count two of the fourteen songs as reasons. The rest of it breaks down into “I don’t like this one at all” and “this one’s okay, I guess” for me. She has another song with Eminem (“Numb”), which I think is the third collaboration for them? It includes him using the line “I’m the butt police/I’m looking at your rear rear rear,” so I don’t really know what’s going on.
I know it would make more sense to just buy the one or two songs I like digitally and not worry about albums as a whole, but the gamble has paid off for me before, most recently with Ingrid Michealson’s “Lights Out.” I just never know how it’ll go, and I don’t mind taking what amounts to a pretty small risk every once in a while. I still have an Owl City CD I’d be happy to give to someone, though. There wasn’t even one on there for me. Any takers?
Tags: Rihanna
December 4, 2014 Benched
This doesn’t look much like Eliza Coupe to me.
I’ve been watching the USA Network’s show “Benched” for a few weeks now – not continuously, mind you, just when it’s been on. Or later, usually, since DVRing things is better because you can fast forward commercials. But doesn’t not watching commercials mean shows you don’t like don’t make as much money? And then when they don’t have enough money, they go off the air, leaving us with Big Bang Theory and its ilk? Quandary.
Anyway, I’ve been watching it for two reasons: Eliza Coupe and Jay Harrington. Eliza was on Scrubs in seasons 8 and 9 and was marvelous. (I’ve heard she was also marvelous on Happy Endings, but I haven’t seen that). Jay you might remember from a different show that we all love. Yes, we ALL love it. ALL OF US.
So pretty much when I saw they were doing a show together, I knew I had to at least give it a try. It’s basically an updated Night Court focusing on the public defenders. That’s pretty much everything you need to know going in.
I like it… mostly? There are some very funny things that happen, certainly. Eliza can do some pretty great physical comedy, and her comic delivery is quite enjoyable. I still can’t quite wrap my head around these cable sitcoms that use slightly naughtier language than the networks do. It sticks out. They are apparently only allowed one or two per episode, so when it happens you’re like, “huh?” It’s weird and (I think) unnecessary.
The show is certainly much better than a different cable network sitcom I watch because a former Scrubs actor is on it, that’s for sure. I don’t want to get into namecalling or specifics or anything, but I wanted more Dr. Cox and less everything else from that one. Ah well.
Oscar Nuñez and Maria Bamford are also in Benched, along with a few other faces you might recognize from elsewhere. These are the kinds of hard-hitting, in-your-face facts you get from reading zwolanerd. I mostly want you to be aware that Ted and Denise have a show together now.
Tags: Benched
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December 3, 2014 Lyn Plays Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm
The company behind Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm, Argali Entertainment, is based in the Ukraine. I only mention this because, as with a lot of these Hidden Object style games, there’s a few bits lost in translation. The hint button never needs a recharge though, so you can click it as many times as you like and you may need to for things that are either translated incorrectly or when you don’t realise on your own that you need to give a bird a hat made out of a turnip in order to get the door handle for the door in the fridge, behind which lurks the exact shoe you need to bribe the policeman. These are made up examples, but Hidden Object Adventure games tend to defy anything like logic. This one mostly makes sense.
It’s graphically lovely, and the hidden object scenes are no real challenge. There’s no tiny 4×4 pixel things to find, for example. It’s not really anything new in the Hidden Object genre, but it’s sweet and a bit cozy which is all you can ask really.
The game retails for around $8 on Big Fish Games, a free one hour trial is available. (You’ll need to install the Big Fish Games Manager).
Tags: LynPlays
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