TwiddleGeek

By way of Kotaku I came across this interesting little demo of Noitu Love 2. It’s not terribly long honestly, but it’s worth at least one quick run through just to try the hyper combat and see the incredible design.

I like how the combat flows fast and feels fun using a combo of mouse and keyboard controls, and the unusual moves like shields and nearly screen length attack dashes. Picture a really hyper version of Mega-Man and you might be close. The graphics aren’t very high res, but they have plenty of old-school appeal. The full version is a whopping $20 (no way), but I had fun with the demo. I’ll have to give Noitu Love 1 a shot someday soon.

I’ve always written off Trackmania, but since switching over to a laptop I’ve been looking for some fun and low-spec games to populate it with. All my consoles are packed for a move, so I decided to grab the recently released TrackMania Nations Forever and give it a shot. Why not, since it’s free?

The first impressions were definitely good. I had expected some shoddy Linux-esque racing clone, but TrackMania actually looks pretty good and scales really well to my laptop’s specs. It certainly feels like a professional, fully realized title right from the first menus rather than some basement hobby project.

One of the things that threw me about TM is that, from the shots, it looks like a formula type racing game. Actually, it’s an arcade racer with crazy jumps, track suspended in midair, and a focus on speed. The best way I’ve heard it described is something like Hot Wheels, actually. In solo play, the goal is to beat set times and win medals, with increasingly difficult tracks. The cool thing is that you can race a ghost of the medal time, and also a ghost of your best time. The game even tracks your progress vs other players locally and around the world.

What I like most though is that hitting the backspace key will instantly restart the race with absolutely no delay at all. I’ve certainly had to hit it quite a few times since a single mistake in a time trial race means you’re not going to beat the goal time. If there were a delay, I’d probably lose patience with it far quicker. Haven’t tried the online play yet, but I plan on it soon. Really, for a free game, you can’t ask for much more. I’d even consider getting the full Trackmania United Forever game, but I think Nations alone has plenty to satisfy most players. It’s far better than I was expecting.

MinishooterRS Delta is a fairly new (2007) freeware shoot-em-up from Japanese developer PEPOSOFT. What amuses me about this one is that it’s presented in what I’m sure Yahtzee would call “teeny-weeny eyestrain-o-vision” at 160×120 pixels. While there are zoom options, I’m sure deep in some internal .ini file the game registers that you wussed out.

Seriously though, aside from the tiny, tiny resolution hook, the game is just fun and surprisingly lengthy. Several hidden stages are offered, tons of bosses and a boss mode, and even lots of hidden ships to unlock. There’s no real gameplay gimmicks here, this is a pretty straight-up Japanese shoot-em-up. Dodge the massive onslaught of bullets and shoot, shoot, shoot ’til whatever you’re up against is dead.

Though it’s in Japanese, you really don’t need any knowledge of the language to play. The menu system is in English, and the game is straight forward. Z fires, X boosts, arrow keys control. I’m a pretty big shoot-em-up fan, and MinishooterRS makes for a great distraction. Give it a try, if you like the genre.

Being awesome, SpaceKitty picked up the niche PSP title Patapon for my birthday. Part Rhythm game, part RTS, part side-scrolling platformer… thing. All I know is it’s adorable and addictive, but I seem to suck at it. I’m doing well enough to get by and all, and I’m certainly having fun, but it’s already driven me to cheat twice now in order to pass a seemingly impossible mission. It’s been quite some time since a game forced me to cheat — the last being Mega Man Powered Up, also for the PSP.

To get Fever Mode, 10 combos have to be chained or a perfect 4 beat rhythm has to be entered at a combo of 3+. Unfortunately, after achieving this the game becomes quite unforgiving, and even slightly missing the beat puts you right back to square one. Wouldn’t be a big deal if Fever Mode was just extra attack / defense as it is in many missions, but in other missions it’s the only real way to win. Results in a lot of frustration, but thankfully the game doesn’t seem to rely on it all too much.

I certainly am enjoying the title though, equipping the Patapon army with better weapons, rarer units, and generally crushing our enemies. Plus it’s really hard not to want to know what “IT” is at Earthend that we’re so bent on seeing. I mean, I really don’t need much of a reason to whip an army of eyeballs into a war-like frenzy, but “IT” could be something useful… *scheme*