Geek Girls Rule! #103 – Scribblenauts

I almost titled this one “Wil Wheaton is Smoking Crack” but I thought that might be a little over the top.  I follow Wil Wheaton’s twitter, and while he didn’t say Scribblenauts was bad, he said it was a rent-er not a buy-er, or words to that affect.  Which made me sad.  I thought the game looked cute.

Then I went over to a friend’s place, and once his new room-mate found out I had a DS said, “Oh my God! You HAVE to play Scribblenauts!”  Ran and got me his DS, and I spent about two hours playing it.  When The Husband What Rules said it was time to go, I made him wait until I finished just one more level. 

I was trying to be good and wait a while, but we were out this weekend getting him new headphones at Best Buy, and there it was, in all it’s bright, shiny, candy-like glory…

Between that and the fact that the Roomie picked up Rockband the same day:  Good-bye productivity. 

The Geek Husband What Rules went home sick yesterday, and when I got home had beaten most of the first level of Scribblenauts. I had to pry the DS out of his grubby little hands so we could go to our weekly Marvel FASERIP game.

So far, I have found that the majority of puzzles can be solved by the judicious application of sharks, grappling hooks and jetpacks.  Meg from the Brilliant Gameologists is currently trying to see how many of the puzzles she can solve with a puma.  We have so far discovered that you can get a bazooka, plane, boat, chainsaw, gnome, puma, shark, submarine…  There are many, many more things.  I have yet to stump the game while seriously attempting to solve a puzzle so far.  I did discover that dogs do not stay bribed when you feed them meat and sharks eat piranha.   Also, bees suck.  Oh, and the girl in one of the first puzzles where you’re supposed to put the flowers in her basket, and if you move wrong she’ll kick the damn basket over.  Grrr. 

You can “buy” new avatars pretty quickly.  Right now I’m playing as the witch.  She’s cute.   I’ve been having a blast with it, and once I beat it straight I intend to sit down and try to come up with as many truly bizarre things as I can.  I highly recommend Scribblenauts.

Geek Girls Rule! #91 – LEGO Batman

LOVE IT!

Review over. 

Seriously, I picked this up over the weekend, having previously enjoyed the LEGO Star Wars:  The Complete Saga.  I expected to like dinking around with it, and occasionally handing it over to the Geek Husband What Rules when I got  bored and hadn’t hit a save point yet. 

Nope.  I spent most of Saturday and Sunday hunched over the DS, happily climbing, grappeling, gliding and exploding my way through the levels. 

I find LEGO Batman easier to navigate than LEGO Star Wars.  Getting from place to place is more intuitive.  I also like that switching between characters to do things is far more integral to the play than before, and not just for opening doors.  I enjoy the comic style cut scenes in the story mode, and find the LEGO art highly entertaining and engaging. 

I give LEGO Batman two thumbs up.  And the cats are pleased with it as well, seeing as it makes Mom immobile for fairly large chunks of time. 

The only downside is it takes the damn thing forever to get past the title screens and everything.  Yes, I know… I also hurry the microwave.  I’m impatient, I can’t help it.  Oh, and Poison Ivy’s the only “boss” you don’t get to fight with physically.  Sigh.

Geek Girls Rule! #88 – Rhythm Heaven

Wow, in a stunning display of coincidence, I managed to buy a brand new DS game just before becoming amazingly ill and housebound.  The Husband What Rules and I were at Best Buy looking for a Who album, and I decided I needed a new game.  I’d seen the Rhythm Heaven commercials with Beyonce (forgive me for the lack of accent, I haven’t figured that out yet), and also read some reviews on a couple of sites, and decided to give it a shot.

This game is far more fun, addictive and challenging than it has any right to be.

Yeah, since picking it up on Monday, I’ve beat all four of the first level games, and the first remix.  I’d probably have beaten more, but I’m on codeine for the coughing, and codeine makes me amazingly stupid, not to mention uncoordinated.

The controls are simple, you only need three basic actions to play (tap, flick and lift).  The games start out simple enough, becoming increasingly complex as you play.  Right now I’m kind of hung up on the Ping Pong game.  I’ve completed everything up to Remix 1 on the “Superb” level.  Getting a “Superb” rating means you get a medal for that level, and medals unlock other minigames for you.

I’m finding it pretty engrossing so far.  The Robot fueling game was the most maddening.  Although Ping Pong is getting there for me right now.  Granted, not having to pause repeatedly to cough my lungs out would probably help.

Honestly, if you’re looking for a good, engrossing timewaster that will keep you occupied for hours, you’ll like this game.  The beats change up to add to the difficulty.  The animations are cute as all get out.  I highly recommend it as a good commute game.  Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get to play it on the bus and see if it’s possible to keep the beat in a moving vehicle.  I don’t know that anyone under, say, 8 years of age is going to have the coordination to play it successfully, but I’ve been wrong before.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat Ping Pong.

Geek Girls Rule! #67 – Ian C. Esslemont – Night of Knives

Yes, yes, I know.  You’re sick of all things Malazan by now.  Well, it’s my column and this just happens to be what I’m bingeing on right now.  So there. 

I picked up Night of Knives at the book signing we went to, and decided to give it a shot after Book 8.  One of my Malazan-addicted buddies told me that he wasn’t as impressed with Esslemont’s writing as Erikson’s.  I’m nearly done with it, and contemplating picking up Esslemont’s next book Return of the Crimson Guard in hardcover. 

Night of Knives chronicles one night, the night that Emperor Kellanved and his partner in crime Dancer return and Ascend to the Throne of Shadow to become Shadowthrone and Cotillion of the Erikson books.*  The book is 465 pages long, which given the time covered in most novels of a similar length (days to years to centuries), seems excessive.  I worried about pacing mostly.  I needn’t have.  The novel is paced brilliantly, it rarely, if ever, flags.  I was initially pleased with it, but got really sucked in about a quarter of the way into it.  Esslemont’s characters are also very deep and engaging.  Their pasts are revealed in flashbacks where important, or dialog, but not clumsily so.

I’m about twenty pages from the end, but I hate reviews that give away endings and such, so I’m not worried.  And I don’t expect to be disappointed in the remaining pages.  I’m pretty pleased with being able to get a little more background on Tayschrenn as well as Dassem Ultor, who figures HUGELY in the 8th Erikson book.  

I would happily recommend this book to anyone, but certainly to anyone who has enjoyed the Erikson books.  I do think you might be a little lost on the over-arching meta-plot if you didn’t know the history as established in Erikson’s books, but not to the point of not being able to understand or follow the book. 

*One thing I always wonder with these books is, what is it like when people you have known, served with and under, grew up with… ascend to godhood?  Neither Erikson nor Esslemont really explore that in great detail.  Well, to a point.  Most of the people who served with/under Kellanved and Dancer seem to view them as the same assholes they were before, just with more power.  But I frequently wonder how the new Master of the Deck’s, Ganoes Paran’s, sister feels about her ascended brother.

In other news, I’m actually contemplating picking up some new DS games during the Xmas sales.  So far I’m considering Ninjatown, Professor Layton, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood, Lego Batman.