Enter the Matrix was a horrible game. "Yea... we knew that," you're probably thinking. Unfortunately I didn't back when I bought the miserable assault on human decency on the day it was released. And yet, amidst its veritable onslaught of tedium and glaringly untapped potential, I managed to find one thing, and one thing only, that almost made me think that the money I had spent was perhapse just maybe well spent; a mini-game.

I've always been fascinated by DOS. "Wait, DOS? You're supposed to be discussing some silly mini-game!" I'm getting there. Whenever I saw DOS in a window I was mesmerized by its strange abbreviations. The tiny flashing underscore seemed filled with unlimited potential. If only I knew its secret codes I could command it to do anything I wished. It was like stealing a forbidden glance at the first page of a wizard's spell book and thinking if only you understood its secret language.

The reason I mentioned the DOS thing was because Enter the Matrix managed to tap into that intermingled since of wonder and ignorance for me with a simple mini-game designed to make you think you were hacking into the Matrix through DOS. When you first loaded the game a main menu popped up like most games, but this one let you choose between the main game or an entirely separate hacker mini-game. That mini-game had me utterly hooked for hours. Constantly I was learning new code I could type in to gain secret access into new computers and networks in order to seal new information needed to continue hacking. The entire experience was freeform, and the story was only a thin varnish of bread crumbs for the persistent and observant. The game almost never told you anything explicitly; this was your experience to discover, interpret, and imagine on you own. The fact that in the end the only thing gained was some broken godmode-esq code for the main game that could have been found in about five seconds on-line hardly detracted from my since of accomplishment. The experience had been reward enough.

"Great, so you want us to go find a copy of Enter the Matrix. He's lost it. Someone go find a way to contact his next of kin; they'll want to know what hospital he's in." NO, No, no! The last thing I would ever tell you to do is buy, rent, or even waist your time to steal a copy of this turd. No, I told you that so that I could tell you this. I've rediscovered that experience I had with Enter the Matrix in grand sty-le

Ladies and gents, I introduce Uplink.

Uplink is a simulation (though I doubt a very accurate one) of what it is like to be a computer hacker (minus the 1337 and 12 year old wannabes) in the near future. It takes place entirely in a simulated Uplink OS where you can do everything from routing your IP address to bounce off of countless networks to befuddle trackers, to running password breaking programs, to reading and sending emails. The game even goes so far as to play along with the farce that YOU, yes YOU, are a rookie hacker who is using their computer (that would be the one you're reading this on) to access a secret gateway computer from which you can launch all of your nefarious activities. This farce means that when you get caught and loose the game the FEDs only find your gateway but not YOU. The game has very little story, leaving you to create your own persona and story in you head. Instead you're free to take whatever missions you want, hack any computer you like, and do anything you wish with the 'proceeds.'

I must say, that this game has been one of the most ridiculously addicting I've played in a long time. What little social life I have has suffered for it. Every mission follows the same basic routine; locate your target, bounce you IP address of as many networks as you can (preferably those you have admin access to), determine its defenses, find a way to crack those defenses and accomplish your goal before the warning timer on your little trace-tracker runs out (i.e. game over), find a weak link in the chain of computer you bounced off of to delete you logs from before your victim can use them, to track you down after the fact, and finally report your success to collect your fee. Rinse and repeat. If you're an addictive personality like myself you'll love this thing (or hate it depending on your perspective)!

The only down side is it's not free. You'll either have to buy it from the developer's web page for 10 Pounds UK (approx. $20 US) or download it through GameTap. Either way I'd say it's worth it.

Get out there and try that game! To make up for the $20 and countless hours I just cost you and your significant others next week I'll be bringing you another free-be. Have fun!

-Fade2Gray

P.S. For those of you who missed it, please give my last Addicting Games a perusal. It kind of got lost in the shuffle last week during my triple post extravaganza. It's about a game that no one should miss.

Here you are, three posts in as many days. I must have made some sort of minor impact around here 'cuz I was barely back more than a day when I was taged with the latest webernet trend. To be honest, I'm not much more of a fan of these chain games than Chilidragon seems to be, but I guess I have to pay my dues for my prolonged absence. And so, whithout further ado; Five Things You May Not Have Known About Fade2gray...

1)I can write in one of Tolkien's runic alphabets.

It's no secret to those around me that I've been a big Tolkien fan since I was in middle school, so I wasn't surprised when in my freshman year of college someone gave me a really nice high end collector's edition of The Hobbit for Christmas. A few days latter I was perusing it when I stumbled onto Tolkien's note to his readers at the beginning of the book. The letter discussed his runic alphabet and translated just enogh of it to get the ball rolling. The rest he left up to his readers to figure out by translating the writing found throughout the rest of the book. I eagerly flew through the book and had the entire alphabet translated in under a hour. Not only that, but the entire thing was almost instantly engraved into my perminant memory. Don't believe me? See if you can read this

2)I have seen every episode of Star Trek ever aired.

As Further proof that I am indeed a geek I offer up this nugget. My dad is a huge treck fan and owns every eppisode of ever series on DVD. For reasons still unclear to myself one day I asked to borrow a season, and I was hooked. The rest is pretty much history. I watched every signle DVD and then found myself whining at the end of it all about how unjust it was that Trek was off the air. I've never been to a convention, worn a uniform that I or a friend made for me, or discussed the finer points of any of the infamous Trek debates on a discussion board, but I suppose I'm still a Trekie by default now.

3)I was once run over by my own mother.

I don't know, does this make me sound like even more of a geek? Back when I must have been no older than 12 I was hanging out in the parking lot of the local elementary school. I don't know why or who I was with (though I suspect that Graphicartist21 was probably with me) but whatever we were doing got cut short when my mom showed up in her old white Ford Taurus station wagon. She told us all to get in... and most of us did. You see, I had only just open the door and steped towards the car when my mom started to drive away without me. Before I knew what was going on the back tire of the car ended up running over my foot. I was fine but my mom flew into a panic before scolding me for not getting in quicker. OK, so that was a rather anti-climactic story.

4)I've totaled a car.

A few years ago I was just starting on bachelor's at a new universit, but the drive was putting a pinch on my folks' wallet. I was still driving my parents' old Cheve Suburban gas guzler at the time and it quickly became apparent that it was going to bankrupt us in a week if I kept commuting in it. My parents decided to kill two birds with one stone by buying me an inexpensive used economy car (a toyota corolla if you wanted to know) for my birthday. A few weeks later and I was commuting home in the first huge downpore of the year. If you know anything about SoCal drivers then you know we HATE rain. People were zooming all around me on the freeway whipping up a thick soupy fog of mist and it was all I could do to keep up. I still don't remember entirely what happened next, but I do remember a wall of red lights coming at me out of the fog and feeling a complete loss of control of my vehicle. When I woke up my air bag had been deployed, my chest and hips aeched where the seatbelt was, and there was a horible ringing in my ears. I eventualy realized that my car was still running so I pulled it over to the large center medium and got out. I had rear ended a man who had himself only just avoided rearending another driver. The two of us exchanged info while we watched other drivers swearving (sometimes unsuccessfully) to avoid accidents themselves in the same spot. Eventually a fullsized van came cureaning down the freway bouncing off of cars like a pinball and didn't stop untill after it smashed into the backend of my car. If my car had been salvagable after the first accident, it clearly wasn't anymore.

5)I'm British... sort of.

I like to say that I'm 100% home grown American, but that isn't entirely acurate. Both of my folks were in the US Airforce when they married. A short while later they were stationed over seas in England. Remember that these where the days near the end of the Cold War when both sides were actively involved in a massive military buildup. A lot of that build up involved having a large and active Airforce presence in Engaland and Germany, and so that was where my folk's went. Not long after ariving my mom was pregnant with me. She stayed there with my dad a gave birth to me in '84. Because of that I have dual citizenship; I'm both a US citizen and a British subject. My dad ended up hurting his back a little over a year later so he was sent home with my mom and I. I haven't been back since, though we are planning a family vacationto England the summer after next. I guess all I have left to say is God save the Queen ya'll!

There you have it. Five juicy and bloated hidden trueths about the man that is Fade 2Gray. Have I paid my dues now?

One last thing; Arcadius and Graphicartist21, your numbers are up!

-Fade2gray

Cave Story Review

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Pros: A deep story with engaging characters that unfolds like a flower, tight controls, challenging gameplay, nostalgia for NES and SNES fans, value, good sound and art

Cons: Story and gameplay can be slow at first, final ending requires a walktrough to find, final boss is ludicrously hard, sound and art would be bellow the bar for the non-nostalgic among us.

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Doukutsu Monogatari, a.k.a. Cave Story, by the enigmatically named Pixel is a freeware game that was released a few years back on the interweb in Japan and has since been translated by fans into English for those of us not blessed with tong of the Land of The Rising Sun. The game is fairly typical Japanese fair at first glance; you have the typical cliché amnesiac for your main character who wakes up in a cave with no idea who he is or where he's at, a town full of cuddly anamorphic rabbits with a secret, and plenty of expectably bizarre anime type art. The wheel wasn't reinvented gameplay-wise either; the entire game is a fairly straight forward side-scrolling action-adventure game in the model of games like Metroid and Castlevania where you start out defenseless and gradually discover new weapons and upgrades through exploration and advancing the story. Perhaps the most unique thing gameplay-wise are the weapons which can level up (and change in functionality) and back down as you gain and loose experience in battle.

So what makes this game so great? I mean, think about it. Why would anyone care so much about this thing that they would go out of their way to translate it in its entirety (and trust me, there was A LOT to be translated here)? The first reason would have to be the story, it's simply wonderful. Early on this game feels completely bland and even a tad predictable. The true secret to the story is the way it unfolds like a flower as you play; the story becomes a sort of reward for game-play. You'll soon find that story is actually quite engaging with characters that you'll actually begin to care about; you'll even see a few die before the end. By the time you reach that ending you'll think that you finally managed to put all the pieces together to make a satisfying whole, but you'd be wrong. This game actually has three ending, and each one adds a new and deeper layer to what's really going on inside the cave with the third and final ending being the most satisfying and difficult to achieve (the only down side being that you'll probably need a walkthrough to help you on your way to finding that third ending). Now I'll admit that one of the endings is a bit cheap (you'll be given a chance to simply walk away near the end of the game which ends the story in its tracks). That being said, you simply don't see this kind of quality storytelling in freeform games very often.

Secondly, that straight forward side-scrolling action-adventure game-play I mentioned is actually some of the best the genre has ever seen. It doesn't add a lot new to the mix, but what it does it does VERY well. This game simply oozes with polish. The controls are tight and responsive (though I would strongly suggest the use of a gamepad) which is a godsend considering how challenging the game becomes by the end. The game is clearly harkening back to the old days of gaming when beating a game truly was something to brag about and left you mentally and physically exhausted. But don't worry that you have to be some sort of gaming god to play this thing. One of the things this game gets right is the ramping of the difficulty level. You'll find yourself getting better with time so that you'll usually be ready for each successive boss fight by the time you reach it. The game doesn't hold your hand, but it doesn't intentionally try to make you fall to your knees crying "I'm not worthy" either (at least not until you find the final boss of the final ending).

Third, nostalgia. Anyone with a fond spot in the heart for the days of the NES or SNES will instantly feel right at home with this game. The art and gameplay is clearly harkening back to what many people would consider one of the great golden eras of gaming without trying to feel like too much of a retread. This game could have easily felt like it was simply lifting gameplay and ideas but surprisingly manages not to step on any toes.

Flat out, go try out this game! Perhaps it won't be you cup of tea, but what have you lost? The ting is free; F-R-E-E... FREE! I'll end simply by saying that I would gladly pay for this game, but you don't have to.

5/5

P.S. If you're curious about my Avatar he's from this game.

P.P.S. I have recently learned that there is a PSP homebrew circulating out there for this game. If you want to try and hunt it down let me know if you find it so that I can link to it.

P.P.P.S. You'll probably want to stay far way from the Wiki for this game until after you play it. They gave WAY more away about the story than they should.

-Fade2Gray

Hiddy-ho good nieghbors!

I'm still kicking, if limping while I do it! My second quarter of credentialling is over so I've got a brief break to recoop. I've been teaching at a local middle school which has been quite the experiance. I might write about it I find the energy; those preteens have a way of taking it out of you!

Anyways, I've been helping Graphicartist21 out with his game a bit lately. He set up a new forum for it and anything else gaming related if any of you are interested (yes I realize that linking to an outside forum is a little shadey, so sure me).

I'll also have a review I wrote recently for another freeware game going up here soon.

Take care all!

-Fade2Gray

Given the positive reception of my last entry I've decided to bring yet more freedom to the masses with this week's edition of Addicting Games. Today's game is, well, an entire sub-genre. "What," you say, "An entire genre!? He's gone mad! This can't be allowed! Some one stop him, please!" Calm down, calm down. It's entirely alright. The reason I've decided to focus on an entire sub-genre of games this time is because they're a relatively obscure and small group dominated almost exclusively by a single indie-developer. They're the Grow games.

Grow games are a type of puzzle game in which the player is presented with a unique game world and number of tiles each representing some object to be placed into that game world. The gameplay is divided up into turns in which the player chooses one of the available objects to be placed into the game world. After each turn all of the objects already in the world interact with one another in unexpected and imaginative ways as they literally grow. For example, a bowl may grow into a fountain, then a tall piece of architecture and finally into a 'Tomorrow Land-esq' plastic house on stilts. Most objects influence the way in which other objects grow such that the goal of every game is to place the objects into the game world in the right order so as to allow every object to grow to its maximum potential. I know this probably all sounds a little complicate, but trust me, it's actually quite simple and intuitive. There's no real punishment for failure and experimentation as you can restart with a click of the mouse. In fact, some of the failures can almost seem as entertaining as the final success. The difficulty for any of the puzzles range from a short and simple three object game that'll take no more than five minutes to solve to a fairly long and challenging twelve object game that could easily take over an hour.

Eyezmaze is pretty much the exclusive developer of this type of game. The puzzles they produce are constantly of high quality, and they all have a fun and colorful drug-induced anime look to them that always leaves you wondering what's going to happen next. Their entire presentation looks very sharp are highly polished making the entire experience fell user-friendly. Their most famous game, and probably the best representative of what a solid strait forward Grow game is, is Grow Cube. It's to their credit though that they not only virtually invented this type of puzzle game but that they often attempt to re-imagine it instead of simply churning out countless clones of Grow Cube. For example, in Grow RPG you're given the goal of creating a fantasy world around a small Link type hero as he quests through the land in an attempt to slay an evil daemon. In another game instead of giving you a list of objects that you slowly dwindle down until you reach the end you're offered two objects at the beginning of each turn which change with each round.

Eyezmaze is the undisputed king of the genre but there is at least one other game not made by Eyezmaze worthy of mention; Sand Box of God(SBG) by Vertigo Games. SBG takes the basic concepts of the Grow games and uses them to place you in the role of The Big Guy as he creates the Earth, Humanity and a race of Anamorphic Rabbits. Yes, Rabbits that can build cities and wage war with the humans. SBG does a few unique things that makes it a deeper game than the Grow games produced by Eyezmaze. First of all, you're not only placing objects like trees, water and animals into the world but also controlling natural disasters and performing miracles. Secondly, the game is divided up into Ages, each with its own set of objects and miracles to be performed that change according to what you did in the previous Age. Lastly, you have no single end goal (You are God after all so its your prerogative to decided which out come is best). Instead you're given a list of objectives to perform (such as create World Peace or Kill all Rabbits after 2nd Age) that can't all be achieved with a single run through. The game keeps track of your accomplishments after each run-through and make note of it on the objectives list so that you can easily see that you still have yet to do. For this reason alone SBG has a lot more replay value than the Grow games, which in turn may make it more addicting for many people. The only big down side to SBG is that it doesn't have the same quality of polished presentation that the Grow games have. The UI is a little muddy and most of the objects in the game look like they where drawn in MS paint, but some people may find that endearing too.

Thats it for the Addicting Games this week, but before I end this blog I wanted to finally answer Xboxrulze' challenge now that my camera has temporarily resurfaced. Well, here I am, your humble bloger...

Please feel free to PM me any fan mail. Hate mail and lawsuits due to blindness can be emailed to nosuchname@nosuchplace@no.plc

Oh, and here's an unnecessary picture of my co-host. Yes, he's a Big Daddy guarding my Imperial Septim. So what?

Lastly, For those of you who missed it last week I did a short update to my blog entry Addicting Games: Freedom! about Aquaria. If you haven't heard of it before or looked into it lately you should check it out. Thanks for reading everyone!

-Fade2Gray

I decided that this week I wanted to show you all a freeware game that could rival those to be found on shelves or Xbox Live. The problem however wasn't that I couldn't find one, but rather that I had difficulty choosing between them. There are several that I'm quite fond of, but finally I decided on the one that I felt was the most inherently addicting (when all else fails look to the series title eh?). That game is simply titled N.

N, sometimes refereed to by its tagline "The Way of the Ninja," is a simple and slickly designed 2D action puzzle flash game in which you don the role of the Ninja, a tiny ninja man with a metabolism so fast that he's capable of performing amazing physical feats. The down side to this ability is that his life span is measured in mere minutes unless he can accumulate gold, of all things, which increases his stamina. Collecting gold though is not his main objective. Instead the goal of each level is to quite simply reach the exit. Thats simpler said than done however as the exit is usually guarded by a layer of switch activated doors, machine guns, lazier turrets, hovering mines and mindless automatons. Its your job to run, jump and wall slide with exacting precision to avoid each trap, flip every switch and reach the end goal all before the clock runs out. Oh, and the timer caries over so if you only just squeak a level in under the wire, the next level will only be that much harder.

This game can be brutal. For all its simplicity the levels are expertly designed to constantly provide new challenges. In one level you be climbing up level after level crawling with motion detecting robots to reach a switch only to be forced to climb your way back down again to reach the door, in another you be leaping from one precarious rounded perch to another all under the constant gaze of a lazier turret. And during all of this you'll be trying to weigh the benefits of trying to reach that next out of the way load of gold to help ease some of the time pressure you're always under. The controls are equally simple and responsive with the traditional WASD setup and one button for jumping. The entire game simply oozes polish and its simple design combined with constantly evolving challenges (there are roughly 400-500 individual levels in the game) will likely keep anyone glued to their computer once they start playing. If you want a simple game to play between bouts of Bioshock or Halo 3 this is definitely a good option.

-Fade2Gray

Update: While I'm talking about excellent flash games I though I'd mention a particularly good looking flash game still in development called Aquaria. In short, its a free roaming Metroid ****game set in an under water fantasy land... I mean sea. No, This one wont be free. You'll probably find it running about $20 online (I'd guess somewhere like steam). I've been watching this one fairly intently and have high expectations based on what I've seen. Speaking of what I've seen, They just released a fairly long gameplay video on Youtube. Notice how good the music and voice acting is. Wow!

Update to Update: S T Y L E is a censored word!? Give me a break!