Terraria

I've actually not played this game but from what I seen it looks wicked fun. It's an indie game with old school graphics and its available on steam for $10.

Ninex

The Ninex.info Server Team is once again in need of your help.

The server is currently hosting three projects:

• "UFO: Alien Invasion"
• "UFO: The Two Sides"
• "OpenXcom".

Lovely Day

We've had a bit of a drought but today it rained so today's a lovely day. Oh it was also a good 10F-15F cooler than normal which was great.
I have a post saved up for tomorrow as well.
Hope you enjoy the song it is a pretty good one.

Song is Lovely Day by Bill Withers originally released in 1977 as a single and on the album Menagerie.

Movie Monday: Labyrinth

A wonderful and slightly twisted movie from Jim Henson released in 1986 starring Jim Bowie, Jennifer Connelly and of course lots of muppets. Sorry I was absent yesterday got busy and lazy.
Anyway it's a really weird movie and certainly not for everyone but I enjoyed it.

UFO2 Extraterrestrials

A preview on another X-Com style game coming from an indie developer. This is a second release and it should be noted the first game was not all that spectacular but I am sure they will improve on this release.

UFO2Extraterrestrials: Shadows over Earth

• A fully 3D game combining real-time global strategy & air combat with turn-based tactical missions

• A turn-based “I-Go-You-Go“ tactical squad-based game system

• Interactive environments with destructible terrain.

• A large number of technologies, weapons, and combat units to develop

• A large number of aliens to interrogate

• Strong RPG elements where soldiers’ stats improve with experience

• Dynamic lighting for intense fire-fights

• Final Gameplay design and balance tweaks by the author of the popular
  original UFO: ET Bman Ease of Use Mod.

SimAnt

Really great game that I have plugged countless hours in. Designed by Will Wright, published by Maxis and released in 1991 for PC/mac 1992 for Amiga and 1993 for SNES.

Populous

Another amazing game from Bullfrog, released in 1989 for a multitude of systems including the PC and SNES.

Master of Orion 2

This great game was released for the PC back in 1996. In it you select one of several pre-made races or create your own with various bonuses and weaknesses. But before that you select custom aspects of the galaxy.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

This is a tower building game for the PC and XBLA. You build a few starting towers and as you kill aliens you get credits to build and upgrade more towers. Your job is to keep the aliens from making off with all of your energy cores which is quite easy, it is much harder however to keep them from taking any at all.

Dune for Sega Genesis

This game was released in 1993 and by the same people who brought us Command & Conquer 2 years later.

Movie Monday

For today's movie I choose Dune(1984).

Well this movie is quite dated by today's standards but it has a great story and some pretty good acting.
It is set in the distant future and revolves around the struggle for control of a small desert planet that only has one abundant resource. This resource however is only found on this one planet and has some extraordinary properties.

Sorry

I've been letting stress get to me. I think I might slow down and take it easy the next few days.
Here is another great song by Queen till I get back. Is it obvious that Queen is one of my favorite bands and Freddie Mercury is one of my favorite artists?

Jagged Alliance 2

This game was released in 1999 for the PC.
One of the best games of its type. It's a tactical role-playing game much like Fallout 1 and 2. Makes use of a gridded world map for travel and isometric tactical screen for encounters.

GOG

This is a great online distributor of games new and old. You can find almost anything there from Duke Nukem to Kings Quest to Master of Orion. They don't have every game ever made but they certainly have a large selection all at fair prices. They have forums and you can make a list of games to share with others or browse other peoples lists to get some ideas on what might interest you.
Some great things about GOG is they do not use any DRM so once you buy the game you can download it as many times as you need and install it on any computer you want. They also accept paypal as a payment option.
It is certainly worth checking out.
http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage

Queen- You're My Best Friend

Seems appropriate.
The magic that was Freddie Mercury(Farrokh Bulsara) singing one of his number one smash hits.
I hope everyone has someone else they can think of when listening to this song.
Did you know he was born in Zanzibar and his parents followed the Zoroastrian religion? He went to school in India till the age of 17.
Anyway enjoy.

Genewars

Here is another golden nugget from the days of Bullfrog productions. It was released in 1996 for the PC and is a real-time strategy game that includes terrain editing and genetic manipulation.

Movie Mondays

I was thinking about spicing it up a bit by sharing a movie that I like every Monday, what do you guys think?
To kick it off I will go with The Fifth Element.

UFO: Afterlight

This game was released in 2007 and is the third and last of the series. It's a walk in the park compared to the first game. This game is very cool because you can see effects you are having on the planets turning a red planet slowly green, melting icecaps and placing buildings.

 

UFO: Aftermath

This is a game from 2003 that is heavily based on X-Com. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Yes I love X-Com and games like it. One thing about this game is it can get ridiculously hard towards the end.

Small update

Yesterday I helped my parents move into their new house, mowed the lawn, cleaned house and various other things not related to video games. Today I have been watching all available episodes of Game of Thrones and trying to figure out just what the heck is going on. About all I can gather is that everyone wants everyone else dead but who is really pulling all the strings and to what end is a bit more ambiguous. Anyway it seems like a pretty good show and eight episodes are currently available with ten episodes in season one. HBO has already ordered a second season and it's not hard to see why.
Worth checking out. Also that is Boromir from LOTR....
http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/index.html
I'm working on another game review that I will post some time today.

UFO: Alien Invasion

I think this will be the last indie game for now with a shift back towards good games you might not have played or even heard of. I have a few in mind.

Anyway UFO: Alien Invasion is a nice free to play project that has been in development for some time now. They have translations for MANY languages and the game has multiplayer functionality.

As promised

Ever want to play as the aliens in X-Com? Well you can!
"Ufo: The Two Sides is a multiplayer remake of the original game X-Com: Defence / Ufo: Enemy Uknown, developed by Mythos Games and MicroProse in early 90′.

Ufo tts recreates most of the original features, adding a couple of new ones, and changing ones that existed. However, the game recreates most of the features as faithfully as possible to maintain the unrivaled game-play of its predecessor. Although numerous other attempts have been made to recreate x-com defense, there is no (known to us) multiplayer game that lets you play full campaigns (that is both geoscape and battlescape). Project has been started on 1st of march 2009. There is no known date as to when it’s going to be complete.
All games from the ufo/x-com series are property of their owners (in 2005 rights have been aquired by Take-Two), the game is still being sold, therefore original game is not ‘abandonware’ and cannot be distributed for free legally. Presently Ufo: tts uses original graphics taken from ufo 1, making it impossible to be downloaded as a complete stand alone product. The crew is currently working on remaking all the graphics, so this will not be a problem in the future."

Current plan

Tying to make my blog look better and more professional so I have been going back and deleting old posts with little or no content. Plan to expand on a few of them soon.
I changed the theme and made my own header. Added some widgets. Started a BitVertiser account.
I will be changing my theme again to something more related to the theme of this blog, that's first thing on the list.
Plans for future blog posts center around a few more indie/no profit projects.
Stay tuned!

X-Com Apocalypse

X-Com Apocalypse is the third game in the series and the last to follow the same basic game design elements of the original. It was released in 1997 for the PC which was actually a bad time for gaming. The market was being flooded with garbage games and this only served to cripple any success of any actual good games. Also at this time Microprose, the producer and distributor, was having financial difficulties which led to this game being released prematurely and incomplete. Despite being incomplete it is still a very enjoyable game that can be played over and over perhaps without even realizing the fact.

X-Com, a closer look

If you hear someone talking or read something about X-Com chances are it is about this particular game.
It was released for the PC way back in 1994 and for the Sony Playstation in I think 1995.
It is the first game in the series and one of three to have the same basics for game style.

Spiderweb Software

Thought I might introduce some of you to another indie developer you have probably never heard of.

This small company was started by Jeff Vogel back in 1994. I remember picking up Exile III: Ruined World back in 1997. It was a dungeon crawler with graphics that you might see on the original NES but man it was fun and very addictive.
Here are a few screens.....lol

Xenonauts

There is a game in development. Some of you may have heard of it, most probably have not.
Xenonauts is a game that is heavily based off of the original X-Com games. It will have all of the same elements from turn-based ground combat to real time air combat to keeping the worlds nations happy/safe and funding you. If you have played any of the first three X-Com games then you will know exactly what to expect, if not then well......they are pretty cheap on STEAM.

An early ALPHA version of the ground combat viewer.

Final Fantasy 2 or Final Fantasy 4

Fourth in the series but released as 2 in the US.

A powerful knight must face his inner demons to become a beacon of shining light and save the world....and the girl. What could be better?