I Served Serial Joe a Slushie

Two posts for the price of one today! A couple of games I've enjoyed recently (see below for the continuation of my Chicago trip travelogue):

Every Extend

I usually glance over the Escapist when it comes out. I say glance over because the articles are fairly pointless most of the time. However, this week one of the articles covered the Japanese freeware ("doujin") scene, which piqued my interest. I'd heard and at least tried some of the classics (Cave Story, Kenta Cho's games, etc), but many of it was new to me.

Every Extend caught my eye mainly because I could find a download link for it (scrolling through pages of Japanese/???? text can be tiresome). It's a small game, something that only lasts for a couple of minutes, but it's great for say, a quick break from studying. It's also quite original - you blow up your own ship to try and create chains of explosions, the longer the better. The music and sounds are also classic retro arcade style.

Mount and Blade

A quite larger, more substantial game is Mount and Blade. It was mentioned in passing at the end of the same Escapist issue (#44, if you're reading this later than tomorrow), as an aside because of the fact that it was written by only two people (!), husband and wife.

It is frickin' sweet, and there is one reason for this: combat. If you look around, there's all sorts of little reviews of this game, and they all same the same thing: it's all about the combat. You essentially fight little skirmishes with bands of guys, one of which you control, while you give orders (hold this position, charge, etc) to your other troops. The point is, rather than just click "attack" you actually control the timing of your swings, the blocking, and the arrow/crossbow/projectile shooting.

It's a bit like Die by the Sword (for all of you old-school shareware games people out there), but with a slighly less complicated model for the actual attacks, but with large outside areas to fight in (and, as I just noticed from the screenshots page, castle sieges!). Oh, and it's an rpg, so both you and your party (if they survive - mine usually don't) level up and take on quests and what not.

I should also mention the pricing model (which is quite innovative) - it's still in beta, but you can buy it now for what will be cheaper than the later price - I think it's something like $18 now, $25 later. It's actually surprising it's still in beta - it's stable and everything.

I tried to find a representative screen shot, but nothing static really does it justice - you have to actually try it out. The feeling of sitting a top a horse, madly firing arrows as bloodythirsty pirates come charging towards you, then ordering your men to charge, pushing your horse forward and swinging your sword left and right - unbelievable. It's amazing the larger game companies haven't managed to get this kind of thing right earlier.