So last week I introduced you to Max Morton, my prisoner from hell in Prison Architect. I want to give you an update on how he’s coming along. He disappeared for a short while, which had me in a dead panic. I expected the killing spree to start in my prison, but a few hours he was back in his solitary cell, sleeping. Game glitch? Perhaps. Knowing Max, though, it was probably something much more sinister.
However, since then, he has been a model citizen. I even tried moving him out of permanent solitary into general population, and he’s been great. He even got a job. It’s been weeks since his last incident and I can’t believe it. Did he have a religious experience during his time away? Abducted by aliens and replaced? Probably. That’s my guess, because this is not the same guy.
I have since moved on to another prison. I do reload it from time to time just to check on my favorite psychopathic murderous inmate.
Tumblestone is a puzzle game, through and through. And it’s hard. I think that’s what I love about this game most. It really requires me to think in different ways as I progress. It’s not for the faint of heart, so if you’re looking for a casual puzzle game to waste a minute or two, this might not be for you.
The goal in Tumblestone is fairly simple – clear the board of tumblestones. However, accomplishing this can be difficult. There are several modes of play and they each have their own challenges:
Story mode is the main game. In each level, you have a board with stones in it and you just need to clear them all to advance to the next level. Each world has 30 levels and there are 11 total. I am currently in world 6, after playing for about 40 hours. Each world presents you with a new twist in the game that really makes you have to learn the strategy before you can move on. There is a story that is cute and engaging as well.
Multiplayer is a lot of fun. I don’t usually play games against other people, but I happen to be pretty good at this and haven’t lost an online match yet. There are three different types of multiplayer modes. Battle is the hardest. Every time an opponent clears a line, your board drops a line. These are pretty quick matches and can be hectic. Puzzle Race is just that – a straight-up race to clear your board first. The host can set rules such as modifiers and game length for all modes. Tug of War is my favorite of the three. You have sections that you need to clear and as you do, other players have sections added. This one allows for the most time to think and that’s why I like it. I can plan ahead and then make my moves.
Arcade is DLC, but I would recommend it if you find you’re liking the game. There are three modes in Arcade. Marathon is my favorite here, again because it gives you all the time you need to plan and play. I’m currently top of the leaderboard on this one 🙂 I’m sure that won’t last for too long. Heartbeat is a never-ending scrolling board that makes you play as fast as you can. Infinipuzzle is also a scrolling board, but you have more time in this one.
The graphics are cute and colorful. I honestly don’t notice the soundtrack much, so it’s just fine. I do like the sound effects as you clear stones. If you are looking for a moderately difficult puzzle game, then you will really like this one.
I am currently first on the XBox Leaderboards in the game Tumblestones in marathon mode. I didn’t realize it until DAN052 sent me a random congrats message through the XBox. I have never been on the top before.
I have placed in the top 100 or so on a few other games – Guitar Hero Aerosmith, EverQuest and Rock Band come to mind. I’m excited and didn’t realize I was that good at the game until this! I have been obsessed with this game and I promise a post coming up about it soon.
I had just learned this two months ago, which is why I’m posting about this now. Apparently, for the last year or so, Microsoft has been giving away four games per month to their XBox Live Gold members, which I am. I pay for my XBox Live membership yearly. The subscription is required if you want to do anything online, which is pretty much necessary. So, for a service that I already have to pay for, I get four free games of Microsoft’s choosing every month!
They release them on the 1st and 16th of each month. Two are for the XBone and two are for the XBox 360. If you have a XBone, you can play them all on that as the 360 games are immediately on the backwards compatible list. These are also all downloads.
They are not slouch games, either. These are major release games. For example, this month it was the following:
That’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2. A major release. I am playing Tumblestones now and you can expect a post about it soon. The others I download and keep until I’m ready to play them. I did have to get a larger hard drive, but I’ve got plenty of space now. So just in case you weren’t aware of this, it’s awesome and as good as it seems!
I’ve been playing Prison Architect on the XBone for a while now and I suddenly have a problem. I’d like you to meet Max Morton. As you can see in the stats above, Max is a bad boy. Max is an asshole. He’s been in my prison for 33 days now and he’s unlike any other prisoner I’ve had in my 300+ hours playing. If you notice, he is now sentenced to 890 years in prison. Here’s another look as to why:
This list is big and it’s full of murders. In one day, Max killed 14 of my staff, mostly guards. It was a slaughter and I was powerless to prevent it. He is permanently in solitary confinement now, but he is so strong that he can break down the door when he gets really mad. I have an armed guard posted in the solitary block. Max is never happy. He gets spun up and goes on murderous rampages. I built a death row facility just so I could kill him, but the game doesn’t work that way. It seems that I am forever doomed to life with Max in my prison.
“Try leniency!”, I hear you exclaim. Yeah, I’m not falling for that again. I have tried that with him a few times now, but the result is always the same – dead staff and inmates as he goes off on a tirade because he’s not near enough to a phone or something. He’s been quiet for 3 days now, which is UNHEARD of. I’m just waiting for this ticking time bomb to explode again. I may have to build a new solitary block just for him.
I have been playing Prison Architect on either the PC or XBone for a long time now. I was an early adopter of the game and it’s been neat to see the changes as it neared its release. The game has finally been officially released to both PC (Steam) and XBone. I’ve played both versions and I’ll discuss the differences. If this game has staying power, it may very well find its way on to my top 25.
In this game, you are the designer of a prison. The game now has a few different modes. I just finished story mode last night and it’s well worth the play through. The game doesn’t hold punches on issues such as death row and the philosophies behind solitary confinement. There were a couple of times that it actually stirred some emotion in me. That’s good writing.
There is also Prison Warden mode, where you play pre-made prisons and clean them up. I will be starting on this mode today, so I can’t comment on it much. There’s World of Wardens, which allows you to download and play prisons made by other players. I find most of these to be ridiculous and not fun. I could do without this mode. For me, the heart of the game is Prison Architect mode.
In this mode, you just design and build. There are objectives you can meet if you choose to, and they give you the funding necessary to build bigger and better. After you are satisfied with your prison, you can sell it and start a new one. You get to keep the cash from your sale and go even bigger.
This game is not for kids, though. The story mode is graphic and there’s quite a bit of blood and violence in the game. The game has a surprising amount of depth, however. You can schedule every hour of your prisoner’s day and there is a tech tree of sorts. You hire your staff and decide how many and what types of prisoners come in each day.
I preferred playing the game on PC. The mouse makes it a lot easier than trying to play with a controller. It’s also hard to read some things on my TV versus my monitor. The PC version has a workshop on Steam, where other players made modifications to the game and you can easily download them. I found some good ones there such as a garden. I would recommend playing on both, however. In fact, if you like building games, you are probably going to love this game.
I found this game two days ago on the XBox Store. I am already declaring it an awesome game. I’ve spent a total of about 8 hours playing it, although it feels like a lot more. I love a good word game and will easily get sucked into one. This particular word game combines a typical word game with an RPG!
You start the game playing as Grimm, a little dude working his way through a monster-filled realm. You can play in either story mode or endless mode. Both are fun. Endless is just what it sounds like – a survival mode where you work your way through monster after monster. You earn coins as you go and can occasionally buy upgrades and potions to help with the increasing difficulty.
As with most games, story mode is where it’s at. You work through a map of levels, earning stars as you go. This is where it gets cool – the stars aren’t just given for varying levels of “good job”. Instead, you need to play through each level four times to get all of the stars. Each is an objective. For example, the first is simply beat the monsters. The second is a time trial. The third is some sort of challenge like “can’t use E” or something equally as challenging. The fourth is a special challenge where the monsters are much tougher and have specific requirements like “takes damage only from words starting with a vowel”.
As you play through story mode, you can spend crystals you earn on permanent upgrades. There are a lot of them and they all help to make you more awesome. Of course, if you’re not good at the core of the game, it’s not going to matter much. The game play is simple – find words from a block given to do damage to monsters. It sounds simple and is, but when I spelled out the word “AFFIDAVIT” the other night, I felt pretty awesome. Some monsters will make tiles unusable or make it so you take damage when you use them.
It also keeps track of your stats! This is a feature I always like. It shows you how many of pretty much everything you’ve done. I’ve spelled the word “BACON” five times and spelled out 25 palindromes. And for the fellow achievement whores – this game is going to be a breeze to complete. I’ve gotten 40 achievements in just under 8 hours.
This all leads to a really fun and highly re-playable game. If you like word games, find it!
Matt and I started our real-life bowling league last week, so I figured I’d celebrate by talking about some bowling video games through the years. For the record, I’m a much better real-life bowler than video game bowler. As usual, I’m only focusing on games that I’ve actually played.
My first video game bowling experience was called “Bowling” on the Atari 2600. That’s the image above. It was pretty simple. Line up your bowler and throw the ball. It made some interesting sound effects and the ball moved about as fast as a 5 year-old can throw it, but it was bowling. I don’t think this game was able to keep my attention for too long.
Next up we have Zombie Bowl-a-Rama for the PC. This was a fun game where you could inflict all sorts of carnage on zombies walking your way in an alley. The “bowling” aspect of it can be applied loosely as you’re really just throwing stuff at zombies. It might look a bit bowling-y, but it seems to lose something in all of the fire. Still, it was a fun game to play once.
Next is Rocket Bowl on the XBox 360. I really enjoyed this game and still play it from time to time. As you can see in the image above, it’s not your typical bowling game. The lanes are warped, there are water hazards, hills and collectibles to get as you play. You don’t even have to hit the pins on the set you’re aiming at, either. The “rocket” comes from the fact that your ball can be motivated in a rocket way in different directions. Fun!
This wouldn’t be an article about bowling games if we didn’t include Wii Bowling. I did have a Wii for a while and I did enjoy this game. The motion controls were new and innovative and just worked well with bowling. True story. A friend and I created a local Wii bowling tournament for senior living facilities and everyone had a blast. Here’s a video of our event. Yeah, I still have the shirt:
My final bowling game of the day is Kinect Bowling for the XBox 360/One. I am terrible at this game. I can never seem to aim in the correct spot. It’s still fun and uses motion controls, but damn I suck.
Are there any bowling games that I’ve missed that you have enjoyed?
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