Thursday, March 26, 2009

Hokage's Picks! Up for a challenge?

Last Weeks Picks: Jigsaw Deluxe, GravPull, Platform Combat

The New Picks:
Challenges:
The Line Game: Orange Edition: Guide your trail of orange through fiendish caves, avoiding obstacles as you go.
A Crow In Hell: Well once again the crow is stuck in hell and must get out. Avoid traps and winding tunnels. Collect keys to unlock exciting new bonus challenges.
Average Picks:
The Great Sperm Race: Millions die and only one can make it, Is it you? This is the journey of a sperm to the egg, race to the end and learn about how it all works.
Arachnid Wars 1.5: A classic turn-based strategy game… with spiders :P
Germz!: Defend yourself against an onslaught of mischievous Germz! The only hope is to match Germz to destroy them and reach your goals. Matching 4 or more will release powerful Antibodies that you can match to unleash a PowerBlast against the Germ hordes.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Death vs. Monstars


A new game on Kongregate that has been badged. By a developer which has brung us other games, but not so popular ones.

Introduction
You're Death and you have to kill monsters upgrading your weapons and playing on different modes. There's also a To-Do List and you have to complete all of those to finish the game.

Quick review
I don't see the diference between many games such as these. They're all the same, you're a creature or a person and you have to kill different enemies which have different strengths. I think ZunderFury, Amourphous+... have a very big similarity to this game.

To-Do List
These are the levels, and you need to get an objective time or mark of points or kills to pass to the next level.

Shop and Upgrades
If you get some money you'll be able to buy weapons or buy some upgrades for your characters to have better abilities.

Last level helpful guiding video

Video by kongquake.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Review - Shopping Cart Hero

Generic Header, I luff thee.

Alright, rather short review this time, seeing as its 11:17 PM at the time of writing, and I have to get up at six AM tomorrow for school. But enough about me, let's talk about this game.

As you guys already know, Shopping Cart Hero recently got badges and a challenge. At first glance, the badges probably seem hard. After playing the game for a mere twenty minutes, however, I had already achieved everything other than the hard. A mere ten minutes more, and thirty more points was mine. These achievements are really quite easy.

Now to get to the review part. As stated above, this review will be pretty short. In other words, this review is going to have about as much depth as the game it's reviewing.

The main statement I want to make with my review here is that this game lacks a lot of depth. It's just so simple, and boring. It's not necessarily a bad game, it just lacks depth. Now, some of you may say "Well, so does Tetris and Pac-Man, but they are all time classics!". Tetris and Pac-Man both have a lot of depth to them. A whole lot. Every game you play will be different with those games, and every player plays them differently. Also note you have to have skill to be good at those games.

However, with Shopping Cart Hero, nearly every player plays through it the same way:
1. Grind monies until you purchase all rockets, wheels, and tricks.
2. Do the tasks specified for the badges.
3. Close the game.
-3.1: Some players may, if they are really hardcore, try to go for a highscore, but since the game has badges highscores will be hacked.

Now that I've made my main statement on why I think this game isn't so hot, I'll rapid fire through the rest of this:

Graphics: 7/10 -- Rather simple, looks a bit hand-drawn (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Bland.

Sound: 2/10 -- Horrible. The only sounds in the game are the stepping of feet and the crasing or clanking of the shopping cart. Really could have done the game some good to include some music or further sound effects.

Replayability: 6/10 -- Depends on if you played it before badges or not. If you have played it after badges, and got them all, replayability is present, just not as much as other games. You may want to replay it on a rainy day just to get a higher score, it all depends on how you play the game.

Gameplay: 8/10 -- The core gameplay is actually really good (ignoring all lack of depth): Nice and simple, yet appealing and has a nice fun factor to it. If I counted the fact it has no depth, it would be around a six or so. The game just turns into doing the same thing over and over.

Overall: 2/5 -- I gave this game a 2/5 because of it's overall lack of depth and music and (In my case) replayability. That pretty much sums this game up, actually.

NOTE: I'm not trying to bash the game, I'm just giving my honest opinion on the game. Not all reviews have to be a 5/5 review, you know.

NOTE2: Well, I guess that wasn't so short after all, eh? I get carried away a lot.

~PlatinumIce

Perfect Balance: New Trials

Perfect Balance: New Trials, by tttursas, is a continuation of the Perfect Balance series which consists of Perfect Balance and multiple other brick stacking games. This game is not a sequel to the original Perfect Balance, but an extra set of stages to play.

Of course, out buddy tasslefoot already has a video tutorial out on how to complete all of the levels. Video can be found below:



Along with this, ttursas is currently working on a version of Perfect Balance for the iPhone/iPod. The name of it is "Perfect Balance: Harmony" and a video preview can be found below.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Guide: Shopping Cart Hero!

Many have tried. Many have failed. Do you have what it takes to be a hero?


Whee! Shopping car(t)s!


Monday's challenge is up again, this time on Shopping Cart Hero created by MonkeyWantBanana. Scoring 2,000 points in one run will reward you the Mindreader's Chalice.


Instructions:
Didn't Tasselfoot talk about this? Yes, he did. Read the instructions, he said.

The game pretty much explains the controls, but here they are again:
Right arrow to run, Up to get in, Up to jump.
Oh, and I hope you don't do a face plant, as that will cause you to get 0.10x points and kill your friends if you have any on the shopping cart.

Achievements:
Mindreader's Chalice: Score 2,000 points in a single jump.
Dropping Loads Badge (easy – 5 points): Load your cart up with 3 groupies, then crash to the ground.
Going the Distance Badge (medium – 15 points): Travel a distance of 600.
Rocking a Rhyme That's Right on Time Badge (hard – 30 points): It's tricky! Score 1800 trick points in a single jump.


The Guide:

This guide will reveal all the achievements, and how to get them.

Well, first of all, you need money. Take some speed, jump in the cart, get to the ramp, jump, hope that you will go far. Oh, and don't do a face plant.

Then, you should have some money now. If you run out of money, or can't afford anything said in this guide, complete some more runs. You should buy the round wheels followed by metal wheels. This will get you a nice speed. Don't worry about the racing wheels yet.

Now, get some money for the rockets. First, buy the one rocket. Don't worry, it's not actually one-time use, it's always for you until you buy the twin-rockets or that big crazy rocket. When you have some money for the twin rockets, buy them. The rockets will launch itselfs during the run, so you don't have to worry about it. For a little bit of extra cash, try doing a backflip or frontflip by pressing the arrow keys left or right. Beware, this is where the highest chance of faceplanting is. After that, buy the racing wheels.

What about the groupies? You don't need them yet, I suggest buying them the last, as there is a chance that you fail and your guys will die, wasting your money. Get some money and buy the new trick, Superman. To activate it, press Up + Left and hold down the Down with the arrow keys. This will make your stickfigure go into a Superman position, earning you extra cash. You can also combine this with flips, earning you even more cash. To stop this trick, just simply let the down key off.

Now, there are two options:

1. Do tricks, fly far and earn cash until you have $5,000 for the big insane rocket.

2. Buy the new trick, Handstand, earning you a little bit more money than Superman. Press Up + Up and hold down Down to activate, release down to stop doing the trick.

Do which ever you like, as each run at this point should bring you around $1,500 money.

After all, buy the big rocket upgrade and the handstand when you have money for both of them. When you get the big rocket, you should have earned your medium badge.

NOTICE: When you buy the big rocket, the controlling can be a little bit difficult. Like the game says, it's not safe. People also want me to notice that when you have the big rocket, if you want to fly far, you should always point your rocket left, so you will get boost to the right. If you're backflipping, it will slow down you due the rocket power.

Now, groupies! No, they don't give any group hugs to anyone. No, they don't kill you. But you kill them. They earn you extra cash. Now this is the most important thing: DO NOT face plant! It will kill your groupies. Buying the groupie, then upgrading to two groupies, and the last to a full harem, will most likely unlock you the card at this point. If you are really good and do awesome tricks, you can even earn the hard badge.

Hint: Get a full harem, and launch your rocket so it points to down, making you fly super high, giving you alot of time doing handstands and easier 1800 trick points.


Congrats! You just won the Mindreader's Chalice!
Yays!


Thank you for reading this guide. This guide was bought to you by Juze. Happy gaming moments at Kongregate! :)

But hey, there's just one more thing to do! The easy badge! This is very simple: Buy the full harem, face plant! Watch the blood coming, and yays! 5 points for you! It's a total of 51 points, 50 by completing all the badges, and 1 for rating the game!

Short review of this game: I gave this game my self 5/5 stars, it is pretty hilarious, like "Don't Ship Your Pants". Yes, I said "ship". I don't want to swear. You know what game I mean. :)

Monday, March 16, 2009

Henry Hatsworth Sweepstakes

"I tip my hat to you, good sir."

To get this ticket you need to complete two tasks. These tasks are found in the games Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2, and 3D Logic. Both of these challenges are easy to complete.

Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2:
In Fancy Pants Adventure you need to find the happy little bee trophy, which is found in the first level. If you hjave trouble finding it then click here for a trophy guide.

3D Logic : Completing the first ten levels is incredibly easy, but if you get stuck then use this guide to help you.

Five Lucky winners will receive Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, a sweet new puzzle adventure game for the Nintendo DS. All you DS owners should definitely get this one, it looks like a lot of fun!

Check with the Challenge Rules & Eligibility first.

Special thanks to:
ChromeGamer for his video guide.
Tasslefoot for his picture guide.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Portal Defenders



Portal Defenders is a game by BoMToons, a developer which has also brang us badged games such as Castle Crashing "The Beard".

Introduction
In this game you have to defend yourself from waves of Developers, Animators and other people which are famous on NewGrounds.

Initial characters
I prefer Dan Paladin because he is faster. He gave me the 30 combo badge. Tom Fulp is slower but more effective. He also has more life, I was more time alive with him than with Dan. They are both good, though.

Levels
Level 1, Kitty Krew Killa: You have to beat up 5 people dressed as cats.
Level 2, Ashkinscrip 3 point OK: Kill the developers of the game! They are crazy and want to eat you, prevent that!
Extra Level, P-Bot Zambo: Cleaning time! Move around with P-Bot and leave everything shiny.
Level 3, Anim8tor Anarchy: Your character wants you to destroy the animators of this game. Help him with it.
Extra Level, Treasure Decoder: Jump on the buttons and get Crown, Cr*p and Thumbs up to get them all together and get extra life.
Level 4, PlzDntBan: NewGrounds wants to have you banned. Kill them to avoid it.
Level 5, Final Boss: Beware of Wodolf, he has lazors and minions and a moustache!

NewGround's walkthrough
NewGround guides us to their game with a useful walkthrough. Including introduction, controls, the players, etc.

Helpful video
Here's a video guiding you throughout the game with Tom Fulp.


Special thanks to kongquake.

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Play Portal Defenders now!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Tass Tips Episode 1 - Read The Instructions!/Tass Tips Episode 2 - Reducing Lag

"Hi. I'm Tass. This is the 1st episode in a, hopefully, long series of general gaming tutorials. The goal is to help make all of you guys better gamers. Today's topic is the most basic of things... reading the game instructions! The game developers put them in their games for a reason, so make sure to read them!"

"Hi Guys. This is me, Tass, giving y'all some tips on how to reduce lag. I hope it helps make your gaming experience better!"

Saturday, March 7, 2009

KongCG Presents: Strategery on the Mastermind Ep. 2

Finally, another episode of the strategery!

Link

Sweet New Picks!

Last weeks picks: Popopop, ClickRace, Divergence Turret Defense, Elite Forces: South Osetia, The Virus Game

The New Picks:

Jigsaw Deluxe: It’s jigsaw puzzle with a new arcade mode, when the pieces of picture are floating around the playing field and a player should manage to put them together in order to create a picture.
GravPull: GravPull is a puzzle game that with simple gravity physics gameplay. You start a level rotating around a planet and must add thrust to your ship once you think your angle of rotation is good for the direction that you intend to travel in. Each level has a goal planet that you must reach to pass to the next level.
Platform Combat: Blast, impale, burn, freeze, snipe, laser and explode other players in this fast paced multiplayer platform deathmatch game.

Bible Fight

Bible Fight is a game from Adult Swim Games. A new developer to Kongregate that has only uploaded this game.

Introduction
In Bible Fight the goal is to beat your opponent. It's a 1 vs. 1 game. You can be different religious characters.

Characters and their attacks
This games' characters are all related to religion as the game's title tells us. Each character can do normal moves (X and Z) or special moves. NOTE: The attacks will be reversed when looking left. Example: Down, Left, Z will be Dwon, Right, Z.
Here's a helpful image to all characters' attacks.

Levels
When you're against an opponent in Tournament Mode, you'll fight in different levels. There isn't any difference in fighting or controls, just difference in background. List of levels:
Garden of Eden (Eve's level)
Noah's Ark (Noah's level)
The parted seas (Moses' level)
The manger (Mary's level)
Hell (Satan's level)
Golgotha (Jesus' level)
Heaven (God's level)

Practice Mode
This mode allows you to play for fun. If you win you'll get the Bible Thumper Badge (Easy)(First win). If you lose, nothing happens.

Tournament Mode
In the Tournament Mode you play to win. If you win you'll get the Forgive Me, Father Badge (Medium)(Beat all your opponents). If you lose, you'll have to start again.

Fight
Beat your opponent in 2 KOs to win a battle. You have to kill your opponents with your attacks.
KO: A KO is beating your opponent once, not a fight.
Perfect Round: Get a perfect round by killing your opponent without getting yourself hurt.

Badges
Divine Prophecy Challenge (Card): Get this card by getting 5 KOs, that means, beat up 2 and a half opponents.
Bible Thumper Badge (Easy): To win this badge, go to Practice Mode and win one time with anyone against anybody.
Forgive Me, Father Badge (Medium): Go to Tournament Mode and beat all your opponents (including God) to win this achievement.
Losin' My Religion Badge (Hard): Beat Tournament Mode with the 6 main characters (excludes God).
Devil's in the Details Badge (Hard): Defeat Satan in Tournament Mode with 2 perfect rounds.

God
You can unlock god by typing JEHOVAH in the Practice Mode.
Or you can unlock him by being the winner of a tournament.
NOTE: You can't be God in Tournament Mode.

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Play Bible Fight Now!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Review - Exorbis 2

Getting tired of these generic headers? Me too.

The game I'm gonna be reviewing today is Exorbis 2. It's one of the BEST puzzlers on Kongregate. That SHOULD be the end of the review right now, seeing as it's just too awesome to miss, but since this is supposed to be a full-length review, I guess I've gotta elaborate. :/

Do you like puzzle games? How about level creators? Do you like games to have tons of levels (I dunno, like one hundred?)? Do you like games to give you reasons to come back to the levels you've already completed? (I dunno, maybe an ace system of some sort?) Do you like to live? If you answered yes to any of the questions above, Exorbis 2 is right for you. (This review comes with 10% more rhymes and half the fat of a regular review)

Anyway, Exorbis 2 is developer editundo's latest game. "editundo" brought us Flash Games such as Jumpcat and Rocketcat, so you know this game's gotta be quality. (Man, I'm starting to sound like the guy who advertises ShamWow.) Exorbis 2 is a fairly unique puzzle game, in which you press arrows in order to slide circles on top of switches that are the same color. It may sound like a simple concept, and you might think you're a master while playing through the first couple levels, but believe me: It gets a LOT harder. Levels range from being able to be completed in two or three moves, to the lowest amount being something like twenty-five. Oh, and yes, Exorbis has an "ace" system similar to Pyro's. If you beat all the levels in a row with an "ace" score, you unlock a bonus level for that row, which is significantly difficult.

If you do take a liking to this game, you will truly never get bored. This game is packed with 110 levels for the main game (100 initial levels, + 10 bonus levels unlocked by acing.). But no, after you finally get done with that, you're still nowhere near at the end of this wonderful tunnel. Exorbis also comes packaged with a level editor, in which you can make your own levels, share, and play others' levels.

If I had to pick a weak point for this game, it would be the music. It's horribly repetitive, but thankfully the developer included a mute button.

Now it's time for everyone's favorite part: The graphics. Excellent. They are just virtually flawless. And it's not just the basic graphics presented in the game which make it great. You can turn on the special effects, which are great, and don't lag your computer at all. In addition to having the special effects, Exorbis even has a mode for color-blind people! If those aren't accesible graphics options, I don' know what is.

Overall, Exorbis is a very long puzzle game, which will draw you back over and over again. It's very simplistic in design, yet surprisingly challenging in the later levels.

Final Verdict: Definite 5/5, favorite. Seriously, go play it. I'd also be willing to bet money this game's gonna get badges sometime or another. :)

~PlatinumIce
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Play Exorbis 2 here!


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Don't Look Back Walkthrough

This game is pretty simple though there is a few hard parts, in which help can be found below.

Video by Tasslefoot:

Monday, March 2, 2009

The Halo Wars Challenge got changed.

Some of you may have noticed, but the way you acquire the Halo Wars Sweepstakes ticket got dramatically changed. The original requirement was to complete the secret level in Battalion: Nemesis. From the many complaints about the difficulty of this task, it was changed to a fairly easy requirement of killing 30 enemies. I'm sure I don't need to post a guide on this, but if you need any help in general then you could refer to the many other guides on the internet, or the original secret battle guide I posted. Kills in the secret challenge are counted for the sweepstakes.

Disclaimer: Completing this new challenge in addition to the original doesn't give you 2 entries or tickets into the contest.

EDIT: I was wrong, here's a quote of what greg said.

There was a communication error with Microsoft regarding this challenge, and we were apparently not supposed to use the image of Master Chief within the game. We were asked to remove the bonus level immediately.

Since the challenge requires finishing this level to earn the ticket, the challenge task was therefore changed to 30 kills so that people can still earn the challenge if they were putting it off until today. You cannot earn the ticket twice if you’ve already earned it.

I apologize for the confusion regarding this matter, but it was not changed due to player feedback.



Edit 2: Challenge extended for 4 more days.

The original challenge is also back.

Globetrotter XL


*gasp* Did I just post a miniature map that links back to a larger one which could possible help you get the badges for this game? I give you my sincere apology. :o

Ahh, learning! Something many Americans apparently don't want to do. Well, tough luck, because with this game, the only way you'll get good if by memorizing where the countries are; by playing over and over, taking note of the country's location after the each round.
Strategies and Tips:
List of Cities.
Easy Badge: You'll need to score 1k points for this badge, which is pretty easy being that it's possible to get this purely off of the first level. You should be able to get this one within 5 tries if you have some basic geography knowledge, and within 10 if you haven't really studied it too well. Not much to say about this badge, other than don't give up right away. It's easy once you get into full swing with playing this game.
Medium Badge: This one requires a bit more time and patience. You need to make it to level 5, not needing to pass it, to acquire this achievement. Similar to the first, you need to play the game multiple times, maybe more than an hour, paying attention to the location of the more difficult to know countries, such as "Yemen" "Quinea" "Uzbekistan" or even "Cambodia".
Hard Badge: Impossible for those that don't pay attention to the countries. This badge requires you to beat level 10 and get a strike. Amazingly, I found getting a strike far easier as for the fact that many popular American cities were thrown in, giving me the edge. As for getting to level 10, it's the same thing as mentioned before; memorizing countries and playing for long periods of time.

Overall Tips:
- Memorize the more difficult countries, as they do repeat.
- Use Google to get yourself at least the medium badge. This doesn't work later on, since eventually you only have 4 seconds to click on the map.
- If you at least click somewhere within the country, you'll easily get the easy and medium badges.

Rant: Can you guys please stop posting cruel comments and/or rating this 1 star just because you suck at geography? It says in the challenge description, that this challenge has to do with learning. Even in the game description is says that you'll be learning geography. Many of those " not ugly Americans" who have all of the badges played many times before they beat it. Don't be a sore loser, and comment "this game suz 1/5" upon failing.

KongCG Presents: Strategery on the Mastermind

The comic with the strategery is here!

Due to the layout of the blog and its huge image size, users must click the link below to see the comic.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3