30/07/2012

Song Pop - Metal

The game is now starting to become a chore & I hate the way it tells you what the other person has guessed because I know nothing about Metal music but by copying Michael's guesses & a lucky fluke on Iowa I was able to beat him. It should be like Trivie which does not tell you what the other player guessed until the round is over.

29/07/2012

Guild Wars 2 - Beta Test

Thanks to a retweet from MerseyMal I was lucky enough to get a beta key from the Eurogamer giveaway to try Guild Wars 2.

My main concern was would the game run on my current system with my basic graphic card.

Thankfully I had no issues at all even with all the action that was happening in the game. I did not spend too long with the beta because I did not want to ruin the experience of the game when released but with my brief few hours I managed to complete a few quests, be involved in a couple of boss fights & even take part in a dynamic event.

My pre-order is done so now time to sit back and wait till the 28th August.

28/07/2012

Tiny Tower - New Update - Save your VIPs

It's good to see that Nimblebit are still updating Tiny Tower.

The recent update gave us new floors & costumes whilst also giving the ability to choose which floor you want to build (This is a silly option because the amount of bux's you need is stupidly high).

The most useful feature of this update is the ability to save your VIPs in the Lobby. You can save up to 5 VIPs for use at a later time. My screenshot shows me having 3 VIPs waiting in the lobby to use.

I'm continuing upgrading every floor to level 5 stock & also delving into the past history of UGVM to pull out some names for new floors.

I've now done a spreadsheet to help me see who has what floor

17/07/2012

Tiny Tower - What to do now?


With needing to collect 499 bux I had a target or goal to aim for but now I have the best lift in the game.

What to do now?
Well I still have lots of floors left to build & bitizens to find to fill the dream jobs.

With the bux I collect now I spend on upgrading the stock level on each floor to hopefully get them all to level 5.

This takes longer for the stock to refill but has the advantage of rewarding you with more stock.

 I'm also running out of potential UGVM people to take over the floors so will need to delve into the archives & do a roll call to make sure everyone is included.

16/07/2012

Song Pop - Dekay sucks at Classic Rock

An opportunity to embarrass a fellow UGVM member? Ok Why not :)

I also did pretty bad.

15/07/2012

Draw Something - Barney

No not the purple dinosaur but the original & the best Barney Rubble from The Flintstones

Draw Something - Metroid

I'm still playing & I especially love any video game words. Here we have Samus

14/07/2012

Matching with Friends - New High Score

Finally I won a game !!

The game I lost against my son I had a high score of 3090 but I still managed to lose.

My first win comes against who else but Words with Friends chum & fellow UGVM friend Becky (Thanks Becky for letting me win)

Getting 980 points on one turn helped me take the win.

New Game - Matching with Friends

What !! not yet another turn based game !!

Yes this time Matching with Friends by Zynga.

A simple game in that you have to match up the coloured tiles to get points (minimum of 3 tiles required to score)

You have x2 & x3 tiles on the board which you can use to boost your score & also you can double your points by matching tiles on your colour (see the blue square under my name in the first screenshot) when I get any matches with the colour blue the score will double.

Also star tiles will match any colour you can place on them, I managed to score 980 points against Becky in our current game.

Yet I am still to win a game losing even to my son who managed to score 1160 in a single turn to beat me.

The free version of the game lets you play with the odd advert or you can pay £1.99 for the ad-free version (I'll wait till the inevitable 69p sale to purchase)

What else? Oh yes coins, you earn coins by completing a game which you can then use to purchase explosion powerups which will destroy tiles on the board or you can use the coins to swap out one of the tiles you have been drawn to play.

It's instantly playable & easy to pick up but will it be a keeper like Words with Friends, Disc Drivin, Hero Academy & Carcassonne? Only time will tell.

12/07/2012

New Game - Syndicate

£10 ? no not yet. £10? No not yet! … email from The Hut “Hello, Is it me you’re looking for?” have 10% off. DELETE.
£10 no not yet. HUK feed The Hut Syndicate £14.99 oh sod it where’s that email !! Click, Click order placed.

I tried the demo when the game was released with a few from UGVM (Jochta, Cooltag & I forget who else sorry). The demo had you playing the role of an agent. You have to run through the map hacking technologies & shooting enemies. There is an emphasis on co-op play because you need to heal team members & sometimes reboot them.

With the game purchased it was time to play the game proper with Gus & Cooltag, our first map was Northern Territories which proved challenging enough on normal difficulty that all three of us died very quickly. There are different classes in the game Support, Offence & Defence and all these really give you is a different default gun load out. Trying again we come up against the boss who had a protective shield which you first need to hack to disable before he can take any damage. Once he died you could then remove a chip which is the currency in the game for upgrades. But to take him down we had to play for the team, no lone wolf attempts. I would disarm his shield while Gus & Cooltag would attack. I would also then keep an eye on the their health bar & heal if needed. Hopefully the next session we will have an extra player to join us, I really enjoyed the co-op gameplay & Syndicate should keep us busy until Borderlands 2.

11/07/2012

Fallout New Vegas - Honest Hearts

I've just finished Dead Money so why wait straight into the next DLC for Fallout New Vegas. Honest Hearts starts off with you escorting a caravan to Zion in Utah. you are only allowed to carry with you a certain weight limit & no companions.

Upon arrival in Zion you are ambushed by a tribal gang called the White Legs. After killing them I looted various weapons & items I needed before checking my map to find a nice big world map. Lots of exploring to do & locations to find.

The scenery is set like the Zion National Park in Utah http://www.nps.gov/zion/index.htm lots of big cliffs & ridges & flowing streams.

You are given a companion Follows-Chalk straight away after you have taken care of the White Legs attack, very useful for helping you carry the extra loot.

I like that this DLC let's you use the fast travel on the map markers & sleep at any beds you find unlike Dead Money.  

Your companion leads you to Joshua Graham who seems to play a big role in this DLC. You learn a bit about him from the caravan merchant at the start of the DLC. He sends you on a fetch & retrieval quest which gives you a perfect opportunity to explore the area & also run into some Giant Geckos !!


10/07/2012

Tiny Tower - WOW !! It's Fast !!

Wow the new Infini Lift Lightspeed is really fast !!
It's taken me nearly 3 weeks but I managed to get to 500 bux without spending a single penny :)



Completed - Fallout New Vegas Dead Money

After recruiting the three members of the team it was time to set off the gala event which unlocks the entrance to the Sierra Madre. You escort each member of your team to a location in the villa to trigger off the opening gala event. There are lots of ghosts now to kill but I found the best weapon to use was the bear trap fist, firstly it does not need any ammo & wih usually 2 or 3 kills you would either kill the ghost or make them unconscious & then shoot them with the shotgun.

With the gala event triggered you could now enter the Sierra Madre. Upon arrival you are knocked out by the security holograms & your team members are moved to different locations. You then need to track them down & along the way find out why the casino was built.

There are a lot of speakers & security holograms in this section but you can hack these via the nearest computer or destroy the speakers if they are blue or a radio.  I won't spoil the game much more but once you have all the information you need then you can break into the vault. You then are giving the option to confront Father Elijah who I obviously killed. You get some nice loot in the vault which with some careful planning and a possible game glitch you can take with you back to the wasteland.

I enjoyed the DLC but I think this was mainly because after completing Fallout New Vegas in 2010 I've had an 18 month gap before playing the DLC, next up is Honest Hearts.

09/07/2012

iOS turn based gaming

There are so many iOS turn based games you can play against friends & randoms. You are spoiled for choice from board games & word games to quiz & drawing.

Thus I have decided to say farewall to a few that I have been playing over the last couple of years.

Firstly Wordfeud, it was always the poor cousin to Words with Friends & just never get the recognition it deserved. Letting you play in various languages & also giving you the option of a random board layout.

Next we have a few Zynga with Friends games that people have just stopped playing Hanging with Friends & Scrabble with Friends. Hanging with Friends took the hangman game and gave it a Zynga paintbrush & Scrabble is basically the Boggle board game with a grid of letters you have to make words to get points.

Lastly I say goodbye to Jenga which is a shame but the notification system on it is just broken & the developers no longer seem interested in fixing the issue.

So what am I currently playing?

Carcassonne, Words with Friends, Hero Academy & Disc Drivin will always be on all my iOS devices because they are all excellent examples of turn based gaming.

Others that I am still playing are Draw Something (iPad only), Song Pop (Although I am quickly getting bored of this), Trivie (again annoying because it is tailored to the US market on the question bank) & Friendle (Backgammon only with random players because no-one seems to be playing this anymore).

I have a few others that I am testing with Abbas & trying to figure out how to play them like Bang, Ticket To Ride & Outwitters. Before I decide on keeping or deleting them.

07/07/2012

Tiny Tower - Strategy for Making Bux

Just over two weeks ago I posted about needing 499 bux to purchase the Infini-Lift Lightspeed I had 44 bux in that screenshot. 2 weeks later & I now have 370 so how can you get bux?



Firstly the obvious option (screenshot on the left) you can purchase them at £2.99 for 100 or £20.99 for 1000 so the minimum I would need to have spent would have been £14.95 to purchase the lift. I think I would rather save than money to purchase another console game or another 21 iOS 69p apps/games.










So how did I get from 44 to 370 in 2 weeks?

1. Firstly by dropping off visitors via the lift to the floor they want to visit they will reward you by tipping you a bux.





















2. Fully stocking all of the items in your shop will occasionally reward you with a bux





















3. Missions when completed will reward you with a large sum of bux.






















4. Placing a bitizen into his dream job will reward you with 2 bux. Even if you have all 3 positions full in your shop I always take one of the current employees out & employ the new bitizen because you will always get 2 bux every time a bitizen is placed in a dream job.





















5. You will quite often get asked to find a bitizen & when you do you are rewarded with a bux.





















But you need to make this process easier for you so what I do firstly whenever I build a new floor I will spend 1 bux to move it next to a similar category floor. If you look at my tower you will see that all of my retail, recreation, creative, food, service & residential floors are together. the next step I do then is to make sure all the bitizens working in these floor have the same uniform.

Kirk Dunn in the example above works on a recreation floor so his uniform is to wear a pirate hat.

This makes it easier for me to find him because he will either be working on the recreation floor or be in the residential floors.

Similarly I have given green clothes to anyone who works on a food floor, purple hat to retail floors, blue shirt & glasses to the service floor & orange shirt to the creative floor.

You have to find citizens quite a lot in the game so if you spend a bit of bux moving all of your similar floors together & a bit of time giving them a uniform. This will make searching for them very easier & reward you with 1 bux each time.

I only have another 129 more bux to go so hopefully in little over a week I should be able to purchase the lift.








04/07/2012

Carcassonne SUPER league - Season 1

Some basic rules for the games, only the base pack to be used no expansions packs or hardcore/kid mode to be activated.

Three matches to be played 2 x 1vs1 matches & one three player match. Points to be awarded 2 points for a win & 1 point for finishing 2nd in the three player match.

Send me the match results via Twitter, RLLMUK, UGVM or the comments section on this post.

Platinum League
xibxang - Relegated
satsuma (3 Points)
actionabbas (6 Points)

Results
xibxang (68) vs satsuma (98)
xibxang (91) vs actionabbas (117)
actionabbas (114) vs satsuma (110)
actionabbas (99), Satsuma (92) & xibxang (64)


Abbas wins the group & xibxang gets relegated

Gold League
Kerumba (1 Point) - Relegated
bushtopher (4 Points)
and1976 (4 Points) - Promoted

Results
And1976 (128) vs Kerumba (92)
And1976 (127) vs Bushtopher (130)
And1976 (100), Bushtopher (97) & Kerumba (55)
Kerumba (108) vs Bushtopher (108) - DRAW !! so 1 point each


Kerumba gets relegated & Bushtopher & And1976 will have one final match against each other & the winner gets promoted. 
And1976 (109) & Bushtopher (108) - And1976 gets promoted.

Silver League
mortis316uk - Relagated
boxoctosis (6 Points)
Jobroo (3 Points) - Promoted

Results
Boxoctosis (128) vs Jobroo (126)
Jobroo (103) vs Mortis (102)
Boxoctosis (127) vs Mortis (91)
Boxoctosis (100), Jobroo (86) & Mortis (73)


Boxoctosis Promoted & Mortis relegated.

Bronze League
Gloomy Andy - Relegated
Lufferov (4 Points)
Chimpz (5 Points) - Promoted

Results
Chimpz (118) vs Lufferov (93)
Lufferov (166) vs Gloomy Andy (123)
Chimpz (120) vs Gloomy Andy (84)
Lufferov (97), Chimpz (74) & Gloomy Andy (63)


Chimpz gets promoted to Silver League & Gloomy Andy gets relegated to the Copper League

Copper League
iHakk
gospvg (6 Points)
Altashheth (1 Point)

Results
gopsvg (130) vs Altashheth (125)
gospvg (122) vs iHakk (96)
gospvg (100), Altashheth (93) & iHakk (48)


Tin League
MrHendo (2 Points)
HaggisHunter (3 Points)
Turbohat (4 Points) - Promoted

Results
Turbohat (111) vs HaggisHunter (98)
Turbohat (109) vs MrHendo (80)
HaggisHunter (114) vs MrHendo (85)
Mr Hendo (85), HaggisHunter (75) & Turbohat (64)


Turbohat gets promoted

02/07/2012

Tiny Tower - VIP

VIP's occasionally visit your tower and they each come with their own special skill.

You have the following

Delivery men who will knock 3 hours off any restock item.

The Estate Agent, my personal favourite will fill up a residential floor with new people. I use this VIP a lot for helping me find people who want dream jobs in the shops I have in my tower.

Construction Worker will knock 3 hours off the time needed to develop a new floor

Celebrity will send people to your shop buying stock.

Big Spender will buy all the stock of one item in your shop.

Before you select your VIP make sure you can use them inside your tower, you do not want to waste their visit.

01/07/2012

Hero Academy Challenges

In the recent Hero Academy update a new feature was added in "Challenges". These have you controlling various teams to kill the opposing team in a set number of turns using various skills.

A nice puzzle variant to Hero Academy

I've completed the first section Meet the Council & decided to upload some youtube videos showing the walkthroughs. Now time to go visit the Dark Elves.

Trivie - New High Score

The questions seem to be tailored towards US players with a lot of US culture questions. Anyhow I managed to set a new high score of 3,150