Secret Files 3 Walkthrough
Walkthrough for Secret Files 3 is up. Review to follow in a few days time.
Meanwhile, I've begun to play the original Mass Effect for... like the fourth time, this time in earnest,
and hope to finally polish it off this holiday season, with a view to writing a review in the New Year. Speaking of
which, a very happy holiday season to all of you!
Monday, 10th December, 2012
Puritas Cordis review
Also as promised, the Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis review is now up.
Review and walkthrough for Secret Files 3 coming sometime around Christmas. And then... I have to finish
Fallout: New Vegas. About 2/3 of the way through it. Just ran out of steam.
Sunday, 2nd December, 2012
Yay! New article
As promised, the walkthrough for Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
is now up. Review to follow shortly.
Thursday, 22nd November, 2012
Purity of heart
Finally managed to get through an adventure game, my first this year. Last night I finished Secret Files 2:
Puritas Cordis, the 2009 sequel to Secret Files: Tunguska. It was
an enjoyable puzzle fest that lasted about a week (in fact, the game informed me that I had spent 1190 minutes
at it, or just about 20 hours). So this evening I sat down with the best intentions of writing a review and...
decided to do a walkthrough instead, as the puzzles were challenging. And I could use another run through the
thing anyway to concentrate more on some of the aspects of the game that I failed to take note of while I was
concentrating so hard on the puzzles. Not to mention that procrastination is my raison d'être.
Should have the walkthrough up early next week, and then we'll tackle that review.
Monday, 21st May, 2012
Obscure Japanese video game leads to inscrutable number of hits
Since that last post concerning football wasn't exactly on topic for a gaming site, I figured I'd better write
something a little more topical, and soon. Because I was looking at the Google Analytics figures the other day,
and noticed that traffic was a down a bit. I mean, when you plonk yourself down at a gaming site, the last thing
you expect to see is some wailing and gnashing of teeth about a questionable Premiership refereeing decision.
As it so happens, my state-of-the-art (well, 4 years ago) video card gave up the ghost a few months ago, so
I haven't been able to play any recent games. Good time to tackle the 20+ game backlog, I thought, and so I fired
up Baldur's Gate: Shadows of Amn with a view to actually playing it the
whole way through this time, perhaps even doing one of my comprehensive RPG walkthroughs for it. So I decided to
check the site stats one more time and... whoa! WTF?! The traffic dynamics of the site had so completely changed
in just the past *two days* that at first I thought the site had flat-lined. But then I figured out that my
readership had increased by about 800% overnight, so Google had to change the scale of the presentation. But
the burning question was: why?
The last time something like that happened, it turned out to be Monkey
Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge having been released for the iPhone. Usually we get about 300 - 400 unique
visitors to the site a day, mostly because we have a pretty good selection of walkthroughs for popular games. In
this case, a very difficult adventure game had been exposed to a new audience that probably hadn't a clue about
how to solve those kinds of puzzles. So the readership went from about 300 to 1500 overnight, and stayed that
way for about six months. But what caused it this time?
Well, if you're reading this, you probably already know the answer: cracked.com recently posted an article
entitled "6 Japanese Video Games That Will make your Head Explode", and a very obscure game (and rightly so)
that was #1 on their list, "Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou" was reviewed by our very own Steve Ramsey.
It being so obscure, we were one of the only sites to review it.
Good illustration of the power of the web, and how inter-connected we all are nowadays.
Sunday, 6th May, 2012
Remembering
Sometimes you forget that you have a blog, and that you paid the yearly subscription to your provider... and that it
doesn't always have to be about computer games. And that FTP is still a viable method of file transfer. And that
you remembered the password. This is one of those times.
Yesterday, what could have been a momentous sporting occasion was wrecked by a world-wide sporting association's
insistence that, despite using modern technology to bring the match to a world-wide audience (I could watch the thing
on my freakin' phone if I wanted to), important decisions be made using 1880's technology... or lack thereof. Yes,
I'm talking about the 2012 FA cup final between Chelsea and Liverpool, which descended into farce due to a single
person on the pitch not being in the right place at the right time to make a game-changing decision. So the world-wide
television audience of like a billion people gets to watch the re-play of an obvious goal that was dis-allowed, like
about 15 times, just to remind them of how farcical the situation has become. Hey, due to the wonders of modern
technology, you can even watch it again:
Back in the real world, perhaps the fact that the ball hit the cross-bar when Chelsea goalkeeper Cech dug it out
might even have been a valuable clue. But when the stakes are so high (Ireland lost out on a chance to participate
in the last World Cup due to an equally obvious Thierry Henri hand-ball that led to a last minute cheating goal for
France in a play-off), it winds up leaving a sour taste in the fans' mouths for weeks or even months afterwards.
<soapbox>So when are FIFA going to get a clue and bring in video ref at the professional level?
It works for other sports like rugby. OK, maybe 10 percent of the time you can't tell what really happened after several
replays, but it at least gives the referees a fighting chance to make the right decision. The main excuse for not
introducing a video ref so far is that it wouldn't be feasible to use at all levels of play, i.e. amateur matches.
But so what? Millions of dollars aren't at stake in some kiddies' Saturday morning match.
Yes, it would disrupt the flow of play, but injuries do that already (and the dreaded diving, another good reason
for it!). Why not give each team up to 3 times during the match when they could invoke it and, *shudder*, stop the clock
during the review? Instead of the referee blowing the whistle immediately for offsides, the linesperson could just hold
up their flag like they already do anyway. The whistle could then be blown for a review if a goal ensues.</soapbox>
