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Echoes new game from Binary Zoo

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:04:32 +0000

Back then when I started writing articles for ghacks I was writing about a freeware game that blew my mind. The game was called Mono and had such an addictive fascinating gameplay that I played it for endless hours. The creators of Mono developed a new game which is called Echoes that uses many of the addicting elements that made Mono famous. Echoes is an Asteroids clone on steroids. That is probably the best way to explain the basic principle of the game. The developers put it that way when they describe Echoes: “Yeah, it’s a bit like Asteroids hyperactive, drug crazed brother displayed in blur-o-vision© and viewed through psychedelic sunglasses in a cheap nightclub.”

Echoes is freeware of course and has a size of about 8 megabytes packed. You can run it from any location. Once started you move your spaceship with the mouse and use the ASDW keys to point the gun in one of the four directions available. The first waves of asteroids are no problem and some leave power ups behind that replenish shields and add guns to the spaceship.

Echoes is probably not as addictive as Mono – nothing beats Mono, you know – but it comes pretty close. It has nice visuals, a good smooth gameplay and action that changes and gets faster with every asteroid that gets destroyed. Take a look, you will enjoy it.

Weekend Fun Tails Gear

Martin Brinkmann — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 03:58:20 +0000

Tails Gear is one of those Japanese arcade shooters that make it pretty difficulty for average gamers to see more of the game than just a few levels. If you ever played games like Ikaruga you know what I mean, they live of extreme amounts of enemies and bullets that they send your way and you have to move the ship more than carefully to avoid death. Graphics are excellent as is the gameplay, you always see some kind of sequences when you finish a level and move on to the next. One of the interesting features of the game are the satellites of your ship that shoot on their own and can stay in a place for tactical reasons.

Tails Gear works fine with a gamepad but can be played as well using the keyboard. You shoot with Z and C and use a secondary weapon with X. If you are new to this type of games I suggest you start with the easy setting and experience the game on this stage before moving on to normal or hard.

Hard is by the way very intense and you really need a calm hand to succeed in this mode. There are so many bullets and lasers on the screen that it becomes nearly impossible to dodge them all without crashing your spaceship. Tals Gear is a great game for a quick pause of some minutes, very easy to learn but difficulty to master. Exactly the types of game that I like.

The game does not need to be installed and can be run from any location on your hard drive. The download is about 10 megabytes which is acceptable for this type of game.

Weekend Game Naac

Martin Brinkmann — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:02:53 +0000

Naac reminds me a little bit of Smash Tv. It is a pretty straightforward top down shooter that can be downloaded from the developers homepage. You start with a handgun and have to defeat all aliens that emerge from different sides of the screen. The game would be incredibly boring if it would not feature power ups, better weapons, different types of aliens and even boss aliens that require strategy to defeat. It is absolutely crucial that you pick up the power ups and better weapons when they emerge randomly on the screen. It would otherwise become impossible to defeat the hordes of aliens at later stages.

The better weapons do not appear immediately. It takes about 2-3 waves of aliens before you get the real good guns like the rocket launcher. You control the game with the wasd keys and the mouse. The mouse is used for aiming at the enemies and shooting at them. Left click fires a bullet in the direction that you aim and the right-click changes the type of weapon that you use at the moment.

What else can I say ? Naac combines a fast gameplay with addicting game elements. Ideal for a quick snack in a break.

Game for the weekend Ray-Hound

Martin Brinkmann — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 06:33:08 +0000

Ray-Hound is a freeware arcade game with great graphics and interesting gameplay. You move your spaceship with the mouse and activate a gravity field by left-clicking the mouse. The gravity field lasts for 1-2 seconds and becomes inactive for a short period afterwards. Other Spaceships fire rockets that destroy the energy shields of your spaceship, once the shields are down to zero your spaceship bursts and you see the game over screen.

The interesting part is that you do not shoot the other spaceships directly but use the gravity field of your spaceship to redirect the missiles and hit the enemies with them. The numbers that spawn become more and more after time and it becomes increasingly difficulty to avoid the attacks of the other vessels.

Babe Violent 2 Fast Paced Multiplayer Game

Martin Brinkmann — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:13:40 +0000

Fun Fun Fun ! That is exactly what Babe Violent 2 is all about. It is a free multiplayer top down shooter. Players are armed balls that carry one of six weapons and try to beat the opposite site in exciting game modes such as capture the flag, deathmatch and team deathmatch. It is currently possible to play on 13 different maps with 2 to 32 players that fight it out. Just add a name and connect to one of the servers that are available. Then choose a weapon like submachine gun or bazooka and enter the battle.

Servers had a good amount of players on them and I immediately felt at home and was able to frag the first enemies. You move your player with the WASD keys, aim with the mouse and shoot the weapon with the left mouse button and throw a grenade with the right one.

You may change weapons every time someone fragged you. I found the shootgun to be pretty effective and the sniper rifle the most difficult to handle at the beginning. There is lots of (ball) blood everywhere on the map after a few seconds which means it is not a game for minors but great fun for us adults.

The size of the game is just a few megabytes and it is worth the download if you like multiplayer games of this kind. Hope you enjoy it, see you on the servers.

Remove the Advertising in Games like Battlefield 2142

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 08:02:31 +0000

Ingame advertising will become more common in the next years. One of the first games that makes extensive use of ingame advertisement is EA Games Battlefield 2142. Once connected to the server it displays ads in the game that are displayed by a calculation of variables like your geolocation or time you did spend looking at an ad.

Gamers do not receive anything from this. All the money earned goes right into the pockets of EA. This kinda sucks and I thought it would be nice to share a way to get rid of those ads. The easiest solution would be to block the network that streams the ads from being able to connect to your computer. All you need to do is block (reject traffic from) the subnets 72.3.184.144/28 and 72.32.5.0/28.

Another method that looks more complicated would be to change the ad files in the cache by using a tool called IGA Ad Cache Editor. The readme explains the functionality: “This application imports and exports DDS image files from the ad cache of Battlefield 2142. You can also import and export groups/sets of images (adpacks).”

Once exported you can modify the images using tools like GIMP and import them after you have changed the contents.