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Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

My Rating: 10/10
Gamespot Community Rating: 9/10

The first Elder Scrolls game that I played and it will always hold a special place in my heart.

How to try and approach a game that I have spent countless hundreds of hours playing...In my mind and in my heart Morrowind is truly a masterpiece. It's predecessors, Arena and Daggerfall may have been larger, but Morrowind was the first highly detailed Elder Scrolls game. Despite it's smaller size, you can still spend at least a hundred hours without touching the main story line.

I've always loved the character creation in Morrowind, Daggerfall's was too complex, Oblivion's was good but simplified, and Skyrim's was pretty much non-existant. Morrowind's was great, like in Daggerfall they give you the option of picking from a list, answering questions to let your answers choose your class, or create a custom class. There are quite a few classes to choose from, but I've always made a custom class. You choose two major attributes which get a bonus, you tag a specialization (stealth, combat or magic) the skills in the selected category get a bonus, and you choose your skills.  You get a set number of primary skills, a set number of secondary skills (both recieve bonuses) and the rest are tagged as miscellaneous skills. Choosing a specialization and two attributes to get a bonus should be left to last as you decide which skills you want to use as I was always all over the place (but the game doesn't penalize you for being a jack of all trades). You also choose a birthsign (which is similar to the guardian stones in Skyrim except you can't change it) which gives you a bonus either in the form of a constant buff or it will give you abilities. And, obviously, before you choose all that, you choose a race, which is where you NEED to start thinking about your character because they tell you exactly what skills each race gets a bonus to, unlike Skyrim which pretty much just says "Kahjiit make good thieves".

This game gives you a wide variety of choice, once you leave the character generation the game will never push you in a direction, not even in the slightest. In fact, if you're not paying attention during the character creation and you don't ask the last NPC in there certain questions it is possible to not even start the main quest (though you could always go back and start it at any time). One of the most beautiful thing about Morrowind is it's openness, explore the vast world, delve into dungeons, join the assassin's guild and get contracts to legally murder people, do quests, B&E places, the choice is yours.

Quests range from simple and mundane quests such as clearing out a storage room of rats (what, not a basement for once!?) or convincing a guy to give back a pair of stolen pants to really long and involving like doing a pilgrimage to several different sites in order to join the temple or delving deep into dwarven ruins to fine a puzzle box only to go back and unlock a door and delve deeper into the ruins. While most of the Morrowind quests aren't really THAT unique, there is quite a variety between them, enough so to keep most people interested for quite a while. The expansions also add great quests chains, in Bloodmoon you get to join a faction previously in the game, but unjoinable, and you get to help them build an effin town which you get to make choices on how it's built! There's also a quest chain where you get to choose whether or not you want to be a werewolf!

There is more than enough items to provide for variety, more weapon and armor types than in Oblivion or Skyrim, they even have medium armor and spears in Morrowind, how cool is that!? It was probably taken out in later games because I always went medium, ebony and daedric were just too damn heavy! Enchanting items was a bit stupid in Morrowind, for enchanting you had all your known spell effects available. You had to go to an enchanter, choose effects that you personally know, and go off your own skill level for making the item. Why then, was there a need for an enchanter?

Spells were a great thing in this game, there was a decent variety and not only that you could make your own spells! Go to an NPC that offers spellmaking (this one makes a bit more sense than enchanting) and choose effects, whether it's a touch or ranged spell, if it's ranged you get to choose area of effect, choose magnitude (damage, or level effected, etc) and duration (if applicable) and it tells you the gold cost and the mana cost. The major flaw with this is a fundamental flaw in Morrowind's leveling system. You can make a spell that is too crappy to even use and it will raise your skills, essentially letting you train your skills without having to spend gold, and without a trainers max skill level cap.


Navigation in this game was one of the major flaws in my opinion, there were no waypoints on the map, the questgiver told you to go to such and such location, or to head in a direction such as north, you'd have to wander around trying to find the place you need to go. There also was no fast travel, need to go back to town to sell off your shit? Walk there bitch! No mounts either made that a royal pain (though you could fortify your carrying weight). In some ways the lack of fast travel really made me appreciate the world though, I got out, and I saw it, it's like the difference between going for a walk or going for a drive, if you go for a walk you take in a lot more of your surroundings. Don't get me wrong though, the game wasn't so bad to navigate, the game had a taxi service, only each town only had a limited amount of choices so sometimes it was like riding a bus, you needed to hop from town to town to get to one place. Also all the roads (not little paths, just roads) had numerous signs telling you which way to go to get to towns further down on the road.

Here are a couple screenshots:





There is too much to say about Morrowind, but I think I've touched base on the game enough already. If there is not enough to interest you in the base game there are a TON of mods available out there, and I would like to tell you about two really ambitious ones. First one being the overhaul mod
http://morrowindoverhaul.rpgitalia.net/
to sum this one up, it brings the graphics up to modern standards and changes the sounds (I personally prefer the original sounds) there are a TON of options with the installer to change settings and keep vanilla sounds. One mention is that with the better bodies mod that it includes there is a nude version and an underwear version, keep that in mind if you don't want your kids seeing nudity.
Here's a video on the overhaul mod's graphics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r6hilB6Dlc

The other great mod is Tamriel Rebuilt
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/
Basically to sum this one up, Morrowind is a large province, look up a map of Tamriel. The problem is Morrowind only takes place on Vvardefell, a very large island, and the expansion, Bloodmoon takes place on a smaller (but in no case actually small) island. Tamriel Rebuilt aims to re-create the entire province of Morrowind in six parts, they are still working on it, part one is complete, part two is available and progress on the other four parts is coming along. I could not get both mods to work together, but they are supposed to be compatible.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Worlds Biggest Pacman

My Rating: 7/10

Now it's not often that I'll be reviewing a browser based game , but this game definitely deserves to get out there somehow.

So one day I was using Stumble Upon to wander around the internet and my browsing stopped at http://worldsbiggestpacman.com I was about to click Stumble again and decided to check it out.

The major thing that bothered me about Pac-Man was the simple fact that when you went off the screen you just came right back on the other side. On Worlds Biggest Pac-Man you go off the screen and you go onto a completely new map. This opens up a whole new dimension for Pac-Man, exploring.

To top that off, all the maps are user created. While this does mean you'll run into some bad maps, most of the maps actually seem to be quite decent. You can logon using Facebook and create your own maps to add to the site as well, and best part about that is you get to choose where they go on the main map.

While I highly doubt anyone will spend hours at a time on this site, the game is great if you want to kill 10-15 mins. 

Sunday, April 22, 2012

King's Bounty: The Legend

My Rating: 8.5/10
Gog.com User Rating: 4.5/5


For some unexplained reason even though I never once read anything about this game, I've wanted to try it, knowing absolutely nothing about it. Then the 1C pack went on sale on Gamers Gate and I thought why not.

The very first thing this game reminded me of was old Turn Based RPG/Strategy games (Heroes of Might and Magic, Disciples, Age of Wonders) but without the Strategy. Your hero is merely a commander, in battle he can cast spells and it is from the prospective that you are commanding troops through your hero, but he has no actual battlefield presence.

 Basically you go around completing quests, fighting monsters, getting items, and leveling up your hero. When your hero levels up you get runes which are used to unlock abilities in the three ability trees (is three ability trees what every game uses nowadays?) and you get to choose one of two of your heroes stats to upgrade. (there are more than two, the game just gives you two options to choose from).

As far as your troops go, you can only command a maximum of 5 unit types, your leadership stat will limit how many units you can have total for each of the 5 slots. You can split troops, but the leadership limit is global. If you have a group of 20 archers, and 20 archers is your max, you can split it into two groups of 10, but you cannot have two groups of 20. Your troops morale is based on what kind of troops you have in your army...My archers had very poor morale because they were pissy because I had undead and robbers in my party (yet for some reason the priests didn't seem to care about the undead).

Battle is fairly easy to understand. Turn order is determined by invisible initiative rolls, which I'm assuming work like D&D (base initiative + roll determines turn order) considering that there are ways via spells to increase initiative. Each unit has their own turn, to move and/or attack or use special moves, when it is one of your unit's turns, you get a chance to cast a spell once per round. Spells can be cast from scrolls or from your spellbook, but in order to have a spell in your spellbook you need to learn it first (to do this you need to have the corresponding magic skill, order, distortion or chaos, and enough magic crystals to learn the spell). Scrolls are used up once cast, but spells from your spellbook use your heroes mana. (if you do a lot of spellcasting it's always good to use both scrolls and the spellbook, especially if you get the later perk that lets you use your spellbook twice in one round).

There are some items in the game that are upgradeable, and the way the game goes about it is pretty interesting. If you choose to upgrade an item you will have to battle the items "keepers" to unlock it's new abilities. The battle difficulty depends on how good the upgrade will be, the main flaw being you can run into a battle you cannot possibly win without even knowing it. The main thing that's different about these battles is not only are you facing enemy troops but you are facing gremlins as well, usually about 3-4 of them. There are two kinds of gremlins, ones that cast support spells on their allies (your enemies) and ones that cast destructive spells on your units.

The major problem for me is the main quests (I'm running on the assumption that the quests the king gives you are main quests) feel like the rest of the quests in the game, even if their goal was to make a non-linear game, the main quests should feel important. I've only done one quest for the king, I've felt more engaged with some of the side quests than the king's quests, which makes me question as to whether there really are any MAIN quests in the game or not.

All in all I've been having fun with this game and I would recommend it to anyone who liked the RPG turn based strategy games or any RPG gamer that is looking for something different.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Pakkuman's Defense

My Rating: 7/10

A pac-man clone mashed with tower defense, surprisingly good!

Normally I try and stay away from pac-man clones, but as I was reading about the games available in the Indie Buskers bundle, the concept of this game intrigued me for some reason. As I started playing I found that this game was actually fun! Finally, a real use for those things pac-man eats!

The game is simple, like pac-man, you must avoid the ghosts or die, and you pick up the little things scattered throughout the maze. Unlike pac-man, levels are randomly generated and ghosts will keep spawning at random (and in random spots) until you finish the level or die. You can build towers on the walls to shoot the ghosts to give you a chance to finish the level. Points are based on money left over first, and then kills.

I have not yet beat a level, but here's a picture of one I found to be a pain in the ass (I got stuck in the vertical corridor) Edit: I just made it to the second level, same type of symmetrical generation as the first, but different colored floor, and more ghosts.

As you can see from my screenshot, all levels are symmetrical

This game is available over at the Indie Buskers bundle Indiebuskers.net you can get the bundle for a buck.

Revenge of the Titans

My Rating: 8.5/10
Desura Community: 9/10

Revenge of the Titans is described as a Tower Defense with RTS elements, tower defense on wikipedia is described as an "RTS offshoot" (which is also how I classify tower defense) so for me, the way they describe the game was pretty strange until I started playing it.

What sets this tower defense apart from all others is two major points. The first point being that like in a normal RTS game you must gather resources. You do this by placing a gathering building near the crystals to mine them. The second point being there is a research system. Normal tower defense, once you get past the first level you unlock another tower, and possibly another after the next one and so on and so forth. In Revenge of the Titans, after each level you pick a technology or a building. Each building you can choose requires certain technologies researched, and some technologies give you bonuses to damage, armor penetration and such.

Mostly other than that it plays out like your standard tower defense, you spend your money (gained from pickups, killing enemies and mined resources) on buildings and your leftover resources (along with the level completion bonus) are carried over to the next level, so in this game, hoarding resources is actually a good thing as it will help you out later in harder levels.

I have only played about an hour of the game and have not seen all of the enemies yet, but there are armored enemies, enemies that seem to move by leaping then pausing, leaping then pausing, there are larger, stronger versions of enemies and there are boss enemies. There are probably other types of enemies in the game that I haven't come across yet (possibly flying enemies?).

All in all I have been really enjoying this game and would highly recommend it to any Tower Defense fan or someone looking to get into the genre.

Stronghold

My Rating: 9/10
Gog.com User Rating: 4.5/5

If there ever was a sim game that got smashed with real time strategy and actually came out good it is Stronghold. You build your castle where you want, how you want, and then (if you're not in an economic campaign or "free build") protect it from enemy troops and animals such as bears and wolves.

Multiple play modes await in Stronghold: Military campaign (the main story), where you wage war against evil lords. Economic campaign: you have a goal to reach for goods produced and a time limit, not much story, but this campaign is in no way shape or form easy! You can siege famous castles (or custom built castles). You can test your castle building ability in the "Siege That" challenge mode where you have to hold enemies off from your custom built castle. There is also a free build mode where you can "peacefully design your ideal castle", or in my case, design a massive, ugly POS trying to expand to keep people to fill the jobs to make sure I have a steady income of resources.

There are various map packs available online (as with any game, some are excellent and better done than the base game and others are steaming piles of fail) and there are even a few mods out there to enhance gameplay.

Gameplay is simple, you need houses to get peasants, your peasants fill jobs (such as farming and processing food, gathering resources, hunting, weapon smithing, etc.) Idle peasants can be recruited into your army if you have spare peasants and spare weapons (troops do not count towards your maximum population). Build walls to defend your castle including towers (so your archers can still shoot your enemies) and gates (just don't leave them open or there's no point to the walls!) walls seem to deteriorate very quickly, so always be prepared to build new pieces in their place.

An element that reminds me a lot of Lords of the Realm is the happiness system. You can tax your people to get gold, but if you tax them too much they will become unhappy and leave the castle. There are ways of making your peasants happy, such as drowning their sorrows in ale, for example.

No matter what I day about this game I cannot do it justice, it's available at gog.com Gog.com or you can get the Stronghold collection on Steam which includes every Stronghold game except the third (the newest one). If you enjoy Stronghold I would recommend checking out Stronghold 3, a lot of people were disappointed in it but that's mainly because it was too similar to the first. It is in no way shape or form worth 49.99 but if you see it on sale you'll probably enjoy it.

One final thing: one beautiful (to some people horrible) thing about this game is there is only one voice actor. This is really noticeable with the female characters, whether or not this was on purpose or due to a lack of funding I'm not sure but it gave the game a subtle humor. The soundtrack is also great.

The Ball


My Rating: 6.5/10
Gamespot User Rating: 6.5/10
The Ball is another good first person puzzle game. The main reason my rating is low is because of the cost of the game. The game is basically just a standalone version of a UT3 mod Desura.com
Whenever you hear "first person puzzle game" you probably think Portal, most other first person games that include puzzles more fall under action because puzzles are a side thing. The Ball is another good first person puzzle game that should not be overlooked.
The mechanics to this game are simple, you walk around, you can jump and swim, and you can push and pull the ball. I can't quite remember the story or how you get the ball as I've just been playing this game a little bit from time to time.
For all puzzles in the game you will need the ball (mostly to push buttons for you). There are parts where you need to leave the ball behind and go solve a puzzle to come back and carry on, those parts I have never felt so helpless in a first person game. Here I am, trapped in ancient ruins, my only defense (or companion for that matter) is a giant ball bigger than me and it can't come with me :\.
The ball is also your only defense against enemies (yes, there are enemies in this puzzle game) you can push it to roll them over or wait until they get close and run them over.
All in all a solid game, built on the Unreal Engine 3, but the 19.99 price tag is probably what will kill this game for most people, 9.99 to no more than 14.99 this game would be worth it but a whole 20 bucks? Watch for sales ;)

Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal

My Rating: 9.5/10
Gamespot Community: 9.3/10
Gog.com users: 5/5

I would like to start this off by saying that I have not actually played the first Baldur's Gate game, I hear it is also great, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm sure most RPG gamers nowadays have heard of Bioware, and they would more than likely think Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, or Mass Effect. Pesonally I think back to Baldur's Gate 2 and it always puts a smile on my face. Anyone who has played Icewind Dale (1 or 2) or the original Baldur's Gate is fimiliar with the Infinity Engine. Please do not confuse this game with Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance as the gameplay is nowhere near the same at all.

Baldur's Gate 2 follows the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, so anyone familiar with D&D will be able to hop right in. While the rules may seem strange to anyone who has never touched D&D or D&D based computer games before, the game presents it in such a way that anyone can pick it up and play.

The game is a party based RPG, you create your initial character (which since it's D&D based includes alignment, and apparently the game penalizes you if you break your alignment) and start the game, you then find 3 party members (and later a fourth) and once you're out of the initial dungeon there are quite a few party members to choose from. One big thing about this game is you HAVE to be careful about your choices, the game not only makes you stick to your chosen alignment, but if you act out of your party members alignment (say you have all good characters and you're an evil dickhead who attacks children in the street) your party members WILL leave you (after a warning or two). One great thing about this game is not only do you control your characters development but your party members as well (it irritates me when games won't let you do that). One of the main flaws I found is that there is an over abundance of good aligned characters, and it can be difficult to make an evil party, often times you have to resort to listening to the whining of neutral aligned characters.

The game goes from great story, to a point where the story pretty much stalls (you have to raise a large sum of money to continue the main quest) but when it stalls, there are massive amounts of side quests to do, and then back to a great story right until the end. The expansion also had a great story, but it felt like it didn't really continue on from the first whatsoever.

The engine was great, it let you choose if you wanted real-time, turn based or anywhere in between with choosing when the game autopaused, you could have it pause after every single thing that happened and plan out a complex strategy if you really wanted to, or throw it on real time and go "RAAAAR ME SMASH!!!!" Though, since it's D&D mages can be a real pain in the ass if it's on full real-time.

The game also, interestingly enough for the time, let you change difficulty level on the fly. Personally when I first played the game I had never seen this feature before and I was a bit shocked.

The last thing I want to say about this game is that the AC system is a bit messed...its like golf, the lower your AC score is the better. When I first played it as a kid I was wondering how in the hell leather armor was better than full plate, then I realized how it worked. They are re-mastering the game (as well as the first) and updating the engine a little bit, they announced that in March, hopefully we'll see the AC system normalize a bit more...but I hope they keep the AD&D rules and most of the way the game is intact because for me it's a timeless classic.

The game will work on any version of Windows up to 7, however any version XP or later will require the XP patch otherwise you will not be able to interact with NPCs for some reason. Wikipedia says that it is available on Mac but I'm not sure if they mean the re-mastered version or not (which is also going to be available on Iphone and other I stuff). Hopefully they make a Linux port, but we'll have to wait and see.

Edit: I would like to include that the game does everything by dice roll (like in D&D) so damage is displayed as XdY instead of X-Y. The difference being if your damage is 2d4 the game is rolling two four sided dice for a damage threshold of 2-8 damage instead of just telling you 2-8.

Both Baldur's Gate games are available on gog.com, and I would say 9.99 is a great price for the second (which includes the expansion) I gladly paid 20 (mind you that was at least 5, 6 years ago). First one (with expansion) is also on there for 9.99 but personally I think I'll wait until they re-master it...if it's any good I'll get that version, if not I'll pick it up there.

Gog.com (second baldur's gate)

Bullet Train

My Rating: 7/10
Desura Community: 7.3/10

Bullet Train is a fast pace first person shooter about defending a train full of cargo from creatures in the harsh desert.

A fair warning about this game: It was designed to run on a specific computer. It has quite a bit of compatibility problems, one fix I found for this is to mess around with compatability settings. I believe it was either Run in 640 x 480 resolution or Disable display scaling at high DPI settings that made it work for me.

The mechanics of this game are simple. You are defending a train of cargo, the train layout you choose will determine difficulty aseach layout has any number of turrent spots, some more, some less, determining difficulty, higher difficulty layouts give you more money to upgrade your turrets and personal weapons. Personal weapons are pistol, shotgun, rifle and dynomite. Turrets include gatling gun, flamethrower and cannon. Each upgradeable with the cash earned in-game.

The game proceeds as follows: leave the station, build turrets and shoot monsters, get to the station, buy upgrades, on to the next station.

The major problem with this game is a lack of co-op and a lack of level variance, it's always the same level, same track. But all in all a good FREE game and worth a look at if you can get it to run http://www.desura.com/games/bullet-train1

This was a student project done at Full Sail University with a 2 month design and 3 month development time frame to make the game.

Zombie Driver

My Rating: 9/10
Desura Community: 8.1/10

Are you a fan of games like Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8? Hell yes? Well then you'll probably enjoy Zombie Driver (you'll probably enjoy it even if you don't like those games)

The game has 3 modes, Story Mode, Blood Race, and Slaughter.

Gameplay is very simple, you drive, you shoot your weapons and you kill zombies.

Story mode is basic but fun, you are a civilian who has survived the zombie apocalypse and end up working for the military, essentially doing missions they can't get the green light for. Most of the time spent in story is rescuing civilians and mowing down zombies. Each mission has a main objective that you have to complete, and a side objective that you can complete for bonuses (money, upgrades, cars, etc.) You can unlock upgrades, which you then use your cash to purchase for your car.

In Blood Race you are pitted against time and other drivers. The streets are crawling with zombies and you are racing against other drivers and time to get to the next checkpoint (which adds time to the countdown). You get bonus money for destroying other cars, and zombies on the way.

Slaughter is essentially survival mode, you down increasingly difficult waves until you die, with each wave getting more difficult, the pickups also get better.

The cars range from practical to whacky, including taxis, sports cars, an ambulence and much more. Here's a screen shot of a taxi flaming some zombies

The toll on the wallet? $9.99 There is one DLC available, Summer of Slaughter but for $1.99 all it adds is a single Paradise Island type slaughter map. Whether that's worth it or not is up to you. I think 9.99 is a great price for the game...but the DLC could be cheaper, a fifth of the price for a single map is a bit much.

DUNGEONS

My Rating: 7/10
Gamespot Community: 5/10

So the best way to describe this game (to those who know the following titles) is that it is a combination of Dungeon Keeper and a little bit of Overlord.

I'll be the first to admit "play as the villain!" is not in any way shape or form a new concept, but it's always nice to see a game that pulls it off well, and one of those games IMO is DUNGEONS.

You are a Dungeon Lord who (through unfortunate events) is dethroned and must fight his way back to the top! You lure heroes into your dungeon with gold, equipment or whatever that hero type wants, wait until they are happy enough (the happier they are the more soul energy you get from them) have your monsters beat the crap out of them, then haul them off to the prison to extract more soul energy.

Beware though, if the heroes get more powerful than your monsters, your dungeon heart may be in trouble, once your dungeon heart is toast, so are you. Your character CAN die and come back, it will just take away part of your dungeon heart's health, so be careful.

What seperates this game from Dungeon Keeper is your Dungeon Lord. He is your main unit, you command him, he levels up, you give him stat points and select spells for him to learn, there are three spell trees to go into. The best spells are only unlocked when you get to the end of a tree.

The game starts off simply enough, first you just have to deal with heroes, then later, you have to deal with quests to move on later even being pitted against other Dungeon Lords. The downside: this game is still 30 bucks. That price, however, isn't too bad, and I'd recommend it if you liked games like Dungeon Keeper and Overlord.

Edit: I do recommend if you get it to get it on Steam, while other places may be the same price and might be preferable for some people, Steam gives you extra content: "DUNGEONS - STEAM SPECIAL EDITION includes an exclusive extra mission, all new maps to play in sandbox mode and a variety of unique prestige items to customize your dungeon."

Audiosurf

My Rating: 10/10
Gamespot Community: 8.3/10

This game is great for anyone with a large music collection.

Personally I love this game, I am the type of person who loves music but cannot simply just sit there and listen to music, I have to be doing something, thus the concept of music based games are great for me.

Audiosurf takes your song, loads up a track using some formula and your song and then you take a ride on that track while listening to your song. There are mutiple characters to choose from, each one has a special powerup ability. The general goal is to match up like colored blocks and get the highest score possible. Or, with the mono character, avoid the grey blocks and collect the colored blocks and get the highest score possible.

Each track is based on your song, you want a fast track to keep you on your toes, pick a fast song like something by Dragonforce. You want a slow, relaxed song, pick something soft, or if you want something totally off the wall random, there are some Queen songs that are great for that. The game comes with "Audiosurf Radio" which essentially is them putting up tracks for you to play if you're bored of your own music. Sometimes they put great songs on there.

Audiosurf Air is coming out soon, not much information is out at this time, but there is a beta application at http://air.audio-surf.com/

Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack

My Rating: 8/10
Desura Community: 8.2/10

In Serious Sam Kamikaze Attack you are a headless kamikaze pitted against Serious Sam himself!

The gameplay mechanics are very simple, you can jump, and you can kick and scream (put like that it sounds more like Serious Sam: Hissy Fit). You have a rage meter, when you kick, the meter fills up and when you're not kicking it slowly empties. The reason for kicking? There are various obstacles in your path: rockets, bombs, cactuses (or logs in the jungle levels), grenades and even frogs. Aside from the frogs, anything you don't kick or jump over will kill you and take away one of your lives.

This game plays very much like an arcade game, there are 40 levels, but each level is mostly just a slightly longer, slightly harder version of the last level. Each level you have a secondary goal, punt X frogs, Kick X bombs or rockets, destroy X cacti or logs. Every 5 levels it's a little bit different, you have to kick explosives back at Sam so many times, then you get to blow him up to finish the level.

Each obsticle you kick you get points for, there is a points multiplier which increases the amount of points you get, the multiplier gets reduced back down to 1x if you die. There are various pickups in the game, a multiplier increaser, extra life, rage cooldown, and a turtle to slow things down a bit (because it can get pretty fast paced and hectic in later levels.

The bonuses unlocked through gameplay are slim but there are some in the game. Some levels when you beat them you unlock either an extra Kamikaze (life), faster rage cooldown, more rage before you explode, etc. You can also put heads on your "headless" kamikaze, giving you bonuses but I don't really see the point considering he *is* a HEADLESS kamikaze afterall.

I personally enjoyed this game during times when I was depressed, bored out of my mind not knowing what to do, or just wanted something to relax and not have to think about in any way shape or form. It's only 2 bucks and available on Desura.com