Foxy!

Fancy spending 10 minutes with a charming 8bit looking MMO? Well now you can, thanks to a neat little browser game called Browser Quest. The game is made by Mozilla and whilst there is only 5 or 10 minutes of “Questing” it’s a nice, relaxed jaunt through what feels like such a familiar world. So simple yet so satisfying, Mozilla’s Browser Quest was made to show off WebSockets which is a way of keeping your browser in constant communication with  the server.

You will be able to fight alongside and chat with other players as they play this charming little game. I love these types of games and the simple design of this HTML 5 demo really makes it look easy. It also makes me wonder if someone else might take this further and make a full on retro MMO with the code and technology, I would love to give it a bash. In the mean time I guess this is the push I needed to go and play Zenonia, I love that little game 🙂

Oh and don’t forget to collect your achievements… I wonder if there are any secrets! And if anyone else can point me in the direction of a similar browser game please do.

I honestly can’t stop listening.

A quick review I did of Fling Joysticks, this was to test the water to see how the camera (and I) worked out. They are pretty well engineered and work pretty well when they work, but there’s just not specific enough support on Android apps though.

Quite old but it’s the first time I’ve seen it and I enjoy it.

So as you can see from the announcement above I had a few problems with the site, it seems that I did not update my WordPress fast enough and some malware was disseminated throughout the PHP on my site. I chugged on oblivious to this until my host helpfully pointed it out and removed the malicious code. This however caused WordPress to catastrophically fail meaning I had to spend quite some time putting it right.

It was a strange experience, I came perilously close to nuking the whole site and starting afresh on another domain. At least though it would have been nice to keep all the old posts as some of them are still quite popular. And this brings me to my current conundrum, I have always felt like restarting my old nupo.org site, posting random and funny news, design a fresh new look and put my personal spin on things. But I’m not sure whether I should just post that stuff here or another domain, or maybe try to join another site. After all there are many similar blogs out there… What am I going to bring to the table?

I know that pretty much no one is reading this, I just like to muse and like to put my thoughts down on paper, whilst I ponder my options I think at the very least I’ll get some more posts up on here and make it a little more lively…

Enjoy.

Though I have not played many of the red faction games I was always intrigued by the way in which they attempted to add terrain and building destruction to games to make games feel a little more real world. There’s nothing stranger than firing a massive energy weapon at some enemies obliterating them but leaving the world around them completely intact.

There have been a few red faction games touting the destructible world mechanics and as the march of technology moves on so too does the ability to destroy. Other games have started adding features like this, most notably Battlefield Bad Company, which although has great destruction is limited by the fact that destruction has to be synced to everyone and so can’t be too complex. The destruction in Red Faction Armageddon is exrtemely complex and sometimes looks stunning to watch.

Read on for more on Red Faction Armageddon

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If there’s one game I love playing on my tablet or phone it’s Angry Birds… The only problem is when I’m at work playing on my phone I’ve got different progress to what I have when I’m playing at home on my tablet. Angry Birds Sync has the answer, just like other Angry Birds backup apps it will backup all three current games to SD. Unlike other backup programs however you can backup to Dropbox making it a sinch to keep your Angry Birds progress persistent across all of your Android devices.

It also makes switching devices just as easy, all you have to do is pop your Dropbox credentials into the program and the rest is a doddle. As above it supports Angry Birds, Seasons and Rio and with just a few clicks you’re on your way. The program works perfectly and just as important the dev is friendly and helpful. The only feature I would like to see added would be a one click backup/restore and to be able to create a desktop shortcut to initialise these.

More info from the market and a link below:

Perfect for those of you who have a new Android Tablet, running Honeycomb or otherwise, such as the Motorola Xoom, EeePad Transformer or one of the Galaxy Tab’s! Install this app on both your phone and tablet, and you will be able to sync your progress from your phone to your tablet! Carry on from where you left off! Features: – Local Backup (SD Card/External Storage) – DropBox Backup – Backup Type Selection – Angry Birds Application Selection (Backup and Restore) – Clear local Backups and Restores (Cached) – Share the App!

Water, water everywhere

So, I’m going a bit Honeycomb crazy this past week or so with reviews and I’ve also spent quite a bit on the Android Market.

Riptide GP is the latest Tegra 2 exclusive title to hit the market and has already had a lot of positive press. As you have probably seen from screenshots Riptide GP is a water racing game vaguely similar to Waverace… The similarity ends there however, from the futuristic jet-skis to the varied course locations Riptide GP is a game of it’s own.

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I have had my Tablet for less than a month and it is already apparent that Android Tablet apps are in their infancy, there are plenty of non-tablet apps on the market that work well on a large high res display but most of them are games… There’s quite a lack of non gaming apps that make full use of the full screen real estate offered by today’s honeycomb tablets.

Obviously the situation will improve and it’s only a matter of time before the Android Tablet scene explodes and with the recent release of the full Honeycomb SDK those days are coming closer. Until that day here’s a nice list of some of the best Tablet optimized apps I’ve found on the market, please feel free to add your finds in the comments and I’ll probably end up adding them to the article. Also keep your eyes peeled for a new post in the next few days for a new android games article…

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