[Game Reviews] Upgrade Complete!

Upgrade Complete by Armor Games

In the realm of video gaming, it’s easy to get obsessed with the idea of “upgrading”. In fact, many great games are built around the concept of “play just a little further, and you can make your guys that much better and cooler…”. A lot of times, these upgrade experiences aren’t that exciting, especially when you’re working towards upgrades like “alternate costume colors” or “bad guys wearing funny hats” or the dreaded “extended credit sequence”.

So, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would go out and make a game where upgrading is the actual focus. Armor Games’s Upgrade Complete! is a free, flash-based game that’s all about upgrading to your heart’s content. The game starts off by telling you you need to upgrade so you can have a pre-loader. Then, you have to upgrade to get menu buttons, a logo, copyright information, a menu background, a progress bar, and so forth.

The actual game itself is a simple little Galaga-style shooter where you move your shift left or right and blast everything on screen. You start out with one gun, no sound effects and some Atari 2600-style graphics. But, of course, all of these things can be upgraded! You can put your money into improving your ship’s gun, but you can also add other weapons and useful components (you can have 12 modules in all) to make the game a little easier. There are 20 waves of enemy ships to blow up, but you never are actually penalized for losing. In fact, replaying levels over and over until you can earn enough money to upgrade your ship is a pretty sound strategy.

It only takes about 15 minutes to get your ship up to the point that it’s maxed out, and one of the achievements you can earn essentially says, “Oh yeah, there’s a game, isn’t there?” and rewards you for actually bothering to finish wave 20. Chances are good you’ll still be upgrading even after finishing that last wave — after all, you’ll still want to upgrade the graphics, the music, the logo, the copyright information, and the game’s ending.

Upgrade Complete!, along with another Armor Games titles called Achievement Unlocked (where you find yourself unlocking ridiculous achievements at a rapid pace), represent something you don’t see often in gaming — social criticism of game culture. It’s fun to be able to play some simple little games that mock both gamers and developers for being too focused on the mechanics of gaming and not enough on the gameplay itself. What’s more, since they’re flash-based, you don’t need any special hardware to give them a try.

Play Upgrade Complete! v. 1.5 on Newgrounds

Play Achievement Unlocked on Newgrounds

[Sound-Off Sunday] Five Board Games You’ve Probably Never Heard of (But Definitely Should Try!)

Star Wars: Epic Duels is surprisingly fun for a licensed game.

Last week, I shared five card games you’ve probably never heard of, but should try. This week, I’m going to focus on board games.

Now, I’ve been a fan of board games ever since I was a kid, but I’ve always found that the standard family games (Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Stratego, Risk, The Game of Life, Payday, Sorry! and so on) are a little dull. I’ve also never been a fan of gimmick games that require a massive amount of setup time for a weak payoff (Mousetrap comes to mind…).

When I was in junior high school, some friends introduced me to some board games that dared to go beyond what I’d experienced before. The first I played was HeroQuest, a game co-developed by Games Workshop and Milton Bradley. It was a board game that played like a paper-and-pencil RPG — very cool. Another game was Battle Masters, a giant battlefield game that featured humans, elves and dwarves fighting goblins, orcs and ogres. Because of these games, I learned about Games Workshop titles like Space Hulk, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl… none of which I could actually afford to play. I was, however, able to afford a copy of Battletech: 3rd Edition, which included little plastic mechs and a paper gameboard.

Yeah! A good board game should come with LOTS of pieces. It's especially awesome when the miniatures are painted already.

I left board games behind as I got into video games, but when I was a little older, a friend introduced me to Star Wars: Epic Duels, a board game I didn’t expect to like, but which was surprisingly fun. I got so into it, in fact, that I wrote one of the definitive tactics pages for the game (apparently), which people still use as a resource for developing strategies. If you can get your hands on Epic Duels, I recommend it; it’s a fun and easy game that is easily accessible to casual gamers, but which has some real depth and strategy to it as well.

This game helped to rekindle my interest in board games, and over the last few years, I’ve been able to play a few that I never even knew existed. The five games below are all games that are a lot of fun, and which I’d recommend to anyone looking for an interesting evening of playing games with friends. Read more »

[Video Game Wednesday] Final Fantasy VII – The Most Overrated Game of All Time?

Cloud wielding his buster sword.

A friend recently talked me into picking up Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for my Sony PSP. For those who don’t know, Crisis Core is the prequel to the game for the original Playstation, Final Fantasy VII, which bears the distinction of being one of the first Japanese role-playing game that many gamers ever played. As such, FF VII has achieved a sort of legendary status among gamers as being one of the best games ever made. There are even a significant number of people who know everything about the game – its story, its characters, its places, its goofy moments — without actually having played it.

As it turns out, Crisis Core is pretty good, and I’d say it’s one of the better games I’ve seen on the PSP. But playing through it has reminded me about my mixed feelings towards FF VII, which is a good game, and maybe even a great game, but surely one of the most overrated games of all time.

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[Sound-Off Sunday] 5 Great Card Games You’ve Probably Never Played (But Should!)

Have you ever turned off the TV and/0r video games, sat down and spent an evening just playing cards with your friends and family?

We do this pretty frequently at the Jordan house. It’s a lot more fun than watching a movie, and it’s lead to some legendary rivalries. Card games are a lot cheaper than board games, and they’re usually easier to play.

But when most people think of card games, they think things like Poker, or Blackjack, or Uno. Not us. Here’s a list of five card games that we enjoy playing… and that you might like too!
Read more »