The Invisible Mazes of Chagunitzu and Paganitzu

In the early 1990s my parents bought their a PC running MS-DOS. Over time we played several different games on that and subsequent PCs, including Monuments of Mars, Pharaoh's Tomb, Jumpman Lives!, Crystal Caves, and Paganitzu. These were all shareware games from Apogee, so we only had the first part of each one. Later, I got the chance to play all three levels of Paganitzu [1], as well as Chagunitzu [2], the first outing of protagonist Alabama Smith. Both of these games have rooms that feature invisible mazes. You know me: I drew maps![3]

Lincoln's First Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year

My apologies for not posting these sooner. I didn't have enough material for Thanksgiving to post by itself, so I waited for Christmas. We signed up for a free 1-month trial of Amazon Prime so we could take advantage of the free shipping for Christmas presents…and then I didn't have time to prepare this post because we were furiously watching shows on Amazon Prime before our free trial ran out.[1]

Video Game Review: LEGO The Lord of the Rings

After getting to play awesome LEGO versions of Star Wars [1], Pirates of the Caribbean [2], and Harry Potter [3], I (and probably many, many others) began to fantasize about what other movie franchises would make great LEGO video games. Among my favorites were Alien, The Chronicles of Narnia, Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, The Mummy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Terminator, and X-Men.[4] But the one that absolutely just had to happen was LEGO The Lord of the Rings. I mean there's a character named Legolas, for crying out loud! On top of that, Warner Borthers owned the licensing rights and they'd already licensed several other properties to Traveller's Tales (Batman and Harry Potter) for LEGO games. But even though I was sure it was going to happen I was still pleasantly surprised when the announcement finally came out. Leann gave it to me for my birthday last year.

Custom Munchkin Treasure Cards

Last time I introduced you to some door cards I designed for the RPG-spoofing card game, Munchkin.[1] The game is similar to D&D in that you're walking around a dungeon, kicking open doors (e.g. the door cards I designed in my last post) and confronting whatever's inside the next room—monsters, curses, or character cards. But there's another pile of cards—the treasure cards. In most cases you earn treasure cards by defeating monsters. The more powerful the monster(s), the more treasures it's carrying. Treasure cards can be weapons, powerups, enhancers, etc. Here are the ones I designed:

Custom Munchkin Door Cards

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at BYU I was a member of a book club. The president of that book club, my friend Jonathan, discovered the game Munchkin and introduced the rest of us to it. It is a spoof of role-playing games (RPGs), particularly Dungeons and Dragons, and to a lesser extent collectible card games, like Magic: The Gathering. In RPGs a Munchkin is a player that plays competitively, even though RPGs are inherently noncompetitive.[1] Thus the game Munchkin encourages you to play in that fashion—in fact, it's tagline is "Kill the Monsters. Steal the Treasure. Stab Your Buddy." In addition to the original games, there are also several expansion packs. This last Christmas [2] I got the sixth expansion pack, Demented Dungeons. It came with a few blank cards with the implication that I create my own custom cards. So I came up with a few.[3]

Movie Review: D.O.A.: Dead or Alive

Dead or Alive was a video game long before it attempted the transition to the silver screen. There is also a nod to the spin-off game, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Films based on video games can fare pretty well at the box office (e.g. Resident Evil, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, etc. [1]), though they're generally panned by movie critics. But there have also been some movies that bombed at the box office despite the popularity of the video game they were based on (e.g. Super Mario Bros., Doom, Double Dragon, Tekken, etc. [2]).

Video Game Review: Portal 2

Leann gave me this for Vamlumtimes Day a year ago today [1], but at the time I was still playing LEGO: Star Wars III: The Clone Wars [2]. After that, I was asked to teach a class over the summer, which ate up a lot of my time. And then Lillian was born early.[3] So it's taken me a while to get around to playing this game, even though I eagerly awaited its premier. It picks up an indefinite amount of time after the conclusion of the first game. The facility you originally played in has fallen into ruin. And, of course, GLaDOS is back.

Video Game Review: LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5–7

Based on my recent experience with LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean [1] I was worried that there would be changes in this game compared to the first (LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1–4 [2]). The first was based on the movies, not the books. But I was still nervous that even though there were four more movies, that they'd treat the last two as a single movie and so give me fewer levels to play. I also worried that since so much of the action takes place outside of Hogwarts that they would ditch using Hogwarts as a meta-level, which made the first one a lot of fun.

Video Game Review: LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean

This video game was released to coincide with the premier of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides. Even though there are sure to be more Pirates movies [1], Traveller's Tales [sic] decided to pack the four extant movies into one game, much like LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues.[2] Recently Lego announced that they'll be producing brick sets based on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the two movies based on The Hobbit.[3] It seems likely that they'll be licensing Traveller's Tales to make a LEGO video game based on the minifigures. Hopefully they don't try to cram all five movies into one game. That would be tragic. They should at least give us two.

Video Game Review: LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is based on the first two seasons of the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which airs on the Cartoon Network.[1][2] It is, for the most part, about the adventures of Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker, and his Padawan learner, Asohka Tano [3], during the Clone Wars (22 BBY–19 BBY [4]). However, there are also episodes about Anakin's secret wife, Senator Padmé Amidala; R2-D2 and C-3PO; clone troopers; Anakin's former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi; other Jedi; and even a few about the villainess, Asajj Ventress.[5] To choose the different levels, you are presented with a map of the Star Wars galaxy with the appropriate planets or moons highlighted.[6]

Video Game Review: LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

Rather than feature a main hub for all the levels, this LEGO installment has six smaller hubs, three for The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and one each for the previous three movies. Each hub features five levels, five replay levels [1], and five bonus levels. You recover treasure chests during the replay and bonus levels. Once you have all ten, you unlock a super bonus level. Of the five regular levels, for each hub, one was always a driving level where you have to go around and destroy enemy vehicles (usually by crashing into them). Another was always a brawl level—once you've beat up enough enemies, the level is over.[2]

Custom Halo: Reach Map Variant: Lost Forest

While browsing a website called ForgeHub, where you can find Halo 3 and Halo: Reach maps built by other gamers [1], I ran across a custom map variant called Lost Woods, which was created for Halo 3.[2] The concept is relatively simple—it's just a room full of pillars. You have to dodge through the pillars looking for your opponents. Since Halo: Reach came out we don't play Halo 3 anymore, so I decided to recreate Lost Woods for the newer game. I named the recreation Lost Forest.[3]

Music Review: Halo: Reach

Many of you may be surprised to learn that a first-person shooter game, like the Halo series, has a symphonic score that is actually pleasant to listen to even when you're not playing the game. The soundtrack for Halo: Reach, the fifth Halo video game to be scored by Michael Salvatori [1], was released around the same time as the game.[2] It gives us plenty of familiar Halo motifs adapted to the new story. It also presents us with new musical motifs developed for the new characters and plot. However, one of the motifs is only a few notes off from being identical to the track "Fairytale" from Shrek.[3]

Custom Halo: Reach Map Variant: Spiral

As I've mentioned earlier, Halo 3 and Halo: Reach include a feature where you can edit the maps that you play on.[1] Some maps are very flexible, like Forge World [2]; others are not. One of the maps included in Halo: Reach is called Spire. It is one of the less tractable maps, but I felt that it needed a few modifications.

Video Game Review: LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1–4

One of the things that I really like about the LEGO brand of games is that you can't defeat the game by playing through each level only once. There are always items that you can't find or collect with the characters you're originally given. So you have to go back and retrieve those things during "free play". For example, in LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1–4, there are places you can't go or actions you can't complete unless you have a goblin character (like Griphook), a strong character (like Hagrid), a Dark Wizard character (like Lucius Malfoy), etc. But you don't just get these characters automatically—you have to find their tokens hidden throughout the levels and then go buy them on Diagon Alley. Then you come back and replay the level with them.

Video Game Review: Halo: Reach

I find myself in a situation very few men in this world share: my wife likes to play Halo. In fact, she's better at it than I am. So as the release for Halo: Reach approached back in September, I pre-ordered it on Amazon. But I still got in trouble because I selected Free Super-Saver Shipping. Which meant that it came 7–10 days after the release date instead of arriving the day-of. So while the rest of her family were already playing, we had no means to do so. So she went over to her sister Jennie's house to play. I was too busy that week to tag along, so I had to wait until our copy of the game arrived before I could play.