Friday, September 21, 2012

Dustforce





With my recent purchase of the Humble Indie Bundle 6, I have acquired six great games (though more will undoubtedly be added as the sale comes closer to it's end), Dustforce is among those games.  Dustforce is a platforming game, developed by Hitbox Studios.  The game has an aesthetically pleasing art style as well as very catchy music and precise controls, numerous levels, and great replay value.

The inclusion of Dustforce in the bundle was a large part of the incentive for me to purchase it, and I was not disappointed, the game is similar to another game I have been playing lately, Super Meat Boy, and has many similarities, such as the platforming aspect, timed runs and moving through the level gracefully.  Dustforce, however, is also different in many ways as you have less death, at least in the early stages I have played, and the emphasis of the game play is on trying to sweep up all the dust while constantly filling up your bonus meter as well.

The art style is very nice, reminiscent of numerous anime and the music is pleasing to listen to, and, so far, it hasn't gotten repetitive or annoying to me.  The art is invigorating with colorful characters, smoothly and nicely drawn foregrounds and backgrounds with an overarching style that connects everything nicely.  The art  also helps to set the mood with sharp distinctions between the worlds, which helps to draw you into the game.

Dustforce has a huge number of levels in each world connected by a central area, and if you finally do master all the levels and miraculously get the highest scores on each (fat chance), you can make your own levels with an included level editor, with which you can make levels and share them with others.  The game also has multiplayer, unfortunately, however, it is only local multiplayer, but this game offers so much that this is really a non-issue for myself.  You can see the replays of others and vice-versa and their times on the leaderboards, which provides incentive to do your best and continually strive to shave a few seconds off your time and to better your score.

Dustforce has been a joy to play so far, and I intend to play it for months to come, Hitbox has done very well indeed with this title.  I hope you enjoy the video above and please remember to subscribe to my YouTube channel to keep up with future videos.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Minecraft 1.3.2 Demo



Last April, I made a video on YouTube in which I played some of the Minecraft PC Gamer Demo, that video has always been popular, and I have decided to give the viewers an update with the newest demo, straight from the minecraft.net site.  All you have to do to play the demo is register on the site, which is free, this will allow you to play the demo in the web browser.

In this video I simply play a bit of the game, nothing fancy, just gathering some resources, battling mobs and doing a bit of building, as I explain a few basic concepts.  Please enjoy the demo and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.


Thursday, September 6, 2012

YouTube channel update



Lately I have been concentrating heavily on revamping my YouTube page and recording and uploading more videos.  I currently have a few ongoing series including a Super Meat Boy play through, a single player Minecraft series and a series with my friend, Thumpercanman, (which I have posted a video of above), on an a Minecraft SMP world.

Though I am concentrating on these series, I also do videos of other PC games, mostly indie, and would be happy to take suggestions.  Here are the games I currently have on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/zartonis/games/, I would be happy to hear suggestions on doing videos of some of these games or about games you find interesting.

From now on, I plan on updating this blog each time I release a new video on YouTube, and hope to update this blog more often, as It has been a good while.  Feel free to comment on the video or leave helpful suggestions.  Thank you for your time.