Games of the Week - Song Pop and Pocket Planes

Song Pop

If you have been awake the last couple of weeks you've probably heard of SongPop. I started playing a couple of weeks ago thanks to the recommendation of my friend Bex. Since then it's gained about 70,000 likes on Facebook. I will take all the credit for the trend!

It's an highly addictive name-that-tune game available on Facebook, iOS and Android. The idea is pretty simple. You get to listen to up to ten seconds of a song whilst being shown four possible answers of either song title or artist. You answer five per round and try to get a higher score than a friend (or a random opponent) by guessing quickly and by getting chains of correct answers. 

I have a feeling it will be around longer than Draw Something because of the ease of play and the option to buy more playlists.

Some things which would improve the game for me:

1 - A choice of rewards at the end of the weekly tournament (I never use those power-up things. I'd prefer some coins. Thanks.)

2 - A lifetime high score table. I got +22k and this was lost at the end of the week. This made me sad.

3 - A little preview of some songs on each playlist, it's rubbish if you buy a playlist and realise it wasn't what you thought. Especially the ambiguously named "I love NY". Apparently it's just songs about New York. How odd!

4 - A limited time refund option in case you accidentally choose the wrong playlist. Easier than having to email customer services.

Here's me getting thoroughly beaten by Toby:

Pocket Planes

Another recommendation from a friend, thanks go to Angela this time. Pocket Planes is a lovely little time-wasting game for the iPhone (no Wi-Fi required) where you purchase airports all over the world and fly people and cargo around. I'm currently dominating Europe with plans to expand business into the US and Asia ^_^

It's quite easy to make money in the game by completing journeys and so gameplay does not rely on those in-game real-money purchases I loathe so much. Have a go, but be warned it's rather addictive!

In other news, I think asshat may be my favourite ever insult. "He's such a total asshat!"

Things I Like - 6 - Games

I started gaming at a fairly early age. Having an older brother probably had something do with this because there were consoles around the house. I guess I must have been about 5 or 6 when I started playing. I'm just gonna name some games here that I was pretty obsessed with at some time or another in my life.

The first game I properly got into, along with the rest of my family, was Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I was pretty good at it until the stupid motorbike level where there are spikes on the ground and monkeys which throw killer leaves at you. I used to get my dad to do it for me. The video below shows someone doing it in ~30 seconds which upsets me because I still repeatedly fail at this level now I'm grown up!

Whilst Googling for things relating to this game I found this in the Wiki article: 

"The game did have an undocumented "continue" feature, where the player could continue the game with three lives from the beginning of the level where Alex had died, by holding the up button and pressing the 2 button eight times during the GAME OVER screen." 

WHAT?! I did not know this! In the dark days without saves this would have been good to know! A lack of save ability also meant if you got tired and wanted to play another day you had to leave the console on pause overnight. I wonder if any house fires were started this way.

Other games of note for the Master System include: Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap and Taz-mania.

Scene from Discworld II. Image Here.

When we got our first home PC (a Gateway 2000) I couldn't find anything more exciting to play with than MS Paint (which has come a long way on Windows 7), Encarta 96 (which is amazing) and MS Bob (which I had lots of fun with but didn't comprehend the actual purpose of) until someone in the house bought Dragon Lore: The Legend Begins,  Simon the Sorceror and Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!? I hadn't read any Discworld books by this point so I was mostly amused by the characters of the Luggage, the wizards and the beggars (favourite being the Duck Man, least favourite being Coffin Henry), but I've since realised the game is based on three really good books from the series, namely Lords and Ladies (the elvish stuff), Moving Pictures (the movie set stuff) and Reaper Man (Fourecks and missing DEATH stuff). I no longer own this game but would really love to play it through again. I think it should be re-released for download on Xbox or PS3. I'd also like to have a go at Dragon Lore again. It was much too hard for an 8 year old me, but I think I could figure it out now. Same goes for Myst.

Weird dog thing from Dragon Lore

One Christmas I got an N64. This was probably the best Christmas ever. I think I got a bike too. Spoiled much? For weeks and weeks on Friday film night I would go to Global Video and rent out Banjo-Kazooie and hope my save game from last weekend was still there. Recently I downloaded it for Xbox 360 and got as far as the final battle with Gruntilda but she kept on kicking my ass and I got grumpy and gave up. Even the Jinjos couldn't save me. I think it goes without saying that Zelda: Ocarina of Time was also an obsession and so, too, was Diddy Kong Racing. I still believe that Nintendo make the best games for pure fun purposes.

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Next, the advent of the PlayStation. I had a PS1 and PS2 and was introduced to the Final Fantasy series by my cousin Rob. I wasn't too into FFVII. Sacrilege to some I know, but I couldn't get past the stupid snake at the start and I got sad when Aeris died. I was instead firmly addicted to FFIX. I liked collecting the cards for Tetra Master and I love the towns and scenery and the airships. After that I played a lot of FFX, and once when I had some teeth extracted and had a general anaesthetic, I had an incredibly vivid dream that I was a character in it. It was the best dentist trip I ever had.

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Most recently I got my hands on an Xbox 360 and entered into the absorbing Bethesda world of Oblivion. And then Skyrim. Both of these games have eaten a huge chunk of my waking hours. I think they're so addictive because they feel impossible to complete and fully explore and this keeps me turning on my console and trying to get my Archery skill to 100. [Insert arrow in knee meme here]. Although I will say that I wish some of the quest lines like the Thieves Guild and Companions could have been a little longer. I still enjoyed playing them through though!

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Feel free to educate me if I missed out on some awesome games so far!

Sherlock Sunday *Spoiler Alert*

At the moment I am suffering from complete demotivation at work. This morning I arrived at 9:00 but instead of going straight to the office I had a hobbit-like second breakfast of a seeded bagel and Nutella - which is the closest I can easily get to a sugary doughnut in the mornings. Now it's >11:00 and I've perused facebook, twitter, congratulated my friends Gemma and Kieron on the birth of their super-cute baby girl (Elise Grace in case you were wondering), found a naughty calendar of Disney ladies and begun writing a blog. I've also sat here for a good few minutes thinking about that Sherlock episode from Sunday.

I knew he wouldn't be dead after reading the original story a few months back (and the BBC know a cash-cow when they see one) but I can't figure out how he survived it. In the story (novella? article? thing?), and in the recent blockbuster movie A Game of Shadows, Moriarty and Holmes appear to have fallen to their doom down a raging waterfall, indeed in the stories Moriarty does never appear again, but Sherlock was resurrected by Conan Doyle for more adventures. It's more easy to believe he survived in this case because they fell into water, but on the BBC he fell onto a pavement. Solid, non-cushioning pavement. And people saw him fall.

As an aside I read this morning in the QI book I have on my kindle that cats survive any fall from higher than seven storeys as they reach a non-terminal velocity of 60 mph and manage to, I think the quote was, "parachute to earth like a squirrel". I've never seen a squirrel parachute, but hey ho. Going by this fact it would seem my gerbil Sherlock could probably have survived it but I doubt BBC's non-rodent Sherlock parachuted anywhere and I think Watson would probably have noticed him gliding down to earth like a floaty-light Quaver (although Watson was pushed over by a bicycle and seemed a bit concussed).

Those I was watching with on Sunday quite rightly pointed out that the hospital staff wheeled the supposedly-deceased Holmes away rather quickly after the fall, suggesting he was showing vital signs. If he wasn't then it would have been a crime-scene and the area preserved for the police surely..?

So, I suppose I figure he wasn't dead after the fall, he escaped the hospital and somebody (Molly?) swapped in another cadaver in place of Holmes' to be buried and provide Watson with a headstone to which he could pour out his heart and bring a tear to my eye.

This all makes sense although I can't help having a fanciful thought that the man who knocked John off the bike was actually Sherlock and it will all work out as some David Blaine/Copperfield style magic trick. Please do comment if you have any other ideas about how you think it could be explained.

I guess I'll find out Christmas 2012 when the series returns but for now I'm eagerly anticipating a Sunday session of Birdsong with the beautiful Clemence Poesy (Harry Potter, Gossip Girl) and unusual-looking-but-rather-attractive Eddie Redmayne (The Other Boleyn Girl, My Week with Marilyn). It's based on a book I haven't read but it looks positively dramatic and I am looking forward to it.