UFO Mission Walkthrough

UFO Mission is another addicting and challenging physics based puzzle game. You have to control a UFO, collect stars, steal sheep and not to run into obstacles. Pink sheep can run. Have fun!Play UFO MissionUFO Mission Walkthrough

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Kingdom Hearts 3D OST and Nier piano CD dated

Square Enix has announced the release dates for two of its most anticipated music releases of 2012. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance will receive a three-disc soundtrack release on April 18th, featuring music by series veteran Yoko Shimomura and Square Enix staff composers Takeharu Ishimoto and Tsuyoshi Sekito. You can check out a sample of the series theme, "Dearly Beloved" on the flashy website that Square Enix has created solely for the soundtrack.

Secondly, while I know some out there wonder why Square Enix is still putting out Nier albums, I can tell you that it's some of the best music Square Enix has released in years and is considered by many game music enthusiasts (myself included) to be the best soundtrack of 2010. Square Enix has slowly come to recognize this by preparing arrangement albums and concert performances in the past as well as this upcoming piano collections CD slated for March 21 featuring arrangements by Kumi Tanioka (Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles composer), Masato Kouda (Monster Hunter series, El Shaddai), and many others. A haunting rendition of "Song of the Ancients" can be heard on the album's website.

Do either of these releases strike your fancy? Are your surprised by the Dream Drop Distance's length or Nier's endurance? 

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Location: Texture and authenticity in Red Dead
Redemption

_{[Over the last week, JRo asked you to write about game settings. Yeroooc's first blog here explores how Red Dead Redemption did the southwest setting so well. As always, remember to load your own blogs into the Community Blogs and tag them with the "Bloggers Wanted Essay Response" tag, and you may see your blog promoted to the front page. - Kauza]}

Red Dead Redemption may be my favorite Rockstar game simply because it detailed the landscape of the Southwest so completely and compellingly. With so many great games with equally engrossing atmospheres of their own, Rockstar certainly has a track record of heavily texturing their releases within specific genres, for better or worse, allowing them to marinate thoroughly in unique environments.

Perhaps my connection to Red Dead was so immediately strong because I grew up in the Southwest, and I had never encountered a game that was able to capture the vastness of the desert as authentically as my experience within the game’s world. For many reasons it remains to this day my favorite gaming landscape. 

Texture and atmosphere are the key words here. The absurd, sprawling light-bright starcape above your head on a clear, in-game night? There are light ordinances in place to make sure that that’s still the sky you see outside in your own neighborhood today. That hokey western prop of a tumbleweed you see blowing through Chuparosa? That’s no joke. I’ve seen them roll through prefab suburban Tucson, gently bouncing past minivans and mailboxes, marooned aside fake adobe backyard walls. The houses may be made to look like mud brick, and honestly the neighborhood associations often require it, but the surrounding desert still seems to find its own way to encroach upon suburban civilization, to remind us that this wonderful, unforgiving desert still exists and surrounds us menacingly. A desert that will not only dry up a plant to extinction, but then parade its corpse around to remind us of its plight, its infinite ruthlessness. A desert that blinds us with the blackest midnight, allowing only pinpoints of starlight so numerous they would amaze even rural midwesterners. Red Dead Redemption brings these still recognizable traits of the desert and strips the Southwestern landscape of its now cushy trappings, successfully recreating and reviving its truthful, gritty texture and history. 

The opening of the game is still with me, leaving Armadillo, in control of John Marston on horseback for the first time. In those few minutes I rode headfirst into a sunset that, even in the Spring in Wisconsin, made my heart ache for that molten evening sky of my adolescence. The in-game thunderstorms brought the smell of wet earth to me, splashing through the pools of muddy water as you gather the spooked horses in the grasslands surrounding MacFarlane’s Ranch. That scent of the revived world, of the desert breathing again after months without rain. The image of steam rising from the suburban blacktop came to me, it’s own distinct aroma entirely. 

 
I remember the first ride to the doctor in Armadillo, stopping for maybe five minutes (maybe longer) to stare out on that vista overlooking the valley below. Cholla Springs burning in the distance. Miles and miles of saguaros wavering in the blistering heat, the sun so amazingly bright that you could almost feel the radiating warmth of the sand surrounding you. 

The sky and cloud effects are perhaps what lend the most atmospheric authenticity to the game. The hugeness of them as a storm grows in the distance, illuminating briefly, internally with each booming clap of thunder. The sharpness with which light cuts through them in beams as the sun goes down in creamy candy colors of orange and red. Whether looking up into the vastness of an open blue sky in the middle of the day or the seemingly infinite sheet of stars at night, it is the one ever-changing piece of the landscape that rings most true to the Southwest as I remember it, and almost always coincides perfectly with events in the game to meaningfully embed any given gaming moment deeply into our memory. 

I can’t tell you how many message boards I’ve read where people have talked about that first ride into Mexico, as José González’s “Far Away” plays in the background, having been one of the most profoundly moving gaming experiences on any platform. I cannot disagree; the in-game engine provided a fiery sunset as the backdrop for that scene, and perhaps because of that, nearly two years later it is imprinted in my mind still. 

Perhaps the only thing the game is missing are packs of wandering javelinas, the phantasmal sound of coyotes wailing in the hills at night. Personally the only heartbreak I found in the game is a lack of activities at Torquemada, my favorite location. The view from that fortress is unmatched, where the towering spires of the valley floor below are taken directly from Monument Valley, a real place I’ve regrettably never been. I could sit and play Liar’s Dice at that vista possibly forever, looking out across Diez Coronas, on any clear night with a few good friends. 



I’ve always believed that any game worth its salt (or book or movie, for that matter) really only needs to nail its given atmosphere. Everything else, as long as it’s not total crap, seems to be icing on the cake. Amazing gameplay and storytelling aside, Red Dead Redemption has atmosphere in spades, so richly textured beyond any game I've experienced before or since that I can be sure it’s not just my personal connection to the desert landscape that amazes me so thoroughly about its presentation. It’s the perfect imitation, the authenticity in the details of the desert landscape that makes Red Dead Redemption Rockstar’s single most amazing accomplishment to date, and a true landmark for how intricately realized a video game world can be.

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[Logically Speaking] Santorum vs. Gay Marriage

I generally try to keep politics out of Cathode Tan, but sometimes politicians just say things which are simply an affront to logic itself.

And yes, I'm talking about Rick Santorum. Faithful Cathode Tanners also know that I'm a fairly staunch advocate of gay rights - though I generally just consider it advocating human rights. Anyone who has actually spent time with a loving, faithful gay couple and walks away with the thought that "we should totally ban that" ... well, I just can't see how it doesn't come from a place of fear and ignorance.

When the politicians use logic to cover up that fear and ignorance - it requires logic to set that right.

When Santorum is asked about gay marriage, he often applies the "slippery slope" argument, that for instance legalizing gay marriage would in turn open the door to legalizing polygamy.  Here's Santorum laying out his so-called argument:


video details and more



Rick says that if we are going to have a conversation about one, we have to distinguish the other for him.

So let's do that.

Let's outline Rick's logic.

1. All people have the right to be happy.
2. Because gay marriage would make some people happy, it should be legalized.
3. However, marrying multiple people would also make some people happy.
4. Therefore, if we legalize gay marriage - we will need to legalize polygamy as well.

This is a classic straw man argument.  The formula here goes:

1. You have proposed X.
2. I can prove Y is similar to X.
3. Y is undesirable.
4. Therefore, X is also undesirable.

The problem is, of course, that X != Y.  It's a substitution for a real argument when you lack the facts to actually distinguish X from Y.  This is why it works for Santorum as a stump response.  The potential voter is prepared to talk about gay marriage, not polygamy - and so is placed in the same camp of not really being able to distinguish X from Y.
The first fundamental problem comes from Rick's first statement.

1. All people have the right to be happy.

Which is a) not the original argument and b) isn't factual.  We have a constitutional imperative, as it were, to the "pursuit of happiness" - but we have laws in place because if being a serial killer makes you happy the state still has the right to track you down and place you in the electric chair (your state laws may vary).  So no,  not everyone has the right to be happy.
A more factual opening statement would be:

1. The state should not create laws which impede a citizen's pusuit of happiness without proof of harm to the state or citizens.

At this point we don't need to worry about introducing ridiculous arguments like I can kill people because it puts a smile on my face.  It should also neatly remove equally ridiculous arguments like "legalizing gay marriage would open the door to bestiality or pedophilia" since proof of harm in such cases easily fall under sexual and/or physical abuse.   So let's continue with this as our opening statement (we'll lump citizens and state into one here as well).

1. The state should not create laws which impede a citizen's pursuit of happiness without proof of harm to the state or other citizens.
2. There's no evidence which shows gay marriage causes harm to to the state and therefore should not be made illegal.
3. However, there's also no evidence that polygamy causes harm to the state and therefore should also not be made illegal.
4. Therefore - if we legalize gay marriage, we should legalize polygamy as well.

So ... that's a more realistic framing of Santorum's argument.  And there's one problem, at least for Santorum.  In this state, it actually holds water.  Without proof that polygamy causes harm - perhaps it as well should be legalized as well.
You read it here first: logically speaking - Rick Santorum supports legalizing polygamy.  Once you remove the moral panic aspect of it, at least.  Of course, Santorum's biggest stock is moral panic.  If he's going to try to attack polygamy as well as gay marriage - he should really get some facts on both first.

The case against polygamy is rather complicated and gets very quickly wrapped into cultural specifics like child marriages.  However, existing laws in place should provide the protection of children.  Probably a more utilitarian issue also provides a segue into a core issue of the rest of the debate - legalizing polygamy could likely tear a hole in our tax and estate code that current lawbooks aren't really willing to deal with.  It's not the definition of marriage which causes an issue here, it's the fact that you've now compounded the possibilities of what was previously defined. "1 Man, 1 Woman" simply makes for an enforceable tax code - far more than "X number of men, and X number of women."

The ramifications on divorce alone would keep the lawmakers busy for years.  So we can leave whether polygamy would result in direct societal harm and state that our current legal structure isn't yet equipped to deal with it.

You know, kinda like how lawmakers are currently handling the Internet and plenty of other technological issues.

Since gay marriage is clearly a different issue than polygamy and we've laid out a case for why polygamy should not be (currently) legalized which does not effect our case for gay marriage, our argument now looks like this:

1. The state should not create laws which impede a citizen's pursuit of happiness without proof of harm to the state or other citizens.
2. There's no evidence which shows gay marriage causes harm to to the state and therefore should not be made illegal.
3. Therefore we should legalize gay marriage.

We can remove polygamy completely as it has no bearing on either the original statement nor the outcome.  The only real issue at stake here is our second statement.   There are now studies which show that gay marriage raises well adjusted kids, some evidence that lesbians may be better parents than their heterosexual peers and even some that state it is good for the economy.  Also, statistically speaking - even if gay marriage were to become legal in every state ... the overall percentage of gay marriage would still be extremely small - so any impact on society (good or bad) would likely be minimal making our second statement fairly safe.
The problem Santorum has from a logical perspective is that the slippery slope began not when people began to propose gay marriage - but rather when the federal government got into the business of defining marriage in the first place.  By placing this definition on the books, it clearly opens the door for changing said definition down the road.  If Santorum and his ilk really want to "defend" the nation from gay marriage - the only logical method would be to bar the government from legalizing marriage at all.  Remove the federal definition, and you remove any chance that the government will "permit" it.  By insisting on a definition is to invite a debate on changing that definition - that's simply how our government works.  This would in fact be the most direct route to get what the far right wants - a definition of marriage organic enough to be bound by local laws and morals.

Of course - this would also remove the benefits of formalizing legal marriage.  Tax benefits, a legal framework for familial issues and a definition for estate laws all directly benefit society.  In other words,  all the reasons why legalizing polygamy would be inherently difficult (if not undesirable) are justifications for creating a legal framework for marriage.

So now our argument looks like this:

1. A legal framework for marriage benefits society.
2. Excluding gays from marriage benefits fewer people than inclusion.
3. Including gay marriage into the legal framework will increase the benefits offered from the marital legal framework.
4. Therefore, gay marriage should be legalized.

Any questions?  If you're going to respond in rebuttal, please:

• Don't use religion as justification.  This is why we have separation of church and state.  Leviticus quotes may simply get deleted.
• Same goes for gay bashing.  Take it elsewhere.  Or preferably, nowhere.  Insults and the like may also simply get deleted.
• If you're going to quote studies, please link to them.
• As a warning - beware of editorials which can't prove causation.  Yes, I've read them.

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Nightfall Mysteries: Black Heart Walkthrough (PC,
Mac)

Welcome to the Nightfall Mysteries: Black Heart walkthrough on Gamezebo. Nightfall Mysteries: Black Heart is a Hidden Object/Adventure Game played on the PC created by Vast Studios. This walkthrough includes tips and tricks, helpful hints and a strategy guide on how to complete Nightfall Mysteries: Black Heart.

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Valentines Gold Room Escape

"Valentines Gold Room Escape" is another point and click room escape game created by Ainars. Explore Valentines room, search obtain items and solve puzzles to find seven hearts and key. After all hearts found use key on door to escape. Good Luck!Play This Game

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Big City Adventure: London Story

Fitzpatrick McGovern is long gone, but his mysterious lost legacy is still out there! Find it in Big City Adventure: London Story! Follow the tantalizing trail of clues he left behind and visit some of the best known locations around London in this incredible Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game. Meet an eccentric cast of characters that can help you in your quest, but only if you can help them first. Track down the legacy in Big City Adventure: London Story!


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Solidus Snake figure lookin' hot, Meryl not so
much

Square Enix's Play Arts Kai line is about to get two new action figures based on Metal Gear Solid. First up is "Mr. President" himself, Solidus Snake, and he's looking pretty pimp unpainted. I don't think I'd even want him to be painted, he's looking so good.

Next up is Meryl Silverburgh, painted. She's looking... well... I dunno. Something is off with her face. It's not derpy, nor is it mannish. She looks slightly constipated. Is that just me? Maybe it's just me.

The figures are expected in either the third or fourth quarter of 2012. No price tags have been tossed about, but considering how much other Play Arts Kai pieces go for, expect to pay between $35 and $50 each.

Under the Radar: Play Arts Kai Solidus and painted Meryl [Tomopop]

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NHL 12 Screenshots from the 2012 all-star game -
PS3 X360

More here...

Read the full post at www.gamezplay.org use the search option if there is no link above...

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Yuuri One Room Escape

One Room Escape is another new Japanese point and click type room escape game by Yuuri. In this escape game, again you are locked in a room and you try to escape the room by finding items and solving puzzles. Good luck and have fun!Play This Game

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