Shadowgun's Armored Shooters

    Hey, everyone. I've been playing a lot of games today and I have several subjects to touch on. Firstly, lets talk about Shadowgun's new Leftover Expansion Pack. In this set of levels, there is a new bad guy. They are the armored shooters who are so difficult to kill. So far, it is my experience which dictates the following strategy. If you can find a place where you can cower behind a barricade without getting killed, the shooters get a little cheeky and walk slowly up to you. Then you can pop up and give them a shotgun blast to the face. This will settle their hash but it has to be at very close range. Otherwise, they merely do the thing where they sort of wilt and discharge electricity, then spring back to vigorous life. Other than this, even the plasma gun seems not to be a solution.
    I read an interview with the co-founder of Madfinger Games the other day. This is the company that came out with Shadowgun. I noticed that the company is located in the Czech Republic. It seems that you can pick almost any nation and there will be a cool game that hails from there. I think that gaming is a great way to promote international understanding and friendship. It makes folks realize that we are not so different, after all.
     If you have any thoughts on killing the armored guys on Shadowgun, could you put that in the comments, please?
    On other gaming news, I want to talk about a decision I made this weekend which has given me some good vibes. Totally disgusted,once again, with getting stuck on games on the 'easy' difficulty level, I have went back to playing simpler games, puzzle games, golf games, anything I can actually play and have fun with. It seems that the gaming community has spurned the money of the casual gamers of the world and will cater exclusively to the hard core gamers. This problem, along with lots of technical difficulties in the app store, has impressed me that it would be foolish for me to buy the new I-Pad 3 when they come out. Why should I drop another $800 into a top-of-the line device when things are like this? I have 15 or 20 of the games that are great to play and great graphics but I am irrevocably stuck on them. Today, I started over on one of them when I was only one third of the way through it, simply so I could get something out of it.
    Meanwhile, the app store has lots of problems. Since IOS 5 came out, roughly about the time Steve Jobs died, things have went down hill. Sometimes I'll be playing one game or another and my I-Pad will just go to the home screen, kicking me off the game. Every time I buy a game or download anything, I get a sign that states "Half Breed and 8 other apps can't download". This is after I paid for and never received an in-app purchase of super powers for that game. When I went to the store and tried to report it they make you jump through hoops like a trained dog until you just quit trying.
    No one is watching the developers, as I ranted a few weeks ago in my post called Apple Plays Violin While App Store Burns. There is a lot of unscrupulous stuff going on. I had several apps that asked me if they could send me push notifications. I said no and then went to my settings and found that they had inserted a line of code that changed my settings on my device so that they could monitor my activity. Is this a crime?
     Sometimes an update will come out for a game you own. When you download it you find the sole purpose of the update was to add ads or do something that you don't want. It makes  you wary of updates. Reviews for games are being 'salted'. This term comes from the old days when a mine was played out. People would go in and leave some high grade ore laying around to fool investors. Now there are companies who guarantee developers that they will get their game a place in the top ten apps by phony 5 star reviews. How many sorry games have you bought because of these glowing reviews that were a pack of lies? It's best not to trust the reviews unless there are at least 40 or 50 of them. The developers in-laws are sending in those 5 stars.
    Numerous companies are doing things which they shouldn't. There are more and more ads, more in-app purchases, more scams. I played one game I bought this morning and there were 4 separate pages with ads before I got to actually start the game. Four times I had to hit start or play. There is a company called Big Fish Games that is fond of saying a game is free, then after a brief play, want to charge you $4.99. That is fine, but just say up front that this is a lite version. Don't lie about it.
   Today has been amazing as I played games that I could actually play and enjoy without the frustration of being stuck. I don't mind having to play the same level multiple times but when it takes 30, 40, 50 times or more and you're still stuck on a game, on 'easy', it is unbelievably frustrating. It is human nature to destroy a good thing and ruin your own business. There is an old saying, "He couldn't stand prosperity". This describes the app store environment and its developers at this time.
    One more time, let me ask, why can't they fix IOS 5? Is it the cloud? Or the fact that I am not in the cloud? Why is IOS 5 so darn slow and buggy? Was Steve Jobs the only guy watching the store?
     By the way, there are a lot of games that you absolutely won't beat without a lot of in-app purchases. Try the last level of Judge Dredd. I have played that level about 150 times. That's after I paid for an in-app so I could play any level. Good game, but what is the deal?
    Well, that's my weekly rant. From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills, just playing Real Golf 2011.