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Something Old, Something New

    Hey, everyone. I wanted to show you a picture of the Lizard Dude from Mass Effect, Infiltrator. As you can see, he is as ugly as a mud fence. If you follow the blog, you know that this bully beat me like a rented mule before my pard, Trevor, came along and annihilated him. Then there was peace on the Ponderosa, as we western fans like to say. I have currently beat a couple of more levels of this fun game. I am close to the finish and eagerly await my reunion with Inalli, my love interest on this rather warlike planet.
     Let me show a little love to the puzzlers among you . My wife, Carley, is playing a free game she likes. They call this one GraviMaze. The goal of this game is simple, yet gets increasingly harder to fulfill. There are a series of square grids. You can swipe with your finger and rotate the grid. By doing this, you cause gravity to pull an icon along a corridor. The object is to collect gold coins by sliding across them and reach an exit, after all objects are collected. Then you guide the icon to a swirling, silver warp hole. This exit takes you to the next grid. My first question to my wife was, "Why would you want to do that?" She replied, "Why would you want to shoot 273 zombies before breakfast?" Her argument was irrefutable.
     One of the older shooter games on the app store is a Gameloft offering called Splinter Cell Conviction. This game is currently $4.99 for the HD version and there is a lite version for free. Several years ago, when I was new to modern gaming, I tried the Lite version and I didn't like it. The controls seemed really bad and really, I don't know why I hated it. The game is routinely on sale for a paltry 99 cents and I decided to buy it around Christmas. It lay around on a dusty portion of my I-Pad for a while, until this week. I got serious about playing it and I am really enjoying it. This game is massive, at over half a Gig of space. You are a secret agent person named Sam Fisher. Your daughter has been kidnapped by a government agency which you were once affiliated with. You open up a fresh can of whip-butt on these evil blokes and pursue them across the face of the planet. You climb buildings by shinnying up drain pipes, do sniper combos that are really fun, (which eliminate multiple targets) and even beat a confession out of captives.
   When you slip around in the darkness, there is a ghost image of you on the screen which shows your last known position, as far as the enemy knows. You use camera grenades, sonar goggles and all sorts of guns in your campaign. You even fight on boats. The biggest reason I like it? I played it for several hours without getting stuck, which is really nice for an old guy like me. I think that many of the newer games have borrowed ideas from this game, which, along with better graphics have given us more intense experiences. However, in my opinion, this spy game is worth the money, and at the sale price of 99 cents, it was a steal.
    On a less positive note, I feel like I should mention Gunman Clive. It is required of me to buy any game which is western themed. After all, I write westerns. This game is a running platform game, sort of like Mario with spurs. I don't normally like platform games and this one was no exception. No great loss, since I only gave $1.99 for it. I got stuck on it, early on, and was generally displeased. You may like it. My problem was getting stuck as I tried to jump over some crates. I also find it humiliating, as one of the renowned gunmen in the world, to have my fanny handed to me by a duck. Yes, a duck gave me a sound thrashing. A bitter pill to swallow, indeed. Rather than ask Trevor to whip a duck for me, I just deleted this game.
   Hey, I am really enjoying watching the Master's from Augusta, my home of many years ago. It was great to see Fred Couples doing so well. He still has the tools, but his back tends to hinder him as the days grind toward Sunday. I imagine that there are some sleepless guys in Augusta, here in the wee hours of Easter morning. I hope that there are plenty of Peeps in your basket this morning. I expect that I will receive nary a Peep this morning. Sniff, sniff. Only nice people, who play puzzles rather than shooters, get Peeps, (small, cute, marshmallow things) according to my wife, here at the green retreat.
    I'm CE Wills.
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