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Gamer's Corner, and Dojo Madness

    Hey, everyone. It's a beautiful Saturday in September, here at the green retreat. Blue skies and temperatures in the 70's. Leaves are starting to turn. The few sourwoods that are left are turning red and the few dogwoods which are left alive are also turning a dark red. Oaks and hickories are turning just a very little and are probably 2 weeks away from their peak color. It has been rather dry this fall and I don't really look for a brilliant fall season.
    I have downloaded a bunch of free and cheap games this weekend, thus far. I have played several of them. Some were good and some were bad. You know I never critisize a gift, so I will just mention a few you might want to look at and make your own judgement. That's part of the fun of IOS gaming, just hunting for cool games.
1) Soldiers vs. Aliens. I think that I actually gave a dollar for this game. You are a Space Marine, aboard a ship which is overrun with slimy aliens that have a negative attitude. Worse luck, there is no one quite so attractive as Sigourney Weaver on board, though some lady space soldiers come running by from time to time. You walk your guy up and down the barricades, shooting the enemy as wave after wave approach. Of course, there are weapon upgrades and other novelties to get.
2) Bounty Avenger. This is a sidescroller with nice graphics that I played a little bit of. You are a warrior who runs right or left, being attacked by  a few different types of bad guys.  It has fairly simple and straightforward gameplay. It is free to play. I had to laugh at myself a bit when I was playing this. One of my attackers was a tall, red-haired lady with high heels and a brief outfit who persisted in beating me with a whip. I had a tough time making myself shoot her. Ha, ha. The huge guy with the hammer, oh yeah, no problem.
3) Jetpack Junkie. This game was an endless runner, or flyer, that is free. It is an odd game in which your avatar has a jetpack and goes through the streets of a future city. There are barricades, ray guns, tanks etc. that you must avoid by jetpacking over them or by sidestepping them. I played it quite a bit. Nice graphics.
4) Cubox. This is a strange puzzle game that you might like. Carley wasn't crazy about it but she played it some and it was free. The graphics are really nice. The game-play is different. There are these stone slabs sitting, anti-grav style, out in the air. Like a lot of people I know, they have no visible means of support. Ha, ha. Anyway, you control a box. You have so many moves to flip the box over and over until you reach a glowing slab. The box must also arrive on the slab in the proper orientation. Say, for instance, that your box has a ridge on one side, like a lip. That lip must arrive on the glowing slab in the correct direction or it's no good. You hard core puzzlers may like it.
5) Blast Away Free. Here's a different kind of puzzler. It has robots that you control. They walk around 'geometry gone awry' and try to free these little boxes from the bonds of geometric villainy. For instance, if the box is held by a blue ball, you must take a blue b-o-m-b (ha, ha) and blow up the ball. The aiming done for the throwing of your weapon is a little hard to get the hang of. Controls are challenging to master, according to my resident puzzle consultant. This game has wonderful graphics and is truly 3D. It is not my type of game, though. Let me say that there is a free version, which we got, so we could try it. The full version is a hefty $4.99.
6) Infinite Warrior. Here's a freebie for those sword lovers among you. You have enemies running at you and you must swipe on their bodies with your finger in the direction indicated by a glowing yellow arrow. The graphics are really awesome, and it looks like it could be fun, but I can't seem to get started on it because of my poor play, I guess. I keep getting killed immediately. Check it out if you wish, you are bound to be a better gamer than I.
7) Extinction Squad. This game is free, now, but it has been out for a while. In this game you try to save endangered animals by moving a trampoline under them and bouncing them into your truck for relocation. No, I'm not kidding. It seems that a flock of DoDo birds have been released into the area and their stench is causing these other animals to leap to their deaths. Don't catch the bombs which fall from time to time, though. This will make you extinct. If you have kids, this might be a fun game for them and I didn't mind playing it myself. It's different and fun.
8) Dojo Madness. This is a free game in which your avatar is a raccoon in a kimono. He has a nice Japanese style home and a lot of bad guys try to 'take him out'. He uses martial arts and power rays, from his 'zen being' to overcome or perish. Some of the adversaries are apes, dogs in traditional Japanese dress and other things. The graphics are nice and I played it for a while.
    I think that one game I tried this week gave me an odd moment which I will try to describe. Immediately after I started playing, it popped up a blue box which said I needed an update before I could play anymore. I went to my app store icon and looked at the available updates list. There was no available update there for that game. Sounds like they wanted me to go to a site of their own, rather than the app store, which sounds a bit nefarious. Normally I would have just deleted the game and then done a 'clear' on the settings page to get rid of the cookies. I went ahead and downloaded this update, very unlike myself. Far as I know, I have not been hacked. Whether this happened on one of the above games or another game, I can't remember. If this should occur, no big deal, just don't get updates unless they are through the app store. That's my advice.
    Well, now that I've talked your ear off, I must venture back into my own life, here at the author's green retreat.
  I'm CE Wills.
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