Now Playing: The Ultimate Alphabet (iOS)

Just take this all in for a minute

Unaffectionately coined as Find the Shit games by Katy, you could immediately write off The Ultimate Alphabet as another of those photo hunt/hidden object games that are increasingly popular these days, but you’d be missing out. Sort of an intelligent photo hunt in reverse, The Ultimate Alphabet presents you with an image of hundreds of things that all begin with the same letter and lets you tell it what you see. And though it may seem like a perfect educational game for little learners, The Ultimate Alphabet is definitely an app for adults. The clues are horrendously cryptic, many of the words are esoteric or simply extinct and some of the imagery is borderline erotic or at least potentially disturbing to younger viewers.

The Ultimate Alphabet by Toytek is a collaboration with Mike Wilks, the Englishman who first created the illustrated book of the same name in 1986. For those who missed it 24 years ago (myself included), it was a coffee table fad that was later followed by books like Where’s Waldo? and The Magic Eye. What the app may lack in oversized, hardback appeal, it more than makes up for in simple interactivity and general gaminess while retaining the same smirk-inducing satisfaction of the original format.

Thank you Final Fantasy for that one!

At the outset of each letter you’ll feel like a genius for spotting so many things so quickly. Apple, ant, aardvark, atlas, apparition, aquifer. But the hidden words go much deeper as each piece of imagery typically contains numerous clues. That atlas also holds several continents and oceans and you’ll also want to think in broader terms. I beat my head against the iPad for a good hour before realizing that the archaeopteryx, adder and anteater are all… Animals. The game does a good job of lending a hand when you get stumped via a layered hint system. You get a cryptic clue for each word and can then tap the question mark for a more sensible definition. Tap the ? again and you’ll get to see and unscramble all the letters that make up the word. Sometimes it’s obvious from just seeing the jumbled letters but other times, like with antimacassar, I still didn’t believe what I was reading. That’s when the globe icon proves useful as it pulls up a web page (usually Wikipedia) that proves that the game isn’t cheating and making up fake words. They thought of everything, and then some.

Similar, of all things, to Katamari Damacy, The Ultimate Alphabet catalogs and details every one of the thousands of objects in the game. You can look at all the Dinosaurs you’ve found, for instance, or marvel at your knowledge of Mineralogy. Guessing a word without using any hints nets you a gold star while using each clue knocks you down to silver and then bronze. Individual word stats add up to category ranks which track across all (eventual) 26 letters. Every one of these statistics is viewable in the catalog and there’s even OpenFeint achievements for the ultimate intellectual bragging rights. “I’m smarter than you noobz!”

It's not all tea time and monocles

Initially, The Ultimate Alphabet (for all iOS devices) features only the letters A through D of the full 26-letter alphabet but it’s more than enough to keep you guessing and puzzling for months. The free version now gives you the letter A in its entirety (so grab it already!) with the other letters for sale individually or as bundles. I paid the full $6.99 when it was released and it’s proven to be one of the few apps that I don’t regret paying more than $0.99 for. You’ll feel smart, you’ll feel dumb, and then you’ll actually get smarter! Well, at the least you’ll be able to totally wow people with your knowledge of dead languages and, honestly, can you even put a price on that?

Now Playing: Sega Superstars Tennis (Xbox 360)

I just bought Sega Superstars Tennis for about $4 at Half-Price Books on ‘Everything 20% Off Day‘. No kidding, it was even the double-disc package that includes an Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Disc! I haven’t tried the Arcade disc yet to see how that DRM mess works (or doesn’t) but a friend and I just played an introductory round or two of Singles competition and it’s a decent bit of fun! Sorry, Auritech, that I ever doubted you when you found it on the cheap yourself. The Sega nostalgia and fan service also doesn’t hurt. Now, let’s see what kind of mileage fanboy unlockables and Achievements gets me!

Nier continues to surprise

Beyond the simple fetch quest that wound up advancing the story by 5 years I am surprisedly in Baldur’s Gate land, playing from an isometric view.

Truer Words Never Spoken in Nier

The writing (or english adaptation) is just another part of this game that I’m lovin’.

Nier is EVERY kind of RPG

I had played through the side scrolling stuff and the top-down Zelda stuff in the demo. That kind of framing has cropped up more than a few times throughout the game so far but I was not at all expecting a text adventure as a major story mission! I had to GameFAQ it because I’m nearly late for work but they’re fairly clever puzzles… even if they read like juvenile fiction.

Strange-Thing Store in Nier

THIS is why I like this game! It’s so far in the future our world is the basis of this fantasy land and every now and then you spot something familiar.

Now Playing: Instant Jam (Facebook)

When I talked about Instant Jam on the podcast I had only played a few late-night rounds and only with the keyboard. Now that I’ve spent an afternoon with the beta application, that essentially brings Rock Band or Guitar Hero to Facebook, and my wireless guitar I’ve got a bit more to say.

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Persona 3 Portable Review/Explanation

Yeah. It's just like that. Smiling with bits of crap coming out of their heads.

Note: When I first started writing this post, it was supposed to be a short little thing were I clarified some parts of the podcast.  It kind of turned into a bit of a review, but there’s no score at the end so just take from it what you will.

So earlier today I did a poor job of explaining Persona 3 because apparently there were dangerous chemicals in the air in my house and had to have the fire department come air everything out.  I was feeling slow in the head while we were recording…though sometimes, I really am just slow in the head, fumes or no fumes.  This time though, I’m going to say it was the fumes and not me just being stupid.  I felt kind of high, but in a bad way.

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Surviving the Madness in Insaniquarium

Since I “beat” Plants vs. Zombies, I was feeling pretty down in the dumps.  No more adventure mode left to do, and so all I have left are the mini games which just aren’t as fun as the main adventure.  I went back to a Popcap classic, Insaniquarium.  I forgot just how difficult this game can actually get once you get into the later levels.

You get snag Insaniquarium from Steam for $10, and it’s worth it.  It’s similar to Plants vs. Zombies in that you get to pick and choose which weapons (in this case, they are fish and not plants…though ask anyone what a vegetarian is and they will insist that fish ARE plants) you use against the enemy.  You aren’t battling zombies in this one, instead you’re fighting off aliens.  The good people over at Popcap love science fiction, it seems.  You also collect golden coins, which are your currency for completing the levels, much like the Sunflower’s sun orbs were the currency in that game.

Right-o.  So, I’ve come up with a few helpful tips for succeeding in Insaniquarium, especially since there were times where I was bonking myself on the head for missing some pretty obvious stuff.

1.  Make like a Tibetan Buddhist, and release all attachments to your fish.  They WILL die.  You will replace them.  They aren’t anything more than fodder in this game though if some of your fishies live long enough, they will turn blue and don a crown on their heads (like in the picture above) and drop gems instead of coins.

2.  Once you have access to Zorf and Preggo, bring them along for a lot of the truly difficult levels.  Having these two “tools” will help run your aquarium on its own.  Zorf will feed your fish pretty consistently, and Preggo will keep the population up by farting out (literally farting) baby guppies.  You’ll barely have to feed your fish…and while you want the population to stay steady, you don’t want to waste money feeding fish.  Let ‘em die, they’ll get replaced!

3.  That stupid, flesh-colored alien that pops out and snacks on your fish and laughs?  Feed him.  This is the time to upgrade max out your food on everything, because the stronger the food the faster it’ll kill him.

4.  You can shoot the rockets from the robot alien before they reach your fish.  This was one of those obvious things I over looked.  Whoops.

These levels can take forever…and I hate that.  I like the game, but I wish a single level didn’t take up to 10 minutes to complete.

Someone Smack Me, I Actually Like Frontierville

Yeah, I need help.

I actually dig Frontierville.  Seriously guys, it isn’t that bad.  If you listened to the podcast, you got to hear some pretty funny stuff regarding some unusual glitches in FV.  After the show I was curious, so I logged in and started playing, expecting yet another Farmville where I couldn’t do two things without it asking me to spend some money.  Well…they did hit me up for money.  Quite a bit, actually.  They never got any money, but they did try.  But the thing I liked was that it was closer to a Harvest Moon online game than Farmville was.

Farmville is not my cup of tea.  You can’t even really do anything in it unless you have lots of expendable cash to blow on literally nothing.  Katy already talked about some of the features, and while I haven’t encountered the retching fox yet (disappointed), I have hit quite a few snakes on the head.  You run out of energy pretty quickly in this game but at least you can do something other than tend crops.  You clear the land (like in HM), you plant crops (like in HM), you put up houses (like in HM) and you have little goals (similar to HM).

I have no idea what makes this so addictive, but it is.  Case closed.  Pretty ashamed to admit that I like it, but hey.  What can you do.