Lameazoid Link List for Saturday 2024-08-10
10-Aug-2024 – Video Game Preservation – Stop Killing Games!
Brief Summary: “It’s been an ongoing issue for years now. People who buy video games, especially physical copies, ex”
Solo Play – Escape from the Space Station
I picked this solo game up on a lark because it was on clearance at a Kohl’s and the clearance was 75% off or something, so it cost me a couple of dollars. I really didn’t know what to expect from it but it sounded interesting with it’s enticement of puzzles to solve, and my slowly growing interest in playing more Solo Games. Then I sat on it for a few years not actually playing it.
The box contains:
- One Scenario “read first” note
- 3 trifold papers with information about the station
- 2 cards of punch out tile pieces
- 10 Puzzle cards
- 1 Solutions Paper (sealed)
The Puzzle cards and punch out cards are made of thick cardboard material. One thing that became apparently after inspecting the contents was, this game is essentially meant to be played once, only. I didn’t really want to destroy the game, in case I wanted to ass it on or maybe play it again, though there is zero replay ability here really. I instead too photos of the cards, and marked them up in a photo editor, instead of actually writing on the cards and papers themselves.
The basic premise is, you are trapped on an out of control space station and about to collide with an asteroid belt and you need to find a missing part in order to fix the station and save yourself. You have to do this by solving puzzles and finding clues to translate symbols in a “Universal Alphabet”, then translating a secret message.
Initially I was a little disappointed, a lot of the puzzles on the cards are super simple. You shade in parts of a grid, or fill in some simple word puzzles, or do some easy math. Though apparently the math was not that easy because in the case of the Pyramid addition puzzle, I messed up my math and I had the right idea to solving the puzzle, I didn’t have the correct total to start with…. twice….
Addition is hard, ok? Especially with a calculator.
Anyway, where the bigger puzzle comes in is figuring out what the clues actually mean. Some are very straight forward, others are not. I didn’t manage to solve two of the puzzles, the previously mentioned math error, nor one of the word association cards. I did puzzle things out by completing enough of the alphabet to be useful for translating the hidden message. There are no instructions for how a lot of it fits together, and you end up using almost every piece of information given in some way. There are clues hidden in surprising places, places I had been kind of ignoring as simply being “flavor text” at first. Also, the methods for translating the symbols vary, it’s not all just “Hey, the one with the squiglies here is the letter E because this card told me it was directly.”
Overall, I found the game enjoyable, and the latter half was more enjoyable than the first half led me to believe. I would say it actually took me a couple of hours of casual play over a few days to get through everything and find the missing component to “escape the space station”.
Thursday 2024-08-08 – Link List
Lameazoid Link List for Thursday 2024-08-08
08-Aug-2024 – New Elite Dangerous spaceship is advertised as a space trucker’s dream, but it’ll cost ya
Brief Summary: ” Spaceship likers, come hither. Long-running space sim Elite Dangerous has just unloaded a new inter”
08-Aug-2024 – [Gog.com] Intravenous ($ 0.00 / 100 % off / FREE) [Limited-time giveaway]
Brief Summary: ” submitted by /u/superbacon-HD [link] [comments] “
08-Aug-2024 – California Games II (Amiga, 1992) – New retrogaming review published on GamesNostalgia
Brief Summary: “California Games II is a sports game created by Epyx. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS and later p”
Who Am I, What is Lameazoid?
Part of Blaugust involves some, optional prompts, and one is an introduction post. This is one I have done before many times and it’s probably mostly all there on the About page linked above. But I’ll recap a bit here for those just joining in.
Welcome to Lameazoid, my first blog that I keep dragging along behind me. When it began life on Geocities it was The Chaos Zone but I did a sort of rebrand when I moved to Livejournal in the early 2000s. It’s technically all the same.blog, though I have purg d and restored content on it probably a dozen times. The name was sort of a retro inspired riff on not being cool, inspired in part by the name Freakazoid.
Last year I did Blaugust on my other blog, [Blogging Intensifies]. Where [BI] is about my “nerd content” about programming, gardening, food, and music, Lameazoid is all about my “geek hobbies”, my toy collecting, my game playing, my TV/movie watching. Though there was a brief period where the Toy content was on its own blog called Ready Set Geek.
I am your host for this month on this blog, Josh Miller, aka Ramen Junkie. Ramen Junkie is a name I have used for ages now, I like to joke that I have been known as Ramen Junkie for more of my life than I have not been known as Ramen Junkie. It’s a name I started using back in the late 90s on Use etc, primarily alt.games.final-fantasy, which I am the duly elected “Supreme Dictator For Life.” Whatever that means, I honestly don’t even remember if I actually won that “election”, it’s just a dumb meme at this point.
The name was picked for several reasons, I like ramen noodles, at the time I was a poor college student and ramen was poor college student food, also, ramen noodles are “hacker food”. I also picked it to poke fun at the common Usenet trope of people using Japanese Anime names as handles.
Anyway, welcome to the blog.
Horizon Zero Dawn Aloy
This line of Playstation based figures kind of felt like it came out of nowhere a month or so ago for pre order. Most of them look pretty cool but I don’t really play most of the games and have no real attachments to most of the characters. I do however really like Aloy’s look and was at the time, playing Horizon Zero Dawn on the PC. She seemed like a good choice to try out the line.
I was a little worried before receiving the figure itself. The actual company making these is Spin Master, which makes more, young kids toys and some Tech Deck skateboards. Basically, they don’t really make a ton of action figures. They could be annoyingly brittle like NECA or have awful likenesses like a lot of non figure making companies end up. On the other hand, Jada toys is mostly known for their die-cast cars, but has been absolutely killing it with their video game themed lines.
Aloy here ended up being really really nice. The articulation is all well done and not too hindered by things like her skirt and shoulder pieces. She even has layers of articulation in her hair so you can make it look neutral or dynamic. The sculpt looks really nice all around, and the paint application is really good all around, especially with all of her multi-colored bits like the stripes on her clothing and elaborate weapon dressing.
If I had any issues, it’s that in places things feel almost a little too rubbery. This is more an issue with keeping her accessories attached. There is a little peg on her back for the spear or bow, but it has trouble staying attached. The same goes for her little arrow quiver that hangs on her side. Also, her feet are a little small which can make balancing her a little tricky.
She has plenty of accessories, which is also why she costs more than most of the line. I believe she is technically a “deluxe” style price point. She includes her bow and spear, the bow is super nice with a nice string for posing the barrow knocked. She also has one loose arrow for posing. She has several sets of hand options and an assortment of face plates with different expressions and face paint looks.
She is roughly 1/12th scale as well, so she will fit in nicely with other 1/12th scale lines and figures.
All in all, I am really impressed with the figure, and I kind of wish I had more interest in more of the line. I may have to pick up Kratos or something to get a second look at the line.
