Review: Plants vs. Zombies

Being overwhelmed with homework this semester, my only time for gaming has come in brief 15 minute or so intervals. Most games I am used to playing require more time. Then I stumbled onto this little gem by Popcap games. Easy to learn, full of style, and fun this defense based game, has been alot of fun.

The concept of the game is pretty simple. Zombies are coming to eat your brains, and your only hope of defense is to strategically place plants to guard your lawn, pool, and eventually roof. At first the zombies are easily stopped by plants such as the peashooter, and chomper, or the potato mine. As the levels progress bigger and harder zombies begin to appear. Bungie zombies, buckethead zombies, pogo zombies, and the scary gargantuan zombie. Eventually you must face the evil Dr. Zomboss, who is out for suburban dominance, with his zombie horde, and large robot.

The beauty of the game comes in its ability to be simple and easy to play, yet with enough options to please any strategic mind. The many game-types ranging from adventure, to puzzles give a refreshing amount of variety.

The art is also a winner, with fun and brightly colored plants, and entertaining variations of zombies. My favorite was the newspaper zombie, who uses a newspaper as a shield and upon losing it goes into a rage and runs at your plants (he was THIS close to finishing his sudoku puzzle).

The music didn't fall behind either, a fun upbeat score, keeps your head bobbing as you fight off the undead horde. for the end credits a fun music video completes the well done musical score.

In closing I recommend this game for anyone. It is fun and easy to play, and not demanding on your time. Just check out this sample of the credit video. I give it a 10 out of 10.

Finals... or is there life after homework?

Wow... its been so long since I have posted. I don't even have the strength to come up with an excuse... I lost that during the Software Development Final Project. Anything clever I could come up with went away during the final days of Discrete Mathematics. All creative urges were stifled on my final art projects... I thought about being constructive but I used up those urges on my Web Engineering final.

Is their life after finals? Or is this the end?

...

I guess I still have video games... Oh wait a REAL life.

Another post coming... whenever I find the better part of myself again.

The Grrz Method... its about LEARNING

Here is a post from a programming blog I am required to keep up. I thought some of my readers might find it funny. I am discussing a rather difficult recent assignment. The Grrz method is supposed to be a great way to expand mental capability. I think its a way for the teacher to be lazy.

Sooooooo..... Four hours later I think I finally know what the Grrz method is. I think it is better put in comparison to the sink or swim method.

Take someone who cant swim. Put them in a helicopter, fly them out over the Marinas Trench, make sure there is no other form of rescue besides the helicopter, and push them in. Perhaps wieghts or restraints would be appropriate as well.Then from the air tell them to swim back to the helicopter.

That seems to be the Grrz method. At least with this latest assignment.

We are supposed to use the RandomAccessFile class to find an answer in little time... with no help other then the suggestion to search for dbf header format...

Well RAF can read and write. No document I could find could tell me exactly how this reading took place, only that it does. So I have no idea how it will parse...

Finally I figure out how to read the document in and make sure it splits correctly, readFully(byte[] b) but am still lost at the offsets so I hacked it...

Not really the coolest code to display... I hope we figure out a better solution soon!



On the bright side all the dbf files open and appear correct! So that is exciting. More on this as it develops.

Score 16 out of 100 (if the code reference counts :)

Updated sometime this millenia...

WOW way too long since I have been here... I don't even have an excuse prepared this time... DARN!

Oh well I bet no one will even notice. :)

UPDATE: I am now at college again! After an excruciatingly long six months of waiting I have made it back to my beloved campus at BYUI. I am moved in and started the first week of school which had surprisingly little homework... must be preparing me for the death load soon to follow.

I am making the critical error of taking to many major classes. I have 4 200 level classes, one 300 level and one 400 level class. I might die. wish me luck.

On a bright note I am taking an art class and I am pretty excited about it. I need the supplies I ordered to show up soon though. Or else I will have nothing to draw on. Maybe I should stop being a cheapskate and just get the art kit the university supplies. NAH.

Well got to run, but more is on the way. So stay tuned.

Stigmas proved true...

I love role-playing or rping whichever you prefer. The title of GameMaster comes from role-playing games where one of the players is the referee so to speak and and plays the part of the monsters and non-player characters the other players come across. It is a fun exercise of imagination and a great way to hang out as typically more talking than playing seems to get done in an average session. It is a great activity and yet it seems more stigmas are attached to people who play role-playing games than most activities I know about. Just because there are a few weird people involved in rping doesn't mean we all are psychos. Just because OJ Simpson was a football player doesn't mean all football players are murderous creeps.

One such terrible stigma is that all role players live in their mother's basement. Seriously how many gamers live in thier parent's basement... besides me... haha.

So its true. How Terrible. I could go through all my lame excuses like being a junior in college and still in college, or that I am poor in this terrible economy, but it would all be useless. How lame I am.

Hey it could be worse? I could be as oblivious as these gamers in this true following story...

(Side Note Ed is the Gamemaster and Eric is one of the characters)

ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.

ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?

ED: (Pause) It's white, Eric.

ERIC: How far away is it?

ED: About fifty yards.

ERIC: How big is it?

ED: (Pause) It's about thirty feet across, fifteen feet high, with a pointed top.

ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.

ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo!

ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.

ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo!

ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?

ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!

ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (roll to hit). What happened?

ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.

ERIC: (Pause) Wasn't it wounded?

ED: Of course not, Eric! It's a gazebo!

ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus three arrow!

ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try. It's a *)@#! gazebo!

ERIC: (Long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.) I run away.

ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It's too late. You've woken up the gazebo, and it catches you and eats you.

ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my Paladin.

At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. It is solely an afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was not situated on a grassy gnoll...

So in closing I think I am doing a lot better than some people and that makes it alright... I think. I know elves and dwarfs are not real, and I cannot conjure any spells no matter how hard I try, so I have a good head on my shoulders despite what all the naysayers would have you believe. Well before I go... could anyone tell me what a gazebo is?