My Little Tank (MLT) is another cute little game from Astraware that has a very simple premise: destroy all the other tanks. Nothing complicated about it, but it is a fun little distraction. You drive your little tank around looking for other tanks to destroy. Some tanks can be taken out with just one shot while others take more. Several different power-ups pop up in the game to give you weapon or speed upgrades, freeze or destroy tanks or to restore the health of your tank (even you can only take so many hits before getting wrecked). Getting past each level requires you to destroy a certain number of tanks and/or destroy one or more buildings.
For $10, it’s a nice cheap game you can add to your PDA and play while you’re killing time waiting to meet someone, at the doctor’s office or waiting for your next flight. Now what would make the game even better is if the Astraware folks could figure out a way to make the vibrating alarm go off when a tank was destroyed.
Closing Time
Review: Glyph from Astraware
After playing the demo mode for a little bit, I couldn’t help but add Glyph and My Little Tank (I’ll review that one later) to my T3.
Astraware is well known in the handheld world for producing some really visually stunning games, especially considering the limitations of the hardware (320×320 screens, 16 bit colour, etc). Two of my favourites are Bejeweled/Bejeweled2 and now I have Glyph to add to that as well.
Anyone who’s played Bejeweled before won’t have a hard time figuring out Glyph. Like Bejeweled, the object is to match 3 or more crystals of the same colour to clear them of the board. The difference is that Glyph has a story behind it. By removing the crystals, you uncover various elemental symbols (glyphs) which you need to piece together to save the world of Kuros. There’s a different pattern for each level and different challenges. Helpful artifacts such as items that convert all the crystals to a single type, eliminate entire rows or columns or of a single type pop up now and then to help you along the way. After unconvering 4 glyphs, you have to ‘reassemble’ the glyphs by replaying a pattern of tunes 2 or 3 times, very much like playing the old Simon game.
Like Bejeweled, it can be surprisingly addictive and fun to play. It’s got a nice little soundtrack of soothing electronic music playing in the background that can be muted for more discrete playing. Like most of Astraware’s offerings, the graphics are very nice and continues Astraware’s tradition of bringing high quality game to the Palm platform.
So far the only downside I’ve encountered is that the crystals are all on the small side, so you tend to get a bit of eyestrain after playing for a while.
February blogger gathering
Before everyone forgets, the question of where and when a February blogger gathering might occur still seems to be up in the air.
I’m up for something going during the next couple of weeks at 10-17 over in West Ashley by Citadel Mall. It’s a nice non-smoking joint that serves some pretty decent food. Big John’s Tavern on East Bay was also suggested as a possible venue. The Blind Tiger Pub might also be a good spot to have a gathering.
The 17-19 weekend is out for jj and myself. Any preference for a weekday or weekend gathering? If not I’ll just pick a time and place and see if anybody shows up. You guys can just meet me there 🙂
More RAM than my computer
Wow, I must have totally missed the RAM specs on nVidia‘s new GeForce 8800 graphics cards. When did graphics cards start needing 768MB of RAM? I know the new games are pretty GPU intensive, but wow.
Graphics cards have gone from being just a peripheral to practically being a whole other computer embedded in another computer (and costing about as much too).