Noyb

Android Games

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Remember what I said about that game, I'm not sure if I should take it back, it seems that lately games have "demo" versions without calling themselves that. This game just says you can buy extra dungeons.... it never said that these dungeons were part of the storyline. 

 

What worries me the most is the "packs" do I have to pay SEVERAL times to beat the game or is one the story back and the other some bonus dungeon?

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I've been playing the Android beta of Scurvy Scallywags. I won't comment on any bugs (which have been few and minor so far, unless those were actually features), but I think gameplay matters can be assessed pretty well, given that it's a port of an iOS game. I'd recommend it when it comes out... if you already enjoy Match-3 games. It's a minor evolution of the genre; not quite as much of a shift as I was expecting. What I enjoy about it over similar games is that you're actively trying to shift your pirate and the enemies around the board by matching items around them. It adds an extra dimension to what can otherwise be repetitive gameplay. If you haven't seen the game before; there's a gameboard with randomly placed piratey-themed pieces, your pirate character, and a couple of enemies. Flipping pieces around so that you get three in a row produces a match and those pieces are removed. When you match the purple glowing sword pieces, you get power points, and when you get enough of those you can move your character closer to the enemies and defeat them.

 

Everything else I'm going to say should be filtered through the lens of me not having finished the game yet. My pirate is up to level 13 out of 20, and I think I've only gotten through two sets of islands (out of I don't know how many). Thus far there isn't as much variety in the gameplay as there is in Candy Crush (which I briefly played before getting stuck at a level that was impossible to get through without paying). All the levels have been pretty much the same, barring different numbers of enemies (which is usually 2-3) and those at different power levels (but it scales at about the same rate as the player character, so gameplay hasn't changed much). There are power-ups, but thus far I've only needed to use them rarely; when I find myself near an enemy that I can't avoid and I either want to jump away or temporarily increase my power. Swapping power-ups in and out really doesn't change gameplay all that much; various power-ups will change how my character jumps away or how much extra damage to do to an enemy, but that's a minor differentiation.

 

There are a bunch of quests given out to the player, but every single one so far has been nothing more than a collect-athon. You manoeuvre your character around the game board until he's next to a fuse or a lollipop or a bag of fertiliser, pick it up, and when you have collected a certain number a sound goes 'Bing!' and you get showered with gold. Except there's nothing to do with gold except buy more useless powerups. What makes that particularly annoying is that the game tries to link these quests in to the ongoing narrative by saying that stealing the fertiliser or whatever will weaken the enemies, except it doesn't. The enemies remain the same in each level before and after you pick up the bags and ultimately the only thing that changes is the 'Bing!' and the cash. It would have been so much better if the enemies started off strong (or possibly invincible) and you needed to weaken them before attempting to fight them.

 

Well... this post ended up being longer than I expected. As much as there are minor things that could have been better, I'm enjoying it overall and am continuing to play it.

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ive got some long flights coming up and look forward to playing some of the above listed games.  hoplite looks like it'll be a good battery drainer

 

thanks for the recommendations! most of what i have installed now is all humble bundle items that i try to work through and delete, EPOCH & Color Sheep have been a great time thus far

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I don't know if I've asked this before, but does anybody know how to use a PS3 controller on your Droid with an OTG cable properly? 

 

After spending ages trying to get Retroarch to work with my PS3 controller I give up, at first, all I could do is walk left, after many painful tries the best I could do is walk right... in a laggy/staggery way? I tried a different controller so I know it's not my controller.

 

Do I simply need an app to configure it? The only one I found keeps telling me I need to root my device.

 

I'm almost tempted to get one of those controller for droid if it didn't seem so expensive and unnecessary since I should be able to do it fine.

 

I could swear I managed to get it right with my old Droid, but it's been so long I've forgotten. :|

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I found an old PC USB gamepad and it works perfectly, it has less buttons, but it doesn't use a battery, so that's a plus!

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So I bought this thing for my birthday.

 

BtN6EG4.jpg

 

Played Star Fox 64 on it on my birthday. It was a great experience, and it has the same amount of buttons as a PS3/Xbox controller, so it works really well with a great deal of games.

 

It feels really sturdy, even though I had to stretch it out to it's max to fit in my elephant of a phone case in there. Comfy.

 

I'll definitely be bringing it with me on train and car journeys, though I'll probably have to keep it below the window if a copper goes past.

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XCOM just came out on Android. I've been playing the shit out of it on my Nexus 5. 

 

You know what'd be great in those clip-on controller things? If they had a large battery of their own in there, and you could plug the phone into it, so you wouldn't drain the hell out of your phone battery while using the controller. Perhaps there is some reason why this is a bad idea though.

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You know what'd be great in those clip-on controller things? If they had a large battery of their own in there, and you could plug the phone into it, so you wouldn't drain the hell out of your phone battery while using the controller. Perhaps there is some reason why this is a bad idea though.

 

A controller peripheral is dirt cheap, a controller-cum-battery peripheral is not, and there'd be no visible features to distinguish them in the public eye? I don't know, it sounds like a good idea to me, too.

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XCOM just came out on Android. I've been playing the shit out of it on my Nexus 5. 

 

You know what'd be great in those clip-on controller things? If they had a large battery of their own in there, and you could plug the phone into it, so you wouldn't drain the hell out of your phone battery while using the controller. Perhaps there is some reason why this is a bad idea though.

I find the games themselves to be the main source of drain, though I suppose anything extra doesn't help. I tend to only really use it on long journeys anyway, so I can usually keep my phone powered by the train plug or a portable battery pack that requires the button to be pressed every 12 or so seconds in order to function.

 

The battery on the controller I have seems to last forever though, and it charges up pretty quickly. I think KitKat may have some battery improvements too.

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Yeah, I didn't mean the controller would be the thing draining it, just that if you're playing games on your phone you're probably running that sucker down pretty bad

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You know what'd be great in those clip-on controller things? If they had a large battery of their own in there, and you could plug the phone into it, so you wouldn't drain the hell out of your phone battery while using the controller. Perhaps there is some reason why this is a bad idea though.

 

The MOGA Pro Power controller does exactly that. If you are looking to get a controller for your phone or tablet, the MOGA is great.

 

I've been playing Hoplite. It's cool but I'm not entirely sure on its terminology and  the exact rules of killing enemies. I also like Extreme Bike Trip. Async multiplayer motorbike racing based on doing stunts and getting smooth landings. cool cool cool

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Looks pretty cool, but man $50 for a phone controller is super rough.

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Hmm, if i ever get a Fire TV it'd probably work with that, actually makes it more interesting. Hmm!

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OK, I found out that those Dragon Fantasy Book games that never came out in Europe on PSN are actually available on Google Play, which make it even more confusing to not seem them on PSN Europe... Anyway, I'll be happy to finally play them, I assume the price is because it's all the chapters combined?

 

This is gaming related, but what do you use to listen to podcasts on your Droid? I doubt there is one that would sync with iTunes, but there has to be one that would make the transition less painless?

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I use DoggCatcher.  It's pretty easy to subscribe to feeds, the built in search has found every podcast I've tried looking for (although I only listen to a handful).  I also hear good things about BeyondPod but have never used it myself.  Neither of those are free, but they both have trial versions if you want test them out.

 

I don't know about synching from iTunes, I sort of doubt you'll find that.

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Yeah, you can't really use anything to synch with iTunes. The only thing I could think of would be to use a third party RSS service to make a custom feed that both iTunes and android collects from, so you can mark as read within that RSS. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth, though.

 

I use BeyondPod, in fact, I use the free version that has manual download one at a time, cause I never get around to upgrading. I like the design, and it has solid widgets for home screen, lock screen and notification bar.

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I use Pocket Casts because it has the slickest interface of any Android podcatcher I'm aware of, has multiple device (like between Android phones/tablets and iOS devices, not iTunes) syncing, built-in and relatively stable variable speed controls (BeyondPod's was a plug-in style thing that crashed all the time, so I stopped using it), and the most specific settings out of any app I've used for how/when to auto-download, auto-delete old episodes, and filters for sorting through whatever podcasts you have on your device.

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I use Pocket Casts because it has the slickest interface of any Android podcatcher I'm aware of, has multiple device (like between Android phones/tablets and iOS devices, not iTunes) syncing, built-in and relatively stable variable speed controls (BeyondPod's was a plug-in style thing that crashed all the time, so I stopped using it), and the most specific settings out of any app I've used for how/when to auto-download, auto-delete old episodes, and filters for sorting through whatever podcasts you have on your device.

 

Me too, I also went from BeyondPod to Pocket Casts and I don't regret a thing. The latest update is a bit messed up for me though, what with making it take longer to add things to playlists and their new "now playing" thing not really working that intuitively.

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I've also been happy with Pocket Casts, except for a specific use case. I tend to sleep better when I have podcasts playing during the entire night (e.g. no sleep timer), but that doesn't mesh well with playlists and queues that automatically remove episodes like Pocket Casts, leaving me frequently rebuilding playlists to include episodes that technically were played but I never consciously heard. Does anyone know of any podcast apps that let me create playlists of episodes that won't change unless I specifically want them to?

 

Back to games, Gridrunner++ is a glorious donationware shmup and the Dwee Pack is a fascinating pack of vaguely ominous mood pieces.

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You can disable auto-delete from Pocket Casts and it would simply indicate played vs unplayed, allowing you to delete what you consciously heard and relisten to ones you slept through.

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I use Pocket Casts because it has the slickest interface of any Android podcatcher I'm aware of, has multiple device (like between Android phones/tablets and iOS devices, not iTunes) syncing, built-in and relatively stable variable speed controls (BeyondPod's was a plug-in style thing that crashed all the time, so I stopped using it), and the most specific settings out of any app I've used for how/when to auto-download, auto-delete old episodes, and filters for sorting through whatever podcasts you have on your device.

 

I'm just going to quickly say that DoggCatcher also does these things.

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