Hijinks Inc.

Author: Fred Smith

  • Hijinks Rating: A tutorial.

    With the advent of Hijinks Reviews we’re adopting a 0-5 rating scale; whole numbers only, so no 2.5 or 4.999999785 reviews. As of this moment I have no plans to officially review anything but software available for the iPod Touch/iPhone. I may give you a rundown of a particular game I’m enjoying elsewhere, but I won’t be throwing a rating on it. The logic behind this decision is that judging a game made by one or two people on their own dime with the same scale as one made by a hundred people employed by a large game developer just isn’t fair.

    This isn’t to say that I’m going to cut any slack for mistakes and flaws I come across in these ‘indie’ games. Check out my review of iDope if you don’t believe me. My goal is to provide some kind of reference to folks who want to discern the good from the bad, and even though it’s a fairly new platform of development, there’s a lot of material to cover. If you have a particular game or app you’d like to see critiqued, let us know in the comments.

    Hit the jump for a rundown of exactly what those little blue guys mean to our rating scale. (more…)

  • Hijinks Reviews: iDope. The Police is too strong for you!

    Pros: The weird looks your friends give you when you talk about what you’re doing in the game without telling them its just a game.
    Cons: Buggy interface and no re-playability. Nothing cool to buy with our ill-begotten gains.

    Platform: iPod Touch and iPhone

    Developed by: Wahkiz (iphone.wahkiz.com)

    Version Reviewed: 0.3.2

    iDope is a port of the classic turn based strategy game, Dope Wars. Originally a high school project, in 1984 John Dell created a DOS based buying and selling stimulater based on drug trading. Almost twenty-five years later his concept has seen countless reiterations (including the wildly popular Facebook application–wildly popular because I swear I get ten invites for it every time I log on.) the latest of which comes to the iPod Touch and iPhone. Full review and screen shots after the jump. (more…)

  • What I’m Playing: Inaugural Edition

    I sat here trying to think of a catchy title for about an hour, but I finally gave up and just wrote the article. My idea for this is to summarize what I played all week in a week-in-review type article every Saturday. Does anyone care? Probably not. Does it create some easy filler content? Oh heck yes.

    Nintendo DS

    Animal Crossing: Wild World. Turn it on, check the mail, check Nook’s, go fishing, get bored, turn it off. Amazingly enough, that’s all you really need to enjoy this game.

    Starfox Command. Five minutes into this game I almost put it back up on eBay for ten bucks and walked away. Ten minutes later, I was having a little bit of fun with it. The biggest downside is the awkward controls (hold the stylus in the left hand and scratch around the touch screen control the Arwing, use any of the other buttons to shoot). If they had forgot about trying to make use of the touch screen and stylus and just make a good port of the 64 game I would have been happier. Darn those game developers and their fanciful ideas of game innovation.

    PSP

    Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. I love this game. I finished it on normal difficulty (took me 28 hours…and I think about a third of that time was spent doing missions), and now I’m playing through on hard. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the combat after playing through the first time, but the missions are kicking my butt this time around.

    WoW Logo

    World of Warcraft. My interest is winding down again. I can make it about two months before I have to stop playing for a while, and it’s been about a month and a half since I fired up my subscription again. I got my 70 geared up to the point that I could without raiding the 25 man instances with my guild. I just don’t have the time to commit to do that anymore. The most fun I’m having is playing it with my girlfriend every once in a while. That experience has reminded me that I take a lot for granted when it comes to understanding basic mechanics of the game.

  • Apple customer service sets the bar, Kahuna burger raises it.

    Yesterday Aaron and I made hour drive up to our nearest Apple store. I had heard about these so-called Apple “geniuses”, but my experience with them was limited to that chick in the Mac vs. PC commercials. Come to find out, there’s only two requirements for working at the Apple store.

    1. A stocking cap and/or yuppie haircut.
    2. An iPod to hang around your neck.

    One can only wonder how many young and aspiring geniuses they’ve turned away for not wearing the correct headgear.

    But I digress. As previously mentioned, my iPod Nano was exhibiting some rather…strange tendencies where the click wheel was concerned. I thought it might have something to do with the cold weather and leaving it out in my car in said weather, but once it warmed up the problem persisted, albeit completely randomly. Because of the unpredictability of my problem I walked into the Apple store I knowing that I probably couldn’t reproduce my problem in front of them. From my experience with any form of customer service, this means that they can’t help you. But what the heck, might as well try. And try I did.

    After all was said and done, I walked out of the store with a brand new 8g iPod Nano, completely free of charge. He couldn’t reproduce my problem, but he said he’d give it to me on good faith. I didn’t know there was such a thing as good faith in the customer service business. Apparently there is at Apple though, and that is pretty much awesome. Kudos indeed.

    We walked out of the Apple store happy, but unfulfilled. The inner man needed sustenance. We continued walking down the broad avanue of stores, most of which were advertizing the latest spring fashions (did you know that flirty was the word for spring dresses? I had no idea). At the end of this street we saw two restaurants. Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse, and Kona Grill. Out of the two, we figured we’d stand a better chance of paying less then 20 bucks for a meal at Kona Grill. We sat down, looked at the menu, and mutually decided the best course of action was the Kahuna Burger. 12 oz of meat topped with three thick slices of chedder cheese on a woefully undersized bun. It was heavenly. Altogether, it was a great trip.

  • Handheld Gaming Fevor, Part 2

    Last time I diatribed about the DS and it’s awesome (yet limited) library of games. That thought motivated me a few weeks ago to pick up a used PSP from my local used game store. First game I played was Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony. My first impression was, “Holy crap, these are amazing graphics for a handheld!”

    I played the original Dungeon Siege on the PC years ago, and it’s claim to fame was a beautifully rendered 3D environment with no load times. The PSP iteration of the series met the graphical bar and even looked a little better then the PC experience I had back in 2002. Now granted, DS:ToA was released four years later, but lest we forget, it’s a freakin’ hand held game!

    I’m echoing the sentiments of just about every writer that’s played good games on the PSP when I say that this is the closest thing to a console experience I’ve ever seen on a 2×4 inch screen. I’ve since picked up a trio of new and old games to try out on my new toy. Such as… (more…)