Play Budget Hero

Budget Hero is a game about balancing the federal budget. Based on the actual economic model and data used by the Congressional Budget Office, it's your turn to decide what to spend on, and what to cut.

Not only that, but you get to choose up to three different "value badges" our of a pool of eight to measure how your decisions on your budget affect what you value. For example, you might choose the green badge, the energy independence badge, and efficient government, like I did the second time around. If you choose the card to award $30 million to the person that invents a better car battery, then that would contribute positively to your green badge. Choosing to drill for oil in Alaska would increase your energy independence (oddly, I don't think that affected my green badge negatively, though). Double clicking on the cards will tell you what your spending/cutting would do, so make sure you do that, rather than just drag the cards onto the "recently played" pile. Research, people!

Let's just say that I effectively nailed the efficient government badge. The other two badges, not quite a quarter was earned. I'm not proud of what I did, but suffice it to say that there would be more than a few old people angry with my decision to destroy social security as much as the game would allow (little do they know that the joke would be on my generation anyway). But I did reduce the national debt from $13.8 trillion in 2008 to $9.2 trillion in 2018 and delayed the budget bust from the year 2038 to 2070, so at least I've got that going for me.

All in all, it was a fun and educational game. I actually felt like this game helped my life and my understanding of government spending in a positive way, which is more than I could say for many other games I've played in the past, like Bart vs. the Space Mutants.

An article about the development of the game can be found at Gamasutra's Post Mortem: Getting Serious with Budget Hero. It provides some interesting gamer statistics, it is worth the less-than-five-minute read time.

M-O-O-N, that spells Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia!

So maybe you have a fear of long words. Perhaps you have a fear of long games too? If so, then you should give You Have to Burn the Rope a shot. Make sure you have the speakers turned up for the ending song, because it is very much worth it. Good stuff indeed. Its been stuck in my head for days. A big shout out to fellow FHSU homie Adam for letting me know about it.

If you have problems beating the game, they also have a text walkthough in addition to a YouTube video walkthrough listed on the site. There is no reason not to play!... Unless for some reason the game doesn't load properly. That would probably be a good reason I suppose.

Strong Bad coming to a WiiWare near you

This is crazy-go-nuts! The just announced Strong Bad game Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is coming in June!

...

Uh, that is all. Really! Yup. No long posts here!

...Although it has been snowing here in McCook almost all day. The ground was warm enough that it didn't accumulate on the streets. What's the deal with that?

How much?

I hate it when games keep track of how long you've been playing. Take Burnout Paradise for example. I've been playing that on my PS3 for over 55 hours and counting. That's approaching $1/hr for high-quality crashing entertainment.

It's a fun game too, you should play it if you have the opportunity. At first, I was really miffed that it doesn't offer two-player split-screen, but seeing as how I don't have anybody anyway, it is a moot point at this juncture.

But if you would rather not go all out for a top-end game, why not give Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 a try? That game got me hooked for about two weeks, which is impressive for a free flash game. Creating paths for pencil-drawn enemies to get destroyed in has never been more fun.

Handheld Linux Gaming, Part 2

It has been nearly two years since my first post on Handheld Linux, and I still want a handy little device that let's me do whatever I want in terms of making software for it. Recently I found out about the GP2X's newest addition, the GP2X F-200. It's mostly the same as the older model, but now with a touch screen, so perhaps we could see some neat physics games that utilize the pointer in some way. Perhaps if I actually got around to making more games than I currently do, I could find the purchase easier to make. Instead, I'll just have to sit at the sidelines and look at all the neat videos. I could do worse with $170 I suppose.

Feel the Love

We just witnessed a 243 day lull in our blogging duties. (Thank you, timeanddate.com.) That's a brand new record!

So what's happened on my end in the 7+ months since then?

• I got older
• ...

Yeah, it's starting to come back to me as to why I stopped blogging.

Seriously though, there have been a few cool things. I got to see Weird Al in concert with Jon, Sam, and some family, which was really neat. He even sang a few songs not on any of his albums, such as We All Have Cell Phones, So C'Mon Let's Get Real and I'm in Love with the Skipper.

....Okay, so that was only one cool thing, but still it was quite a ride. Oh, I guess I did also go to a Dave and Busters, a sort of Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups, where I finally got to play an arcade machine I've been waiting many years of my life to play, called The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Apparently it is based off of some movie. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I wanted to play it so badly. Wait, now I remember: because shooting dinosaurs is awesome.

In conclusion, the secret to happiness is that you will never find it. You have to make it yourself. At least that is what I was able to gleam from Dan Gilbert from one of those TED talks.