kevinski.com

Welcome to kevinski.com! Feel free to join the forums and discuss anything and everything in the world of gaming. I'm particularly fond of Castlevania, Illbleed and Valis, but feel free to share your own interests with myself and the rest of the community. And be sure to invite your friends, unless they're hackers from Ukraine, of course!

Free Play: Stickvania - Posted by kevinski at 01:10 PM

Are you a Castlevania fan? Are you tired of those fucking hard-to-see bats getting cheap shots in on you? Well, then Stickvania just might be the game for you...assuming that you don't mind playing the original Castlevania with even more primitive-looking graphics, albeit with vastly superior controls.



As I hinted at before, Stickvania's simple graphics pretty much guarantee that you'll never take a cheap hit from a bat again. Sure, the graphics are simple to the point of being nondescript, but I'm always open to the concept of redrawn sprites in a Castlevania game. Besides, I feel that the original Castlevania's aged very well from a game play and level design standpoint. While the game's level design is based entirely around the original Castlevania, however, the music is borrowed from Super Castlevania IV. The controls are pretty close to what you'd find in Super Castlevania IV, as well, since you can control your jumps in mid-air. My only real gripe is the control mapping, as you need to press Up to jump. It just feels...slightly unnatural. Still, it's a very solid game that's worth checking out.

You can play the game right from the comfort of your own Web browser by going here, assuming that you've got Java installed. Yes, Java. Beware the loading time.

Upcoming Site Downtime Likely - Posted by kevinski at 01:46 PM

I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that there'll likely be some extended downtime within the next week or two. I'm still not 100% on this yet, but I'm pretty sure that I'll be switching from a Windows-based server to a UNIX-based server. I've plan on getting segazene.com up and running within the next couple of weeks, and I have a feeling that it'll be wiser to make the transition to a UNIX-based server sooner rather than later, since managing file permissions (among other things) is just a bitch on Windows-based servers.

So, what does this mean for you? Well, hopefully, just a bit of downtime. And, by a bit, I mean possibly days of downtime. It depends on how smoothly everything goes. I'm telling you ahead of time because I'd like to discourage you guys from doing much of anything as far as adding new posts (especially in the restricted forums), since there's always that tiny chance that something might get lost in the transition. I'll do a database backup immediately prior to requesting that MochaHost (my Web host) make the transition, so I shouldn't lose any content. I'm also attempting to devise a means of easily backing up and restoring my files.

The overall site structure isn't changing, and FluxBB runs just fine on UNIX-based servers. My plans for segazene.com are a bit more ambitious, however, and I need everything to go really smoothly due to the sheer amount of content that it'll likely come to offer in the future. Unlike kevinski.com, segazene.com will allow for anyone to submit news and other content that'll be able to make its way to the front page, and it'll allow for much more interaction, as well.

If you happen to have any questions, then now's the time to ask.

Free Play: Pac-Man...Google-Style! - Posted by kevinski at 02:57 PM

I realize that there's no shortage of free variations of Pac-Man that you can play online, but this one's a bit different. As is the case with plenty of other special occasions, Google is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man by incorporating elements of it into its logo. Thing is, this one's fully playable. It even has support for two players, with player two taking control of Ms. Pac-Man.



Now that it's been archived, you can play it here.

Review: Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360) - Posted by kevinski at 01:13 PM

Having only more recently purchased an Xbox 360, I suppose that I find it interesting that one of my favorite games for the console thus far, Deadly Premonition, lacks a lot of what seems to define AAA titles these days. While its graphics won't win any awards, the game still manages to entertain with interesting directions it takes in terms of character development, music and storyline.

Deadly Premonition revolves around a murder investigation in the town of Greenvale. Enter our hero, Francis York Morgan, an F.B.I. agent who finds himself in Greenvale in pursuit of a killer who targets young women. With the most recent victim found bound to a tree with her chest cut open in the nearby park, York finds it safe to assume that he'll soon solve the mystery and bring the killer, whom you eventually know as the Raincoat Killer, to justice. Despite his confidence in the matter, however, York can't possibly imagine just what he'll experience during his short stay.

Free Play: Sushi Cat - Posted by kevinski at 10:59 AM

And now maybe mine is!

The screenshot's gone too.