jobless and games about spess

I quit my job a while back to move down to spring hill. Fate has been kind to me so far as I have house full of wonderful friends. Various video games have distracted me in this time, most notably Borderlands. Its more of the same if you liked the original borderlands with a few quirks about it. Its one of many games that will suck away all your time if you're not careful. I played this game almost exclusively while down at my new place and it screwed up my sleep schedule accordingly. My parents wanted me to come see them for the holidays so I drove 6 hours to get to East Tennessee.  As if to be expected I had to watch my step as dog crap carpet mines lay in wait. Animals with no regard for their excrement aside,  I managed to grab a couple different games during the steam sales thus far. I bought multiple copies of Awesomenauts, FTL, and SPAZ (I'll go into detail about those in a bit) as well as a gift for my bro christian; Warhammer 40k space marine. I hope his computer can run it.

As previously mentioned got a couple different games for christmas, the first I'll mention being FTL (you can click that link before this to check the website)  or Faster than light. If you click on that link there it will take you to the website for it. It of course can also be found on steam. This is quite the gem and for the low price of about $2.50 I paid for. I couldn't help but buy up a couple copies. Most describe it as a rougelike space adventure and that's pretty much spot on for a description. If you're not familar with the rougelike genre the basic premise is this- Your ship has data valuable to the federation fleet (just go with it). You have to jump through 7 star systems to deliver this data and get to the final boss. Each of the star systems have multiple planets and other features with random events occurring in many of them. You have to manage your crew, maintain your ship, battle other ships or use diplomacy to get out of sticky situations and adapt to unique challenges along the way. Its a fun if not unforgiving experience.  To keep things short here's the main points to be aware of-

The positives-
+the game is genre aware and plays itself  perfectly in this respect making you feel like a starship captain with its almost tongue in cheek style.
+there's a lot of customization in this game- from what crew you use to what weapons are on your ship and how you upgrade your ship's stats as you go.
+There's lots of replayability with all the content unlocked by completing certain challenges .

The crapitives
- The game as I mentioned before is very unforgiving. Even on an easier difficulties its not uncommon to encounter a terrible end.
-the graphics are nice for what they are but this isn't going to push your computer to the brink. If you have a older computer this won't be a problem.
-its very short. It can easily be beaten in one sitting if you're lucky enough to get to the end.  Again this may not be a bad thing if you don't want to get lost in a 60+ hour game.


I'll go over  Awesomenauts and SPAZ what when I can. I won't flake out like normal I hope.