STG's

The Knife of Dunwall is a DLC pack for Dishonored, which has 3 missions where you play Daud, the assassin of the Empress. Daud has pretty much the same powers as Corvo did, but has some new powers and gadgets - including Summon Assassins, Chokedust (stuns enemies for a short while) and Stun/Vaporize mines. One particularly interesting addition is the concept of Favors. You can buy those before a mission, and they can be something like a disabled alarm, a rune placed somewhere or a code to a safe. Very useful! I have finished the first mission, and I like it as much as the regular missions, that is, very much. Strongly recommended for fans of the game. And if you haven't looked into it already, I strongly recommend it too, and you can read my review for Dishonored . A nice start for the first mission of The Knife of Dunwall

I rarely read books in Portuguese. I hate translations, and almost all I read is written originally in English. However, recently I read As Esganadas, by Jô Soares, in a single sitting (to be fair, I had to sit around for 3 hours while waiting in an hospital - but if the book wasn't so good I might have switched to doing something else after a while). While a bit old (I bought it shortly after the release, but then forgot about it), this is the latest in Jô Soares' series of fiction that takes place in historical times, and often confuses what happened and what was fiction. The story is a about a serial killer in Rio de Janeiro that likes killing fat women in ironical ways. While I think that his motives could have been exposed later in the story for better effect, I really enjoyed the book and laughed hard from the beginning to the end. Very much recommended, if you can read in Portuguese. I don't know if translations are available (can't find them at Amazon) a

Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack is a platformer with absorb things to grow mechanics. Graphics and sound are pretty good - but I found a few places where it was hard to continue. Other than that gameplay is good, but not great. Not particularly recommended, unless you really are a big fan of platformers.

God Mode is a 3rd person view shooter, with a hell motif. It has a semi-single player mode - it is more like you are playing a co-op game, but alone. You mostly shoot your enemies (or melee them) until you get the key monsters and the Test of Faith is concluded. The whole Test of Faith is just a level modifier. Maybe there is a thick fog, or infinite ammo, or (and this one is called God Mode) you get indestructible at random intervals. You also have Oaths, which are a personal modifier - such as getting more XP and Gold on a level but getting less ammo per pickup. Not very exciting. Graphics and sounds are pretty good. You start with a shotgun and uzi. The unlocks are clearly meant to be earned - I have played for about 40 minutes and still am not close to getting another weapon! And this one of the things I didn't like on the game - progression is crazy slow. Also, when a Test of Faith is completed, it is sometimes hard to see where you can go. Other than that, i

Antichamber is described as a "mind-bending  psychological exploration game". It is interesting, but very weird and quite probably like nothing you ever tried before. For example (spoiler alert, but it is just the basic) - going back where you just came from may change what is there. And this is just the start...

I have just tried Antichamber and it crashed after a few seconds of sound. Installing the new PhysX drivers fixed that. You can get them at Nvidia  . Now it runs fine. There are people who report that this worked for them, and others that say it didn't, though.

Cubemen 2 is a retro looking 3D strategy game. You have a bunch of towers - excuse me, units - that you can send anywhere in the play field. You get the usual types - pistol, flame, ice, mortar, laser, and a couple of unusual ones - blockers and mines. Action on campaigns is pretty much standard TD (tower defense) stuff - waves of enemies of various types. Several of the enemy types are quite similar from a distance. I'm not a fan of the camera style used on the game, and often found the view annoying. Gameplay was mostly boring to me too, and often I was just waiting for things to end (you can control the speed, but I felt this way even on fast mode). Music is repetitive after the first few minutes. Overall, I didn't like it and don't recommend it.

Pressure is a nice little racer/shooter with top view and a steampunk style. There are plenty of upgrades available, and graphics are good. Sound and music are acceptable. Gameplay is OK. For some reason I'm not crazy about the steering - maybe it is too loose? The physics are OK, but shooting all the time feels silly. Ramming is very effective after you upgrade it. I have tried both on the controller and on keyboard+mouse, and it feels a little better on the latter. Overall, it is OK, but I recommend you try the demo before you buy it.

When I recently finished Ender in Exile  there was a little blurb on the end that mentioned how the story of Jane "meeting" Ender was covered in  First Meetings in Ender's Universe . So I immediately got it. First Meetings in Ender's Universe - by Orson Scott Card  covers a little of the background of the series. The book is composed of 4 stories: The Polish Boy - a story of Ender's father. In theory, this is a big spoiler, though. But it was nicely covered. Teacher's Pest - the story of how Ender's parents met - all orchestrated by the I.F. Ender's Game - The original (or so it seems to me) story from which the longer novel came. I read it on the early 90s when Asimov's Science Fiction has a brief brazilian version. It is very good, and it does have the first meeting of Ender and Bean. But pretty much everyone who buy this already read the full novel, so it mostly feel like it is filling space on the book. Investment Counselor - the stor

Ender In Exile - by Orson Scott Card -  is both a sequel to the Ender's Shadow Series (albeit only as far as Petra and Bean's lost kid) and an expeansion of events mentioned in the original Ender's Game. It covers the events from when Ender won the war and got sent to be governor of the first human colony. Some of it contradicts minor things in Ender's Game. A new version of that chapter is available from IGMS's site for magazine subscribers (but doesn't seem worth reading, IMHO). The book feels like the original - Ender comes upon situations, and wins every time in ways that surprise you. There is some coverage of the Formic's bio tech, that I felt was interesting, as well as a letter from Ender to his parents which was quite touching. Overall, I really enjoyed and really recommend it to fans of the series. Non-fans should get Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow (better in many ways - clearly Card was a better author by the time he wrote it).

I was just getting ERR_SOCKET_NOT_CONNECTED errors when trying to access Google from Chrome. A fix is going to the url chrome://net-internals/ , go to Sockets tab, and click the "Flush socket pools" and "Close idle sockets" buttons. Using Shift+Control+N for a new Incognito mode windows also allows you to do a quick search.

Signal Ops probably doesn't fit any genre properly. I guess it is mostly a stealth squad-based tactical game, where you control several agents from a 60s style control room. For various reasons, the game annoyed me constantly. First, I had to find the config and switch to DirectX (and BTW, that is a very bad looking screen), or it'd just do an annoying electrical sound from the hidden menu screen (not sure who thought this would be cute - it is pretty awful). So OK, now it runs. There is a semi-tutorial on the controls to start with. They are half for game controllers, half for keyboard+mouse, so I start using the game controller (the controls feel quite a bit silly, too, such as the combos to turn clipboard pages or open a door. Could be common for all I know). I don't think you can see or switch controls from the menu. When I get to the control room, the instructions are for the keyboard, and that is the only way it seems to work. So now I switch again. There is s

Darksiders is supernatural third-person fighting game. I am not a big fan of the 3rd person view, and only occasionally I have liked a game that uses it (Prototype comes to mind, specially as it has several mechanics similar to Darksiders). The fact that there  doesn't seem to be a way to use mouse + keyboard instead of the game controller doesn't help. You are War, and somehow was summoned to Earth as forces from Heaven and Hell started battling. Most of the time you will swing your sword around to kill your enemies. That is well done enough and somewhat fun. First boss in the game - the Destroyer You can also grab and throw objects - such as cars - at enemies. For whatever reason I never really got the hang of it and it felt somewhat off to me. It also required in the first boss fight - the Destroyer (on the image above) will pop them from below your viewpoint and throw them at you, at which point you can grab exactly one and throw it back at him. Several of th