Recently, I made a few game purchases.

I bought Torchlight 2 for $20. It’s only available as a download. You can’t buy a physical copy.

The developers had an interesting point. They said “If we sell a game in a store, we only get a couple dollars on a $40 game. If we sell a download, we get to keep the full purchase price.”

I liked Torchlight 1. Torchlight 2 was definitely worth $20. I like the randomly generated dungeons. That adds a lot of replayability. Without randomly generated content, it isn’t interesting to play a game after you beat it once.

In Torchlight 1, the maps were randomly generated but linear. Torchlight 2 has better map generation, with open outdoor areas and branching dungeons.

The only negative is that they don’t give skill respec potions, and you don’t get enough skill points to try all the skills. I decided that, after beating the game, I’ll use the console to cheat and give myself extra skill points. Otherwise, I’d have to play the same class multiple times to try out all the skills.

They promised to release modding tools, but that hasn’t been released yet. I hope the devs aren’t thinking “HAHAHA! You bought it already! We don’t have to finish the mod tool we promised!” If people are serious about making good mods, it could be worth playing again with mods.

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I also bought some Android games.

I got Deadly Dungeons, another action RPG with random dungeons. I bought Monsters Ate My Condo, an interesting puzzle game. They were only $1 each.

When a game only costs $1, you don’t have to spend too many hours playing it to get your money’s worth. For Torchlight 2, I already spent enough hours playing it to be worth $20.

There is a sequel to MAMC, Super Monsters Ate My Condo. It has an annoying feature. In addition to buying the game, you can pay money for powerups to use in the game. You can also earn in-game money by playing, but it’s tempting to use the money. I hate games that let you pay cash for powerups.

I bought fpse, a PlayStation emulator. I also bought Dosbox Turbo, for emulating old Dos games. Some of the best mobile games are old games, played in an emulator.

Several of the games I tried didn’t work in fpse. I tried Devil Dice and Pro Pinball Timeshock, both of which didn’t work.

Dosbox Turbo worked fine, although there was one confusing bit. The default .conf file that ships with Dosbox Turbo is not the same as the .conf file it uses if you specify an invalid .config file! It’s also different than the one that comes with the Windows version of Dosbox. It took some figuring for why the sound randomly worked and didn’t work! I had the soundblaster card configured. It turns out you also need the speaker, because some really old games only use the default PC speaker!

When I get a new phone, Google Play let’s you transfer the games to your new phone. I’m probably going to get a Droid 5 from Motorola.

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I’ve been updating my blog less frequently. I’m still recovering from my hospitalization. I’ve been more interested in playing games than blogging. That should wear off.

Also, my primary blogging time was while commuting on the subway. I’m unemployed again, so I don’t write on the subway. When I do take the subway for something, I get some posts written. There is no hiring in December. Hopefully, I can find something in early 2013.