The Pxl Lab is a blog dedicated to writing about the great games, software, and the stuff you can do with them.
Posts tagged online
Welcome to Team Fortress 2 Week!
03 years ago
by Pxl_Buzzard
in Gaming
Hey readers! Here at The Pxl Lab, we all share a love for Team Fortress 2, which in case you don’t know, is a totally awesome online multiplayer FPS created by Valve, the greatest developer of all time. Now that we have our facts straight, it’s time to get in-depth with the game. All week long we’ll feature awesome game sprays for you to use, videos that will blow your mind, an interview with the Gib$Ru$ admin, a detailed guide on how to tweak TF2 for better performance, skinning the characters, and more! Keep checking the site all week long for the latest and greatest, and we hope to see you on the battlefield soon, soldier!
Desktop Tower Defense – The Best TD Game on the Web
03 years ago
I discovered this little game while surfing the net today. Desktop Tower Defense is a flash game where you have to protect your desktop from invaders by spending money on attack turrets and building a maze for the invaders to go through. It’s strangely addictive and before you know it you just want to play more and more. I really enjoyed seeing other people’s mazes and how many points they scored with it. You can play the game on Kongregate with achievements, or just play it on the creators’ website, HandDrawnGames.com. Check out the videos below for some awesome in-game action.
Get the Flash Player to see this content.
Get the Flash Player to see this content.
Bubble Tanks 2 – Message in a Bubble
03 years ago
Bubble Tanks 2, sequel to the excellent Bubble Tanks, is an incredibly creative shooter. As the name implies, you play as a Bubble Tank in a bubble world flying around shooting other bubbles so as to absorb their bubbles to make your own bubble bigger and better. The game has a lot of bubbles, to say the least, as well as many improvements over the original Bubble Tanks, and is easily one of the best Flash-based games this year.
In Bubble Tanks 2, the tutorial has literally not changed at all from the original. This is quite a blessing, actually. Bubble Tanks and Bubble Tanks 2′s tutorials consist of writing on the background of the first couple bubbles. That’s it. Also the core gameplay is virtually unchanged. You still move from bubble to bubble using W-A-S-D and aim and shoot using the mouse. BT2 also adds an entertaining “Arena Mode” in addition to normal mode. In Arena Mode, you can choose to do battle against any of the bubbly foes you have previously encountered, as well as start your bubble off at any stage you unlocked in normal mode. This brings me to my next point. Players of the original Bubble Tanks probably noticed that there are literally no customization options. Now in BT2, as your tank “levels” up, you can choose which specialization you want. You can go as an agile Fighter Tank, a slow powerful Heavy Tank, or a nice balanced Balance Tank. It adds a nice level of customization to the game, in addition to adding a lot to the replay value. There’s also a new Secondary Weapon feature, which affects your overall strategy in the game. If you’re playing as a balance tank, for instance, shields are useful for fighting bigger enemies so you can block their attacks. Though there are also plenty of useless secondary weapons as well, such as mines. No enemy ever ran over any of the mines I ever laid down, ever.
Overall, Bubble Tanks 2 is a huge improvement over the original Bubble Tanks, which is saying alot because Bubble Tanks is one of my all time favorite flash games. The only real problems I have with the game are the lack of balance between the classes, with many profoundly useless classes such as Sniper, as well as absolutely no carried over traits when you upgrade your tank. The customization really ends with which tank you pick. Also, it ocassionally has lag spikes when there are a bunch of enemies on screen. Overall, however, I’d say this game is an excellent way to spend a little time while in the interwebs.
ProcessQuickLink Is the Perfect Addition to the Task Manager
23 years ago
Process Library has long been a popular website to check on what processes are doing on your computer. The creators of Process Library have made it easier than ever to figure out which processes are doing. ProcessQuickLink adds a button next to each process in Windows Task Manager that, once clicked, take you to the process’ profile page on Process Library. Here is a feature list taken from ProcessLibrary.com:
You can download ProcessQuickLink from The Pxl Lab, and there is a mirror from the offical site also.
Keep Your Bookmarks In Sync Across All Your Computers
03 years ago
Have you ever wanted to find that one site or another, only to realize that the link is stored on your other computer? Foxmarks, currently for Firefox and IE, makes it easy to syncronize your bookmarks. If you save a couple bookmarks on Computer A, then save a couple on Computer B later, Computer A and B will both have the same bookmarks. Foxmarks works in the background, going as unnoticed as possible.
Maybe you only want to have some of your bookmarks on your work or school computer, while keeping others saved only on your home computer. With Foxmarks, you can create profiles that will only have certain bookmarks saved on them. One of the recommendations of the profiles system is keeping a shortlist of bookmarks for your phone/PDA, and there are plenty of other uses, too.
What if you can’t install Firefox at work? Foxmarks saves the day again, because you can view all of your bookmarks on their website.
Are you ready to download Foxmarks yet? Here are some download links:
Warrior Epic Closed Beta Account Giveaway
34 years ago
by Pxl_Buzzard
in Gaming
Looking for an RPG that skips over the whole “talking with NPC’s” and “following a deep plot” and takes you straight into the combat part? If so, Warrior Epic is your new favorite game. An MMO designed to be played with up to 4 other people at a time doing quests and PvP matches, Warrior Epic promises to be the RPG that combat lovers will flock to. However, the game is currently in closed beta status, so you only have a mediocre chance of getting to play it before everyone else.
Lucky for you, I have 20 closed beta account keys, and I’m making it really easy to get them. All you have to do is:
- create an account on The Pxl Lab (this blog),
- create an account at the Warrior Epic site,
- then post a comment on this article with the name of your WE account.
That’s all there is to it! You can see a trailer for Warrior Epic below, otherwise hurry to get your free closed beta account!
Get the Flash Player to see this content.
iSketch Is Pictionary Online!
54 years ago
iSketch is simple: it’s basically MMOpictionary. After selecting a username, you log on. Unfortunately you cannot save usernames and see highscores as of yet. Every account is technically a guest. At first glance of the server list, they are all the same save the number. However, if you continue to browse, you can join certain rooms dedicated to books, animals, time periods, and various languages. iSketch’s variety of languages is English and French, but also has single rooms for Turkish, Dutch, Spanish, and many more! It also contains chat rooms user created that vary from cybering to casual chat.
The actual iSketch experience is good. The chat rooms are full at 10 users, and everybody takes a turn out of the 10 rounds to draw a word. The first person to guess it correctly wins 10 points ,the 2nd 9, and etc. Usually only about 3 or 4 of the people actually correctly guess the word, because the drawings are user made. No words are allowed in the picture obviously, but you can give hints with a handy hint button, or simply skip the word altogether if you are chosen as the artist. As a drawer, the more correct guesses of your word, the more points you receive. After 10 rounds, the winner will get his name rotating up in the sky with fireworks going off. No awards or ranks yet, just recognition within the channel.
Sometimes there are a lot of immature people that join the channels who spam it up and/or take their draw turn writing vulgar words, and since there is no registered user system, the effect of booting them does nothing. Overall though, iSketch is fun. It is a great way to waste your time on the internet, with no strings attached! A lot of games require multiple visits to maintain your score, or at least are very competitive (WoW, need I say more?). This simple game is very entertaining, at no cost, with no time determined commitment.
OneBigGame Has One Big Idea
04 years ago
by Pxl_Buzzard
in Gaming
One day some veteran game developers got together and asked, “Why doesn’t somebody make video games for something other than profit?” This question is the foundation for OneBigGame, a non-profit organization that describes themselves like this:
Our mission is to bring together some of the most famous game designers and major development studios to create a number of unique games, specifically developed for OneBigGame, with all the proceeds going to children’s charities around the world.
The known developers that are working with OneBigGame at the time of writing are: Charles Cecil (Revolution Software), Eric Zimmerman (Gamelab), Ernest Adams (International Hobo), Avalanche Studios, Relentless, Kuju and Freestyle. The first games being made for OBG are likely going to be flash games, but the founders of OBG hope that one day console games will be made too. If you are good at any game developing skill, you can send an email over to OBG and volunteer your services.
You’ll likely start seeing games with the OneBigGame logo on them in the latter half of 2008, so keep an eye out and make a contribution to world by playing video games.
Adventure Quest Brings Flash Games to the Next Level
14 years ago
Adventure Quest is just one game from the game creation geniuses at Artix Entertainment. Other flash games the company has made, like Dragon Fable and MechQuest have roughly the same graphic styles and battle mechanics.
Digging into the fun of AQ is as easy as creating an account, starting the game in your web browser, and eventually upgrading your account to Guardian status for a one-time $15 fee. Once you’ve loaded up the game, you’ll get a request to look at an advertisement and then get stuff from a magical chest (generally 200 gold). From there, you can go on to level your character doing quests, killing 700+ monsters, etc. Some of the classes you can be are: Fighter, Wizard, Ninja, Vampire Slayer, Rogue, Knight, Mage, Paladin, or a Dragonslayer.
One reason to keep playing Adventure Quest during your lunch break is that the game is updated every week with new content, such as new quests, areas, items, and armor. Here are some in-game screenshots for your viewing pleasure:
So if you are looking for a fun game to play in your spare time, check out Adventure Quest, the online flash RPG with loads of lands to explore and monsters to kill.
Face of Mankind: Rebirth Canceled
04 years ago
by Pxl_Buzzard
in Gaming
Face of Mankind: Rebirth was an MMOFPS that had some great potential. I personally played in the beta for Face of Mankind (not Rebirth, check out this article if you want some more information on the history of the game), and I thought it was an awesome blend of FPS, MMO, and RPG. It had “raids” where players from one of the factions in-game could take over another planet from another faction. The unique quest system let higher level players create quests for others, such as mining a certain ore or assassinating an enemy of theirs.
Even with all of the game’s potential to be something excellent, the recreation of an MMO is not easy for a small team of people financing their own work. Sadly, the game is coming to an end because of the team’s financial problems. Here is an excerpt from the offical FoM site:
FoM, as many other MMORPGs today, is a game that relies heavily
on visual content. For us, being only a small development studio with very limited
resources, it would be nearly impossible to make the game we want it to be. You
might wonder what there is to change? It runs fine and works in a way. That’s right,
but not the way it’s supposed to. And spending so much more power and private funding
into the project made not much sense anymore. There might be a time for FoM in the
future, but it’s just not now.
The developers of FoM, Duplex Systems, are working on another MMO that they hope to release in place of Face of Mankind, called NanoVerse Online. As of right now there is no content on the site besides a nice logo, but Duplex promises that if you continue checking back that more content will be there.