Such menial tasks with shovels.

Due to an increase in cash flow from my new job I was recently able to buy a shiny, new Samsung Galaxy Tab 4! It's a pretty spiffy device and a worthy replacement for my Nexus 7. I can run it with a brighter screen for longer periods of time, it lets you multitask with certain apps and like many Android-based tablets it lets you use micro SD cards. As a bonus for registering my tablet on the Samsung site I got a $10 credit for the Google Play store. I spent it on Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.



It was only after installing BG:EE I found out that some developers are not bright enough to figure out how to make games save to the SD card slot. Since I bought the 8GB 7" model, 3GB of that was already eaten up by the OS, the default apps and after BG:EE and Super Hexagon were installed I had like 600MB left. So I guess my plan is to play BG soon, back up my saves to the cloud and delete it so I can have those 2.3GBs it ate up back.

I do have an original physical copy of BG on PC I never got far in, but I tried it on my rickety laptop but it overheated and crashed as expected. It hates all games no matter what they are, so much it blew it's WiFi card a few weeks back so all my Steam games are off limits. So BG:EE it is!

Before anyone goes "That's why I don't do digital" - most of my Steam purchases are just hoarding for the day I have a desktop PC worth a damn. That laptop could run the original Fallout, Morrowind and Deus Ex but not without overheating. You might get fifteen minutes of playtime tops. Bastion and Torchlight maybe twenty. Super Hexagon it will run forever. That's just something I buy on anything, though.

But yes, aside from that one snag with BG:EE, I'm liking the Galaxy Tab 4. Doing this is just awesome:



That and I got just about all my MP3s loaded on the SD card. Getting them all off my 3DS's SD card is a great thing, so I guess there's a silver lining here. More space for 3DS games!

Aside from that I grabbed Shovel Knight off the Nintendo eShop and then Devil Survivor Overclocked also for the 3DS since it was on sale for $15. Additionally, I got Wario Land II as my Club Nintendo reward. Not thrilled about �such a cheap reward but I got plenty of free games from Club Nintendo in the last year anyway.�

Wario and DSO are familiar faces, though, Shovel Knight is the new kid on the block and I really dig it. The game is everything I hoped it would be and it's a very rare, special occasion when I get to say such a thing. I saw a game that was inspired by Megaman, Castlevania, Zelda II, Super Mario, Ducktales and Dark Souls and that's exactly what it is, just with a few modern sensibilities blended in.

Shovel Knight manages to take all their qualities and make them its own, which is better than just being a retro game that sends up the classics by constantly pointing at them. There's just never a moment where the game feels it has to point out another game's elements, much like Cave Story never does. Yacht Club Games just blended all the classic elements like seasoned pros without going "Dude, remember Simon Belmont?" like Drinkbox Games did with Guacamelee. That Shovel Knight doesn't go there helps it feel more classy.�



I'm really having a blast with it and it may steal my vote for Game of the Year. I suppose you could say it is a groundbreaking game, but mostly because of the shovel. It also has charm in spades.

I'll see myself out before I do more shovel puns.

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Whispering Willow   

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