Goombd Played! - A World of Keflings DLC: It Came From Space

The concept of playing a game with absolutely no confrontations and violence might seem foreign to many videogame fans. Killing and being victorious over your opponent always seems to be the goal of just about 90% of all games. Luckily for us, the 10% left sometimes turn out to be amazing. That's the case for Ninja Bee's A World of Keflings.

I already made a case about how much I love that game a while back, when it was released as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion that Microsoft likes to make during U.S summertime. It's an absolute blast putting together your own towns and not have to worry about anyone coming around to demolish it. It was truly a "busy busy bee" game.


So it comes as no surprise that we're getting to play a set of DLC for that game, a little more than a year after its release. It Came From Space features a whole new set of blueprints to build, a new environment to pluck resources from and a handful of crazy characters to laugh at. As the name suggests, this DLC is centered on aliens. They crashed on the Kefling world and lo and behold, it's up to you (mainly, your Xbox Live avatar) to help them get back home.

Luckily for your E.T friends, all of the materials they need happen to have come along with their ship. You'll get things going by putting some of them to work and harvesting the base items like bars of radioactive materials, wood and clay but soon enough, just like in the original game, you're steered towards turning these into more specialized materials.



The gameplay structure It Came From Outer Space follows is right on with what we saw in 'Keflings. Those base materials are harvested into a single building at first and from there, you expand and build new structures as objectives are met and blueprints are learned. This time around, though, there's a catch. Some of these buildings are living beings and can be mutated into other types of structures. This might sound pretty complicated, but it's really not. You basically build the core structure and feed it a carrot filled with alien mutagen. Mutated buildings can then produce other types of much needed raw materials.

Another new type of unit introduced in this DLC is the robotic minion, which already starts out at high levels on just about every job you could put him to. And you'll need to put him to work right away since he's the only one capable of handling the nuclear materials and junk parts required by your schematics.


As you might have picked up by looking at these screenshots, there's only one environment to play in It Came From Outer Space. It's relatively smaller than the usual A World of Keflings stage and takes about as long to play through as well. You're likely to take around 2 hours to complete all the objectives and get every achievement, but there are incentives to keep building even after the story is done.

There are plenty of good reasons to pick this new DLC pack up. It's charming to no end, brimming with the sort of personality we've seen in previous Ninja Bee games and the pokes at science fiction tropes are hilarious. The writing is quick and witty and just like A World of Keflings, it's very reverential to pop culture and loves to make fun (in a fun way) of the tenets of videogames. It Came From Space is a great excuse to pop A World of Keflings back in, no probes abo...er... doubt about it! |8

Goombd! Played - Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road DLC

Unlike the title might suggest, in Fallout New Vegas' newest piece of downloadable content, you're hardly ever alone. Lonesome Road picks up right after Old World Blues, where you discovered that you are not the only Courier in the Mojave desert. Courier Six, the first person approached with the task of delivering the Platinum Chip and who refused to do so, is hot on your trail for mysterious reasons.

It all begins after you get transmission from Six and are sent to the depths of the Divide through a conveniently placed entranced in the middle of the wasteland. Much like previous DLC, you're not allowed to take any of your party members along. The trip is hardly solitary though, since as soon as you get to the first area of the Divide, you meet an eyebot named ED-E, that much to your surprise, acts a lot like another ED-E you might have met during your journey through the Mojave.


Much of Lonesome Road revolves around discovering the reason why you've been brought there. You come in contact with Courier Six rather early on and he hardly gives any clue about why you're there, let alone how to find him. You do, however, run into a crap ton of active nuclear warheads, Deathclaws and irradiated mutants who must all perish in the name of Six.

This DLC goes so far as to give you a special gun that activates those warheads in order to clear the path through all the rubble in the Divide, along with a few new pieces of gear to don and fashion on your way back to the Wasteland. Red Glare is a new type of rocket launcher that has the added bonus of being upgradeable. ED-E can also receive updates if you're thorough in your exploration and can manage to find his fallen eyebot friends scattered around. The best part about upgrading the little flying hunk of metal is that it all transfers to your original ED-E party member once you travel back to the main game.


The best part of Lonesome Road that I found to be extremely rewarding, besides the smartly written story and dialogue, that are not as heavy in delivery as Old World Blues, is how your actions in Divide play a pivotal role in the main New Vegas campaign. None of the previous downloadable packs provoked consequences in the Mojave, aside from giving you exclusive pieces of gear, but depending on your choices in particular parts of your visit to the Divide, your main Mojave quest might be deeply influenced.

I'm talking extermination here - things that can create ripples in your New Vegas experience. This is an awesome part of Lonesome Road that makes it worth playing through and to put an end to a four part story that began way back in Dead Money, where I for one hardly thought they would reconnect story-wise in any way. I will go so far to suggest that you give this a go right in the middle of your main New Vegas experience in order to see how the hell these consequences play out in the story. You also run into recordings made by Six as he explored the areas covered in the previous DLCs that tie into and help carve out a personality for this enigma of a character.


If you enjoyed New Vegas, there's no reason not to give any of the four DLC packs a try. As a combined experience, New Vegas' pieces of downloadable content managed to deliver a much more solid overall story than say Fallout 3's, and that's saying a lot, considering how much I liked those back then. |8