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PC Game Review Spring Up!
Peggle clone Spring Up! takes on a gardening twist. This Breakout-style game starts with the ball at the top of the screen where players point and shoot in hopes of hitting as many like-colored pegs and bricks. That’s where the similarity to Peggle ends. Unless Spring Up! is for a child, stick with the stellar Peggle.
Young kids will appreciate Spring Up! because you can’t lose the game — it has no rules, minimums, or goals to frustrate the kids. They can just keep shooting the ball until all the pegs and bricks fall down. The main goal is to clear the pegs and bricks, but they must be hit by a ball of the same color to fall down. Catch the falling items for added points. Four available power ups also fall for the catching. One makes the paddle wider, another ups the score multiplier, the third adds points, and the fourth and only negative power up shrinks the paddle.
As you rack up points in adventure mode, use the money to buy junk for the garden. The garden contains $ all over, which cost $5000. Click a $ and that particular $ price goes up to $20,000 while the others remain at $5000 until clicked. The garden holds 50 items and it’s not really customizeable. All you can do is click which item you want next. That’s all. No moving stuff around, changing colors, or anything.
Spring Up! has a quirk — not sure if it’s a bug or a work-around. Sometimes falling objects don’t make it to the bottom and just sit there. I mean after all, if a volleyball can get caught on a gym’s ceiling (which it did at a tournament I watched last week), physics can explain why an object gets stuck. When the object stops moving and all loose objects fall, the stuck object disappears and another ball awaits shooting. No harm, no foul.
Except for the locations and number of pegs and objects, the scenes don’t change much. Fans do show up to blow falling objects to make them harder to catch for bonus points. The game could use more obstacles like the fans to keep players guessing.
The game offers no challenge. Little variety. Unexciting graphics. But it could be a great game for young children people who hate losing, or those who need a simple game with that won’t aggravate.
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10 Overused Game Journalism Cliches
When I first started doing casual game reviews, praising or picking apart a game came easy. Now, when writing game reviews, I feel like I’ve said it all before. The top 10 game journalism cliches captures the challenges game reviewers face. Here is the list along with my comments.
Top ten lists: I rarely do this. When I do, the top ten list article comes out at the end of the year. Sites like Mashable often write “## best sites for [enter a topic].” I prefer “## sites for [enter a topic]” because it’s easy to miss deserving candidates.
The historical open: This approach gives the writer a nice way to segue into the review. But during these times of information overload, I try to open a review with what it is along with a subtle hint of whether it’s great or blah. What do you want to know when you read a review? For me, I want reviews to tell me what the game, book, or product is about and whether it’s any good.
Headlines with a “?” at the end: I don’t have to worry about headlines since all the places I review for just list the game title as in “Diner Dash PC Game Review.” We could argue for and against this method, but it tells you exactly what it is.
7/10 reviews: This would be 4/5 for some of us where ratings use the five point scale instead of 10, but 7/10 appears frequently in working with one client. The local newspaper started adding comments next to the rating such as “two out of five stars (good).” So, two to five stars are positive while one and zero (never happens) stars is negative. That’s no bell curve. It’s as if the newspaper is trying to be gentle and prevent readers from automatically thinking “two stars… don’t go there!” Reviews should be about serving the reader and potential customer, not making nice with the business. Kids today often get a trophy every time they play a sport regardless how their team played. Getting a trophy should make us proud because we earned it not because we signed up and played. How are we going to motivate ourselves to improve?
Realistic graphics: No comments on this one.
Quirky: Is it good or bad? Exactly the problem.
Fans of X will enjoy it: Guilty. I use this line when I don’t have a clever way to end the review.
Only time will tell: Pointless. Just give the details now.
Reviews broken up into standardized sections: This refers to “graphics,” “sound,” “gameplay,” etc. None of the places I review for use this. They provide a rating. One uses “pros” and “cons,” which gives you a snapshot of what’s good and bad about the game. I think that’s beneficial. Web writing rules apply here — if the review is long, use bold headers every few paragraphs. I rarely do this, though — it just doesn’t work as well for reviews.
“Fun.” I try to avoid this like the plague. Considering its synonyms (enjoy, amusing, cool, entertaining, pleasurable) often don’t work well, reviewers sometimes can’t help but use “fun.”
My biggest problem is describing different things such as the graphics and sound. You can only say the same thing so many ways. One thing about reviewing… it offers writers a wonderful way to put their creativity to work. [Link: Gamewire]
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Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition Review
Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition, developed and published by 3000AD.
The Good: Comprehensive game universe, smart auto-pilot, progress is automatically saved, believable physics
The Not So Good: Archaic user interface, ambiguous objectives, confusing controls, tedious tutorial, no skirmish or quick battles, no dynamic universe to explore at your own pace since the campaign is limited to missions only, plodding pace, annoying music, outdated graphics with unrealistic and distracting backgrounds
What say you? Only the hardest of the hardcore need apply: 5/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
The space adventure genre, once a bastion of PC gaming, is now populated by a number of independent space sims, like Arvoch Conflict. Apparently big publishers are more concerned with making console games with pretty graphics and big guns than more epic fights in the dark reaches of the universe. Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is the latest iteration of the Battlecruiser/Universal Combat universe, taking a more action-oriented approach to the genre. This is the second edition, as the first was a GameTap exclusive and now the space adventuring is available, with some addition development, to everyone. How will this space game stack up against the competition?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition certainly looks like an independently produced product. The graphics are outdated and static. The cockpit is clearly a 2-D skin, rather than a 3-D environment that’s been present in the genre for a while now. The planets look good from a distance, but up close the surface textures are underwhelming. Planets are detailed if you are flying in their atmosphere (with some nice ocean effects) and the city textures are taken from real satellite images, but they tend to repeat often. The background stars in space are too large and too bright to be remotely believable; I don’t mind a little artistic freedom when it comes to space, but the distractingly bright orbs that populate the universe make you wonder if the developers ever looked at a realistic space image. The sound design is functional at best: the tutorial and some radio transmissions are voiced, but they are not accompanied by subtitles so you really have to pay attention when the game is talking to you. The sound effects are basic as a whole, and the background music is atrocious; I quickly turned the music off. In short, the presentation of Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is underwhelming at best. While this would be forgivable for a company’s first release, 3000AD has been at it for a while and I would expect a more solid effort.
ET AL.
Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition revolves around the 16-mission campaign that features a linear order and some background story. This is the first in a series, so one would assume that later entries would include more missions with different ships (the manual makes this suggestion). While the game automatically saves progress, you can’t completely quit a mission (this includes the tutorial). This became an issue when I wanted to stop the tutorial (for reasons I will explain shortly) and start the campaign; I could not, so I had to create a whole new profile. Proceeding through the campaign will net experience points which translate into ranks and medals; you won’t gain any bonuses from being higher in rank, but it’s nice to feel like you are accomplishing something. It would be nice to have a dynamic universe to mess around with, like every other contemporary (and even not-so-contemporary) space simulation features. At it stands, Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition feels very restrictive with none of the freedom featured in many other titles. The game does feature multiplayer with cooperative play and a “base wars” mode featuring destructible stations for team-based play. You can populate the universe with AI characters to create a more believable setting. This almost makes up for the lack of skirmish battles, except there was never anybody to play with when I logged in. As with most games in the genre, Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition has a steep learning curve; this is not helped with the underwhelming and generally crappy tutorial. You have to print out the tutorial, unless you want to listen to the computerized voice that gives instructions at set time intervals instead of where you actually are. You can read the PDF files in the game, but they are very laggy and essentially unusable. The tutorial covers most of the bases in a very boring and slow manner. At one point, the tutorial wants you to “leave the controls alone and for about five minutes, watch as the fighter performs an escort flight profile around the carrier.” Sit there and watch for five minutes? Uh, no thanks. I would like to learn how to play the game, not be bored to tears. It’s better to read through the manual and tutorial files and just try to fly the missions. This is where a skirmish mode would be helpful, as it would allow the player to fly around with no set purpose and try out the controls. As it stands, you had better know the difference between SSR, VID, VDD, WTS, NIR, TRS, and SMD (plus tons of other abbreviations) before you start playing.
The interface used in Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is pretty standard for any flight simulator on the PC. Your HUD displays shields and armor information, wingmen tasks, target info, and heading. The multi-function displays act as a map, radar, and visual camera. Most of the systems the ships of Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition have are rooted in modern fighter planes, so anyone who have played one of those simulations will quickly adapt to the information presented here. Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition does feature a right-click menu system to select any system, planet, or target possible; while I appreciate the comprehensive nature of this menu system and how it substitutes for hotkeys, the sheer amount of options may prove to be overwhelming to some. Still, having everything a right-click or four away is a nice feature. It’s odd, then, that Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition does not allow you to interact with any of the displays with the left-mouse button: if you click on a display, nothing happens, so you must resort to the use of keyboard controls.
Like a lot of flight simulations, Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition features a lot of freaking keys and it takes a while to remember how to do things. The lack of mouse interaction I mentioned earlier makes life a lot more difficult; pausing the game to look up a command is a sadly frequent occurrence. Forward motion is done with the thrust; choosing a key 0 through 9 will pick a percentage of thrust and holding down W will add afterburners. Having a key that just enabled full power would be much better than having the hold down W for minutes at a time. Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition does support joystick and mouse control in addition to the keyboard, so some of the key-pressing issues could be alleviated. I prefer mouse control, and Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition allows you to switch between mouse selection and mouse control with a simple press of the ALT button. One thing that does take some of the arc out of the learning curve is the all-inclusive auto-pilot. The on-board computer can handle pretty much everything on its own, from navigating to and in planets to actual combat. This is a very nice feature, since simple actions require ridiculous command combinations. For example, to track a missile on radar, you have to enable the VDD with the V key, cycle to the RTM mode, press 7, then press F10. Most games would simply bind it to a single button press, but not Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition. You really need to dedicate a lot of time to learning the controls in order to make the game playable.
The universe of Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition uses real-life space locations, which is pretty cool. The universe is also quite large and detailed, creating a believable environment in which to blow things up. The fact that planets have orbital and surface features (and usually an assortment of them) is pretty impressive. This is one of the highlights of the game, and the plausible setting creates, well, a plausible setting. Each of the planets in Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is connected by jump gates, wormholes, or flux fields (which actually transport you to a random exit point…how thoughtful!). Navigating to far-away lands can be as simply as selecting a target and having the auto-pilot hyperspace to it. You can also manually set up waypoints yourself, a process that I can’t get to work completely. What you need to do is press “add,” pick a type (proceed to next waypoint, intercept, strike, patrol, search and destroy, suppress enemy defenses, combat air patrol, escort, defend, mine sweep, repeat actions, wait, halt, or land), and select the location. So I did that and my ship said the waypoints don’t exist. Sigh. Maybe I didn’t save them or something, but neither the manual nor the tutorial make the process any clearer. Planets can be entered so that you can blow things up on the surface (there are a lot of targets to choose from) and you can dock (or, you know, blow up) space stations for repairs and rearming purposes.
Combat in Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is pretty straightforward: pick a target, pick a weapon, and fire. You can set up a list of priority targets to filter out friendly or non-threatening objects. Since the game is called Galactic Command, you will normally be commanding a squad of pilots. You can give them attack orders in addition to all those waypoint orders I mentioned earlier. The AI and enemy pilots behave intelligently enough, although most of the NPC actions are heavily scripted. The game’s physics are seemingly accurate and produce some interesting dogfights. Once you learn the game completely, Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition can be fun, but getting past that initial curve requires a lot of effort that most people probably won’t bother exerting.
IN CLOSING
Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is a game designed for experienced players who don’t mind a steep learning curve and lots of terminology. You will have to commit the various key commands to memory (or have a list of them handy) in order to play, since most of the interactions can’t be made with the mouse, outside of selecting objects and systems. It’s sad that Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is limited to the campaigns and multiplayer that nobody uses; a dynamic universe that gave the player more freedom would be much more preferable. Plus, it would take a lot of the sting out of the tedious tutorial. Offsetting this is the quality auto-pilot system that behaves very intelligently. The graphics should look better and the backgrounds are distracting. Those who have played any of the previous 3000AD games will be more accustomed to Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition, but the new players I think the game was geared towards will be left in the dark. In the end, Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition is more of a slight modification of previous efforts rather than a unique title, and the generally unapproachable gameplay that divides the PC gaming market is still present. Those people who liked other 3000AD games will most likely enjoy Galactic Command – Echo Squad: Second Edition, but if you didn’t enjoy them before, you won’t now. Well, I got through the entire review without mentioning Derek Smart. Wait, does that count?
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Casual Games Slowdown
Notice few exciting games have come out lately? It may be a good thing since the weather is beautiful in many areas of the U.S. and we should be out enjoying it instead of hooked on a game.
Shame on me — I haven’t had the chance to play Dream Chronicles 2. Got busy reviewing other games based on requests from editors and game developers. The weather is just too lovely here in the Dallas area, too. Although, it looks like today is an off weather day, but booked for the day.
Love games — but get fresh air, too, OK? Off to yoga. Namaste.
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Saga Review
Saga, developed and published by Silverlode Interactive.
The Good: Persistent online cities that function when you aren’t actively playing, units gain experience over time, elementary resource management, free to play with purchased boosters to replenish lost troops, PvP combat with organized play features like guilds
The Not So Good: Repetitive quests, bland and restricted combat, resource management is too elementary, outdated graphics, barebones tutorial
What say you? A card-based massively multiplayer real time strategy game that’s more combination than innovation: 5/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
The MMO. Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of gamers more than yet another massively multiplayer online game. While most of these titles have been pegged in the role-playing realm, more recent games have attempted to incorporate different genres as the base of their online worlds. While the real-time strategy game seems to be more includes towards shorter skirmish matches, the possibility of fighting in or for a persistent world is appealing, and that’s where Saga comes in. Saga takes the cards of role-playing games, the city building of, well, city builders, and the tactical strategy of strategy games and puts it in an online world where you can go on single-player quests or engage in player-versus-player duels. Does this mishmash (or, if you prefer, hodgepodge) of different ingredients produce a tasty MMORTS?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
The graphics of Saga are reminiscent of the Total War series, but, unfortunately, they are reminiscent of Shogun: Total War. Well, that might not be fair, but clearly the presentation of Saga is not one of the highlights of the game. While Saga is rendered in 3-D, the environments are bland (but varied). The units have halfway-decent models but they are animated poorly, creating some laughably bad battles where friendly units are swinging their weapons at thin air. The weapon effects can be nice on occasion (especially the spells) but, like the animations, they are repetitive. The large banners that indicate each unit can obscure the field of battle, and the buildings that you will attack use the same design and textures over and over again. Other than the ground textures, there is nothing that differentiates one part of the game world from another. This lack of excitement permeates to the sound design as well. None of the objectives are voiced and each unit uses an annoying canned sound effect that loops frequently. The background music is decent, but the rest of the sound is repetitive and jarring. Now, a lot of these shortcomings can be forgiven since Saga was developed by a small company, but those shallow people who put a lot of emphasis on looks will be clearly disappointed with this game.
ET AL.
Saga combines real-time tactical battles and an online, persistent city. The first thing you’ll do is create a new town by choosing a flag design and which alignment you prefer (light, magic, machines, nature, war). You should choose the theme that you own the most cards for, as Saga’s troops are represented as cards you play during combat, much like a classic role-playing game. New players will start out with a basic deck full of human troops that can be used by any realm. Booster packs can be purchased (for $3) that will give a random set of new cards. While this seems like a good way of doing things, the result is that you will use your human units more since the basic cards come with a lot of those units (about 20). Getting a new card results in getting one new unit and one unit on the battlefield can be easily killed. Thus, it’s very difficult to field an army consisting of only specialized units and still remain competitive. It would be better if a new card gave, say, five units instead of one. Your new town will function online whether you are logged in or not: a neat feature. You start out with one town, but later on you can expand into surrounding territory. The tutorial is short and only covers the battle portion of the game, leaving the city building aspect of Saga to pop-up windows.
Managing your town is akin to a classic city builder. You will need to produce resources (gold, wood, food, stone) in order to afford new buildings. Each of these resources is produced by a specific building (mines or farms) and getting your basic economy going allows you to construct defensive structures and more advanced buildings that enable more advanced units. All of the construction in Saga takes place in real time, so if you queue a new building it will be finished in a couple of hours (a good thing to do before you logoff for the night). Your peasants, the population of which is dictated by the number of houses present in your settlement, can be assigned to gather resources at resource-producing buildings, police against attacks, or pray to increase your god favor (used to cast spells during battles). You can also tax your population to increase gold income, but make sure you are feeding them well enough or they will leave your establishment. Sustaining a balanced economy is simply a matter of constructing the right buildings and the process is very straightforward and almost trivial. If you are short on resources, you can trade in the market, exchanging gold for the other commodities. You can also offer unneeded cards to other players; since each city focuses on only one of the realms, all of the other cards you own are extraneous and can be exchanged for more appropriate cards to round out your army. Unfortunately, most of the proposed trades in the market are for single cards and you’ll have to scroll through thousands of trades to find an appealing choice. Like most online games, players can organize themselves into guilds to increase plunder gained from victories and battle against other guilds for supremacy. Towns developed by other players can be raided as well. The city management aspect of Saga is a good distraction from the quests and battles. While it would not be enough to function as a stand-alone game, running your town is a welcome feature to the game.
Most of your time will be spent completing quests, as they are a way of getting small amounts of resources and giving experience to your troops (experience can also be gained through training but it’s very expensive). Before you enter a battle, you should organize your army. You are limited (by your overall experience level) in the number of troops you can deploy at once and how many total troops you can bring along as reserves. The cap is very small when you start out, so you’ll only be able to field about three units and bring around 20 total. As you can imagine, this severely limits your strategic options and makes the combat for new players quite bland. Units can be outfitted with weapons and armor you have collected in quests, although not all weapons can be used by all troops. The items give small attack or defense ratings that make a small difference in combat.
The quests in Saga have repetitive goals (either kill everything or capture buildings after killing everything). The quests are different for each realm, however, and the difficulty seems to match well with the level the game suggests. You can replay levels on more difficult settings (silver and gold levels); replays involve more powerful enemies but more desirable loot. While replaying a quest does sound quite repetitive, new quests are unlocked frequently enough (assuming you keep winning) where it’ll be a while before you need to cycle through them again. The quest map shows the locations of new quests, but it takes some time to find the actual locations since the bronze color for bronze quests camouflages into the color of the map; a simple list of quests would be quicker to navigate.
The combat in Saga is pretty typical for a strategy game: pick a formation, move troops around, and attack. Each unit (which is actually a group of individual units, much like the Total War series) can be assigned a formation that is designed to defend against specific attacks. For example, melee defense will grant increased defensive ratings against melee troops, but then units will be susceptible to ranged attacks. Because of this trade-off, it’s better to have a mixed set of troops attack enemy units so they cannot take advantage of formations. Flanking is also a desirable maneuver: units that are surrounded will suffer exaggerated morale hits and subsequently die more quickly. The AI in Saga is very basic: it sends troops directly at you and occasionally uses a flanking maneuver. Of course, the combat in Saga isn’t exactly the most advanced in the world, but the AI is easily defeated if they have comparable troops. Later quests will prove to be more difficult as the AI gets more (both in terms of quantity and quality) troops and you’re stuck with the same ones since the booster packs only give one or two useful troops each. You’ll get to the point where you simply can’t win, and you’ll have to replace defeated troops with new booster troops and eventually fall behind the curve. Not helping this fact is the watch towers that populate most maps are very, very powerful. They, like most buildings, have high health and it’s easier to capture the structure than to destroy it. While you are capturing it, however, your units are taking damage and the watch towers can easily annihilate entire squads if they consist of 5 or less units. Beating the AI and winning a mission but losing because of watch towers is not very enjoyable, and I’ve lost a number of missions simply because of this. Troops die very easily; I would guess this is on purpose, since you’ll need to spend more money on booster packs (the game has no monthly fee, so this is where the income is derived). You can play human opponents in player-versus-player battles where you take on their town. The game doesn't tell you opponent's level when joining a match so you can easily be outmatched and lose a lot of troops. Still, the PvP battles are more interesting since humans (generally speaking) perform more intelligently than the computer.
IN CLOSING
Saga is a good idea and the potential is there, but the game just isn’t fun enough due to a slow start and random (and inadequate) troop recruitment. The initial unit limits make all of the battles small, uninteresting skirmishes. Booster packs are a good idea, but you get so many useless cards and the trading interface is poorly organized. I like the city building mode, as its serves as an entertaining distraction and also an important battle element when PvP contests are fought. The strategic controls are clearly designed for novice players, as simple formation stances are the only components to choose from. Winning a battle seems to be somewhat reliant on luck, as you must deploy appropriate troops since you are very limited in your selection. You could do a better job countering enemy units if you were given a bigger selection to start out with: three units is not exactly an imposing force and doesn’t lend itself to advanced tactical maneuvers or strategic planning. Since the game relies so heavily on getting the right random cards, you really need to sink a lot of time and/or money in Saga to make the game fun. Once you have played the game for a while, Saga does get enjoyable when you start fielding a lot of varied units, but this does take a while. Saga is geared towards novice players (not that there is anything wrong with that) with simplified combat and simplified city management, so more experienced gamers will likely grow bored of this title before the game becomes more interesting later on. Saga is one of those games that sounds good on paper, but a couple of design decisions make the overall product less fun.
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PC Game Review Magic Seeds
Magic Seeds does not copy Alice Greenfingers or Plant Tycoon. Rather it crosses the two games. Players plant, grow and sell seeds as in Alice Greenfingers and they cross seeds to grow more expensive plants like in Plant Tycoon.
Fortunately, the game doesn’t involve dealing with equipment or digging. Simply click the flower so Jane puts her gardening skills to work in planting and cultivating. While Jane may not mess with equipment and actual digging, the tasks turn into a dance of digging and weeding with a break for selling plants to get needed funds for buying bigger ‘n better gardening supplies, or adding on to Jane’s growing home.
Plant Tycoon has a massive list of plants to cross and create. Not so in Magic Seeds that only uses eight plants to grow ten for a simpler breeding experience. Players aim to build Jane’s house, but it takes a long time to do it as the price of the house climbs faster than gas prices.
Chaining — or rather clicking ahead to complete tasks — works… sometimes. Jane doesn’t always do what you want her to do or doesn’t do it. When she makes a wrong move in picking up plants, there’s no way to know what they are unless you put them down on an unused flowerbed.
Not only does the game move slow even with speedy shoes and fast growing fertilizer, the dialog has grammar errors including in the explanation of Normal and Arcade modes. Arcade mode involves fulfilling the store’s orders.
Magic Seeds could stand some more cultivating to flesh it out. Nonetheless, it entertains for a few hours especially in completing the crossing chart so you know what seeds make what.
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Audiosurf Review
Audiosurf, developed by Dylan Fitterer and published on Steam.
The Good: Great use of user-supplied music, addictive gameplay, adapts most genres of music well, simple controls, essentially infinite replayability, online scoreboard, ludicrously low price
The Not So Good: No playlist options
What say you? Just listening to music is passé once you experience this fantastic puzzle game: 8/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
MP3s have certainly thrust the music industry head-on (apply directly to the forehead) into the computer industry. With people able to fit thousands of songs on their computer and portable players, the delivery of music has changed from dingy stores to futuristic online marketplaces. If everyone has all of this music on their PC, why not make a game around it? We’ve seen music-based games that have utilized licensed (or emulated) tracks in the console Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, but not really anything that took the consumer’s already existing collection. Well, here comes Audiosurf, a game that does the thing I was just talking about. Coincidence? I think not! Audiosurf adapts sound files and converts them into a puzzle game. Does it make for a fun fusion of music and gaming?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Audiosurf uses a simple 3-D setting, but the way it incorporates your music makes the graphics compelling. Each song is converted into a track: uphill sections represent slow parts of the song, and downhill sections represent fast tempo. You are collecting “cars” (represented by simple colored blocks) along the way in order to make matches and score points. While the game may not be a technical marvel, Audiosurf certainly does a good job matching the road, the background, and special effects to the current song. The view also adjusts to which lane your ship is in, making the game easier to navigate. Audiosurf looks no worse than your standard matching game, and while the simple 3-D interface may not have the background detail that music games such as Guitar Hero have, most of the time you aren’t paying attention to what’s happening away from the track anyway. The game does not like to be alt-tabbed (it takes a couple of seconds for the graphics to reset) and the menu system is rudimentary at best, but Audiosurf functions well enough. Audiosurf contains the best soundtrack you can imagine: yours!!!!(LOL!!!)! Being a release on Steam, the game also comes with the soundtracks for essentially all of the Half-Life games. While most of these songs are basically generic background music, you do get the increasingly famous “Still Alive” song from the end credits of Portal, which everyone seems to have an unhealthy obsession with.
ET AL.
Audiosurf is a puzzle game that uses sound files to generate each level. You pilot a ship at the bottom of the screen and capture colored blocks as they come towards you, trying to make matches of three or more. The abilities of your craft depend on the mode you choose. Mono has you collecting all colored blocks and avoiding grey blocks, and the rest of the modes have you matches blocks of different colors. Pointman is the classic matching mode, Vegas allows you to randomly arrange your blocks (to potentially get matches), Eraser lets you choose a single color to remove, and Pusher picks up blocks and puts them in another row. There is also a Double Vision mode for two players on the same computer (no online play). The tutorial does a decent job teaching the mechanics to new players, though I found the constant interruptions to be jarring (bordering on annoying). It probably would have been better to display hints in the corner of the screen instead of pausing the action every five seconds or so during the tutorial. Still, it’s not like Audiosurf is the most complicated game in the world to play. The control sensitivity is adjustable, and playing the game with the mouse is the preferred method, giving the user precise control over their ship.
Audiosurf lets you choose any song in MP3, CD, OGG, or iTunes format (though iTunes songs must be burned before they can be played…they can’t let us actually own our music). It then converts the song into a level, where the blocks match the lyrics and instruments and the undulations of the track match the tempo. Most songs work very well in the game: there is certainly a difference in playing slow versus fast songs. Songs that have mixed or well-defined rhythms work really well, and it feels like you are actually playing the song. There are basic difficulty settings that adjust the available of “emergency lanes” and how many notes are converted to blocks, and some songs are just more difficult than others. Scoring is done by making matches; obviously the more blocks that are matched, the higher your score will climb. Blocks gathered during fast song portions (red and yellow) are worth more points than the boring blocks (blue and purple). To help you out, the multi-colored modes come with a number of power-ups along the way that can fill in the grid with a single color, attempt to make matches automatically, or otherwise help you out on your quest for musical dominance. You will also get very important bonuses at the end of a song if you finish with no blocks in your tray, collecting almost all yellow or red blocks (fast song parts), or not hitting a grey block in Mono mode. I’ve found that the points compare well across the different game modes, and it’s just up to you as to which style is most desirable. Personally, I like the straightforward Mono modes: if it’s colored, get it.
Audiosurf keeps a high score list of every song ever played. If you are good enough, you might get the global high score for a particular song, and the game will e-mail you if your score is ever beaten by another player. The in-game scoreboards also display the path and time of other players to prevent cheating (suspicious high scores can be reported with a simple mouse click). Audiosurf also keeps track of the most popular songs, and you can search songs by artist name as well. Audiosurf certainly is an addictive game, and you’ll certainly want to try out most (if not all) of the games in your library to see how they play. Then you’ll want to perfect your technique and own all of the high score. Checking your e-mail and seeing that someone has beaten your score on your song results in immediate retribution. There is always time for one more song, even if it’s past your bedtime.
IN CLOSING
In short (too late), Audiosurf is brilliant. It has essentially infinite replay value thanks to the ability to easily import user content with great results. All genres of music I have played (from ska-punk to Old MacDonald Had A Farm) have translated well, with changes in tone and individual beats being emulated convincingly. The controls are tight and the mechanics are easy to learn. The system requirements are so low that almost everyone can enjoy this game. Audiosurf makes you want to play some of those old CDs you have and see if others have attempted the same songs. This is one of those games that you can play for five minutes, but then five minutes turns into a couple of hours. There is really only one complaint: the inability to create a playlist. You can do songs from the same folder in order, but there are no other options (like a shuffled list) to keep the music playing. But that’s a very minor complaint in what otherwise is a fantastic game. Do you like music? Do you like computer games? (Do you like nachos?) Then get Audiosurf! Oh, and it’s only $10. I got far more than $10 worth of enjoyment out of this quality game. Audiosurf is well worth your time and money.
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Draft Day Sports: College Basketball Review
Draft Day Sports: College Basketball, developed and published by Wolverine Studios.
The Good: Improved interface puts more information on one screen, enhanced player relationships and communication both on and off the court, play editor, better game day graphics, dirty tactics available for recruiting, even more historical stats
The Not So Good: Essentially no autosaving, hokey sound effects, needs more positive player interactions, more default plays would be nice, interested recruits need to be really interested
What say you? A deep sports management game gets needed upgrades in key areas: 7/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
It’s that time of the year again: when your carefully crafted brackets go down in flames (except for mine, of course). Yes, we are in the midst of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, where sixty-five teams vie for ultimate supremacy. Of course, I know I could do a better job than any of those highly paid coaches in reaching the Final Four, and that’s why we have Draft Day Sports: College Basketball. In this sequel to personal favorite Total College Basketball, you take the helm as the head coach of any of the 337 Division I-A schools. While Total College Basketball was a quality product, there is always room for improvement and enhancement; will Draft Day Sports: College Basketball expand upon the original enough to make us go back to the court?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Draft Day Sports: College Basketball looks like Total College Basketball got two additional years of work, which is essentially what happened. While this game is a management title, so you won’t be expecting enhanced 3-D graphics with realistic sweat dripping off the players, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball does feature some nice touches for the genre. The actual games have been improved upon, featuring more detailed player icons that are sized according to the player attributes. Also new is a health bar to give a good indication of exhausted athletes. The court can now take up the entire screen, provide more detail than the more simplified version present in Total College Basketball. The other main area of improvement has to do with the user interface: the developers have put more information on a single screen, taking advantage of higher resolutions and using the extra room to reduce the amount of page switching from the previous title. One of the problems with Total College Basketball was that you had to scour several different pages to do simple actions (especially during recruiting); this is greatly alleviated in Draft Day Sports: College Basketball. This game is much easier to handle and I’ll never go back to the “old” interface. As for the sound, it is not very good. There are only very basic effects during games, and they are very repetitive. While the ambiance is good, the whistles and crowd reactions all use the same sound over and over again, making the games much less realistic. Also, the opening theme music is an amateurish college band theme that is annoying the first time you hear it (the horns are not in sync with the rest of the band). It would be nice to customize which ones to use rather then turning them all on or off, since some of the sounds are useful during games, but the effects are very repetitive and the theme music is downright annoying. It’s an all-or-nothing affair with the single sound option. The sound notwithstanding, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball features an appropriate level of upgrades in terms of presentation from the original game.
ET AL.
Since Draft Day Sports: College Basketball shares a lot of similarities with Total College Basketball, you should familiarize yourself with that review first (there will be a quiz on it later) since I will mostly talk about the improvements (or lack thereof) present in this iteration. Creating a new single player or multiplayer game (yeah, online leagues) is generally the same, although there are a couple of new options available. You can now enable illegal recruiting: offering bribes to low-income recruits may reel them in, but repercussions (like getting fired) may be felt down the road. Draft Day Sports: College Basketball gives you the options to create pretty much any league you would like: importing roster files, allowing for conference team movement, limiting the ratings you are able to access to make success more realistic (and difficult), and allowing underclassmen to declare for the pro draft. Speaking of the pro draft, you can export a draft class to use in the professional version of this game (coincidentally titled Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball). Draft Day Sports: College Basketball features fictitious teams, but you can download real teams that users have made. It should also be noted that Draft Day Sports: College Basketball doesn't include the CBI, but nobody cares about that third-tier tournament anyway. Your coaching avatar can be assigned levels of ambition, academics, discipline, and integrity. You can also customize your skill ratings (offense, defense, recruiting, scouting, developing), or choose a level of proficiency (from low-level coach to elite) and randomize the distribution. Depending on how good you are, you are then presented with a list of schools you can coach and the game begins. Each school has different goals (from winning ten games to getting a national championship) that are realistic for each situation. You can now create protégés to control after your coach retires/dies, letting you play in the same universe for longer periods of time.
Draft Day Sports: College Basketball gives you a bevy of information in the form of numerous reports and stats. Most of the in-game action can be done through your office. New features include the ability to call recruits and players and the play editor. The level of interaction has been increased: now you can call up any prospective or current player and discuss team priorities, game roles and strategies, academics, and behavior. These options give you more direct control over the course of your program, but not too much control where the element of surprise is removed. Handing down a suspension for behavior or telling a recruit to study more to avoid academic penalties increases your responsibilities and makes playing Draft Day Sports: College Basketball more satisfying. Most of the call options are negative, however, so I would like to have more positive interactions (such as praising a player for winning a weekly award, for example). Also new is the ability to design your own plays. While I have almost no idea how real basketball plays should be run, people more familiar with the X’s and O’s of the hard court should be able to take advantage of this new tool that seems to work well. Because of my novice experience in this area, I would have liked the developers to include some plays beyond the basic ones that were also included in Total College Basketball. The rest of the office options let you check out the upcoming games, see the current news (which includes polls and bubble team reports), pre-season magazines, receive pertinent e-mail, and check out any previous games. One option I would like to have is to automatically save your progress at the beginning of each week. You game is auto-saved only twice during the year, and I would like the choice to increase this frequency, since the occasional crash can serious hamper your day if it happens right after you beat a top 25 team and right before you save.
The first thing you’ll be doing is recruiting, and the interface has been greatly improved. Instead of having to switch between five displays (how annoying that was), everything is on one master screen. You can also scroll through the recruits with the keyboard and quickly put them on your call list with a simply hot-key. While Draft Day Sports: College Basketball should save recruiting display settings from the last time you used the screen (do I really have to select “national” players that are “on call list” every single week?), the interface is so much better this time around and I don’t dread the nuances of recruiting anymore. I would also like the “interested” option to only include players that have you in their top-10 choices; how it is now requires a lot of work seeing who you have a shot at. In addition, the call options let you plan your pitches when you visit recruits much better. Most of the league options remain the same: see the current standings, statistical leaders, historical stats, and even search through the records. Player information sheets have been upgraded with star ratings, which prove to be very useful in determining the best players on the team (though I would like to be able to sort by them). The remainder of the league and team options are the same as before (great): Draft Day Sports: College Basketball gives you all of the information and options you need to take your program to the next level.
Actually playing a game has seen some improvements. If you chose to simulate the games, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball does an excellent job quickly generating plausible results with believable statistics (even if you don’t have a fast computer); you don’t have to worry about the AI “screwing it up” if you are not there to directly make game-time decisions. In addition to the improved icons I mentioned earlier, you can now have the court display take up the entire screen or half it with the statistical information. Personally, I like to see the actual numbers for stamina instead of the simple bars under each player, so I normally play with the half-and-half view. The in-game ticker that displays out of town scores makes the games seem more genuine. I still play the game on high speed settings (I find 6 to be slow; I can’t imagine playing at 3 or 1) but 10 is fast enough for getting through boring stretches when you cant’ really do anything. Besides the ability to call plays you have designed in the play editor, you can now motivate individual players or the entire team. The options are basic (scream, concerned, or praise), but they are more than enough to make the game feel more like real coaching. While I certainly like this feature, I would also like to motivate players during media timeouts and not just during the five (ten if you count both teams) team timeouts. Draft Day Sports: College Basketball gives you the strategic options through the play sets, pace, rebounding, and substitutions to tailor your team to your design, and it’s quite fun to guide a program from humble roots to national prominence, and then leave them for a big money contract. Total College Basketball was a quality simulation and Draft Day Sports: College Basketball is even better: the improvements made with two years of additional development alleviate much of the pains associated with the original game and this iteration is definitely recommended for owners of the previous title. Of course, gamers new to the series have no choice as Total College Basketball is no longer available for sale, but no worries as Draft Day Sports: College Basketball delivers a quality basketball coaching experience.
IN CLOSING
I was initially skeptical of Draft Day Sports: College Basketball, since, on the surface, it appears to be almost identical to Total College Basketball. But, the more you play it, the more the improvements come through and ultimately make for a much more polished and playable game. Putting more features on one screen is a very welcome feature, making the game not annoying to control. The sheer amount of teams makes for high replay value, and online leagues sweeten the deal even more. Giving the coach more direct interaction with players is also nice, letting you suspend problem players and tailor offensive strategies for star players. Draft Day Sports: College Basketball throws even more data at you, but all of the information is accessible and organized well. There are a couple of small areas that could be improved (autosave frequency, positive interactions, more plays) but these issues are so minor that I can’t resist the urge to grant this game the seal of approval. People who don’t like text-based sports management games won’t have their mind changed, but Draft Day Sports: College Basketball is still a great title. If you like college basketball or quality management games, then you can’t go wrong with Draft Day Sports: College Basketball.
Oh yeah, the quiz on the Total College Basketball. OK, take out a sheet of paper and put your name in the upper right-hand corner. Question number one:
The “evil empire” I refer to in the review is:
(a) Electronic Arts
(b) Rosie O’Donnell
(c) FEMA
(d) the ASPCA
Answers are on the back.
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Game du Jour: Week of 2008-03-17
Remember the deal is good on Game du Jour for one day only.
17 March: 40% off on Slingo Quest
18 March: 50% off on Pontifex
19 March: 50% off on Diner Dash
20 March: 50% off on Rummi
21 March: 50% off on Eleven
22 March: 50% off on Putt Mania
23 March: 50% off on Magic Stones
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DarkSide Review
DarkSide, developed and published by Pi Eye Games.
The Good: Innovative orbital combat, multiple game modes, varied game objectives, lots of action, plentiful power-ups
The Not So Good: Can get repetitive
What say you? A hectic space action game that takes an orbital approach: 6/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
Classic arcade shooters were presented in 2-D, mainly because that’s all the processors at the time could handle. Blowing up wave after wave of enemy forces has fully made the move into a three dimensional realm, though a lot of the core gameplay remains the same. Most contemporary arcade shooters still maintain simple 2-D geometry with infused 3-D graphics, not really making the jump to a full 3-D game. Certainly few games (if any) take advantage of orbital dynamics, but with games such as Super Mario Galaxy, the door is wide open to restrict the action to a spherical surface. DarkSide is one of those games, a classic shoot-things arcade title but with a twist: you are bound to the asteroid or planet each level takes place on, and so are your enemies and weapons. Will this unique take on the classic shooter game prove to be entertaining?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
The graphics of DarkSide are pretty good. The asteroids you orbit are nicely textured, and the models of the various objects you protect and alien aircraft you fight are well done. The weapons effects are convincingly powerful: when tons of missiles and lasers fill the screen, the pure destruction at your disposal shines through. The setting is generally dark (that’s the whole DarkSide thing) so it can be difficult to spot certain objects, but I think this is by design. It is also tricky to determine whether objects on the horizon are power-ups or enemy ships, since they both appear to be flat when viewed from the side. Other than those small issues, however, DarkSide is a visually striking game. On the sound side of things, you are going to get appropriate effects and background music: pretty typical stuff for the genre. So overall, DarkSide does not disappoint in its presentation.
ET AL.
DarkSide is a classic 2-D arcade shooter, except the action takes place on a spherical surface. The game features three game modes: a campaign with 100 missions, an arcade mode with a limited number of lives, and a survival mode with infinite enemies. Although each of the missions in the game have the same general objective (shoot stuff), the specifics are different: goals include destroying asteroids, defending power stations or launch pads for a set period of time, or preventing goods from being stolen (like Defender). Controls are done through a combination of the mouse and keyboard: your ship will face towards your cursor, left-click shoots, right-click moves forward, and the WASD keys can be used for strafing. Piloting your ship is straightforward, which is good since DarkSide focuses heavily on combat.
Like any good arcade shooter, DarkSide has copious amounts of enemies to shoot at and lots of weapons to shoot at them with. Defeated enemy units will occasionally drop power-ups that will unlock more nefarious weaponry: 3-way blasters, rear blasters (make your own diarrhea joke here), smart bombs, missile launchers, and powerful lasers. You will also occasionally enjoy extra ammunition as well as shield refills. Each of the weapons has a finite amount of ammunition, so DarkSide isn’t simply holding down the fire button as you fly around: you should actually aim in order to maximize your destruction. While most of the weapons are well-balanced, the lasers are almost too powerful, disposing of enemy units in a matter of seconds (this also conserves ammunition, making lasers last a long time). The asteroids you are defending have terrain and buildings, meaning you will have to take some care piloting around each of the game’s levels as running into solid objects tends to damage your ship (who knew?). Since weapons will orbit around the planet (which is pretty cool), you can accomplish some neat shots from a distance. While DarkSide might not break any new ground in the genre, it is a fun and fast-paced action shooter that provides enough unique thrills to make it a notable title.
IN CLOSING
Is the spherical setting enough to make DarkSide stand out? Actually, yes, it is. If the game were to take place on a conventional 2-D landscape, then DarkSide would just be yet another arcade shooter. But the orbital dynamic of DarkSide makes it somewhat unique, and the varied level design (with obstacles) means games don’t get completely repetitive. Even shooting enemy units has a slice of strategy in it, as conserving ammunition will result in more kills. The controls are very straightforward, and although the mission objectives are constant, you won’t notice much as you are hurling lots of firepower at enemy ships. While DarkSide won’t convert anyone that doesn’t enjoy endless shooting, it is an enjoyable game for fans of the genre that takes advantage of its setting.
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Game du Jour: Week of 2008-03-17
Remember the deal is good on Game du Jour for one day only.
17 March: 40% off on Slingo Quest
18 March: 50% off on Pontifex
19 March: 50% off on Diner Dash
20 March: 50% off on Rummi
21 March: 50% off on Eleven
22 March: 50% off on Putt Mania
23 March: 50% off on Magic Stones
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Game du Jour: Week of 2008-03-03
Remember the deal is good on Game du Jour for one day only.
3 March: 40% off on Cradle of Rome
4 March: 50% off on Liong: The Dragon Dance
5 March: 50% off on Socket Logic
6 March: 50% off on Mahjong Roadshow
7 March: 50% off on Dropheads
8 March: 50% off on Dream Solitaire
9 March: 50% off on Fruits
Game du Jour: Week of 2008-02-25
Remember the deal is good on Game du Jour for one day only.
25 February: 40% off Turbo Subs (Turbo Pizza was a blast.)
26 February: 60% off Casino Blackjack
27 February: 50% off The 80s Game with Martha Quinn (MTV first came to life when I was a teen… oi!)
28 February: 60% off StarMonger
29 February: 50% off RealBall 2
1 March: 50% off Betty’s Beer Bar
2 March: 50% off Treasures of Ra
PlayFirst Deal: Nightshift Code and Chocolatier 2
You can save $7.95 and get The Nightshift Code and Chocolatier 2 for 1200 PlayGold each! Hurry, because the offer ends March 6, 2008, 12:00 P.M., PST!
500??PlayGold is worth $5 with no expiration date.
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PC Game Review Magic Match Adventures
Travel and learn the stories of the kingdoms of Arcania consisting of water, Earth, air, and fire. Reading the stories, however, is difficult because of the text formatting. Whether you’re into stories or the text bugs you, just skip the story and head straight to the Magic Realm.
There in the Magic Realm is the match three game for collecting red potion to fix anything the evil wizard does. We also gather mana for using power ups. After collecting enough red potion, return to the scene where evil cast a spell and see the spell in action. The imps reward you with bonuses to help you in your adventures in defeating the darkest evil.
The match three game grid has at least four different elements and your goal is to destroy the minimum for each element. One calls for 60, another for 40, and two for 25. As you progress, you deal with more elements.
Cradle of Persia players will recognize some similarities in Magic Match Adventures especially in how the elements move. If you make a match from left to right, the entire row or column moves from left to right. You also deal with frozen, locked, and double locked pieces in the form of rocks and volcanoes. Coins, potions, and power ups also count as an element.
Figuring out what each spell / power up does takes experimenting. Plus, only a handful are worth the effort while you want to save points for strategic reasons.
With every kingdom comes a new evil wizard and a Dark-O-Meter counter. The counter shows the number of evil spells needed to stop and duel the evil wizard in a different kind of game.
The duel involves you and the evil wizard taking turns creating matches to get the required elements. The first one to clear all of the elements first wins. Frozen tiles and other barriers don’t appear during the duel, however, evil wizard puts up a few to slow you down.
By the time you figure out the game and its rules, it’s near the end of the adventure. Magic Match Adventureshas 33 levels and doesn’t take long to play compared to the average game. Since it doesn’t have other game modes, players won’t likely want to keep replaying the game except to try to earn all the trophies. This one could use an arcade mode since it has the right elements.
PC Game Review Big City Adventures: Sydney, Australia
In this hidden object game, players seek items shown in the list of things find in a Sydney locale before time runs out. After finding all items, players receive a memento and a postcard with facts related to Australia, its past, and its present. If timed mode is too rushed for you, play relaxed mode and don’t worry about the clock.
A nice improvement lets you read any received postcard. Sometimes I didn’t feel like reading postcards and just wanted to play — so I skipped through them knowing I could go back and read them anytime.
Hidden object games often re-use the same scenes. Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia comes with 25 unique scenes. Memorizing the location of objects won’t do much good in this one — a good thing. Objects often don’t show up in the same places you’ve seen before making it harder to find them each time you counter.
The game progresses from easy to hard at a steady pace. Experienced players may not feel challenged by the clock or finding objects for half the game, but the game will grow more challenging. Don’t let the game fool you — it will get you later.
Big City Adventure: San Francisco tokens and “Quick Find Bonuses” return in this sequel. Hidden tokens appear in every scene to award players with hints, points, and adding clock time.
Like the original, this one lets you know visually when you click an invalid item. But it also misses a valid click on occasion and doesn’t like you quickly clicking multiple valid objects in a row. It needs to focus on taking one item away before the next one.
Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia leaves little room for flexibility in moving around. The game starts with traveling to a spot for finding hidden objects, playing a mini-game to find out the next destination, and repeat. It may bore some while others will appreciate not figuring out what to do next.
The music and graphics remain sharp as the original. However, the characters need improving. I thought they were corny looking in the original and they still look the same in this one with two new friends — a koala and a wallaby. With beautiful scenes, it’s surprising the characters don’t look more natural.
PC Game Review Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper
Where am I going with this? Crosswords meet science fair and Peanuts look-alike characters in Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper! I’m not shouting — it’s the game title. Although the game deserves a shout of excitement as it falls neither in the hidden game nor time management game genre. So what makes this crossword game different? Strong story, loveable graphics and characters, original power ups, and a Hangman slash Wheel of Fortune style mini-game.
Friends work together to create a word machine for the science fair project. Somehow a thief breaks their project and runs away with the their machine and its parts. The kids chase the thief who drops parts around town passing playgrounds, parks, the beach. The gang creates words to collect all of the the parts in every stage.
Create words with at least three letters from the nine letters shown on top of the Scrabble-like grid. Parts rest on different squares of the grid and enemies try to block your way. When you enter a word, a bubble appears with its definition.
Power ups and combos help create words when you’re stuck, jump to a further away square, get a joker, electrify tiles. Even with all of this support, don’t think this makes for an easy game. Besides, it makes a great game for families to play together even with pre-schoolers.
Two mini-games change the pace that fit with the story. Upon spotting the thief, the kids a game where they race to pick up more parts than the thief to win the stage. Before trading kids, the currently on-call kid plays “The Challenge,” a Hangman type of mini-game. The winner gets a page of the machine plans. Just like Hangman, a blank word with a couple of letters filled in appears along with the word’s definition for a clue. Normal game mode uses harder words and clues, but other than that — there’s little difference between Easy and Normal modes.
Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper! comes with 42 stages in adventure mode. Quick game mode comes with five games where you can play with three of the five kids. These last longer since they contend with more parts and challenges. I’d like to see a game mode without the adventure that lets you pick which kid you want to play. Supposedly, more levels are available on the Internet, but nothing shows up on the referenced Web site.
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Quick Review Slingo Quest Hawaii
Players travel from island to island in Quest mode similar to many of the time management games where trails contain dots indicating your progress. Classic Plus mode works like arcade mode where players repeatedly play the game.
New features include:
- Tricks that come with powers you can use before spinning.
- Game modes including Speed Slingo, Volcano Slingo, and Special Shape Boards (The game comes with two different game modes: Classic and Quest. These modes occur as you play).
- Power ups such as Power up Vision (see through the numbers), Power Shots for matching five cells in one shot, and Tiki Jokers that create Slingo from one match.
- Collection of Hawaiian postcards (also known as trophies).
Let me share a lesson I learned the hard way when using Super Jokers first so you don’t waste them like I did. Super Jokers can clear any number on the grid whether they’re in the same column or not while Jokers can only clear items in the same column. The first click applies the Super Joker (unless the number is one of the selected numbers) before applying any Jokers.
Note: Quick reviews are based on playing one hour of the game.
PC Game Review Magic Farm
If you’ve played Bloom Busters or Grimm’s Hatchery— you’ll notice some similarities. However, I’d say this one offers more adventure and variety than Bloom Busters. Grimm’s Hatchery runs a different type of business and both games have features the other doesn’t have.
The game brings many features that you can’t say it’s another clone with a different theme. In fact, it has its own special charm because of the dragon help mate named Robin. The girl (whose shoes we fill) in the game has no name.
The amazing Robin does as many tasks as we do and does a better job of it than other games with a helper. Robin rarely clashes into our character and works hard. As the dragon gains experience, his skills improve making him faster and stronger in doing tasks.
It’s nice having company on their travels from farm to farm where they also discover new plants and battle more aggressive bugs and monsters. The two start with a journey to find the girl’s missing parents. Along the way, she needs to earn money, which she does by raising and selling plants.
The pair also meet people from the towns — some nice and some not so nice. The town’s folk provide tips, demand bribes, and assign quests. It only takes about half of the game before the pair finds her parents. The rest of the game involves quests where the girl receives instructions from the locale’s people.
As the girl and Robin find or buy new farms, the plants become more expensive and exotic. The cheapest plant costs $20 while the more expensive ones run over $400. Plants also evolve into two more advanced plants that a light plant (yes, like a light from a candle) starts orange and then produces blue flames and the most expensive is a pink diamond.
The girl makes more money when she sells the flowers in the Flower Shop as bouquets instead of singles. So she could sell a bouquet of three for $30 as opposed to selling them singly for $5 each — that’s $15 more.
While the Flower Shop starts as a cool feature, it turns tedious by the time the game reaches the halfway point. Of course, you can work faster selling the flowers as singles, but then it slows down profits and some things call for big bucks.
The game moves slowly in the beginning because raising money takes time. in its first hour or so. Furthermore, Robin and the girl have to buy supplies every time they find a new farm. Count on surprises in the adventure — it’s these and the quests that make the game engaging and enchanting.
The game has plenty of surprises along the way. No matter how much money you have, be ready to start over. To divulge more details would spoil the fun. It’s the quests and surprises along the way that stir curiosity and captivate players.
The RPG part comes in with the girl and Robin having three skills each. Their skills grow over time as they gain experience allowing them to work faster, sell plants for higher prices, and buy plants for less.
Game du Jour: Week of 2008-03-10
Remember the deal is good on Game du Jour for one day only.
10 March: 40% off on Bookworm Deluxe
11 March: 50% off on Bridge Baron 18 Express Edition
12 March: 50% off on Diner Dash
13 March: 50% off on Star Blaze
14 March: 50% off on Azangara
15 March: 70% off on Jane’s Hotel
16 March: 50% off on Action Solitaire
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Spuds Review
Spuds, developed and published by Bog Turtle Games.
The Good: Challenging strategic gameplay, very lengthy and detailed tutorial, well-designed user interface with easy-to-use commands, lots of weapons and behaviors to choose from, good sense of humor
The Not So Good: No skirmish maps or level editor (beyond the training ground), no manual, correctly programming units can be tricky
What say you? A thought-provoking strategy game that requires you to program the AI: 6/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
One of the hardest things to do in computer gaming is to program a convincing artificial intelligence opponent. Making the CPU behave like a human is one of the hallmarks of a well-designed game. Of course, life would be a lot easier if developers left the programming up to the end user, and that’s what Spuds has done. There apparently have been games that have done this in the past (though I am not familiar with any of them), but combining strategy and puzzle gameplay elements is an interesting proposition. But if the game is too much like actual programming, then even a novel idea would fall flat. Is Spuds a French fry of victory, or a baked potato of defeat?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Spuds is in 3-D, but you won’t really notice unless you zoom in really far. There are some aspects of the game that are detailed, such as the spud models and the weapons fire. However, the game world is quite bland with very low-resolution textures and archaic rocks and trees. The spud models almost look out of place since they look so much better than the environment they traverse through. That said, the game is functional and pretty easy to handle, since you don’t have to worry about rotating the camera since it is fixed in one of three positions (top-down, isometric, ground-level). The game’s overall theme is very reminiscent of Dodge That Anvil!, with a slight cartoon feel to the design. The sound fares better: while the battle sounds are pretty generic, every tutorial instruction (and there are a lot of them) is voiced. This is pretty impressive, as a lot of big-budget games don’t include complete voice acting. I always like to hear the directions while I am reading them, so this feature is appreciated. In addition, the avatar in the game giving the instructions matches the instructions with his mouth animations, something a lot of big-budget games also miss. So while the graphics of Spuds are unimpressive as a whole, there are a couple of nice touches present in the game that shows care was put into the presentation.
ET AL.
Spuds contains a very lengthy single-player campaign that contains tutorial missions that teach you everything about the game, one new concept at a time. The first thing you’ll notice is the sense of humor: from the loading screen (referring to the game’s “spiffy weapons” and “technically unbelievable arena”) to the in-game theme, Spuds certainly has a playful atmosphere. Spuds has the most comprehensive tutorial I can remember, introducing the user to each new concept slowly through the campaign and giving fully-voiced instructions. For the non-tutorial missions, you will design spuds in the training ground (more on that process later) and then select your units and beginning formation for the upcoming mission. After they beam down to the planet surface, you have no control over your troops and you have to rely on your programming and planning skills. Spuds also comes with online play: one-on-one deathmatches using spuds you have created during the single-player campaign. You can play over a LAN or register your server for matchmaking purposes.
Most of your time will be spent in the training ground designing spuds. The interface is great: mouse-driven with clear icons. There will be no typing of commands in Spuds, as all of your behaviors are programmed using the mouse and clicking on icons and locations. For each spud, you will choose their chassis, weapon, and various behaviors they will exhibit around specified objects. The selection of weapons is intended to cover all possible enemy encounters: long-range lasers, short-range shotguns, suicide bombers, flamethrowers, and field generators. After choosing a weapon, you’ll need to dictate what your spud will do. You can set general movement commands or actions to perform around specified objects like trees, rocks, and enemy units. Actions include firing, turning, and moving. You can also spell out orders for different terrain (grass, swamp, lava). The combination of all these things makes for an entertaining game. There are so many combinations you can make that the possibilities are essentially infinite. For example, you can make a missile launcher spud that will fire upon injured enemy units, move right when they encounter a tree, stop if reloading, and avoid lava by turning around. And this just scratches the surface of what is possible using the flexible command interface. The developers have a particular solution in mind when they design each level (usually the thing they just taught you in the previous tutorial), but there can be alternative ways of completing the objectives. Most of the solutions are intuitive, and difficulty results from forgetting one behavior or choosing the wrong composition of troops for a mission. If you fail, the game will give you vague to specific clues on how to advance through the campaign. You will probably end up with hundreds of spud designs once you have finished with the campaign, and though replay value is pretty low since Spuds lacks skirmish maps, you can program enemies in the training grounds for some interesting scenarios. You can tailor your force even further by choosing upgrades to their stats, although most of the time all of the categories will be maxed out. Still, Spuds is a fun game of experimentation.
IN CLOSING
Spuds provides enough content, through the extensive campaign and plentiful behaviors, to make most strategy fans happy. The gradual method in which Spuds introduces new commands is appreciated, because if a new player encountered all of the orders at the beginning, heads would explode. The comprehensive nature of the tutorials (complete with voiced instructions) makes learning each aspect of Spuds straightforward. The possible designs you can create are varied and allows for multiple solutions for a single puzzle, although the developers clearly have one answer in mind. Once you are done with the campaign, you can enjoy some online gaming or mess around with the training ground; I would like to see a skirmish mode with randomly generated enemies, but that is a small complaint. Overall, Spuds is a solid strategy game that successfully marries diverse gameplay, robust content, and a well-designed interface.
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Circulate Review
Circulate, developed by Pi Eye Games and published by Slave Circus Entertainment.
The Good: High replay value due to multiple winning approaches and numerous obstacles, good tutorials, unique and straightforward gameplay, lots of levels that don’t have to be completed in exact order
The Not So Good: Controls take some practice and aren’t terribly precise, some levels are extremely difficult
What say you? An entertaining gravity-based rotational puzzle game: 6/8
MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
With all of the puzzle games on the market, you really need to have a unique idea in order to differentiate yourself from the crowd. There are tons of match-three titles out there, but more games are adding unique elements to spice up the gameplay. Faster processors have meant more believable physics, and puzzle games are slowly adding realistic gravitation as integral parts of their designs. Add Circulate to that list, a game where you must rotate a level to maneuver objects, kind of like those labyrinth games that make you tilt a maze to guide a ball to the exit, except here the “tilt” is always down. Sounds neat, but is it fun?
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
The graphics of Circulate are basic; that said, they still don’t look too terrible. The various levels have a generic feel that don’t make you immediately think of the game. The levels themselves are easy to navigate, and the colored balls are brightly colored. There are some nice effects in Circulate, such as when objects enter a black hole, but in general the game has a very simple and uninteresting look to it. The sound is similar: basic effects that accompany the in-game action. On the plus side, the entire game is around 30 MB in size, a far cry from the many memory-hungry titles that populate the market. Circulate also performs very well because of the lack of graphical excellence, so everyone should be able to run the game.
ET AL.
In Circulate, you circulate the map (who would have thought?). By doing this, you will (hopefully) match up balls and/or guide them to their goals, all the while avoid (or using) objects along the way. The game comes with 120 levels, including some introductory tutorial levels that introduce new objects one at a time. The game isn’t hard to understand and pretty much everyone will get the hand of it after the first couple of levels. Plus, Circulate gives very explicit directions before each level that lead you in the right direction. The levels provide a good amount of variety over the course of the game, with plenty of dangerous objects intended to impede your success. Depending on how fast you complete each level, you will get assigned a star rating (from one to five). These stars are used to unlock future levels; this means you don’t have to play each level in order and you can skip past a difficult one. This is a very nice feature because a lot of the levels in the game are extremely difficult. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between a five star and a one star rating; I usually end up getting one or the other. It would be nice to actually see the time breaks for each grouping.
Part of the reason Circulate is so difficult is the control scheme. You must hold down the right mouse button and rotate the mouse in a circle in order to rotate the map. This seems pretty intuitive, but I had a really tough time getting the map to do what I wanted. Many times, I would move the mouse to the left or right and it would swing the puzzle in a crazy direction, destroying all of the hard work I had done. Although it might not make much spatial sense, I would much rather be able to move the mouse in one direction and have it keep rotating. For example, moving the mouse continuously to the right would cause the puzzle to rotate clockwise. As it is now, you need to move the mouse in a circular pattern and this simply does not give the user the precision required to finish the game’s more difficult levels. Even though the controls “make sense” in their current arrangement, more options would be nice since I can’t seem to successfully employ the present scheme.
Puzzles in Circulate are mostly populated by balls. You can win each puzzle by guiding the balls to their color-coded container, matching all of the balls of the same color together, or mutually destroying them (in the case of fire and ice). The introductory levels may be simple mazes that only need to be turned to guide the balls to their home, but later levels introduce more objects into the mix. The left mouse button is used to activate objects that may be present, such as magnets that attract metallic balls, bombs, stop signs, and movers that cause balls to follow your mouse. To complicate things even further, you may also have to deal with balls that disregard the laws of gravity. Also, some levels restrict the amount you are able to rotate a level, and crystal sphere can only drop a short distance before breaking. And there are even shapes, doors, black holes, and force fields that can disrupt your plans. Circulate really has a lot of content when it could have stopped with the simple rotation gimmick. Circulate is also one of the most challenging puzzle games I have ever played, so veterans looking for a worthy competitor will not be disappointed. The difficulty may be due, in part, to the iffy controls, but most of it is due to the intricate, but not impossible, level design.
IN CLOSING
If the controls were a bit more polished (or tweaked to my specifications), then I could fully recommend Circulate. I suspect that not everyone will experience the trials I did when dealing with rotating the puzzles, but the inexact nature of the controls contributes to making Circulate more frustrating than it needs to be. Overall, Circulate has all of the ingredients you need for a successful game: a unique idea, lots of objects to provide variety, and tons of levels to play through. I like how the game allows you to skip past annoying levels, which allows me to forgive some of the control issues. Circulate certainly falls into the old cliché of “easy to learn, hard to master.” It’s always nice to play something different that all those click management and match-3 games that populate the puzzle genre, and the rotational mechanics of Circulate certainly are just that. Circulate breathes some fresh air into a typically bland and repetitive genre.
