PC Game Review Zen Fashion

Don’t let the wave of fashion-style games that have come through the ocean of casual games affect your judgment of the latest fashion entry: Zen Fashion. Instead of a running a business style game play, it fashions a game of match three along with a journey through Asia’s world of fashion.

A new Japanese fashion designer explores various Asian cities for eight levels each to learn the intricacies of Japanese design. Match at least three of the same flowers to help the young designer gain experience beginning with her basic designs and advancing to beautiful and detailed designs.

Create matches up/down, left/right, and diagonally. While that sounds too easy, believe me… it’s not after you advance enough levels. The barriers narrow the matching possibilities, lengthening your chances of getting through the level. To complete a level requires clearing all the colored squares with a time limit. As expected of most matching games, later levels have squares that take two, three, or more matches to clear.

Since the game keeps players too busy to notice the shrinking time on the hourglass, it warns players when 30 seconds remain. The game issues another warning at 20 seconds and then counts down from 10. This feature has proven valuable, but it might help to have a warning a little sooner and then another at 20. The countdown just makes a gal panic and give up unless only one piece remains.

Upon completing a level, players pick what new article of clothing to add to their collection. The item comes with two power ups. Zen Fashion comes with six power ups, and although the game introduces each one — players may need to review instructions later when they start needing them. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t come with a Help file. Some like the clock are obvious and others like the “Eye for Fashion” are not. Time and practice will help players discover what each power up does.

Designing 108 new pieces — in the form of making many matches — takes a lot out of a new designer, so take a Zen break and enjoy the gorgeous scenery. A Zen break pauses the game, clears all of the game’s elements, and displays nothing but the serene scene representing the current level’s city. Click anytime to return to the game.

The coolest part of the game is that players can change up the hair style, blouse, and bottoms for hundreds of outfit possibilities. Remember each one comes with two power ups, so coordinate with style and power up in mind. By the way, our designer earns new fashion — real ones based on the styles from the 12 countries albeit with some updates. I’ve never liked playing dress up as a little kid and enjoyed changing the designer’s outfits as she wears them for the upcoming level.

The flowers on the grid change very little — just color variations. Since the backgrounds change with each new city, it would be nice to see the objects also change for variety. The game comes with Adventure mode and Zen mode, which is like adventure without the clock and story. Adventure mode unlocks levels for Zen mode, so you can only play Zen mode as far as you have in timed mode.

Why play Zen mode when you’ve already conquered the level in timed mode? To earn trophies (24 in all) you might not otherwise win in timed mode and to experiment with different styles without the pressure of picking the right power ups or to experiment with power ups so you can finally move on to the next level in timed mode.

The sound effects electrify especially when special pieces come into play and set off some serious action on the grid. If Zen Fashion could walk on the runway in Paris, it would dazzle the fashion industry with its great looks, sharp cut, and new twists. It’ll make a worthy addition to the casual gamer’s wardrobe of games without the high price tag that comes with designer gowns.

Try Zen Fashion.

PC Game Review Hyperballoid 2: Time Rider

I’m trying with all my might to resist saying this, but my willpower went on vacation today. Hyperballoid 2: Time Rider ain’t your daddy’s (or mommy’s for that matter as I played video games as a kid) breakout game. How we’ve come a long way from Breakout and other bland brick breaking games.

Peggle first convinced me breakout games worth playing do exist even for those tired of such games (me included and that goes for arcade, too). Hyperballoid 2 grips from the start with its firecracking special effects, superb graphics, and variety of backgrounds — known as worlds — including ancient, hitech, original, and planets.

When you change worlds, you start a new game. Return to any world and you pick up from where you left off before. Not only does the background in the world represent that world’s theme, but also the arrangement of the bricks. In hitech, the game treats me a UFO flying in and out of the screen.

With 280 different kinds of bricks, it’ll be tough to get bored. There are standard rectangle bricks, rectangle bricks with a circle inside, stone bricks, bricks that detonate when hit. They also disappear and reappear, float, move back and forth, act as barriers.

Elements come flying down like a bridal bouquet for the catching for bonuses. Bonuses expand your paddle, give you multiple balls, shoot flames, shoot cannons. These bonuses have three different colors: green, yellow, red. Just like stoplights, green is good. Red is bad. Yellow — slowing down the ball’s movement, for one — is so so. Slowing down the ball gives you time to move your paddle, but it also makes you impatient waiting for it to do its thing.

The physics of the game work beautifully. Be prepared for balls defying physics as bonuses can turn them into crazy balls doing loopty-loops and other unpredictable moves.

For those who love to design and create, you can edit any of the levels to change them up and create your own to share. But this doesn’t appeal to me — it’s not easy to use and I don’t want to mess up the original settings. The toggles, options, buttons have no labels, so move the mouse pointer over each item to see its tooltip to find out what the item does. Too time consuming.

The game’s mode (easy, normal, hard, expert) is adjustable, but the pop up window that appears at the start for selecting the mode has typos, so it doesn’t make sense. It also takes effort to figure out how to switch modes because this doesn’t appear in the options. Instead, you return to the main menu and click “Other Campaigns.” Here you can download new campaigns like Chinese Zodiac and each new campaign comes with a five star rating system as voted by the community.

Hyperballoid 2 lasts for a long time with over 200 levels to beat. It’s also easy to pick up the game when you haven’t played it for a long time. Hyperballoid 2 is like playing a variety of solitaire games where the rules never change. Superb visuals, diversity of everything, and smashing audio effects (loud, too… had to turn down the settings… way down) will take players out of this world giving them a break from their daily lives for a little while.

Game du Jour: Week of 2008-04-18

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ web site dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. Apr. 21th: 40% off on Yahtzee Texas Hold’Em

Tue. Apr. 22th: 50% off on Dragonmania

Wed. Apr. 23th: 70% off on SkyAces 1918

Thu. Apr. 24th: 60% off on Summer Spin

Fri. Apr. 25th: 50% off on Nanotech

Sat. Apr. 26th: 70% off on Caribbean Pirate Quest

Sun. Apr. 27th: 50% off on Warblade