Jim Hunter
I like games… sometimes.
Flower (PS3)
Mar 10th
The PlayStation Network is quickly becoming one of my favorite things about owning a PS3. No, it’s not because you can play multiplayer titles for free across it, but instead there’s this little outlet called the PlayStation Store that is becoming chock full of games that are creative, entertaining, and buck the status quo by taking chances outside the typical spectrum. For some reason developers feel like they are able to take more risks with PSN titles than on Xbox Live Arcade, and we are better off for it.
Enter Flower. A title developed by ThatGameCompany that is not really much of a game but is a completely engaging experience from start to finish nevertheless. You play as the wind and it is your job to guide a single flower petal throughout five different levels exploring widely ranging landscapes while picking up a swirling train of additional multicolored petals.
Controlling the wind is simple enough. Pressing any button on the PS3 controller initiates your forward flowing breeze, while the SIXAXIS’s motion control is your steering wheel. There’s no arrow pointing you in the direction you’re to go, no heads up display or concrete objectives. Instead, the game encourages you to explore the lush scenery yourself, sometimes floating carefree and whimsically through the air, while other times avoiding potential hazards that could hinder your progress.
Speaking of the lush scenery though, this game is certainly a sight to behold. Showcasing an impressive 200,000 simulated blades of grass on the screen at a given time, there may not be anything that comes close to the visual fidelity of Flower on the PlayStation 3. It is gorgeous and all presented in 1080p. Vibrant colors literally explode from every corner.
When I first started Flower and entered the first level, I spent about 5 minutes just marveling at the beautiful landscape before me with the serene audio lulling me into a conscious trance. When in action, musical tones were provided by the landscape itself and the plethora of flowers that decorate it allowing a dynamic melodic experience that seemed perfectly fitting while swooping down low through the parting waves of grass or soaring high above the game’s majesty.
You can plow through Flower in about two and a half hours if you’d like, possibly less without bothering to really hit up much more than necessary but while some may feel this is a drawback… it is exactly as long as it needs to be. You can lengthen the experience by heading back in to try and unlock all the trophies, which you may just do while showcasing this visual feast to all the visitors to your abode. Flower is also perfectly acceptable as a screensaver.
Its easy to equate this title to poetry or enter it into the ‘games as art’ debate, but it does present a story complete with its own message that will play out over the different levels. It appears to take place within the dreams of different flowers that look out over an urban landscape all day; what you take away is completely up to you.
In general, I’m not a fan of poetry or motion controls but I am a huge fan of Flower. It is a game that any PS3 owner should try, putting a few hours in to get a simple yet beautiful experience. Who knows, you may even come away more enlightened. Without the PSN, this game would not be possible. I can only hope that future entries into this experimental space turn out so wonderfully.
Score: 5 out of 5
The Good
One of the best looking games available for any system
Exudes quality from every single blade of grass
As proficient aurally as it is visually
The Bad
Some may think its a bit heavy handed with its environmentalist message
The Ugly
Industrialism
Savage Moon (PS3)
Feb 17th
Its pretty clear by now that in the future, we’ll have used up all of Earth’s resources at some point and if science fiction has taught us anything, it’s that space has a plethroa of awesome reserves that we can exploit for fun and profit. Of course, along with the limitless caches found in the outer reaches comes the biggest threat to humanity: ALIENS!
In Savage Moon, those aliens take the form of arachnid styled bugs called Insectocytes. These guys just don’t want you touching their stuff and will attack any mining operation that goes up. So, its up to you to build up a defense system that’ll fend off these foes from taking down your factories. How do you do that? By building towers to shoot them of course.
Savage Moon is a Tower Defense game through and through. You have to take your limited resources and plan the best way to defend your base from the rushing horde of squishy bugs by building up towers. Aside from placement, there are two things you’ll need to take into account though when building, and those are money and drop-pods. Basically, you can only build as many towers as your pod allotment, no matter how much cash you’ve got. This may seem like it’s a problem, but it only remains one in the earlier levels. Typically, you’ll run out of money before you run out of pods.
There’s not much here that TD fans haven’t seen before. You’ve got your basic machine guns, anti-air, mortar, lasers, and support towers, all upgradable up to 5 times. Upgrades are shown by the actual tower taking different forms, so you’ll need to memorize those to keep track of which ones have been upgraded how much. This can be a bit frustrating as the changes can be very minor so you end up being better off selecting the tower to see what level it’s at. One handy addition though are the ‘Command Skills’. Utilizing these will give your towers a boost in one of three categories: Damage, Defense, or Credits Gained. These are a great addition as I can’t tell how many times I’ve said “I wish they would do just a bit more damage!” or “I need some more cash.” Additionally, you can pick two at a time lowering the advantage of each, but giving your picks a hair of oomph.
To complicate matters, you’ll only be able to build your towers on certain surfaces. Place them on overlooking cliffs, and you’re pretty safe against most bugs. Place them on the flat plains however and they’ll be susceptible to attacks from the ground forces. In the later levels however, no tower is completely safe as certain larger foes will shoot projectiles to take down your defenses… and herein lies one big issue with the game.
Savage Moon does an OK job introducing you to how to play through the first three levels via a bunch of onscreen text (a narrator would have been nice), but then lets you fend for yourself figuring out what each tower does, which towers have been added to your arsenel, where they are in the build order, and what the different enemies can do as they’re coming at you. Once you figure all that out on your own, you’ll still need to determine how you’re going to lay your towers out. This truly leads to a lot of trial-and-error gameplay.
Maps are laid out in a multitude of different ways and while there’s isn’t a set path for the bugs to attack in, they usually head down the shortest, most unobstructed route. The ground based bugs will come out of cave type structures while winged beasts will fly in through beehive looking capsules. The game sports plenty of different maps for a $10 title (12 in all), but the environments are nothing spectacular.
When all’s said and done, Savage Moon does what it sets out to do. Provide a challenging tower defense game on alien terrain, allowing you to blow up tons of insects by various means. While I fear that it’s difficulty curve will throw off some TD novices, those willing to put in the time will certainly get their money’s worth. With 12 maps, trophy support, and a challenge mode that pits you against a never ending flood of creatures, there’s plenty to do in this downloadable title making it worthy of purchase for anyone looking to scratch the TD itch.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
The Good
TD Vets will get quite a challenge
Great looking tower designs that upgrade beautifully
You certainly get your money’s worth with the content
The Bad
Maps are pretty bland and presentation is mediocre
Steep learning curve will put off many people
Could have used another round of tower balancing
The Ugly
Sometimes overly frustrating trial-and-error gameplay can sour your experience
Cuboid (PS3)
Feb 3rd
Have you ever wanted to play a game where the protagonist a rectangular shaped block? How about one where you can only move by walking a block around a level on each of its faces? If this sounds appealing to you, then Cuboid is the game for you. Wait, it doesn’t sound that great? So why the heck am I so addicted to this game?
Cuboid is a pure puzzle game where you do exactly what I just mentioned. The objective is to take your rectangle block, and walk him towards the goal without falling off the floating platform you are placed on. The goal is a 1×1 square, so you’ll have to position yourself in such a way that you are standing upright on it. When you do that, you’ll pass through the board and head to the next level. If this sounds a little familiar to you, its because there was a flash title called Bloxorz a while back that followed the same formula.
Adding complexity along the way are weak wooden planks which require your rectangle to be laid flat to traverse, two types of pressure switches, and teleportation devices that can even split your rectangle into two perfect cubes until they meet again and rejoin. These elements are all presented in the form of some quick tutorials and slowly enough that you get the hang of what you need to do before proceeding.
With the exception of a handful of ‘boss levels’ which actually limit the number of moves you can make, that’s the whole game right there in a nutshell. Each level allows you to achieve a different type of medal based on speed and move count so there is replayability there for you puzzle fiends that just need to achieve the best you can, but much like Portal… once you figure out how to get to that goal, you can probably do it again with relative ease.
Therein lies the rub, though. Cuboid causes you to wrap your head around something that should be so simple, yet becomes more and more difficult as the game progresses. Its a pure mental puzzle game through and through, not requiring fast reflexes or brutal accuracy.
I think what makes Cuboid so attractive and addicting is its simplicity. There’s really not much you have to learn or remember, and with the exception of being split apart via teleporting, you can control the entire game with just the d-pad. There isn’t any multiplayer and there are only two difficulty modes with a total of 66 puzzles, but none of this stuff detracts from the experience in the slightest. If I may be so bold, this is the type of puzzle game that’s almost on par with the likes of Portal. If you enjoy puzzle games, and have a PS3, do yourself a favor and shell out the $9.99 on PSN for Cuboid. Its a great game, a great buy, it has trophy support, and your head will explode at least twice (if you’re into that sort of thing).
Score: 4.5 out of 5
The Good:
Addicting, Addicting, Addicting.
Devilishly Simple
Will make your head a splode
The Bad:
Addicting, Addicting, Addicting
Light on the overall puzzle count
Presentation could use some more flair
The Ugly:
Broken Controllers
Magic Ball (PS3)
Feb 3rd
Its hard not to get a bit nostalgic when playing Magic Ball. The basic gameplay harkens back to Breakout for the Atari, then Arkanoid in the arcades (and on Nintendo). It is effectively the next iteration in that formula. You take control of a paddle at the bottom of the screen and bounce a ball at wall full of stuff to destroy. If you miss the ball on its way down with your paddle, you lose a life. Lose them all and its game over. The primary addition here though is that instead of just busting down an inanimate set of bricks, you lay siege to a three dimensional scene that moves, falls, and crumbles as you decimate it with your magic soccer ball.
Certain destructibles on each level will produce power ups, extra lives, and even death skulls to make things more entertaining than just bouncy, bouncy. There are temporary upgrades for your paddle in the form of machine gun, laser or cannon to help bust up the scenery with quickness. Additionally, you can grab environmental effecting items that produce a series of lightning strikes, wind gusts, earthquake or even a meteor storm. Grab that death skull though, and you’re out a life. In total there are 24 different items.
On the multiplayer side of things, you can tackle the game’s levels with a friend in co-op mode, or challenge someone to see who can break apart the level first.
Graphically, Magic Ball delivers some vibrant and colorful visuals in native 1080p. There’s plenty of chaos and taking down some of the taller structures is really quite a treat to see. The musical backing is downright garbage, but the rest of the sound effects are well done and varied.
The biggest issue I have with Magic Ball is that its really short. You can bust through all of the 48 levels in about three hours, less if you don’t lose that much. There are two environments to play in but it looks like there’s more on the way thanks to a ‘coming soon’ message, most likely part of some DLC. There’s a dozen trophies to earn to keep you coming back as well, but some unlockables would have helped too.
Additionally, its a very easy game and very forgiving. While you do indeed have a set number of lives, if you lose them all, you can just start the level you are on at the beginning. The only thing the lives alllow you to do is continue your path of destruction on a level. Your overall score does not get affected by loss of life or restarting a level.
I enjoyed what I played of Magic Ball but would have prefered a longer experience and more of a challenge. It really is a nice looking game and there’s nothing like hitting a few environmental power-ups in a row to really get the destruction rolling.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
The Good:
Vibrant, attractive destructable environments
A nice evolution in the brick-breaking formula
Fun and action packed
The Bad:
Three hours and you’re done
Too easy and forgiving
Not enough visual variety in the two themes
The Ugly:
The Crazy Ball powerup
Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom (PS3)
Feb 3rd
Chances are that you’ve played Mahjong at some point, so the concept should be familiar to most. However, if you’re one of those that just doesn’t play puzzle games here’s a quick overview. Mahjong is a tile based puzzle game where you are given a set of tiles on a single board and tasked with clearing them off by matching two pieces together. Most tiles will only match with their twin, however there are two types of tiles that clear because they are both types of flowers or seasons. Its an effective and relaxing time waster.
Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom takes this game, gives you four variations (Ancient Tales, Motion, Classic Infinity and Multiplayer), and throws it on the PS3 as a PlayStation Network download. The base formula is tried and true, so the question remains as to how successful Creat Studios was in the transition from board game to console. The answer? Fairly successful but not overly so.
Ancient Tales is the game’s ‘story mode’ where you get to walk through five parables each with 9 boards to solve. After beating each, you get a paper-cutout cutscene with a new page of the story and a horrendously over-compressed sounding narrator.
Motion takes the serenity found in playing solitary Mahjong and turns it on its ear. Instead of having plenty of time to match up the tiles, you’ll get to race against a line of ‘extra’ tiles marching toward a fire breathing dragon. If they make it there, you lose a life. You’ve got 45 stages to clear to beat this mode.
Classic Infinity is what solo players have come accustomed to. 100 different layouts with your choice of background and tileset. Match them tiles up and try to clear the board.
Multiplayer is effecively a take on Motion mode without the dragon waiting to hinder your progress. You get a set of tiles that you need to clear before your opponent and have a marching line of tiles to assist you. Unfortunately, try as I might, there was never anyone around to play online against so expect to play this mode locally only.
The graphics are sharp in 1080p so you can clearly make out all the stamps found on the tiles and certainly get the job done, but in general there’s not much going on here. They tried to add a little flair when pieces are matched by throwing a particle effect at you, but in some cases this just gets in the way as you can’t see the tiles behind it very well. Similarly, the soundtrack is generic themed music that isn’t intrusive but isn’t spectacular either. Both are just utilitarian. Mahjong Tales does support custom soundtracks though, so once you’ve heard the loop a few hundred times you can pipe your own music in.
The most important thing though is how it plays. Mahjong Tales does not feel like it has been ‘consolized’ much and seems like it would be better played on a PC. To match tiles, you effectively control a mouse pointer with your analog stick. While it does have a snap-to type movement if you get close to a tile, it doesn’t feel that great. When speed comes into play with Motion mode, or you’re trying to increase your score by matching tiles quickly and consecutively, it can get a little frustrating to have such an imprecise control method. The more you use it, the better you get, but that doesn’t stop it from being clunky.
Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom is a decent entry into the casual PSN space. If you’re itching to play some Mahjong on your PS3, it will certainly fit the bill as there’s plenty of content for $9.99 (its got 16 trophies to earn too!), just don’t expect to be wowed in any way.
Score: 2.5 out of 5
The Good:
Plenty of Mahjong to go around
Motion mode throws a cool action twist to matching tiles
Its Mahjong
The Bad:
Controls are a bit frustrating
No one is playing online
Very vanilla visuals
The Ugly:
You could mute your TV and it wouldn’t take away from the experience
Defense Grid: The Awakening (PC)
Jan 6th
Despite being around for quite some time (1990′s Rampart was probably the first example), there really aren’t too many retail titles in the Tower Defense (TD) strategy niche of gaming. Instead, independent developers have released free mods for existing titles and Flash games to fill the void. Recently though PixelJunk Monsters and Ninjatown have stormed the scene and acquired many a rabid fan, making the viability of a retail TD style game plausible. Now, Hidden Path’s newest PC offering titled Defense Grid: The Awakening hopes to capitalize on this addictive genre with an excellent out of the gate entry.
The premise is fairly simple in Defense Grid: You’re in charge of trying to stop an alien race from completely destroying the last remnants of civilization. Among each of the twenty levels you get a map with entrances and exits, locations where you can build towers, some starting cash, and a stockhold of power cores to protect from being snatched from wave after wave of the alien horde.
At the beginning, you’re able to build fairly basic towers along a set path. Done in a very nice learning curve, each level of the game presents new abilities for you to learn and master and different challenges to face. You’re not just thrown into the fray and forced to figure out which towers work best in what situation, but instead given time to become versed in the ways of each tower. Additionally, levels can become segmented forcing you to manage two separate paths of attack or give you the ability to shape your enemy’s walking route. Protip: The longer it takes the bad guys to get in and out, the better.
You can’t just build your towers ad nauseum, you’ve got to pay for each tower and upgrade so there’s a bit of resource management needed. Each destroyed alien unit yields resources for you to continue building more towers and your AI partner-in-crime (an omnipotent voice that talks you through and provides some witty banter as well as helpful tips) can more effectively ‘process’ resources the more you have, making it prudent to not just spend every penny you have in your pocket as you’ll get some free resources for whatever’s in your wallet.
When all is said and done, you get ten types of towers to construct, each with three upgrade levels indicated by a color (green, orange, red). They run the gamut from basic gun towers, energy and barrage weapons, and mortar fire. Similarly, there are a variety of enemy unit types each indicated by the same colors to show their strength. When you see red units coming in, watch out, those are effectively the boss units which can take quite a lot of concentrated firepower and keep on going. Seeing reds on your radar approaching can be quite nerve-racking when you realize you can’t take on a Red Crasher and have no money to build or upgrade. It’s wonderfully maddening.
Getting back to the power cores, about 95% of the time they’re held at one point on the map. The bad guys will need to walk or fly past your towers to pick them up, then exit the map. If the units are destroyed while carrying one, the glowing core slowly makes it’s way back along the same path it traversed to the holding square. This is particularly annoying because aliens can play bucket brigade with the cores, allowing their friends to pick up a core and make a break for the exit. Taking out your foes prior to them ever touching the cores is of course the best plan, but it rarely works out that way. The waves of enemies often take this brute force relay into account when attacking and expect you to not be completely prepared to save all of your cores. This again puts your brain to the test to try and figure out just what you have to build and upgrade to keep your stash.
Along with just simply beating a level by destroying all baddies while not losing 100% of your cores, the game provides three medals to achieve. The bronze can be obtained by just finishing a level with 1 core remaining, the silver and gold however, with the exception of the first few levels, both need all your cores to be safe and a score to be achieved. I kind of feel that the silver medal should be able to be obtained without having 100% of your cores, maybe 75% instead. This is one very minor quibble I have with the game as doing it the way they did, you’ve got to be really good just to get the silver and you may be good enough to get the gold as well. More often than not, you’ll be getting the bronze the first time through a level.
Another small beef I have with the game is it’s soundtrack. The voice-over work by your AI friend is great but the music to go behind everything is generic and repetitive. While it doesn’t get in the way or become annoying, it is clearly not anything to write home about.
Defense Grid: The Awakening is deep, challenging, compelling and pretty darn good looking for a ‘budget’ title. In addition, it also has an addictive chemical reaction with the human brain, making you think about playing even when you’re not. With twenty levels, three difficulty modes, leaderboards, and a high level of replayability, I can’t help but recommend Defense Grid to any fan of the strategy genre.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
The Good
Tons of depth and replayability in a budget package
The best looking tower defense game yet
Level 3 Meteor Towers
The chaos, oh… the chaos.
The Bad
Some tower designs are a little too similar looking, making them difficult to distinguish among a sea of activity
The music soundtrack is not varied enough and a bit too repetitive
The Ugly
Taking on four Crashers without a satellite weapon while Racers are rushing towards the exit holding power cores
Neopets Puzzle Adventure (DS)
Dec 9th
Neopets Puzzle Adventure is what you get when you take the board game Reversi (Othello), combine it with a popular Nickelodeon license, and sprinkle in some lightweight RPG elements. While it is clear this game is marketed to a younger crowd, there are things that should make any fan of puzzle games give it a look.
When the game first boots up, you are asked to create your character by choosing from a list of twelve Neopets. You can change it’s color and name but generally there’s no difference in the pets other than appearance. After doing so, you are free to set out on your quest.
The story is told by characters conversing on the top DS screen and by navigating the game’s maps using your stylus on the bottom. While the narrative is mostly forgettable (much like it’s big brother Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warloards), and the maps are fairly pointless as the game progresses in a completely linear fashion, the confrontation system is quite excellent.
Battles in Neopets consist mainly of playing Reversi against an AI opponent. Each character gets a different color, either red or blue, and you take turns placing your coins on a 8×8 grid. By sandwiching your opponents pieces between yours, you ‘take’ their squares. When the board is filled, whoever has the most pieces wins.
To make this more compelling than simply playing Reversi over and over, the developers have done a few things. The first is the introduction of the Petpet system. Depending on your Neopet’s experience level which raises as you play more, you’ll get to bring up to five different Petpets to battle. These act like one time use magical spells that effect the board in specific ways. Some will destroy 3 random pieces, some will allow you to change your opponent’s pieces to your own. They really add quite a level of complexity and strategy to the game, changing the focus from always trying to just get the corners.
To obtain the Petpets, you simply have to play through the game. There are 25 of them in the DS version to collect, each with different effects, but unfortunately there’s no exploration involved to find them. If you want them all for multiplayer, you just have to progress through the story.
Additionally, while the game board is always an 8×8 grid, many encounters will see several squares on the grid blocked off from use causing players to further alter their strategy for attack.
Lastly if you setup combos, there is a chance in causing a ‘Shockwave” which randomly targets an opponent’s piece, changes it to your color, and if there are any of their pieces sandwiched as a result, those are converted as well. This bit of chaos can be frustrating, but also very helpful if you’re hurting for position. All of these additions are well thought out and executed, creating a very dynamic way to play Reversi.
The leveling system is fairly weak. While you do obtain experience points during combat, they are simply a way to level up your character in order to bring more Petpets into battle. Most of the time when you level, there is no visible benefit removing any real feeling that you’re growing your character. There are no stat points to dole out, nor are there any items to equip your character with.
Later on in the game there are sleight deviations from the typical Reversi-based encounter system. Playing one of three minigames, Neopets pits you against a clock and a score. These distractions help break up the flow and are also accessible directly from the game’s menus if you just want to play them for a quick time waster.
The first is a memory clone where you are given a grid of cards upside down and you have to match the artwork. The next is a speed drawing game in a shooting gallery where cards will float across the top screen and you will have to mimic their design with the stylus below. Finally a neat clone of a puzzle game I’ve played long ago where you are presented with several different patterned blocks. If two blocks have the same symbol on them you can tap them with the stylus and they will be removed. If there were blocks above them, those will fall downwards to take the empty space. The object is to get rid of as many blocks as possible.
One interesting addition to the game for fans of the series is the unlockables. There are ten unique codes that are accessed by performing certain tasks such as clearing the game boards of all your opponent pieces, or achieving a certain number of experience points. These codes can be redeemed at Neopets website, acting like the Xbox Achievements to show off what you’ve done in game.
Puzzle Adventure also sports a head-to-head mode where you can take that Neopet you slaved over in the story mode and have it fight against your local friend. One addition that could have helped the staying power of this title would have been some sort of Nintendo WFC matchmaking support with an Elo style rating system.
I admittedly don’t know the Neopets license at all, but I do know Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, which Neopets Puzzle Adventure gets it’s inspiration (and lead developer) from. What Griptonite Games has done here is a fairly good, albeit lightweight entry into the very small RPG-meets-Puzzler genre. If you are looking around for an appetizer to tide you over before Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is released, Neopets Puzzle Adventure is the mozzarella stick you are looking for. Not a whole lot of substance, but still tasty.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
The Good
Excellent core gameplay mechanics
Attractive graphics that make good use of the Neopets license
Plenty of game for your money
The Bad
No real RPG elements
Very linear
The Ugly
Leveling up and not having your character change at all