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Added: 23.12.2013 17:00 | 8 views | 0 comments
Waking on the shore of a strange island, your first realization is that your friends are missing. Your second realization is that it's time to get to work! Much like , Cat Story puts you in control of creating a functional town one building at a time. Harvest food, gather resources, and build bungalows as you find your friends and expand the village to take over the island! |
Added: 20.12.2013 22:00 | 11 views | 0 comments
By many people's reckoning, Disney's Frozen might be one of the best animated films they've done in a while; even so, there's nothing that says the movie's ancillary products are up to snuff. Disney's team knows how to market with things like dolls, toys, and clothing, and these days they're reinforcing their cinematic brands with mobile games. Sadly, interactive entertainment is not their forte, as evidenced by the mediocre free-to-play match-three game Frozen Free Fall. It's no surprise that Free Fall tells more or less the same story as the film and banks on the film's appeal. Starting with sisters Elsa and Anna, it sets you to removing the snow and frost slowly taking over the kingdom of Arendelle. There's nothing earth (or ice)-shattering here; like a thousand other match-three games, you're asked to achieve a set score or clear the board by matching three or more same-colored crystals. Also like other games in the genre, power-ups like Icebergs are created when you match four or five crystals; other power-ups cause entire vertical or horizontal rows, or rectangular groups of nine crystals, to explode. |
Added: 20.12.2013 21:00 | 6 views | 0 comments
If, like me, you've never played a physical dice-building game before, then Quarriors should be the right game for you. It's not very complicated. You roll your dice, gather your resources, and attack with your monsters while your enemies defend. Sometimes you buy monsters or spells and build up a whole virtual dice bag of possibilities. Unfortunately, that last paragraph is far and away a better tutorial than the one the game provides. In Quarriors, the actual tutorial is a dizzying info dump of pop-up windows and flavor terms with nary a layman's interpretation to guide you. It will teach you to collect "quiddity" to capture monsters from the "wilds" so you can accrue "glory;" just don't expect a breakdown of what any of that means, or for any of it to be eased into your game organically. If you miss the tutorial blast at the top of your first round, you can dig through a series of static PDFs in the help section for a dictionary of terms and turn orders, but that's hardly optimal. Quarriors does not make a good first impression. |
Added: 20.12.2013 17:00 | 18 views | 0 comments
Disney has a new hidden object game (HOG), and despite some of the rumors and urban legends that still haunt the House of Mouse, it has nothing to do with finding bad words or naughty imagery in movies like Aladdin, The Lion King, or The Little Mermaid (Say, Disney - are you taking pitches for game ideas?). No, Disney Hidden Worlds is very innocent. It also features its own unique cast of characters that guide the player through several familiar Disney worlds - an admirable addition, given Disney could have easily phoned in the game's presentation. In fact, Disney Hidden Worlds would be a perfect "starter" HOG for young people if not for some problematic bugs and an energy system that makes it difficult to play for an extended period of time without paying. |
Added: 20.12.2013 15:00 | 9 views | 0 comments
Abducted: Episode 1 is the first entry in a six-part, episodic sci-fi adventure that combines puzzle, horror, and RPG elements. This genre sampler is a mixed bag both literally and in terms of quality: while it presents a mysterious and beautiful world to explore, actually doing so is a slow process. Episode 1 lays the groundwork for a sprawling adventure across unexplored--and unsettling--reaches of space, but with less than compelling gameplay that often fails to encourage making the journey. Players take on the role of Eve, an amnesiac who wakes up on an alien ship with no memory of how she got there or anything about her past. Eve's only clue to her current status is a computer built into her arm that claims to have been with her "since the beginning" and is able to answer questions about their life together. Although the arm computer is also unaware of how or why you've ended up on this particular ship, it is able to fill in some of Eve's blanks--like the fact that she is an explorer that catalogues alien life forms--and help her investigate her surroundings. It will mostly provide information on objects from its extensive database, but the computer also allows Eve to hack into terminals throughout the ship that give her access to new areas and a potential escape. |
Added: 20.12.2013 13:00 | 7 views | 0 comments
I was disappointed to discover that in spite of all the pre-release promotion, The Gate has about as much to do with real-time strategy as Family Feud, and is in fact a straight-up collectible card battle game. But as I delved into it, I was also elated to learn that it's a really, really good CCG, quite possibly the best one I've played since I broke free of my -habit. "Combines Real Time Strategy and Training mechanics," the App Store entry for The Gate promises, and for a brief while I bought into it. Passing through the Gate into a hellish underworld filled with demons and wickedness, your only hope is to fight - and by fighting, your hope is sustained. As you move ever deeper into this sulphuric underworld, you'll acquire "Disciples" who you can train, upgrade, and evolve, and who will do battle on your behalf against both computer-controlled opponents and the forces of your fellow players. This is where the RTS component comes into play, as instead of simply a static, numbers-versus-numbers contest, battles are rendered entirely in 3D and filled with impressive visual effects. |
Added: 19.12.2013 21:00 | 6 views | 0 comments
Riiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer! With two decades and a ton of releases under its belt, Ridge Racer is one of the golden standards in the realm of arcade racing games, and Ridge Racer Slipstream is no different. The latest installment in the series brings what you would expect from the folks at Namco Bandai with regards to the series, including lovely graphics, tight controls, a catchy soundtrack, and of course, appearances by Reiko Nagase, the Ridge Racer racing queen herself. The premise is simple, and as old as time itself: Take control of one of a number of top-of-the-line automotive vehicles and gun it down the track as quickly as possible, outracing the competition and crossing the finish line either first, or with the best time. Of course, you'll need more than just the ability to drop a lead foot down on the gas to win; as with many an arcade-style racing game, drifting around sharp turns and tight corners is essential. Plus, when the chips are down, you might still be able to call upon the surge of speed provided by a nitro-charged turbo boost. |
Added: 19.12.2013 18:00 | 4 views | 0 comments
It's a surveillance society, and we're all just living in it. At my , I have to admit that I happily contribute to it. Other times I do wonder about the implications of it all, and the folks at Camouflaj obviously do too. Their sci-fi stealth survival game République explores the positive and negative aspects of omnipresent cameras and a connected civilization, and does it with a storytelling flair few mobile games have managed to date. If setting the mood of a video game was a college course, République Episode 1: Exordium would be the professor. You meet the game's protagonist, a girl named Hope, when she calls you for help. She may or may not have read something she shouldn't have, which is against the rules in the (apparently near future) city of Metamorphosis. The Orwellian buzzwords fly during the opening scene of dialogue - Recalibration, The Arrival, etc. - but it's clear Hope is in trouble, and only you can help. |
