Liza's Lil Protege's Game Spot

PC Review: Bistro Boulevard

2012-01-02T08:50:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, I know. You're going to get on my case here about all the Diner Dash-esque games one of these days. What can I say? I truly enjoy them!

Anyway, Bistroy Boulevard I'm going to have to admit straight off the bat is nothing special to stand apart from the pack. It's actually almost like Diner Dash-Lite, since all you have to do is find a way to seat all your patrons and make sure your service is up to par enough to where everyone will be served in a prompt manner. This is more difficult in earlier levels when you have little money to work with for adding extra tables, and they're so desperately needed.

Also, in this game, you unlock new dishes by having to actually guess the recipes for them. (Well, the ingredients, anyway.) This sounds easier than it actually is unless you're a dedicated foodie. And it costs money for each try. When you're strapped for cash to begin with, it makes it VERY difficult.

The money issues in this game force me to have to give it a low rating. The first couple of restaurants, you can barely scrape your way through, but everything beyond that, unless you know some well-guarded secret about this game, FORGET IT. You won't be able to get anywhere and progress whatsoever. And what fun is that if you're stuck with it in gridlock? I'll give this game a generous 3 out of 5 star rating.

PC Review: Bee Garden: The Lost Queen

2011-12-10T07:02:00.000-08:00

Alright, before you even say it: just looking at the cover picture alone, I probably should have known that this game was going to be incredibly lame just by looking at it, right? Well, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt...and evidently my skepticism was right on the mark.

The premise of this game is that there's a colony of bees, and their queen has left them. Rather than, y'know, appoint a new queen (as is the case in real hives), they decide to try and make it on their own so they can *impress* the queen SO much that she might come home. Maybe. If she feels like it. They go from garden to garden, with their sophisticated honey making machines, all around the world to make all sorts of different hybrids of honey.

There's a glaring fact here that I can't ignore that just annoys me about this whole game that they're assuming kids won't know: BEES DON'T LIVE THAT LONG. They wouldn't have time to globetrot and just do this all over the place. And bees make honey without needing a single machine in real life. So what the hell is this?

You start out with a few lone seeds, and from there, you're expected to breed them and produce more and more seeds as your flowers die off, after you've collected the "nectar drops" and made honey from them. Uhhhh....okay then. You have a quota to fill every level. Since when do bees take honey orders, I ask you? Oh well, nevermind. Then toss into the mix that you have bumblebees trying to steal your nectar drops that you have to kill, caterpillars, ground beetles, and a whole mess of nasties that you're constantly chasing after with a spray can to keep from killing your garden. Also, weeds. Whenever these weeds pop up, you have approximately, oh, 2 seconds to get them the hell out of there, STAT, or they'll poison your bees. Lovely, huh?

Then, while all of this is going on, at the same time you also have to be distracted by trying to collect pieces for random powerups. There's always 4 or 5 pieces to all of them. Say, raindrops and a cloud for a rainstorm (to water your plants), clock pieces for more time on the clock, peas in a pod for extra seeds, honeycomb coins for more money....you get the picture. All while you're supposed to be focused on cultivating your plants and making honey. Huh. And don't forget that there's about a million upgrades you have to buy for each garden, too!

My other HUGE gripe with this game is how SLOWLY everything moves. Have the creators of the game ever seen a bee? I honestly have to wonder! They move SO. SLOWLY. And don't even start me on the speed of the cut scenes. I can't even stand to sit through them. I tried, I really did! Iusually try to always watch them to get a better idea of the storyline that goes along with the gameplay, but trust me, you do that on this game and you'll be wasting more time watching shoddy animations than actually playing this sub-par game.

Do yourself a favor. Spare yourself the time, the money, and the effort, and just don't buy or play this game. It is AWFUL. I'm going to give it a lowly star and a half rating.

PC Review: Restaurant Rush

2011-11-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

Restaurant Rush is a slightly different type of 'dash' game than the typical ones we've all grown so accustomed to at this point. Assuming it was going to be something along the lines of Diner Dash, I downloaded it on a whim, even though I'd never heard of this particular title before. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was actually a different type of gameplay altogether from what I'd assumed!

I think it's fairly safe to say that anyone reading this has to be familiar with the game Bejeweled, correct? (If not, go search it and play it online. Right now. This is the modern equivalent of Tetris; EVERYONE has played this game. If somehow you haven't, stop reading this review right now and correct this problem straight away. ;)) For the rest of us, continue reading.

The gameplay in this game is very much like that of Bejeweled, except with food. Well alright, there's tons of Bejeweled knockoffs out there, what makes this one any different? Let me tell you. Just like with the dash games, down one side of your screen, you have a line of customers who keep making their food orders. On the opposite side of the screen, you see what ingredients you need to make these meals, plus how many of each item (something akin to Burger Island). Now, in the center of the screen you have the actual gameplay board, and THIS is the part that's like Bejeweled. The ingredients you need are the pieces on the board, and you have to match them up in rows of three (or more) to collect said ingredients. Don't take too long though, or your customers will get mad and leave.

There's upgrades of course, par usual. Ingredient upgrades to buy, new recipes, new songs to play on your jukebox, upgrades to your additional equipment for keeping customers happy, etc. There's also several maps that you'll play through that focus on different world cuisines from all over the globe - it's educational as well as fun!

The one gripe I have about this game is that unless you buy things in a very specific order, it is IMPOSSIBLE to actually win this game. I know, I know. This is the same girl who complains about other games being too easy, but it's not fair when it's in this genre and they set you up for failure unless you know specific knowledge of what you have to buy, in what order, to win. Still, overall, even if you don't win, it IS pretty fun... I'm going to rate it 8 out of 10 sliced and diced carrots.

PC Review: Nanny Mania 2 - Nanny Goes To Hollywood

2011-11-28T17:06:00.000-08:00

Far from the first game I've reviewed where I didn't bother playing the original game in the series first, Nanny Mania 2 is yet another one of these. I'd never heard of the original, but seeing this one available - especially anything with Hollywood in the title - grabbed my attention, and I had to download it and try it out.

Now, true to form with my usual theme of PC games, it is indeed yet another 'dash' type game. (Yes, I hear your resounding groans here.) I must admit, this game was pretty lackluster. I'm guessing that it ties in following the heels of the first game that you're playing a nanny, but, immediately upon her arrival in Hollywood, she gets snagged up by one of the world's hottest actresses. (Given the way that she's portrayed, she seems to be a split between Nicole Richie and Angelina Jolie.) You're hired to keep house for her and take care of her children. Little do you know she's just going to keep on having and adopting more and more children as the game progresses.

Let me tell you that these people are complete and utter SLOBS. They leave dozens of articles all over their house (in every level, mind you) that you have to wash, dry, and put away. They leave garbage all over the floor, all through the house, that you have to throw away. There's piles of dirt to vaccuum, puddles to mop up, knocked over furniture to straighten, beds to make, food to prepare, dishes to wash, and that's not even counting where the kids are concerned. The kids fight and destroy the house in their aftermath; the babies need their diapers changed, bottles fed to them, and to be comforted whenever they fall down; the kids jump on beds and have to be put on time outs, etc. Not to mention, there's a dog that barrels through the house and destroys things, has accidents, and knocks things over, plus a bird who always seems to be on the loose. The house is in complete and utter chaos, and it's your job to fix it.

Also thrown randomly into the mix are relatives that come and overstay their welcome, paparazzi who stalk outside the windows trying to get exclusive photos to sell to the tabloids, and other such ridiculousness that could only happen in Hollywood. You're also on a strict timer, but this isn't all that hard to keep up with once you learn how to chain your actions and abuse the coffee pot.

It only took me about a week of casual playing to win the whole game, and I never felt particularly challenged by it. I guess for a younger crowd, maybe this would be the case, but for a teenager or an adult, definitely not. I'm going to rate this game a 3 out of 5 stars.

PC Review: Cake Mania - Lights, Camera, Action!

2011-11-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

In between working on my NaNoWriMo adventures, reading/reviewing books, and trying to get my cross stitch projects complete in time for Christmas, I've been on a time-management game kick lately. (Ironic, given that I can't seem to properly even manage my own time...) Right on the heels of my last Cake Mania game review, today I bring you Cake Mania: Lights, Camera, Action!.

What struck me immediately about this game as being different from the other titles in this series is that this one seems to have much more of a plot than the others do. Jill and her husband are apparently expecting a baby and still trying to run their bakery. But wait, there's more! This time around, there's a film crew in town trying to film a movie at the same time. Their friend Risha has opened up a fashion boutique, and another friend has opened up an Italian restaurant. (This will all become important in a minute.)

When you first start playing, you're working in the bakery (which has had a serious facelift since the other games in the series) and the gameplay is fairly predictable - nothing entirely different from the other Cake Mania games. However, after a couple rounds, you unlock Risha's Boutique. This is an entirely new thing for the Cake Mania games, as this has nothing to do with baking whatsoever. Over here, you're in a cluttered boutique and have to find specific articles of clothing for the customers in a timely manner (it's more of a hidden item seek mini-game than anything) and gift wrap for certain patrons. Instead of upgrading appliances with your hard earned cash, instead you upgrade the new fashion lines you're carrying, as well as your gift-wrapping options. One particular fashion line caught my eye as a tried and true Liza Minnelli fan...

...I officially have a new favorite Cake Mania game, folks.

Then you unlock the Italian restaurant after a certain number of rounds in the fashion boutique. This is something more akin to Diner Dash, but still slightly unique and different. You have to combine ingredients to make the customers' food requests. Not that difficult, not all that different from other time-management games out there, but still unique to Cake Mania and gives the game a little extra zest.

Now of course, my obligated gripes about the game...

Given that this is a line made with kids in mind (even though it usually tends to be adults, I've found, who end up playing it) I found it to be a little disconcerting that the map screen for the bakery levels is a little bit...porn-y, for lack of a better term. You've got Jill and her husband standing back to back, Jill rubbing her very pregnant belly and giving bedroom eyes while stereotypical "porn music" (as I so lovingly coin it) plays as background music. It just so happens that the trail of the map happens to be in a heart shape around them. One could argue that they're married, it's expected, but... I don't know. Something about it just feels the teensiest bit inappropriate. Nothing horrible, it's just a subtle thing that I couldn't help but notice every time the screen popped up in between levels.

Another gripe is how the game seems to assume that every expectant father is a bumbling idiot. Honestly. I know there's a stereotype that's being followed and all, and that's all fine and well, but honestly, I'm pretty sure that even the most naive of fathers wouldn't make a point of constantly pointing out how fat their wife has become. (And this happens REPEATEDLY, if you actually read the dialogue between levels.) It's not exactly a problem with the game I guess, but it just seems like a bad message to be sending kids while they're still at an impressionable age. Goes right up there with stereotyping gender roles from the 1950's.

Overall I really don't have too much to complain about with this game. It's fun, but it seems entirely too easy. All the other games in the line feel more challenging than this one. I don't know if they simplified the gameplay because of the alternate forms of gameplay included in the game or what, but I finished this almost alarmingly quickly. Had I not been multitasking with several other projects, I easily could have probably finished the entire game in 2 days, 3 tops. It doesn't feel like it has a ton of replay value. Maybe a little, but I don't see this one being one I'd come back to many times later on.

I'm going to rate this game a 7 out of 10 frosted cakes.

PC Review: Cake Mania To The Max!

2011-10-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

I've been a long-standing supporter and player of the Cake Mania series. Basically since day one, honestly, as it was so similar to Diner Dash (which I've also been following since it first came out). There have been so many spin-offs in both series that it's hard to keep up these days. (There's a few I still need to get on both accords right now.)

This particular one was supposed to be a 1980's inspired game, basically going back in time to detail how the main character got her start in the cake making business. As you progress through the storyline, the background of the 'map' is all pictures of her life, starting from her birth.

The artwork is actually very nice. It follows suit with the quality of that of most of the games in this series, but I'm a big fan, so I may be biased. The dialogue, however, is horrendous. I AM a child of the 80's and I remember what people spoke like. And I'll give you a hint....it was nothing like this game. They more or less took every stereotypical phrase from the 80's and peppered it into every sentence or two, so there's no way you could forget what era this is supposed to be taking place in. (However, it comes off sounding much more like an immature valley girl.)

The gameplay itself is comparable with just about any other Cake Mania title. Personally I only managed to get up to about level 42 out of 100 before I deemed it impossible to play, but that's just me. I'm sure others have managed just fine. Needless to say, it is what it is. There's nothing particularly new or special about this title. But if you're a fan of the series, feel free to give it a spin! I'd rate this game a 3 and a half out of 5 cakes.

DS Review: Winx Club: Quest For The Codex

2010-12-12T10:25:00.000-08:00

You know, it is quite simple to say that a game is quite possibly the most boring game you've ever played, but all too often, we throw around that sentence too fluidly. It takes a special talent, if you will, to develop a game this badly.

Konami... you have let me down.

I've been aware for several years of that Bratz-wannabe cartoon series, The Winx Club. And even after sitting through about half a dozen episodes, I can safely say that this show is crap. And what's crappier than this show? This game.

In some land far away, there is apparently a land of pixies--no wait, fairies. (The pixies are their own entity, I forgot.) But they're not just any fairies, oh no. They're hip, valley girl fairies (except from the geeky one) who go to school and are essentially every teenage girl stereotype...plus wings. And super powers. Why? I'm not sure. Apparently there's a market for this. At any rate, you're obligated to fight your way through this game to.........actually, the storyline is so poor, I'm not even entirely sure what the hell you're trying to do here. Nor am I sure how the "powers" each fairy has has ANY bearing whatsoever on what little storyline they do give you of what you're trying to accomplish. (Example: you're going to open a locked safe "with dance magic"? Really?? You are not Jareth the Goblin King; knock it off.)

One of these - the only one of these - seems fairly plausible that it could be a legitimate gameplay for fighting your way through this game. You've got your little fairies, it's more or less a side scroller, and you shoot at demons or shadow beasts or whatever these weirdass things are, and each fairy has its own unique power up to fight with. Okay, fine. That's not so bad. Even if the whole game were like this...it would be dry, but not entirely bad. But that's where the decency ends....

The OTHER ways you fight through this game? Well, let me tell you. Since I mentioned it already, I'll start with the dance magic one. It's basically DDR for the DS....which, any DDR that doesn't involve a real dance pad, in my opinion, is pointless. Why bother, I don't know. But they threw it in. Then there's a similar DJ beats game....there's falling notes, and you have to match up the right instrument with the right key and get it at the perfect timing. (Yes, it's exactly as stupid as it sounds.) So there's that. There's one where you're trying to grow a vine plant, and bugs keep attacking it, so you have to kill the bugs before they kill your plant. There's one where you wire the circuitry of a computer (well....I guess this could come in useful). And lastly, one that is more or less a glitchy paddle ball where you have to draw your own paddles and have the ball bounce off it, aiming for pixies and gems.

Now, if these were typical mini-games, this would not be a problem. But they are the ENTIRE GAME. They make absolutely *ZERO* sense in how they tie in to your storyline, which really makes me think that Konami was trying to cheaply throw in as many mini-slices of different genres as possible to market to the girls who would buy this...and just failed miserably. And this game doesn't let you forget that it's based off a tv show, oh no. In between levels, you're constantly bombarded with the theme song and show bumpers from the series. If this isn't one of the poorest examples of advertising marketing, I don't know what is.

There's really nothing good whatsoever I can say about this game. Avoid it at all costs. Voting it a 1 out of 10 fairies.

DS Review: Tom and Jerry Tales

2010-11-30T05:02:00.000-08:00

I remember, way back in the day, playing the NES Tom and Jerry game. I also remember, time and time again, getting beyond irrationally angry with the stupid thing because it was so impossible to play that I could barely ever even get past the first level.

This game? It's like that.

I don't know if it's just something about it being Tom and Jerry that screams out to game designers to make impossible games or what, but it sure seems to be a common theme I'm noticing. I did even worse here than on the NES one... I couldn't even pass the first level, isn't that pitiful? I consider myself to be a pretty decent gamer...not the world's best by any means, but I think I can hold my own all right. So why is this one so difficult? Even after following the tutorial exactly, it doesn't seem to help. Even with the on screen directions and following them to a tee, it tells me I didn't do them right. (I personally smell a glitch.)

This is all quite a shame, because even though the 3D graphics sure aren't the best ones out there, the style of this game really does the original Tom and Jerry cartoon series justice, and I was very much looking forward to seeing just where they went with this one. Oh well...

Rating this one a 2 out of 10 cartoon mallets.

DS Review: That's So Raven - Psychic on the Scene

2010-11-29T14:55:00.001-08:00

You know, first impressions can be deceiving, especially if you judge a book by its cover... well, in this case, a game by its cover. Seriously, who would ever in a million years expect a That's So Raven game to actually be - dare I say it - actually pretty decent? I know I sure didn't.

This is another one of Disney Interactive's releases - yes, the same people who did that buttload of Hannah Montana video games. (Oh, don't get me started again...) As such, comparing this qualitywise? I'm guessing that it was made sometime around the same time as the first Hannah Montana DS game, since the quality is pretty comparable. Sure, the music is pretty lame, but the quality of the 3D is surprisingly decent, and a lot of the graphics throughout the game are of photographic quality. That earns it lots of bonus points right there for me.

The game plays out like a series of mini mysteries that take place over the course of about a week. The main one is that Raven saw in a vision that the local theatre is being sold and closed down. However, anyone who's ever seen the TV show knows that Raven's visions are half-baked at best, and that she only focuses in on about half of it until she's gone and tried to change destiny, at which point she'll have another vision that's actually accurate and makes her feel like an idiot. Such is the case in this game, and it happens with all the mini mysteries as well. Now, much like with the first Hannah Montana DS game, I'm also impressed with how well-written the dialogue for this was, and have to wonder if they used the show's scriptwriters. (Yes, having a little sister right in the target age range of that show makes one appreciate these things.) The game is pretty well involved; there's so many side stories and missions in addition to the main one that it'll keep you occupied for a good while.

I do wish that, in the navigational controls, that there were a way to run. It would make things SO much easier. But, the rest of the game is good enough to where I think even with this small annoyance, it still holds up.

What gets me is seemingly how Raven has more visions about what she should dress up as to scam whoever it is she's in the vicinity of to get away with whatever mission she's on. For this, it seems less like she's a psychic, and more like she's a con artist, but hey, what do I know? ;)

In the extras, this game does show its age a little... There's an actual TV spot commercial for when Hannah Montana first went on the air. (What a mind trip that was to watch.)

Surprisingly, even though it's a simple little Disney game, I'm going to rate this one highly. I'm giving it a 7 out of 10 psychic visions.

DS Review: Spongebob Squarepants: The Yellow Avenger

2010-11-28T09:46:00.001-08:00

Admittedly, I've never quite understood the full appeal of Spongebob Squarepants. Perhaps this has something to do with the only times I've seen it, it always seems to be one of the same three episodes over and over again, that I didn't really even find to be funny to begin with...hmm. Regardless, I decided to at least try to give this game the benefit of a doubt here.

What an hour wasted.

Granted, this game is from 2005, when the DS was still relatively new on the market, and 3D platform games for a Nintendo system were practically unheard of still - note the almost complete lack of stylus usage in this game, it's almost all arrow pad keys. This wouldn't necessarily be such a problem (even with the graphics being extremely polygonal, poorly laced, and glitchy), except....... (insert pregnant pause)........you're limited to using only the left and right arrow buttons to navigate.

That's right. A 3D world that operates like an oldschool side-scroller. Oh sure, there's points where you're supposed to move forward and backward, but do the up and down keys work? NO. They don't. You press down, you duck. You press up, nothing happens. (WTF???) So, what to do? Oh... you stop in front of one of these directions, and apparently press left or right in whichever direction's closer. ............Yeah, that makes little to no sense to me either.

As for the actual plot, you're employed to help Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy save Bikini Bottom from The Dirty Little Bubbles. (Why yes, I do believe that's a double entendre.) This more or less involves jumping around on innocent victims' heads, then capturing the bubbles. (Oh yeah, that's real fun. Not.) Every time you see a jelly fish, you capture it and milk it for its jelly. Ummmmm......am I the only one seeing something not-so-vaguely phallicly referenced by that? >_> You have unlimited lives, but each time Spongebob dies, you pick up from wherever you started your last turn at, and you lose any and all progress you'd made on that turn. Ugh. I can't even BEGIN to tell you how frustrating this is, especially when the naviagational system makes things so damn impossible.

I feel like I'm being generous even rating this game this highly, but I'm rating it a 3 out of 10 Krabby Patties.

DS Review: Crime Lab - Body of Evidence

2010-11-28T06:23:00.000-08:00

Never before has there been such an impressive game...and then such a let down.

As I was first playing this game, I was thinking to myself, Wow! This is the first game I've played in the longest time that doesn't suck! Given all the shovelware out there lately, trust me, these gems are few and far between.

The game itself in its nature reminds me a lot of the show Law & Order: Criminal Intent. You're a detective who's solving murder mysteries, and going to just about any lengths to do so. The artwork is great, the music is effective, I just like everything about how it works. Granted, the controls could be a tiny bit better...sometimes you touch something once and it doesn't do a thing, then when you go back to it, it does. But apart from that, it's pretty good.

Now, the letdown? I was very well involved in the storyline when I got to the level with the safecracking. I know I had the right code. I even doublechecked this numerous places online. Yet, no matter how many times I put it in, regardless of how I spun the wheel on that safe, no dice. I have to wonder if this is an antipiracy measure, as I was indeed playing a rom of the game, or if it was some sort of glitch or what. If it weren't for that, this game would probably have the most glowing, perfect review. However, as I haven't played a physical copy of the game, I'll try not to crack down too hard on it and give it the benefit of the doubt that its non-rom version probably works better. Therefore, I'm going to rate this game a 7 out of 10 body outlines.

DS Review: Betty Boop's Double Shift

2010-11-22T09:07:00.001-08:00

I won't lie, I have an obsession with the jazz age, Roaring Twenties scene that won't quit. So I was more than a little surprised to see that there's a DS game involving Betty Boop...complete with 20's art deco right on the cover. I had a feeling just by the cover that this would be yet another Diner Dash knock-off, and truth be told, I was right.

It's not even a good knock-off. Any time you try and multi-task, it seems to gum up the works. There seems to be no real rhyme or reason to the line waiting outside the door at the club, if you take more than a couple of seconds to get to somebody to take their order, they change their mind and aren't ready to order after all, you can't change the music when it's needed, and that's just the tip of the iceburg. After each level, you're introduced to a musical interlude... if one could even call it such. You have to match up 4 musical notes one a screen, twice, and that's it. No particular timing or anything, just tap them in the right order. Nor do they even play a tune; you just hear the crowd cheering for you with every note you tap. Very odd.

Also at the start and end of each level, you have to hear that god-awful "Boop-ee-oop-ee-oop-ee-oop, boop boop ee-doop!" To the point where after only playing a few rounds of it, you're so annoyed with this damn thing that you want to throw your DS through a wall. (I assure you, no matter how tempted you are, it's just not worth it. Don't do it.) It's also VERY prone to freezing up entirely and it drives me NUTS. It's just not worth it for a game that isn't very good to begin with.

I just have to ask.... What genius felt that it would be relevent in today's world to make a Betty Boop game? Honestly, what market are they catering to? I don't think there is one. They were hoping for a niche, while at the same time latching onto someone else's idea. But they failed miserable in the process. I'm going to rate this game a 3 out of 10 boops.

DS Review: 12

2010-11-08T05:46:00.000-08:00

Well now, here's an interesting little oddity of the DS game line if ever I saw one! It's entitled, quite simply, 12. Given the cover, I thought it must be a cheap Japanese release that got a US translation. Guess what? It's LICENSED BY NINTENDO. Wowwwww. If I didn't hold it in my hands rightn ow, I'd probably doubt this game's existence, as even just finding a photo of the cover for this review was like pulling teeth.

Even with a name so obvious as 12, it's rather vague and ambiguous - you don't really know what exactly you're geting. I, personally, was immediately thrown back to the mid-1990's; the era where the keychain digital pets prevailed. There was one in particular that I had which was a 12-in-1 pet, and the cover of this reminds me greatly of the box from that. I digress.

I can't quite decide if I love or hate this little game. In a way, it also reminds me of the oldschool computer games, those Klik n Play games that seemed to come as demo versions with all sorts of titles, but did anybody ever really buy them? These have a very strong vibe of those. The graphics are not very good; not horrible, but not good. Very simplistic as though this were intended for a toddler to play, even though these clearly weren't. The music, also, is almost gratingly annoying after about 30 seconds of listening to it. My suggestion is either turn your volume off on your DS, crank some music, or both. ;)

The opening menu itself already further perpetuates the true vagueness of this game. You appear to have a telephone touchpad (plus asterisk and pound signs, and a call sign and wrench symbol for options). There's no explanation. Just "press any button!". Um....okay. 1 seems like a good place to start...

I suppose the best way to review such a game as this would be to address each individual mini-game that this title comprises of, so here goes:

Lolli Rolling - .....Okay, unless "Lolli" also means "mouse" or something in Japan, I have a feeling that the Japanese have a lot of explaining to do here. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, just look up "lolita complex" on Google.) This game....it's very strange. You're controlling a little mouse who balances on top of a ball while juggling about 6 balls at the same time. (Oh Mr. Kruk, I'm having flashbacks to 8th grade gym class with you.) You mustn't let the mouse's ball hit any object on the floor, lest you fall and lose a life. At the same time, depending upon the speed you chose to play this game at, you'll have a row of letters scrolling down the right side of the screen. You have to hit the button on your DS that correllates with each letter in perfect timing with this, or else you'll drop one of your juggling balls. Lose all your lives, and it's game over. The oddity here is that upon game over, you put in your name in the oldschool arcade game high score table fashion, which doesn't make a lot of sense when chances are that you'll be the only one playing this game in the first place.

Fun Fishing - Despite the almost alarmingly low quality of graphics here, this is actually a pretty decent little game. I'm not quite certain if it would stand up to being its own release should the graphic qualitiy be improved upon, but if this were back in the GBA days, I have a feeling it could have easily held its own. It's surprisingly complex for such a simplistic game. It's exactly what it sounds like, a fishing game. The graphics look as thought they were pulled directly from a GBA Pokemon game. But there's various locations, different types of fish, all sorts of different items to stock up with at the market that affect your fishing capability, earned money from catching and selling each fish..... I could see where this easily could become quite an addictive little game!

FillLove - This game is somewhat like a vaguely date simulated based Dr. Mario premise...minus the pills. But the gameplay is about identical. There isn't much to say here. I thought the game was fairly boring.

Dice - I don't quite understand what you're supposed to do here. The game seems to be a weird hybrid of dice, dominos, and tetris. The problem with this entire game is that none of these games give you any directions on what you're supposed to do; they only give you the controls. Dislike.

Test Grill - I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but this game is a prime example of Engrish at its best. Practically every sentence is in SUCH broken english. The game, once you figure out what you're supposed to be doing, is actually pretty fun. You place as many pieces of food onto the board as you can fit, trying to crowd out the other player. You then eat your food as quickly as possible before it burns, or else you just wasted precious time and points. It's a little more complicated than it sounds.

Egg Adventure - This is one of the oddest platform games I think I've ever seen. You play the role of an egg that has to travel throughout level to level, trying to get back to its nest. You throw hay at enemies. You cannot jump. What sort of game is this?! I also cannot STAND how slowly the game moves on top of everything else. Next...

Mr. Oil - I'm quite confused by this game as well. It appears that you try to maneuver a hobo around to collect bottles to exchange for money while avoiding a bloodthirsty dog. ....Yeah, I don't get the point of this either.

Match 2 - Was there a Match 1? Regardless, this isn't your typical 'tap and match 2 cards' matching game. I think it might be match 3....although I can't seem to get past the first level, no matter what I do. Very confusing...

Bang Bang Balloon - This is basically a fancy worldwide dart-throwing competition. You stand on top of a platform while a friend inflates and releases helium balloons, and your aim is to hit as many balloons as possible. Reach the pre-determined score, and you'll move on to the next country's competition. However, for every balloon that you miss, you lose as many points as you would have gained. This isn't much of a problem the first few rounds, but it quickly becomes one when the speed increases and it's harder and harder to get the correct rhythm down. (I made it to Paris, for anyone interested.)

Moon - I have no idea why this is even titled Moon. Basically, you run aronud, tooting on a horn to wake up sleeping mice and guide them back to their mousehole. But watch out! A sneaky cat is on the prowl, looking to make away with a mouse if you don't scare it away. As you level up, the cat remains the same, but the mice change into different items or animals to match the background. It's very weird.

Kuo - Of course, we couldn't have a multi mini game extravaganza without a mindless shooter, now could we? *eyeroll* You're firing from a sea turtle at anything that hurtles your way in the ocean. That's about it. Real exciting, right?

Buffy Racing 2 - The Japanese certainly try to make anything sound cute, don't they? Here's a hint: buffalos aren't cute. Nor by calling them "buffies" will you make them cute. It's more of a horseracing type thing where you pick your buffalo and hope it's the fastest.

Overall......this game, unless you're about 5 years old, is probably not even worth wasting your time on, in my opinion. None of it is particularly grabbing or fantastic (the fishing game was the closest) and it seems more like a time waster if anything. Not even a time killer...time waster. This one gets a 4 out of 10 ninja stars.

DS Review: My Hero: Doctor

2010-11-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

I know I've said it before, but I'm always a nerd for all the medical-based games. Soon as I know they exist, I go out of my way to do my damndest to procure a copy of it. Such was the case here. However, some are better than others...and this is not one of the very high quality games.

You're supposed to be interning at a local hospital, straight out of med school. You're immediately instructed how to give injections. This is a far more involved process than in most medical-based games. Bonus points for that. You're then tutored in ambulance driving. Now, I should tell you, this is what you'll be spending the majority of your game doing. A more appropriate title for this game would be My Hero: Ambulance Driver, or My Hero: EMT. You'll be briefed through comic strip format of some type of accident that has occurred. This is the scene you're racing to. This wouldn't necessarily be so bad....except, that no matter how well you drive, you're going to be swerving ALL over the road, and often get hit by other cars literally out of NOWHERE. It's maddening. You get to the scene, and - big surprise! - what you learned will now be implemented into action. After that, it's another drive back to the hospital. On to the next round. The process repeats, except that you additionally learn how to x-ray and identify fractures, bandage breaks, perform CPR, remove foreign objects from wounds and clean them, and in a few extreme cases, use a defibrillator.

What gets me is how incredibly short this game is. Since everything seems to be training, you keep expecting to get into the 'real' rounds of the game....and then you find out, this was the game, that's it. I was very disappointed with that, but what can you do? I also couldn't help but notice that it ripped off a few sound effects directly from other medical-based games. The whole thing seems to smack of shoddy quality and low budget-ness, and all seems to have been very quickly created. I feel that, had they have spent more time developing this game, it had potential to be pretty decent and might have even stood up to about the level of Lifesigns (to which I still wish there was a sequel). But as it was far too rushed, I'm going to have to rate this game a 5 out of 10 ambulance sirens. Very mediocre, very disappointing.

DS Review: 7 Wonders II

2010-11-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

How odd is this? Merely days after writing my review of the original 7 Wonders game, I find out there was a sequel. After just how much I complained about it, it's amazing that I found enough interest drummed up to try out this game. For once, I was not completely disappointed!

Almost every single issue that I complained about in the last game? It's like they heard my pleas and fixed them. (Even though I wrote that review long after this game was released, I'm sure. ;)) The tiles are twice the size, there's more variety in what you do, new gameplay options, less distracting construction workers, less rambling on about history... just plain EVERYTHING is better about this game! The game itself is still rather on the short side though, which could be improved upon. I still finished it beginning to finish in approximately 3 hours, much like the original. For such a casual game though, that's not too terrible at all.

The most notable features here are the ones that were added specifically for this game. For this one, you collect map pieces as you clear the boards. Once you complete a map, it takes you to a bonus level, exclusively unlocked by these maps. You must get the specified piece cleared off the bottom of the board in a certain number of moves (it's different each time), and if you do, you win a massive amount of bonus points. And at the end of each level, there's another new feature: You're presented with a grid that has colored squares in it. Depending how many bricks you accumulated throughout the level, this determines how many squares you can move. The aim is to get each square to the top of the grid. As soon as you do, you've completed the wonder. It's a different way of going about things, but not necessarily bad.

Overall, not too bad of a game. The ending was a little bit of a let down, but hey, what can you do? Although, I am left with one lingering thought... If the first game was the 7 wonders of the world, what were these 7? As such, I feel it would be appropriate to rate this game a 7 out of 10 colored tiles.

DS Review: 7 Wonders of the Ancient World

2010-10-29T07:35:00.001-07:00

7 Wonders of the Ancient World is a throwback to a time past, where civilizations made of stone conquered all, where boys were boys and men were men, where gem swapping games were still f--wait. Did I say that?

Unfortunately, it's all too true of this game though. I love a good Bejeweled-esque type game as much as the next person, but in my humble opinion, this game just doesn't quite make the grade. The whole premise seems to be a feeble attempt at being an educational game about the 7 wonders of the world. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. However. If you bought this game, the whole point was because you wanted to play puzzles. You'd probably like to unwind, and not really have to think about much of anything, as this is a fairly casual gamer type of a game. You don't want to read page upon page of boring history notes. If you did, you'd pick up a book. So there's a point against it in the first place. Secondly, I take issue with the main menu/opening screen of the game. There's a long menu down the right side of the screen with different play options. But for the actual regular game? Off to the left on a big glowing medallion. Now, given that menu, I didn't even hardly take notice of the medallion as anything other than decoration at first, so I kept clicking Rune Quest and Free Play, and driving myself nuts in that I couldn't figure out why, despite completing the level in the allotted amount of time and without losing lives, I couldn't progress past the first wonder. I very nearly almost wrote the game off at that. I felt really stupid when I realized that, not only was that medallion a button, it was the button to play the *actual* game. Another point docked down for confusion in layout.

This brings us to the actual gameplay itself. The very first thing I noted was how tiny - miniscule, even - each of the tiles on the board are. This makes precision very, VERY difficult; you often swap the wrong piece by mistake. (Another point down.) I feel that this game would actually work out better if it did NOT implement the use of the stylus, or, at the very least, gave an option to use the arrow keys instead. It might take a little longer to maneuver around with, but it would ensure precision, and any mistakes would be the fault of the user.

Also worth noting is that while you're playing the game down on the lower screen, the upper screen displays tiny little workers building the wonder with the blocks you're providing them by clearing them off the bottom screen. It's a nice touch. However, if you're ADD like I seem to be, you'll find yourself sitting there wanting to watch what the workers are doing while the time ticks away down the clock, and before you know it, the level's not done and your time's up. (However, I can't hold that against the game.)

Each wonder has approximately 8 levels to complete to finish it. Once you complete the wonders, there's a bonus 'wonder': Atlantis. It's not particularly hard though. Another thing I have against the game that I learned the hard way, on the second to last level of the game at that... Once you run out of spare lives? You don't have the opportunity to just do the whole wonder over again. No, it's GAME OVER, you start over from the VERY start. It's extremely frustrating.

On top of which, if you were to sit down and play the game beginning to end? It would only take you a few hours to do so, if that. (I had an insomniac night, started from the beginning of the game around 11 pm, and completed it by not quite 3 in the morning.) I guess it's just as well though, because despite the fact you're working on constructing different wonders, the game is essentially extremely repetitive and gets boring quickly. The colors of the tiles don't even change with the levels. Any sort of variety would have helped.

Ultimately, I think I'm going to rate this game a 6 out of 10 ancient construction workers. It's not the worst puzzle game I've ever played, but it's far from the best, either.

DS Review: Jane's Hotel

2010-08-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

Ah, Jane's Hotel. Another PC to DS crossover that I saw coming a mile away. I remember playing the demo of the PC version the day it hit the Zone download site, and I can safely say that the DS version is more or less identical to this...except harder the maneuver, since you have such a tiny screen to work with, whereas on the PC, you have it all laid out before you and don't have to worry about scrolling. But, I digress...
This is the story of a little girl, searching, searching, for she knows somewhere, there is a someone for her--wait a minute, that's not it at all. (Pardon my Judy Garland diversion.) This is the story of a girl who dreams of starting her own hotel chain to live out the dreams of her grandparents. Thus, you start out with a small bed and breakfast and set out to turn this into the Plaza Hotel...or something like that anyway.
You run around, checking hotel guests in, then attending to their every need: wanting the phone, newspaper, coffee, their room vaccuumed, etc. Depending on how quickly you attend to them determines just how much they'll tip you. As you level up, you'll be unlocking new items...but also new needs. Everything from a restaurant to tv to wanting fresh fruit to having their dry cleaning taken in to having a pianist play for them to watering the plants in the hall to having you bring liquor to their rooms...you get the picture. This doesn't sound so hard, and for the most part, it isn't. It's mostly just the last couple of levels per hotel that you work in that you'll probably have to re-try a few times before beating.
TIP: Try to pair your actions off in chain reactions. You'll get more points for doing so, and in the later levels, this is often the only way of making hitting the daily cash goal attainable.

This game is another game in the realm of Diner Dash-esque time management simulation games...which, if you're into that sort of game, you'll probably love this. If you hate them, you'll hate this, simple as that. This one has a certain flair to it as it seems to have been designed by Brits....everybody in this game has an accent. (It's beautiful.) For that...personally, for me anyway, I'll give it a bonus point for that.
One thing that I couldn't help but get distracted by though, and this is just because I am the way I am, is what Jane looks like. Sure, there's a lot of people out there with big eyes and short, cropped hair, but the fact that in pretty much any shot where she's shown close up, she's doing jazz hands, dressed in a suit, has dark red lipstick on.........I couldn't help but draw my own comparison here. And it made the game SO much more interesting as soon as I did. ;)

The unedited version...

And my version. Much more interesting! (C'mon, you know you saw this coming!)

Overall though, the game is pretty fun. I wish it had been a little bit longer, but then, this type of game usually never seems to last long enough for me. I'm going to rate it a 7 out of 10 hotel chambermaids.

DS Review: Animal World: Big Cats

2010-06-19T14:44:00.001-07:00

I know that I've made similar comparisons before to the oldschool MECC educational computer games with certain DS titles, but that would be insinuating that the game is good. Who remembers the old cheap knockoff titles that were more or less nothing more than an animated textbook, and therefore not very fun? Yeah... That's pretty much what you're getting here. Which is disappointing.

90% of this game will be spent reading factual information about big cats, their habitats, and the way they live. (Just like when you were in elementary school earth science class.) There's quite a few lovely photos to accompany this information, but facts are facts....and as such, all you're doing here is memorizing facts. Every so many 'pages' that you read, you'll be challenged to a sudden pop quiz. Oh, joy! Make this even more like school! (Way to rope in some of that good ol' fashioned test anxiety.) You don't really earn much of anything for getting the answers right, except maybe a pat on the back...from yourself. There's a couple of other mini games as well, if you'd call them that...a slider puzzle, a 'guess this animal' picture from a snippet of a photograph, and a race to see which big cat is the quickest... That's about it. Literally.

The graphics in this game are also a throwback to the old days of computer gaming; the sort of stuff you'd see on the old Macintosh computers in the computer lab where you'd typically play nothing above the ranks of Kid Pix, The Treehouse, and Word Munchers. Given the times... this just adds to how low budget and cheaply made this game must be to look like that. It also reminds me a tiny bit of those old "Really Wild Animals" videos that National Geographic put out in the late 80's/early 90's. ...Except without Dudley Moore as the awesome talking globe. And less fun.

If you're getting this through a rom for your kids to play, knock yourself out, but I can't think of any legitimate reason why anyone in their right mind would pay good cash money for this title. Rating it a 2 out of 10 jaguar cubs.

DS Review: Wedding Dash

2010-06-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

This is another of those games that I played the PC version of first looooong before I even discovered there was a DS version of it. Unlike Diner Dash (despite being made by the exact same people and even having Flo as a secondary character), the PC and DS versions are actually quite similar.

The premise of the game is more or less the same thing as Diner Dash. Except that instead of running a diner this time, in this game, you're playing the part of a wedding planner. You must accomdate your patrons every demands; both from the way they want their wedding arranged (the type of cake, the honeymoon, the food, etc), but you have to take into account who want to sit next to who....and who they don't want to sit anywhere near as well. It's not a problem at first, but once you get into the higher levels, it becomes more and more of a challenge. Throw in other random outbursts such as catfights on the dance floor, the DJ booth getting unplugged, random swarms of bees, the cake falling over, the kitchen catching on fire, the groom's dog getting loose, Uncle Ernie getting trashed, Aunt Agnes getting weepy, and Bridezilla outbursts... It'll keep you busy in between trying to deliver each meal to each person and bringing their wedding gifts to the bride and groom's table. Also worth noting is that different types of patrons have different patience levels - some will be fine to wait a bit for their food whereas others, if you don't address them IMMEDIATELY, will throw a temper tantrum and cost you points over the ordeal.

I like very much the way in which this game plays out. It plays like both a puzzler and a simulation game at the same time, with a hint of action. Especially up in the higher levels, if you make one wrong move, you'll quite possibly throw the entire round and have to do it again...and possibly again after that. Strategy is key here.

The one thing I don't like about the game, although it's not the game itself's fault - this would probably work better on the DS XL, is that because of the size of the screen, the people on it are SO tiny and hard to move around as accurately as one would like. Same with picking up the right food trays. But it's not impossible, and not really *that* hard; it's just a minor setback. The one other thing I wish for this game is that it were longer...but perhaps this leaves the game open for a sequel? (Hint hint?)

Overall though, I liked it a lot, and I'm going to rate this one a 8 out of 10 wedding planners.

DS Review: Ready Steady Cook

2010-05-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I've learned over the course of my reviewing various video games, it's that one thing never works: TV show to video game conversions. Why is that? Who knows. But it never, ever seems to work.

This game is based off the BBC programme, "Ready Steady Cook" (just as the title implies). You learn to cook in five different ethnic cuisine styles: British, Mexican, Indian, Oriental, and Mediterranean. The quality of your dishes will be stacked up against those of another contestant, and whoever does a better job wins, quite simply enough. Now, the dishes are also subdivided (even under each cuisine title) into four categories, based on price, apparently: Budget, Classic, Bistro, and Gourmet. Here are the dishes you'll be making:

British:

Creamy Pea Soup (Budget)
Bread and Butter Pudding (Budget)
Banana Smoothie (Budget)
Sticky Toffee Pudding (Classic)
Sweet and Sour Peppers (Classic)
Cod Wrapped in Bacon (Classic)
Eggs Benedict Royale (Bistro)
Venison Burger (Bistro)
Smoked Salmon (Bistro)
Wafer Stacks (Gourmet)
Stuffed Mushrooms (Gourmet)
Sea Bass with Asparagus (Gourmet)

Mexican:

Cannellini Bean Soup (Budget)
Mexican Sandwich (Budget)
Chorizo and Chickpea Salad (Budget)
Black Bean Salsa (Classic)
Spicy Tortilla (Classic)
Burritos (Classic)
Churros (Bistro)
Tex Mex (Bistro)
Quesadillas (Bistro)
Red Pepper Tortilla (Gourmet)
Chicken Chimichangas (Gourmet)
Tuna Tortilla (Gourmet)

Indian:

Lentil and Vegetable Dhal (Budget)
Vegetable Curry (Budget)
Chickpea and Potato Curry (Budget)
Chilli Flatbreads (Classic)
Chicken Biryani (Classic)
Chicken Tikka (Classic)
Samosa (Bistro)
Lamb Chappati Rolls (Bistro)
Sheekh Kebabas (Bistro)
Fish Pokora (Gourmet)
Prawn Curry (Gourmet)
Fish Curry (Gourmet)

Oriental:

Crab Cakes (Budget)
Pak Choi (Budget)
Pad Thai (Budget)
Egg Fried Rice (Classic)
Pork Spring Rolls (Classic)
Pork Lettuce Rolls (Classic)
Wontons with Jam (Bistro)
Coconut Broth (Bistro)
Stir Fried Prawns (Bistro)
Oriental Duck Salad (Gourmet)
Chicken Satay (Gourmet)
Chicken and Noodle Goreng (Gourmet)

Mediterranean:

Chilled Melon Soup (Budget)
Parma Wrap (Budget)
Ricotta Stuffed Figs (Budget)
Glazed Carrot (Classic)
Carrot Coriander Soup (Classic)
Parma Ham Bruschetta (Classic)
Italian Tomato Tart (Bistro)
Pesto Spaghetti (Bistro)
Aubergine Wraps (Bistro)
Gazpacho (Gourmet)
Flatbread Pizza (Gourmet)
Tiramisu (Gourmet)

You'll spend this game cracking eggs, chopping, cleaning, cutting, dressing, deep frying, draining, filling, frying, grating, manually mixing, automatically mixing, opening cans, setting ovens, peeling, picking, seasoning, simmering, slicing, and squeezing foods in preparation to make each meal. Not all these steps will be done either realistically or anywhere even VAGUELY near realistically... for instance, to open a can, you tap on randomly appearing dots that show up around the rim of the can. Ummm.....the last time I opened a can, there were no dots nor tapping? :p Just like with draining food, I don't think you'll be catching food randomly falling from the sky into a collander and saying it's been drained... no, it doesn't work like that. So, take some of these steps with a grain of salt. What gets me is that there's so little instruction on how to do these things that even on the easy difficulty, I failed a *lot* of times before finally figuring out the tricks in how to accomplish what they wanted. (Which, to be fair, is probably a lot like how real life cooking goes.) Also, it doesn't give you enough time for almost any of the tasks. If they'd extended each round by even just a few seconds more, I think it would greatly help things. I do, however, like that there's an in-game cookbook that tells you how to make each and every one of these dishes in real life. So it's won bonus points for itself there.

I'd by no means call this a terrible game; it should probably be ranked right up there alongside the Cooking Mama franchise. Analytically speaking, however... I think I'm going to rate this one a 6.5 out of 10 collanders.

DS Review: All Star Cheer Squad

2010-05-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers, I'll let you in on a little secret here: when I was in 7th grade, I was on the cheerleading squad at my school. (No, I will not post photos.) For as much as it always embarasses me to admit that fact, it seems odd to me that I always feel obligated to try out the various cheerleading video games...even if just to laugh at them. This one was released for both the DS and the Wii. Now, I don't have a Wii to test out that version on, but I bet it was MUCH better than its DS counterpart. The utilization of the Wiimotes as pom-poms makes it seem almost natural. Of course, it could only get so realistic without the cheers themselves...and I don't believe any of that was included in the game. However, this review is about the DS version, not the Wii one.

This game seems like it made sense on the drawing board as being engaging and fun. Somewhere in between the planning and the production of the game, however, it seemed to lose sight of both. I can look past the shoddy 3D graphics, I've come to expect that from DS games at this point. But things like the map...

I'll tell you one thing: THE MAP IS A LIIIIIIIIE. Honestly. If you just look at it and try to move around on the upper screen based on just what you see on the map, you'll never meet your destinations. They do NOT match up. Not in the least. It takes you until figuring out that you can tap locations on the map itself to get in the general vicinity (not even always arriving quite at the right place, just NEAR it), which is never even mentioned in the tutorial that you can do, to figure out transportation doesn't have to take about 10 minutes - real time - to figure out where you're going. I almost didn't make it past the second game day because of this fact.

The plot goes a little something like this: Your character is going to Cheer Camp this summer for a week with her cousin, who's a well-seasoned veteran of the camp at this point, and you're going just for fun. All too soon, you find yourself forced into being compared with your cousin, whether you like it or not, and are expected to live up to and surpass her reputation. One catch... When you're promoted to captain of the Wolf Squad (and I'm still mad I couldn't pick which squad I was on, I'd of picked Diamond squad), this ego quickly goes to your head in a matter of hours and instead of being the kind, helpful girl you were when you first started camp, you turn into a bossy, mean spirited, selfish person who only has her own success in mind instead of the team. You also start picking up the phrases and mannerisms of the rival top captain, whom everyone hates. Split personality disorder, much?

You'll be planning your daily schedule with the aid of your activity wheel. And just what is an activity wheel, might you ask? Well I'll tell you. It's basically a pie chart where you'll arrange and allocate your time into your daily tasks: free time, working out, practicing your moves, competitions, etc. Keep in mind that your free time isn't really "free" per se. You either have to practice your moves, or you have to go help people. Those are your options. (And I thought camp was supposed to be fun?) When you help other campers, you'll be sent on some type of wild goose chase, looking for a specific item. Some aren't so hard to find, whereas others are buried in dirt or sand - how are you supposed to see those?! Sure, you could blindly grope your way through each screen until you find it, but even when you see where it is? It won't necessarily register. Actually, you usually have to tap the correct location repeatedly about a dozen times before it will pick it up. It's ridiculous.

The music in this game is also atrocious. There's only one real song in the whole game...and it's a JONAS BROTHERS song. What the hell?!!? Another strike against this game, just saying. All the rest are ones made for the game, and every level of retarded. Let's try on these lyrics for size: "Better sit back cos I ain't gonna stop, that's my banana rollin' round the block!" (From the gem "Back of the Bus") They're ALL LIKE THAT. That's scarily enough probably the 'best' one (and I use that term loosely here).

I was really hoping this game would be a quick playthrough, but noooo. It drags out FOREVER. Which only further adds to my disdain with it. Oh well, what can you do, right?

Rating this game a 3 out of 10 pom-poms.

DS Review: Emma in the Mountains

2010-04-19T08:12:00.001-07:00

You would think that after discovering just how bad and a waste of precious life I'll never get back that Emma At The Farm was that I'd never, ever touch another "Emma" game again. But no. I'm evidently a masochist for such punishment. (Plus, I think I picked this up with the other one at the same time, not knowing what it was.)

That aside - first thing's first. Why does this kid look nothing remotely like the one in the first game? Hell, why does the kid in the game not even look like the girl on the cover? (Developer fail.)

This game has even less of a clear-cut plot than the last one did. In this one....apparently there's some groundhogs, and they're missing - or we think they're missing, then it turns out they're just hiding from an eagle who wants to eat them, I don't know. And somehow you complete the story by taking place in a ski competition.

...Say what?

I'm pretty sure whoever wrote the "storyline" for this game was on drugs. Just sayin'. This game is also more difficult on a couple of the levels than the first game (although the rest of the levels are so mindless, it should barely count as a game). This is a game meant for toddlers (probably) and yet, I'm 25 and couldn't figure out how to win a couple of the levels and got so frustrated that I had to turn it off. (Even when I did figure it out? This does not seem like something a toddler could get the hang of.) Like with the other Emma title, you unlock bonuses as you go along...although I'd be amazed if anybody ever actually looked at them, they're so boring. (Yes, one of your bonuses are FACT SHEETS.) I don't know what they were thinking, but they really dropped the ball on this one. There's no way ANYBODY'S going to enjoy this game, let alone a little kid. (And I even let my toddler-age nephew give it a shot.) I'm giving this game a 1 out of 10 snowballs. Epic fail.

DS Review: Planet Rescue: Animal Emergency

2010-04-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cover of this game implies that you'll be working with exotic, safari type animals in this game. Lions, zebras, tigers, giraffes, you name it. Seems like an interesting shift from the usual vet games...

Your game starts up, and you have to watch a poor quality 3D animation of your animal shelter, where evidently you have a pet tiger cub. Don't ask me why. Nevermind that you bend down to pet a dog while this tiger is running at your heels. ....Is it just me, or would the tiger not just eat the dog while he's at it? Eh, whatever...

This is about as close to the game the cover portrays that you're going to get. You're playing the role of a vet who has her own clinic, who, just like every other vet game on the market, specializes in cats, dogs, and rabbits. But wait! Your first patient it...a baby tiger cub! Seems exciting. Except that this tiger cub never once becomes relevent again, despite the fact that you keep him for the whole game.

Basically, the plot is this: A lot of the animals living in the general area have been contracting mysterious patches of itchy spots on their bodies, and nobody can quite figure out what they are. They've been making the animals very sick, however, so this is a problem that can't be ignored. It's your job to eventually figure out what's going on. (I won't give a spoiler and tell you what it ends up bring, but I will tell you this: it's very predictable.) So you diagnose their ailments, treat them, nurse them back to health, the whole shebang. Nothing particularly new or groundbreaking here, folks. But then again, given the genre...did you truly expect there would be something?

As the game progresses, you'll learn to do housecalls for horses, and eventually be taken to the large rescue station to help wild animals...the extent being pandas, tiger cubs, grizzy bears, and baby seals. Now, how does that live up to the cover of the game? I have no idea. Especially since you'll get maybe 5 requests, tops, to help them at all.

For a young player where repetition is key, they'd probably love this game. For adults, though? It's just monotonous and boring. More or less just a waste of your time. Rating this a 4 out of 10 baby tiger cubs.

DS Review: Amazing Adventures: The Forgotten Ruins

2010-04-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

So, I'm not going to lie about my age here - I was a child of the 90's. As such, much as basically any kid of my generation will remember were all the educational computer games from the software company MECC. These games were phenomenal for the times, although they all had a distinct style to them you could spot a mile away.

Guess what? I think this game may have had some of the same developers. I'm pretty dang sure.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try and solve an ancient Mayan code (oh, hello Mayaquest...) by deciphering their heiroglyphics. On the way, you'll be served up an educational storyline...which not going to lie, I didn't read much of because I just wanted to get on with playing the game.

Anyhow. 90% of this game is your typical I Spy style of game, which seems to becoming increasingly popular on the DS system. You're presented with a list of items that are often pretty expertly hidden in your locations you visit. There's 20 missions, but for each mission, there's about 3 to 5 levels on average. You'll be busy for a while.

Once you find everything on your list and complete the level, you'll be brought to the next one, where you have to spot 5 or 6 subtle differences between the top and bottom screens. Most of these are pretty obvious, but there's usually at least one you need to use a hint for.

After this, you'll get a puzzle slider. Just as the name implies (although I KNOW you all know what a puzzle slider is), you slide the tiles around until you re-piece the photo together.

You'll then be introduced to a matching memory game. It switches up... Sometimes it wants you to find perfect matches, sometimes it wants you to find similar items that are the same KIND of item, but still different...and sometimes it wants you to find related items, such as a screw and a screwdriver, a tire and a car, etc.

Finally, to finish up your level, a mah jongg type of puzzle... except that I don't think you can fail this one, so it's much less frustrating, but also much less strategic in its approach and means you won't be doing much thinking here. (And that's the entire reason I like mah jongg in the first place.)

The game is fairly straightforward, and more of just a good time-killer than anything. The graphics are fantastic, and the sounds and music aren't too bad either. The controls are a *little* bit touchy, but DS controls are hardly ever entirely accurate. You can't win em all. I'm not going to go and say that this is the best game ever, because it's not, but it's not bad either. I'm going to rate this one a 6.5 out of 10 Mayan temples.

DS Review: America's Next Top Model

2010-04-14T08:33:00.001-07:00

When you hear the name America's Next Top Model, what do you think of? Probably things like fashion, glamour, vogue... The series itself is a hit or miss; you either love it or you hate it. I personally don't care for it much, but I can appreciate it for what it is. Now... when somebody makes a game of a show, you expect it to at least be a little bit relevent, right?

Wrong.

Who knows if this game was even licensed...Tyra Banks doesn't make a single appearance in the game. And ANYONE who's ever seen the show knows how central she is to the series. There's an immediate docking of points right there for me. Second...well, to put it bluntly, this game sucks. You start out in your chic, modern NY (I assume) apartment, where you'll find your fashion consultant (who does absolutely NOTHING), a personal shopper (who also does zilch except stand there and look pretty) and....that's your whole team. Great, isn't it? You'll also find that navigating through your apartment is SO much more difficult than need be and that they should've just cut this entirely from the game. The only actual things you do here are you check your PDA each morning to see what your schedule for the day is, and you eat a bowl of fruit on your way out the door. You aren't allowed to leave your apartment until you do so. Now, I can understand the reasoning of this - I'm sure it's a subtle anti-anorexia ploy by the game developers, knowing that young impressionable girls will be playing this game. However, your fashion consultant insists you eat an apple before you leave...and your model eats the whole bowl. Um. Prelude to bulimia, anyone? (I mean, she is a model. She just binged. Her manager would probably force her to go purge if they found out.) Honestly, they could have entirely done away with the apartment scene altogether and nobody would be any the wiser. (Anyone who's played the game would quickly tell you that it'd be better without it.)

That aside, there's only four things you do in this actual game. You go by the schedule of a work week, Monday through Friday, so one of these activities WILL be repeated at least once throughout your week. You have four options:

Makeup
Creating outfits
Photoshoots
Practicing your catwalk

...Doesn't sound too thrilling, does it? (Trust me. It isn't.) Let's touch upon each of these in order, shall we?

In each of the makeup rounds, you're given a model, and are supposed to make her over in 3 minutes or less. Nevermind that the application process in this game is slow, tedious, and it takes trial and error to even figure out if you're even close to getting it right. You get a tiny picture in the corner of the screen that you're supposed to copy. ....HA. HA HA HA HA HA. That's funny. You can copy it EXACTLY, and you'll still fail. You have to watch the style meter on the left screen (oh, did I mention this game requires you to hold your DS sideways like a book? ...I didn't? Well, you do. Which only adds to my annoyance with this game even more.) and if you have the wrong shade of makeup, it won't move. If you have the correct shade, keep applying it until there's nowhere else to put it, so the bar keeps raising. Simply going by the reference picture will NOT help you achieve this, I found. Now, you also have to apply about 2 or 3 coats of each type of makeup. RIDICULOUS. This has got to be one of the most stressful, yet nonsensical makeup games ever.

Then we have the outfits you throw together. This is at least a little bit easier...you just pick a top, a bottom, and shoes. You're thrown a general style to try and create an outfit for, but again, following that won't give you top marks. It's pretty much trial and error...go down through the pieces, see which ones raise the style bar the most, and use them. Usually, the pieces look TERRIBLE together, but you get reviews such as: "Oh! That is so fresh and modern!" *eyeroll*

Then, photoshoots. I thought this would be the best part of the game, but no. Nooooo. All you do is you trace your stylus over a weird pattern that shows up on the right screen, and if you get it exact, you get a top score for that photo. Miss a little of the pattern (which is often what happens, since you only get THREE SECONDS to trace them) and you get half points. Don't make it to the end of the pattern, and you fail it. You have 10 photos to take each time. Meanwhile, on the left screen, your model does the same few poses over...and over...and over...

Finally, this brings us to the catwalk. In addition to practicing it throughout the week, you'll also be required to finish off every week with a catwalk faceoff. Now, in the practice mode, you walk the catwalk 3 times. At the end of the week, you only get one shot. Anyhow, you must tap your stylus back and forth in time with every step perfectly so your model doesn't trip. Then, like with the photoshoots, same thing: tracing designs in 3 seconds or less to hit the pose. (Also, you may fall down if you miss in this one.) Then you get your evaluation at the end.

There's no real elimination process in this game. You never even meet your "competition", nor does your performance seem to affect the outcome of the game. It seems impossible to fail out. The whole game seemed to be put together very quickly and cheaply, if you ask me. Especially for one with such a big name show backing it. Overall, I was extremely disappointed with this title. If I were you, I would NOT waste my time playing it...none of it's even fun. Rating it a 2 out of 10 runways.

DS Review: Puzzle Bobble Galaxy

2010-03-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's played any of the Bubble Bobble series over the years (and it's been around for about as long as I can remember, so that's saying something in terms of longevity) knows how these games typically work. They are, as the name would suggest, various forms of puzzle games. This one in particular doesn't exactly have a very original style to it (I'm sure most of us have played some form of the "bubble pop" puzzle at some point), but it doesn't mean that it's not good. The difference with this game is that, for once, there's actually a plot to go along with this sort of puzzler. Granted, it's a somewhat loose plot, but a plot nonetheless. Also, just because you finish a level in this game doesn't mean that you've necessarily unlocked everything; oh, no. There's certain bubbles, star bubbles, that you MUST pop if you want the bonuses that come along with them. The boss levels are also particularly difficult, since you have to work around obstacles and use the utmost precision to hit very specific points that are damn near impossible to reach. But depending upon your viewpoint, this can be a good or a bad thing - I like a challenge, and it kept me busy for about a week playing through it. Of course, there's also a multiplayer mode where you can connect to another player through a single card, which comes in handy, because how often do you run into two people with the same obscure game title? Not too often, just saying. The graphics aren't bad...they're nothing spectacular, but they're pretty alright. And the music is pleasant enough; it won't drive you crazy from hours of playing (probably). Ideally, I think I would have liked to have seen the story mode go on longer than it does. Apart from that, if you enjoy this type of game, definitely give it a shot, I think you might like it. I'm rating this a 6 out of 10 colored bubbles.

DS Review: Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island

2010-03-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

After how much I found that I loved A Witch's Tale, I took a gander over at the NIS game website to see what other games for the DS they've put out, in hopes that perhaps I might find another game I like equally well. The title seemed interesting - I liked the cover, but I recognized the title quickly as sounding German...or at least, German-inspired. Oh sure, why not? I'll give it a try.

I wasn't disappointed.

You're playing the role of Annie, a young lady who seemingly wants nothing more out of life than to merely "marry up" in society... You know, a gold-digger. She's lazy, has zero motivation, and never goes anywhere or does anything. Her family is worried about her, to the point where her grandfather feels the need to step in and do something. He sends her away to the remote Sera Island, where she will be trained to become an alchemist...whether she likes it or not! As you would imagine, she is not pleased with this arrangement. But, with the help of new friends that she makes on the island, she slowly begins to learn the ways of alchemy.

Initially, there's only one factor that makes her willing to try at all - there's a huge contest for all the alchemists on the island, and whoever wins will win either the King's son or daughter's hand in marriage. Talk about marrying up! Suddenly, it's nose-to-the-grindstone for Annie, and she begins to work harder than she's ever done in her life.

You spend the majority of the game mixing elements together to create different items that you'll need along your travels, as well as running errands for others. In addition, you'll be trying to build and operate the biggest, best resort the island has ever seen! Along the way, you'll run into deluges of monsters, who you must battle in a turn-based RPG style. But it's all fun, it's not as tedious as certain other games have made the genre out to be!

Where it gets interesting is that this game can have dozens of different outcomes at the game's conclusion. Just a quick tap into youtube, searching for "Atelier Annie ending" will bring up loads of these (which I sat and watched pretty much all of). Everything from the entire contest having been a huge mistake and everything's being shut down now, right up to actually going and marrying the prince. (With LOTS of possibilities in between those two.) It all depends upon just how you played the game, which relationships you developed, how well you managed things... This appeals to me, and definitely scores it major points in the replay value factor.

It's not often that I do this, but....I'm going to rate this game a 10 out of 10 alchemy pots!

DS Review: A Witch's Tale

2010-02-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

The first thing I should mention in this review, before anything else, is that I didn't have a legit copy of this game to try out and review. (Haven't been able to find it ANYWHERE.) So I downloaded a rom of the game. (I know, I know. Booooooo on L.L.P.!) Of course, if someone would like to donate a copy to me, I wouldn't be opposed. ;)

So why is this relevent, you may ask? Well... Because of one minor, and yet major flaw that I'm sure isn't an issue with the game cartridge itself: the main menu is jumbled up. And because of that, you CAN'T get to any save files. That poses a *huge* problem in the gameplay for this game, so I wasn't able to get incredibly far before being taken back to the main screen. It's really a shame, because this was the first game in a LONG time that I'd been particularly impressed by in every other aspect. (But, props to them nonetheless for implementing such successful copyright protection. Good show. If I can ever manage to find a copy of it, I'll definitely be buying it.)

You're playing the role of a young, mischievous, and let's face it - bratty witch named Liddell who's decided the magic she's being taught in witchcraft school isn't strong enough for her. She hears tale of an ancient black magic more powerful than anything else the world had ever seen, strong enough to send the entire planet into peril. Only by the powers of Alice (oh yes, THAT Alice... What timing for me to run across a video game that just happens to tie in with "Alice in Wonderland", no?) was this evil witch entombed for all eternity. ......Or so one thought. Liddell makes it her mission to track down where exactly this tomb is located at, and breaks into it. Sure enough, now freed from her entombment, the evil spirit is unleashed on the unsuspecting world, and Liddell is left with her old spell book.

The breaking and entering manages to wake the slumber of a vampire who lives in the vicinity named Loue. By all accounts, Loue is only one notch above a Twilight vampire as far as vampirism is concerned. Fairly wimpy, unimpressive, and yet... strangely lovable at the same time. (Don't ask, I don't even know.) He decides to make it his mission to take dear, stupid Liddell under his wing and show her the ropes of how everything works, so that she may have some shot at re-containing this ancient black magic. It takes some persuasion on his part to convince her that this is, indeed, a good idea, and that with some work, she might become as powerful as Alice. Those are the magic words as far as she's concerned, and she cooperates.

Loue guides her through the navigation of maps, shows her the different worlds she'll be traveling to and defeating enemies in, and, most importantly, how to fight said enemies. Now here's where things get a little different. Although one would have to technically classify this as a typical turn-based RPG, the actual fighting is somewhat unique to this game. You have the option to merely attack your opponent (thus saving magic points but not being as powerful in most cases), but what you'll find out quickly is that you'll want to use your runes. Runes, you say? Yes, runes. Each rune has a different type of attack power, and each one affects different opponents to different degrees. There's a lot of trial and error involved here, as well as a fair degree of luck. In addition, Liddell possesses a doll that also helps her fight in battles. She's more powerful than Liddell herself is, which is impressive for a doll. Throughout the game, you'll collect more dolls and be able to choose which you want to take into battle at your side.

The graphics are actually pretty good for a sprite game. I was very impressed by that and the sound quality. It isn't the typical video gamey music - it's actual MUSIC being played for once, real voices being used, etc. This also earns it huge points with me.

This game might be a little bit scary for a younger crowd; I wouldn't advise it to anybody under age 10. Possibly a little older if they're easily scared. While the game seems as though it was created with females in mind, I wouldn't doubt that there's a male demographic who play and enjoy this game too. It's got just the right degrees of, well, EVERYTHING to make the game great for almost everybody. I'm going to rate it a big 9 out o 10 witches.

DS Review: My Little Baby

2010-02-11T18:24:00.001-08:00

In the many games out there aimed towards little girls made for the DS, you'd be amazed at just how many of them evidently are trying their damndest to train them from a young age onward into domesticity; something you don't see happening when you play games that are aimed at boys. (Usually. I'm sure that there's an exception or two here or there, but that's about it.) As such, it's no surprise that there's a ton of 'baby' games out there....such as the one that I'm going to be reviewing here. Didn't have very high hopes going into it, and as it turns out, looks like I was right.

Upon first booting up the game (and not just on the first load, oh no - you get this little reminder every single time you load the game), you'll be treated to an animation sequence of 'your' baby developing in utero as a fetus up to delivery day - which VERY thankfully is not shown - and you're handed this baby. Not as a newborn....as a three month old. (I don't know why either.) Your doting nanny gives you helpful hints and pointers along the way...wait, let's focus on this for just a moment. Nanny? If you have a nanny for your child, why the hell is this even a game? Shouldn't the nanny be doing all of this for you?! (You know I'm right.) Strike one!

As you'll quickly find out, you have many necessities you'll need to buy for your baby...and very little money. Oh, so little money that you burn through very quickly and only earn as a pittance at a time. About $20 a day, if I'm not mistaken. Doing what? I don't know! You just get it at the beginning of each day. Regardless, you'll learn fast that this won't get you very far on its own, which I suppose is good training in regards to life skills, but I digress. You'll see your VERY ugly baby. Yes, I said it. The baby's UGLY. It doesn't matter what sort of 'parental' info you put in for the biology of this child; at best, your baby will look like a miniature version of Bert Lahr. (For those not in the know, he's the man that played the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard Of Oz". Look him up.) This is totally a case of a kid having a face that only a mother could love. Perhaps because you're not the real mother, that's why it's not cute? I don't know.

Regardless, you'll be presented with a map of your house. You can go out in the garden, the playroom, the nursery, bathroom, or the kitchen. Each place has its own activities that are unique to that location. Well, almost. Most of the things you can do in the nursery, you can do in the garden, and vice versa. About the only difference is that when the baby gets a little older, there will be a swing out there that can only go outside, and obviously can't take indoors. The kitchen is where you prepare the bottles and/or the baby food and then drinking/eating, the nursery is for dressing your baby and putting it down for naps and sleep, the garden and playroom are for playing in, and the bathroom is for, as you probably have surmised by now, bathing. (And diaper changes.) What an exciting life, right? You can also go to the shops, but, as you hardly have any cash at any one given time, it's usually just sitting there on the map, mocking you in the face and reminding you that you're a poor parent for not being able to provide them with everything they want and need. And indeed, there WILL be times when you can't even provide for your baby's most basic needs, and they'll get sick as a result. Guilt trip much?! Then the doctor has to make a house call, which you ALSO won't be able to afford, and a random family member will have to pitch in and foot the bill for you whilst reminding you that you need to mind your money better. (Jeez. As if I don't already get enough of that in real life?)

99% of this game will be horrible, boring monotony day in, day out. At least in real life, as your child grows, they'll become more spontaneous and keep you amused as a parent! Not here. This game out to be a mandatory teaching tool in high schools to try and scare kids out of teenage sex. "This WILL be your life if you get pregnant." Seems decent enough to me! Then there's the rare teaching experiences, where you get to teach your baby to crawl, balance, and walk. These last for about a minute.

Then there's the 'wtf' factor at play. For instance, anyone with even half a brain knows that you do NOT feed a baby honey. EVER. That's a HUGE no-no that I thought was just common sense. Oh, it's out the window in this game! It's a SOOTHER. What the HELL?! You can't do that! Oh, but they do, they do. And don't have a lick of guilt about teaching young girls all over the world that this is okay. Also, once your baby is crawling, if you ignore it for a few minutes, it'll try sticking its finger in an electrical socket. What sort of an idea was THAT to put into a game like this?! There's so many weird little things like that. But, it's always the nanny pointing it out to you, which again brings up the point - if the nanny is ALWAYS around and watching, why don't they just look after the kid themself and let me get on with my life? I didn't hire them for nothing, after all!

Here's another pet peeve of mine: did I mention you don't even get jarred baby food? Oh, no. You have the pleasure of COOKING the baby food yourself. Isn't that a pleasant little joy? Now, how many parents honestly do this, show of hands? Okay, that's none.... now, how many of you parents who have nannies for your children do this? ....Mmhmm, that's what I thought. NONE. Why is this in the game?! It's a waste of time!

The element of time drags on PAINFULLY slowly in this game. It took me literally weeks of playing this stupid thing just to get my baby to hit a year old. And guess what? Suddenly, the age jumps from 1 to 3, and now baby's in preschool and you get a NEW baby! YAAAAAAY!.......actually, gag me with a spoon, I'm NOT ABOUT TO DO THAT AGAIN. I shut the game off, didn't bother saving or anything. This, sadly....was a humongous mistake. Why is that, you may ask? Well, while in my mind, I'd made the assumption that whenever your babies grow up and go on to preschool, you just get a new baby and this whole game is an endless loop, to be played over and over until you get bored of it. Well. While I was grabbing the box art from Google for this post that I'm writing right now, I discovered that apparently, your older child isn't gone. Oh, no. I could've played with them too....except that I didn't save, and there's no way in hell I'm going to play that game through *again* just to see what it might do when this entire game had been nothing but mind-numbing monotony to the point where I want to SCREAM! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (....feel better? Yes. I feel better now.)

The whole experience, even minus that last part, is maddening. And not in a good way. I can't see myself ever truly recommending this game to anybody unless if it were an act of complete and utter sadism. This game gets a rating of 4 out of 10 milk bottles.

DS Review: Cate West: The Vanishing Files

2010-02-04T17:48:00.001-08:00

I'd been meaning to try out this game for months, ever since I heard of this game and saw a few screenshots of it, but still was a little unsure of what exactly to expect - gameplay or otherwise.

In this game, you're playing the role of Cate West, a young authoress who's recently been receiving much acclaim for the release of her new book. Unbeknowst to she (or anyone else, for that matter), she's been blessed with a gift: she's a psychic. She has vivid dreams of things before they happen. As such, she begins having dreams about crimes that have been happening around the city, and begins to help solve cases by details she sees in her dreams. The plot probably doesn't sound nearly as impressive as it actually is; it's very heavy and downright dark at points. (If you like dramatic storylines, like myself, then you'll love this.)

As far as the actual gameplay itself goes, it's a bit different from how I anticipated it to work out. It plays, more or less, like a glorified I Spy type of game. You'll move from location to location, being given a list of items to find that are scattered and hidden throughout the location, and do so before the time runs out. I also particularly like that most of the locations seem to be named after classic stars...Garland (leave it to me to notice that one first and foremost...), Townshend, Mason, Gillespie, Sullivan, Bennett, etc. Very nice touch! After going through all of these, you'll be presented with a couple of items that are actual clues... but broken into shards and you must find these pieces amongst different locations as well. Once you piece these together as well, you'll discover your suspect's hideout - which will present you with two pictures side by side of the same location, and you point out all the differences in the two pictures. (It's harder than it sounds - some are INCREDIBLY subtle.) You then deduce pieces that will help identify your criminal; you pick them out from a lineup of 8 people based on your clues, and then you recreate the crime scene in a reverse style from the criminal hideout level - you have two screens side by side and have to replace the missing objects where they go. This is how you complete each case. (It makes more sense when you actually play it.)

I was fairly impressed by the graphics of the game. While the characters themselves are drawn in a cartoon style, they're animated beautifully. The actual gameplay is much more realistic looking, which also makes it a little more difficult in finding all the necessary items. (Good thing they give you copious amounts of time to complete each one.) The sound effects are both good an bad. The music gives the game an eerie, almost deja vu feel to it (which I'm sure was the intention), and then during dialogue scenes, often the first word or two is actually spoken by the characters. But during the intro and endings of the game, the entireties of both are fully spoken...so why not do this for the whole game? I'm not entirely sure. A little continuity would've been better, I think. And the controls, well.... While not horrible, they do leave something to be desired. They're not a mile off, but oftentimes you'll find yourself clicking on an item that you KNOW is right there, but it doesn't register (and subsequently docks you points for it), and then you do it again a minute later in the same exact spot and magically, now it decides to work.

I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone, as it's the main focal point of the game (and the entire reason that playing so many levels in a row that are virtually the same exact thing over and over again doesn't get really boring) but I will say that they left things pretty open-ended so that a sequel might someday be made. I personally hope they follow through with this...I do think I'd buy it! Overall, this game is actually surprisingly good. I'm going to rate it an 8 out of 10 case files.

DS Review: I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover

2010-02-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

Once again, I bring you a game review of yet another makeup simulation game. (Yawn.) For how many seem to be out there, it tells me one thing: give these little girls some real makeup to play with and have done with it! But, alas, amidst the waves of tweens dressing skankily (whom I still refer to as 'prostitots'), parents are still reluctant to let their girls play with real makeup. (Rather ironic, when you think about it.) Anyhow, I digress. I bring you a genuine, L.L.P.-patented review for I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover by City Interactive.

City Interactive? I can't say as I'd heard of them before, so I took a gander at their website to see just what else they'd done. A first glance at their game list looked fairly impressive...until I noticed two things. One, one of their titles has a blatant spelling error right in the name! How did THAT pass through without anybody noticing it? And two, of all these fairly good-looking games...every last one of them except for 3 are for the PC. The only 3 for DS are Sushi Academy, Chronicles of Mystery: Curse of the Ancient Temple, and of course, I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover. Comparing the two lists, I came to the conclusion that with the exception of that second title, they feel that boys play computer games, thus putting all the badass games out on PC only, and then the other two games left for DS are blatantly sexist toward female stereotyping. (My interpretation? 'Women are only good for doing makeup and getting back in the kitchen'. See what I mean?) Of course, this observation has little to nothing to do with the actual gameplay of this game, so I'll set that aside now that I've gotten it out of the way.

You're playing the role of a new, yet prestigious Hollywood makeup artist who gets clients from all facets of the industry. As you satisfactorily complete their makeovers, you unlock more missions you'll need to complete, as well as new clients altogether. Sounds simple, right? In this case, you're wrong, for you see, this game does not allow for any mistakes, no matter how minor. If you barely smudge some makeup, you'll have to entirely start the whole makeover over from the beginning to even attempt to get a 5 star rating. That hardly seems fair! In real life, you can just wipe it away and do it over, but you can't do that here, for some reason. It quickly becomes infuriating, and for that, it's another one of those games I can only manage to get through maybe a couple of makeovers at a time on before having to put it away and not think about the game for a week or two. (Thus why it's taken me since September to complete a game that, had I just kept at it, might have only taken me a few days.) Now, what could be so difficult about accurately applying all this makeup? Well, for starters, they demand such a level of accuracy that you might as well be playing with real makeup... I'll go through step by step, detailing every portion of the makeovers.

Hair Dying - Cover the whole hair with dying foam and wash with water afterwards. This is pretty straightforward, although... SInce when does anyone dye their hair with foam? I've only seen it in liquids, powders, and gels. Hmm.....
Brushing Hair Out - Take a hair brush and brush the hair thoroughly. Sounds simple, but oftentimes, even when you think you've gotten it all, you'll only get a "very good" rating instead of a "perfect" because you missed one tiny little swipe with the brush where you should've gone over it just one more time.
Hair Curling - Curl the hair as nicely as you can. Be careful not to overdo it. You take a curling iron and curl each section of hair, but if you leave it on for longer than just a couple of seconds, you can and will burn the hair. Getting the timing just right on this is maddening.
Hair Straightening - Straighten the hair as nicely as you can. Be careful not to overdo it. Basically just like the hair curling levels, you'll easily burn the hair if you leave the straightener on even a fraction of a second too long.
Hair Spray - Spray the hair as thoroughly as you can. Be careful, there is not much hair spray left. All you do is just spray the whole head of hair with spray and watch it change color.
Jewellery - Match the jewellery to the makeup the way you like it. There's no way to get this one wrong.
Foundation - Use the foundation to match the effect from the example. Try to avoid eyes and lips. Easier said than done...get too close to the mouth, it'll count it as going over it. Don't get close enough, and it'll register as though you forgot a spot. This one is really luck of the draw in how it ends up working.
Powder - Use powder in the right places to get the same effect as shown in the example. In actuality, this is blush, not powder.
Eyeshadow - Paint the eyelids as shown in the example. Again, be careful not to smudge outside the lines.
Eyeliner - Remember the example and draw a similar line on the eyelid. This is what I'm talking about with needing to be so accurate that you may as well be doing real makeup, folks.
Curling - Warm the curler. If it gets too hot, switch the hairdryer to cooling. Close the curler, but not for too long. ...Did I mention we're talking about eyelashes here? We are. And it's even harder to get correct than curling the hair. By the way...who ever in real life has warmed their eyelash curler with a blow dryer first?
False Lashes - Move false lashes on the eyelid and place them in the right order. ...Since when do false lashes come in segments of four pieces for a single lashline? This is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. I thought I'd love this part of the game, channeling a bit of Minnelli into all of the clients who request this, but...ugh, nevermind!
Eyebrow Drawing - Change the eyebrow contour with the eyebrow pencil. As long as you go nice and slowly, this should be easy.
Tweezers - Find unwanted hairs and remove them by gently moving them in the direction they grow.
Mascara - Paint the eyelashes as shown in the example. Be careful not to glue them together. ...Easier said than done. I'm pretty sure putting on real mascara is even a million times easier than completing this level accurately.
Lip Liner - Remember the shape of lips and try to draw a similar one. Like with the eyeliner, you'll be tracing a very thin outline here, but it's even trickier, as a singular line isn't thick enough to fill the outline, and if you don't fill it just right, it will dock you down a rating point. But in going back to fill it in, there is a high probability you will go outside the lines.
Lipstick - Put the lipstick on carefully to get the same effect as shown in the example. Don't smudge outside the lines, lest your client end up looking like she's got herpes. (Learned this the hard way...)
Gloss - Paint the lips with the gloss. Try to get the same effect as shown in the example. Pretty much, as long as you stay inside the lines and don't miss any spots, it's hard to mess this one up.
Nail Polish - Polish finger nails by moving nail warnish across them. ...Except that this game LIES and you're not polishing the nails at all, you're buffing them with an emery board! What is this?!
Nail File - Smoothen nails by moving the file along their edges. Ew.... I hate these things in real life, and the thought of the rough scratching they make sent shudders right through me even just VIRTUALLY doing this. EW!
Painting - Paint nails and dry them by blowing.
Decoration - Decorate nails the way you like them. Pick a decoration and slide it towards a nail. There's no right or wrong way to do this, as long as it makes it on the nail. They don't even have to match.
French Nails - Paint all the entire nails with the chosen color, then paint the nail edges white. Nevermind that the edges will look like you painted them with Liquid Paper.
Acrylic Nails - Choose an acrylic nail matching the shape of dot and move it over a finger tip. ..."The shape of dot"? Really guys? Couldn't you have used proper grammar? :p Anyhow, I HATE this level with a passion, because even eyeballing it to the best of your ability, chances are you'll ALWAYS get at least one or two wrong.

As you continue to progress through the game, there will be three makeup competitions you'll have to compete in to complete the game. Each consists of three makeovers that you'll have to complete perfectly, lest you have to start over from the beginning of the first one again and keep on doing this until you get it right. Eventually you'll complete all three, your friends will throw you a party, and it's the end of the game. A rather disappointing end to the game, at that.

I must say that while on one hand, I do enjoy that this game's a bit more challenging than most of its competitors on the market - it's not quite as mindless to play - but on the other hand, I hate the fact that some of the levels are almost impossible to complete with a perfect score, even as an adult. I'm sure there's a suitable middle ground that could have been struck here. I'm going to rate this game a 6 out of 10 lipstick tubes. A very forgettable game...

DS Review: Imagine Makeup Artist

2010-02-02T10:14:00.000-08:00

Before you even say it, yes, I know what you're thinking about yet another Imagine game. But wait! Don't go! I'm not going to say what you think I am about it!

For as horribly as the past...I don't even remember how many Imagine games have sucked, this one somehow, miraculously....didn't! I don't know if they got one of their older game programmers/illustrators back onboard or what, but this game is surprisingly MUCH better than I'd anticipated it would be for 'just another makeup game'.

For starters, you'll immediately notice the difference in animation style once you boot up the game. It's not the lousy 3-D graphics that Imagine has so fondly taken under their wing, despite the fact that they don't look very good on a DS. No, these graphics are the adorably cute anime style graphics that we saw the likes of in Imagine Master Chef and Imagine Ballet Star. This immediately set the bar a little higher for my standards and expectations of this game, as it already seemed higher budget than many of its sister titles. Sure, the music sounds like something out of a 90's fashion show, but... what else would you expect from a makeup-themed game, right? It DID borrow some of the sound effects from Imagine Master Chef, but that's alright. I can overlook that, because they're not bad.

Now. Your character, of whom you have 3 different types to choose from as your base (I personally chose the 'cute' style one because - hey! She looks almost just like me!), has traveled to a prestigious makeup artistry school, to learn from basically the best of the best in the world, with the intentions of learning everything they can from them so that they may take the new title of the world's greatest makeup artist. A lofty goal, certainly. You go through lessons on just about every type of makeup (except nails...I don't know why they left that out) to learn how to use them and how they benefit you. (I found on a few of these, you can learn some real life tips that I didn't know a lot about. Also, they stress the importance of toner, moisturizer, and sunscreen as necessities.) In between lessons, you'll be practicing on clients who come in to the university, looking for help with their makeup. It's your job to ask around town for tips on how to achieve the look that they want, procure the necessary cosmetics, return and then do their makeup. Pretty simple.

Of course, this isn't the whole game. Oh, no, no at all. Following in the footsteps of Imagine Ballet Star, everything is not a hand-out here. You actually have to work for your money to buy cosmetics, hairstyles, and fashionable clothing (the latter of which are completely unnecessary, but I'm a perfectionist who likes to complete her games to the most thorough of her abilities...thus, I collect everything). You start out at a job in a restaurant, washing dishes. As lowly as that job seems, you'll quickly find out that you can easily earn the most money at one time through this mini-game. (I'm also overlooking the fact that they entirely ripped off this mini-game from Imagine Master Chef.) Then you can move on to a cafe where you decorate cakes to fill customers' orders, then on to a florist's shop where you dole out the right number of flowers in specific numbers to customers, and finally to an amusement park, where there's two possible job routes: filling balloons or reading announcements over the PA system. (For a mild dyslexic, the latter of those two is almost cruel, as you have to quickly find, at a moment's notice, each line individually of the announcements.) Being the realist that I am, I like the fact that the game stresses that, despite trying to pursue a career in makeup, you'll need a side job to support your means, since surely you won't be earning a living off of doing makeup alone.

As an aside, and I guess to help flesh out your plot line a little bit more, you'll find your character falling for a boy and going out on dates (innocent ones, nothing trashy that the younger crowd shouldn't be seeing) with the boy on your days off. I won't say where exactly this leads to, since I don't want to give out TOO major of spoilers here - you'll have to play for yourself if you want to find out the answer to that question. ;)

There's only two things that I find particularly strange about this game, and only one of which is an actual complaint - the first is just something I find a little odd. At the beginning of the game, your instructor equips you with a compact. But, oh! It's not any ordinary compact, you see. It doesn't just house makeup... it also doubles as a PDA. It's where you receive your emails and take notes. Now, I don't know about you, but I find that to be just a little bit strange, don't you? And now, for the complaint. It's just a small complaint and doesn't hinder gameplay or anything, it just makes things a little more difficult than I feel they need to be. You navigate through the map screens with a series of arrows. Now, if you were to lay out the entire map on a 3 x 3 grid (so that there were 9 squares total), there'd be....well, a couple of squares missing. No big deal, except that the game doesn't compensate for this, and will toss you into places you shouldn't be if you were trying to go to X location, then you try to go back where you came from and end up elsewhere. That part annoys me, and made trying to figure out where things were at first somewhat difficult. That's my only real complaint about this game though, so hey! Kudos to you, Imagine; you've finally made a game I couldn't just mercilessly rip to shreds!

Overall, this game's actually pretty good! Therefore, I've no choice but to give it a good rating, despite it being an Imagine game. I think I'm going to rate it an 8 out of 10 makeup brushes.

DS Review: My Horse & Me 2: Riding For Gold

2010-01-22T06:51:00.000-08:00

As the rainy winter months continue to drag on, I find myself trying out more and more of these silly equestrian games...mostly because I wish like anything I could be out riding in real life. But, as that is not an option, I go for what, logically, seems more or less like the next best idea. This time, it was with My Horse & Me 2: Riding For Gold.

The storyline is fairly predictable and typical. You're playing a girl who's visiting her uncle's ranch (why is it always a grandfather or an uncle? Just wondering...) and, of course, things can never just be. There's all this drama that the ranch's horses are all getting sick, and the ranch itself is in danger of being shut down and your character is its only hope, blah blah blah... you can see where it's going. You have to start riding so you can enter competitions to try and save the ranch. (Who didn't see that coming from a mile away?) And, of course, more in the style of any TV drama involving a ranch rather than most games, there has to be the one token hunky guy who's interested in your character from the get-go. (I'm sure my own sexuality has something to do with this, but every time the guy showed up, I just rolled my eyes and groaned. Can't STAND that skeeve. You know as well as I do he's only interested in one thing. :p)

So, what's a girl to do? Well, you train your horse and compete all around the world, of course! Each competition has a dressage, jumping, and a cross-country obstacle course. You get to train for each of these at your own ranch before traveling to remote locations all around the globe (many of which I wouldn't associate with horse showmanship, but whatever) to compete in each competition. I do like the fact that it's only very rare that you end up doing anything at a galloping pace. More typically, you use either a trot or a canter...which is far more true to real life than most horse games assume things work, where everything is all, 'THIS IS YOUR HORSE ON STEROIDS. NEED FOR SPEEEEEEEEEEED!' No. Just, no. And this game respects that, so I'll give it a bonus point for that.

In between competitions and training sessions, you must care for your horse. Sounds typical, I'm sure, but so far this is the only games I've ever seen thus far in the genre who've gone to the lengths of detail that this one has. Even the more common practices, they put their own spin on, which makes this game a one of a kind in the field. First, you must bathe your horse. You take a round brush and break up all the clumps of dirt in the horse's fur (which, unfortunately due to the animation style used, results in the dirt looking like flanks of meat hanging off the poor animal), then lather it up with soap, rinse it off with a hose, and try is with a towel. Funny thing about rinsing the horse....after you do so, there's streaks of neon blue left behind on the horse that make it look like a zebra. (They don't entirely disappear when you dry it, either. They just fade a bit.) Then, you must clean the horse's hooves. (Ah, caught you off-guard, didn't it? This is something new to horse games!) You get a hoof pick, and just like in real life, you have to pick all the clods of dirt out from the hooves. But then they take it a step further by requiring you to fill the cracks left behind in the hooves with grease. (They could have only topped this by requiring you to change the horses' shoes from time eto time as well. Maybe in a future game someday.) Then you have to take care of the horse's legs by massaging and wrapping them (another feature I've never seen used in another game), and, although I felt they may have been reaching a little bit on this part, give the horse massages patented to their moods. This only proves to be educational in the fact that it forces you to pay attention to your horse's body language, which exhibits subtle signs of different moods that real horses display as well. (Growing up around horses my entire life, this wasn't even a challenge for me.) Then you get to clean their stall, which is about as tedious (but luckily not as backbreaking) as it is in real life. Collect up all the dirty straw, get rid of it, wash away the poop with a hose (although they say it's dirt....c'mon. You wouldn't be cleaning it up if there weren't poop everywhere. I'm guessing they just didn't want to disgust the kids by calling it what it really is), and then scattering new, fresh straw all over the floor. And then, of course, you have to feed your horse. This part, they took some creative liberties on, because you have to combine 6 different pieces of food (of your choice) with a supplement, add water, mix it, and see if your horse likes it. (I was only able to come up with one combination that my horse didn't hate.) It's not nearly so complicated in real life.....nor even vaguely similar to this process.

Now, with all that said, I do have some complaints. (Then again, when don't I?) If the 3-D animations weren't so horribly grainy, they might actually be decent to look at, but in the shape they're in, they're just hideous. (What a waste.) Yet, in the actual dialogue scenes, they're horribly cartoony by comparison. There's no real set style throughout, which annoys me. Also annoying is all the in-game advertising for Atari, especially during competitions. It makes it VERY distracting while you're trying to concentrate on what's going on, and then suddenly there's a huge Atari logo dragging your attention towards it. They should've made these more subtle. The controls themselves are iffy.... When they want to work correctly, they're fantastic. But, they're very finicky and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when they will and won't work, and then you're about a mile off from where you need the controls to be picking up at. This makes trying to get gold in any competition almost impossible. You'll be lucky to see silver. But, the absolute #1 biggest gripe I have about this game is that there is NO way to speed up the dialogue. It scrolls past irritatingly slowly, and it doesn't even stop between messages for you to have to tap the screen, signaling that you've finished reading this part. It just keeps going. So you can't even try to multitask while playing this to have something to do during the aggravatingly long waits for the dialogue to finish popping up. If it weren't for this, I'd be liable to give this game a considerably higher rating than I'm about to. Potential improvement for if you ever make a sequel to this, Atari. Heed your players' suggestions!

Overall, the game length isn't that long. In one sitting, I'd venture to say that one could easily complete the game in about 4 or 5 hours, tops. But, because of how aggravatingly slowly things go, I couldn't play it all in one sitting, I had to keep taking breaks between each competition and coming back to it later; playing it in only small spurts. (I'm sure I can't be the only one to have felt this way about it.) So it ended up taking me about a week or so to complete it, playing through a couple of competitions per day. I think this speaks volumes both about its lasting and replay appeal. I'm going to rate this title a 6.5 out of 10, and I feel that I'm still being generous with that. The negative points should've forced it lower, but with so much uniqueness in the horse care department, I did have to take that into consideration when rating this.

DS Review: Imagine Cheerleader

2010-01-13T17:07:00.001-08:00

Keeping in step with the stereotypically female aspiration-inspired video games, Imagine has topped itself this time in trying to crank out another extremely girly video game. This time, they took on cheerleading.

...CHEERLEADING.

As you can imagine (pun intended), there isn't a whole lot somebody can do with this. If this didn't have the Imagine brand tied to it, I would be convinced that this was an absolute scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel budget to even produce this game in the first place. The graphics look both as though they were drawn in MS Paint and drawn in one of the shoddiest anime stylings I've seen in a long time. They have to distract the little girls from the terrible quality of this game with making sparkly fireworks explode any time they tap the bottom screen. Then you get into the actual gameplay...

All you end up doing is copying what the opposing cheerleading squad does. How this is supposed to lead you up through the ranks in "beating" the other squads, I don't know. But you either swipe your stylus up, down, left, or right....that's it. That's what you do the whole game, through every routine. Can you imagine just how quickly that gets old? Ugh. I kept waiting for the game to become fun, but it never happened. Thankfully, it only took about two hours, total, to complete the entire game. The only requiem you get from the monotony of the game is a small minigame you get to play a grand total of twice throughout the course of the game; a bake sale where you have to hurl your baked goods at your customers from a distance. ...It didn't really fit in with the rest of the game, but I guess they had to make some attempt at fleshing this out into a semi-playable game.

About the only thing I liked about this game, albeit predictable, were the Showgirls. VERY Broadway-esque, thus why I loved them. They should've belonged to dance troop rather than the cheerleaders, but that's neither here nor there. You can also purchase their dance styles (along with any of the other troops' dances as well), but I personally feel that you should just level up through the game and earn the dances with higher levels. Have it built in to simplify things, y'know? But the only drawback to that would've been that a.) it would have felt like that much less that you could do and b.) you'd lose that customizable quality to your troop to give it its own flavor. So I guess it's good and bad at the same time.

I feel that this game is really rather forgettable. It gets a measley 3 out of 10 pom-poms.

DS Review: Puzzle Kingdoms

2010-01-13T13:34:00.001-08:00

When dealing with typical colored block puzzle games, there's only so many possible ways to try and change the game up. While this one tried its best to do so by adding many intricacies to create a deeper game, it fell flat in the shallow end of the pool.

The game opens with an ominous storyline about how a far off, distant (and imaginary) land is perishing to death and pestilence, and that your hero is the only hope that can even try to save it. You have to assemble teams of fighters to come along with you on your "epic quests", attempting to regain everything that once belonged to your people.

To do this, you'll have to battle through colored block puzzles. Oh, yes. Colored blocks on a grid, and you get to slide them around, one block at a time, to try and connect three of the same color. Doing so will help you to power up your fighters and attack the opponents, as well as vice versa. Whoever has more fighters still alive at the end of the fight wins.

There's just one small problem with this game: There's relatively little to no explanation of how to play. You're expected to figure this part out more or less all on your own. While not impossible, it leaves you feeling very confused, trying to figure out what the hell to do while getting your rear end handed to you on a plate in the meantime. It's definitely harder than it initially seems going into it. But it's not just the puzzles that aren't really explained to you. It's not very well explained in how to conquer the different kingdoms, other than to 'win battles'. Well no s***, Sherlock. Ugh. And then it takes trial and error to figure out the right way to even assemble your troops.

In my opinion, if a company's going to make a game with a complicated premise like this, wouldn't it make more sense to at least include a tutorial level to show you what you're supposed to be doing, rather than either figure it out for themselves or get ticked off and return it? It just makes no sense to me. For this, as well as the game looking to be seemingly very low budget, I'm going to rate it a 3 out of 10 vassals.

DS Review: Monster Mayhem - Build and Destroy

2010-01-10T11:19:00.001-08:00

I won't lie, I don't have much personal interest in monsters. Go ahead, blame it on me being a chick, but I just don't, no matter how hard I try. Still, I decided to at least try this game out and see how it went. You never know, sometimes odd things end up surprising you!

While this game initially seemed like it just might become one of those titles, it didn't end up panning out. You get a set number of stat points with which to build and customize a monster of your own design, which, while destructive in nature, is sent to protect the town in which it lives, not hurt it. To gather the strength it needs, unfortunately it must destroy inanimate objects such as dumsters and cars, but the locals won't mind - it's for their own protection, you know. You have to chase down the bad monsters in town into caves and then fight them.

I only got to the third monster of the game before realizing that I must have failed in building my monster strong enough, and for that, he wasn't strong enough to beat it, no matter what I did. After wasting nearly a week just to keep re-affirming this fact, I finally gave up. All the nice graphics and sound effects....down the drain. All because I couldn't level up quickly enough. What a waste, no?

I'm going to try and give the game the benefit of the doubt in thinking perhaps it's not bloody awful, because the quality seemed good, and perhaps it's just the fact that I'm not so accustomed to this particular genre of game that it didn't turn out all too great for me, so I'm going to be generous and rate it a 6 out of 10 monsters.

DS Review: Sea Park Tycoon

2010-01-06T17:20:00.001-08:00

Ever since Maxis released the first of the Sim City games, I'm sure they had no idea just how much of a genre that they'd be cornerstoning by doing so. There've been tons of city simulation games, home simulation games, and of course, the whole gamut of Tycoon simulation games. One of these, the one which I'll be focusing on here, is Sea Park Tycoon.

The premise itself seems simple: Build a sea park, keep your animals and visitors happy, and turn a profit. Seems simple, right? Not so much. Not only are there numerous goals that you have to reach (well okay, in scenario mode anyway), but keeping your assets afloat doesn't prove to be as simple as it seems at the start. This is good training for real life money management skills, I suppose, but at the same time, it does get really frustrating, going bankrupt so easily so often.

There's two types of gamers in the world; the experts at these type of games, and the rest of us. The experts can cruise right through like they're nothing, and the rest of us are practically reduced to tears of frustration. It's like Zoo Tycoon all over again, except with clearer controls and better graphics. The one main difference is that when your animals get sick, you have to play minigames to heal them, and there's other mini-games for whenever you want to hold a park animal show with, say, the dolphins or sea otters.

The 3-D graphics aren't the typically horrible quality that we're so accustomed to expecting from Nintendo DS games, but it's nothing spectacular on the other hand, either. Definitely a little on the better side of the line, if anything. This helps bring up the points a tiny bit on my scoring for the game, as does all the detail put into most aspects of the game.

Overall though, this is an easily forgettable game. Chances are, at most, you'll spend a few weeks playing this, put it down, and never think about it again. Rating this a 6 out of 10 zookeepers.

DS Review: MySims Racing

2010-01-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

Remember how a while back, the MySims line already ripped off one of the Mario series titles when they released their game MySims Party? Well... looks as though they've done it again. This time, however, they've gone and done it with MySims Racing, and, as you may have already surmised, it's basically a complete and total rip-off of Mario Kart... right down to the fact that you don't even race in regular cars; you are, indeed, in a go-kart.

You still have the typical cutesy MySims style characters and animation the whole way through, which is a redeeming factor I suppose - it at least keeps some degree of stability throughout their series, much like the Legos games all having the same animation style - but at the same time, I do realize that there's only so much you can do with this style. Still... One would think that a company like EA Games would be able to think up something a little more original rather than rip off the competition so blatantly, right?

No matter what game mode you play, it's really not much different from Mario Kart Racing. You drive around, do races (obviously), but the one difference is that as you drive around the streets, there are also a great number of characters littered along your paths, who you have the option of helping on mini-missions to earn points that you can upgrade your car's parts with. So, if you want a good car capable of leveling up, not helping these characters is not an option; you'll have to at least do a few. As I don't believe there's any of this in Mario Kart, this is the only thing that really sets it apart as being unique.

My own personal opinion here is that EA Games should ought to set forth to try and come up with more original ideas instead of just copying NIntendo's. Just a thought. Should they do that, I feel their games will improve exponentially. Rating this a 6 out of 10 go-karts.

DS Review: Dreamer Series: Pop Star

2010-01-03T10:18:00.001-08:00

I know what you must be thinking right now: Jeez L.L.P., first you attacked the Imagine series, and now you're going after the Dreamer series? What's wrong with you? Well, while I'll definitely agree that I assumed that this game was going to be a cheap knock-off of the Imagine games (I mean, just look at the cover...), I was actually surprised that it was not very akin to its predecessor.

What I can compare this game to is if and Hannah Montana: Music Jam and Rockin' Pretty somehow spawned a game together, this would be the result. And it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I needn't even explain the premise; it's very straightforward in what you'd assume it to be: a girl band trying to rocket their way to super stardom fame and fortune. You start out playing very MIDI-esque sounding random songs that were obviously made up for the game, as they sound like they were demo songs off an old Yamaha keyboard. But as you progress through several rounds, you find that suddenly, you start beginning to recognize the songs. Lily Allen's "Smile"; Sugarbabe's "About You Now"; Britney Spears' "Toxic"....the list goes on. Suddenly, the game becomes a lot less tedious when you actually know the songs that you have to play 5 times over each. Oh, did I mention that part? Yes. You'll be playing each song at least five times. You have to practice it on every instrument in your band, dance to it, and THEN you finally get to perform it.

Even so, the game isn't particularly lengthy. I finished it in under a day. The graphics are nothing to write home about; the backgrounds aren't bad, they're actually pretty good. But the characters are done in HORRIBLE 3-D graphics that make you cringe a little to look at them. Your main character's face will more likely than not look deformed, no matter what you do with it. And even in the songs you know, they're still played in MIDI-format, so... This is another area that could've been improved upon.

Overall, I think I'm going to rate this game a 6 out of 10 pop stars.

DS Review: Harvest Moon Frantic Farming

2009-12-31T20:24:00.000-08:00

There's only so many ways that the classic Harvest Moon farming game can be spun without entirely exhausting the series. As that has more or less already happened, it's really no surprise to anybody that Natsume had to expand their franchise to encompass different types of genres, so in this particular case, they decided to try their hand at turning the farming game into a new sort of puzzler.

Much like many other puzzle games for the DS, you'll be familiar with the sight of colored blocks on top of a grid board. But unlike typical puzzle games, each different color represents a different type of vegetable, which you must grow from the size of a seed upwards, until it's fully grown. Once it's fully grown, you can send your little garden sprite to harvest them. Depending on the level, you either have to harvest certain type(s) of crops in general, or collect a specified number, or collect more crops than your opponent. It gives an interesting competitive edge to the game, but at the same time, this makes some of your levels frustrating.

Add to this that, once you think you've finished the game the first time around, you learn you've only just begun. Which is good on the one hand, because if the game ended at the beginning of your first game, you'd complete the whole thing in possibly under an hour's time. The downside to this is that you'll unlock new characters...with whom you'll have to follow the same exact storyline with from beginning to end; the only variation being their own special type of power-up moves. Some of them make the game considerably easier, while others make it almost impossible to complete.

While at a first glance this game seems like it's just a quick little knock-off Harvest Moon game, it's actually surprisingly complex. If you enjoy challenging puzzle games, you'll most likely enjoy this. You'll definitely get your money's worth for the amount of time you get putting into this game! Rating this 7 out of 10 HM crops.

DS Review: 50 Classic Games

2009-12-31T18:31:00.001-08:00

In an industry where there's stiff competition for new and original games, it's often difficult to even attempt to market tried and true classics that have survived the test of time for decades, if not centuries in some cases. With all the new cutting edge games out there, it's really impractical to try to release any of these said games alone. Instead, you must try to package as many of them as possible together and make them more appealing this way. Sometimes, it works, sometimes it doesn't. In this case...well, it's not too great.

For a start, upon booting up this game, you'll find that the music is SO whiningly annoying that you'll almost immediately turn the sound down, if not entirely off. This should be your first clue that it's not the greatest game ever. Second, the graphics. Oh man... You're first presented with a number of different random avatar heads to pick from to create your own player file with, but none of them are particularly original, and almost none of them, sans for one or two, even seem practical to use since they're so odd looking. (Customization would have been nice here...there's another point docked off.)

So you've made it past the random dismembered heads to choose from and entered your name. Fantastic. You're now presented with three game categories: board games, card games, and puzzles. Under each of these categories are a number of different games to choose from to play. Under board games, you're presented with:

4 in a Row
5 in a Row
Backgammon
Checkers
Chess
Chinese Checkers
Gomoku
Mahjongg (10 Seconds)
Mahjongg (Countdown)
Mahjongg (Match)
Mahjongg (Point Race)
Mahjongg (Standard)
Peg Solitaire
Reversi
Same
Superbrain

Under card games, you'll find:

Blackjack
Freecell
Hearts
Klondike (Deal 1)
Klondike (Deal 3)
Omaha Hold 'em Poker
Texas Hold 'em Poker

And last (but not least), beneath puzzles, you'll find:

Arrow
Blocks
Catch the Butterfly
Combine
Dots and Boxes
Influence
Kakuro
Magic Square I
Magic Square II
Magic Square III
Match 3
Matchsticks
Memo Pair
Memo Quartet
Memo Trio
Minefield I
Minefield II
Minefield III
Music
Puzzle Pieces
Puzzle Strip
Spot the Difference
Square Puzzle
Sudoku
Symboku
Trace
Way

Now, initially I was going to go through and give a little review of each of these... but then I realized something: I'd be doing 50 mini-reviews on games that, at best are mediocre, and at worst, well... While I give the makers some credit for cramming so many games onto one tiny little cartridge (this is still a novelty for me, you see, having grown up with the oldschool Nintendo and Gameboy games when I was a kid, when you could only fit one single game onto a cartridge that was considerably larger than that of a DS one), quantity does not override nor equal quality, as is evidenced here. It seems like at least a few of the games here were just made up to flesh out to a nice round 50, but on the other hand, even some of the classics weren't executed very well. Mahjongg, for instance, is near impossible with how tiny they drew the tiles for this game. I gave myself a headache from squinting at the screen. Other games, they seem as though they'd of been much better had they of given an option for multiplayers that didn't involve having to purchase more than one copy of the game. It's just a little strange, you know?

Between the shoddy graphics, sound, and execution of each game... I've no choice but to rate this game poorly. 2 out of 10 mediocre games.

DS Review: Sudoku Ball Detective

2009-12-31T17:26:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed (well alright, it would be impossible not to notice this), the number game of Sudoku seems to have taken the world by storm especially as of the past few years. It's been around for ages under different names, but the fact remains the same: people seem to be enamoured by this strange, yet addictive game. What exactly is the appeal, you may ask?

Well, for a start, as of late the game has been touted as helping to keep the aging mind sharp, and to make the growing mind more acute. There's plenty of people who, even upon the game being explained to them, still won't understand it. As a result, there seems to be an air of eliteness among those who do understand it, and cling to it that much harder as a status symbol. (Not entirely unlike Starbucks.)

This particular title tries to put a new spin on the game...with varying degrees of success. The storyline is more or less your typical murder mystery, which you must help to solve - albeit not playing as any given one of the characters in particular. You're playing from a third person type of perspective, which gives the game somewhat of a strange tone to it, but not entirely bad. Just different. The graphics are pretty meh... The map is downright embarssing in its quality (or lack thereof). If it were better quality, I'd probably be reminded of Animal Crossing, but...it's not, so it doesn't. It's more like you're sitting there and watching a movie unfold and as you complete more an more puzzles, you unlock more and more of the storyline. It's a slow and tedious process, but it gets the job done.

As for the puzzles themselves, they basically are just a typical Sudoku game, but with a slight twist: Instead of being presented with a typical 9-grid Sudoku board, you're presented with a whopping six 9-grid boards that form a globe (well, ball) that you have to entirely fill in to complete each level. Some levels are relaxed, and you can fill them in at your leisure, while others are timed so tightly that if you don't complete it by the time the hourglass at the side of the screen runs dry, you'll be losing some of the numbers you inputted on the grid and will have to re-enter them. And then there's still other levels where you have to race against the clock to use your grids to crack combination codes, chase after criminals, etc. It gets pretty intense for something that used to be thought of nothing more than as an old people's game.

If you're not much of a Sudoku fan, STEER CLEAR of this game! There's a total of about 240 puzzles before you're done. If you're into that sort of thing, then step right up! You'll love this. Really.

Rating this a 6 out of 10 Sudoku balls.

DS Review: 1912 Titanic Mystery

2009-12-30T09:23:00.001-08:00

One could ask, upon seeing the title of this game, What possible Titanic mystery could there really be? The ship went down, end of story! Well, this game isn't about that....not entirely, anyhow.

In this game, you're not even traveling on the Titanic itself - rather, the game takes place in 2012 (ooooh, ominous year there...) - 100 years to the day of the original Titanic's voyage. You'll be travelling on the Titanic II - which looks identical to its fateful predecessor, but is updated with modern techology to keep things safer. However, there's a mysterious passenger on board who's written you a secret anonymous letter, telling you that they've planted a bomb somewhere on the ship that will detonate soon if you do not uncover a set number of clues around the ship to find out who this person is and where they've hidden the bomb.

In between searching for clues, you'll be speaking with your crew on the ship, who'll more or less just be there to tell you random facts about the original Titanic. (This proves to be more of an educational game than anything.) As you search the ship - which is drawn out in EXCRUTIATING detail to look photograph-esque, might I add - you'll find portions of long lost diary entries of someone who travelled and survived the original Titanic's voyage, and details an intricate love story (think Jack and Rose) that took place on the ship before it went down.

Most of your gameplay will be in levels that are much like I Spy, with a few additional mini-games thrown in here and there to keep things interesting. There's a whopping 19 chapters... Despite this game being rated for ages 3 and up, I doubt there's ANY young child who could appreciate (or even read) such a storyline, but even the ending if you do find the bomb in time and have to cut the wires to keep it from detonating... This doesn't seem very appropriate for a young child to be playing. However, if you have a child about 10 years old or older who'd like to play this, I'd say go ahead - they'd probably learn quite a bit from this game! The game itself ends all too soon... I wish it were longer, but how long can one really drag something like this out? It's a fairly simple, and yet at the same time, complex game. I liked it. I'm going to go ahead and rate it a 7 out of 10 iceburgs. (Oh....too soon?)

DS Review: Beauty Salon

2009-12-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

In a market that's so over-run by dozens upon dozens of games that are essentially the same exact thing, just by a different company, it makes things really difficult in the way of finding any that are worth bothering with.

Based on first appearances alone, this game does not look particularly appealing or impressive. The box art looks like something I could have drawn myself and then digitally colored in on Paint Shop Pro. Even if you get so far as starting up the game, the eyes on all the characters are TERRIFYING. This says a lot coming from me...the girl who usually likes huge eyes. (What can I say? I am a Liza Minnelli fan, after all.) These, on the other hand, look like they'll try and eat your soul in your sleep.

Creeptastic characters aside, once you pass the main menu, you're brought to a screen that looks like a typical office desk. The different items in front of you open the different game modes and such.

Upon entering career mode, you'll be placed inside a salon setting (you'll be viewing it from an aerial view while deciding which customer(s) to take next) where you'll either be trained to perform a new salon treatment or given a goal of a certain number of customers to take care of in a certain amoutn of allotted time, without letting X number of customers leave in frustration from waiting too long. (It's easier said than done.)

Unlike most other salon/beauty games, this one runs the gamut in REALLY going the extra mile to have different treatments of all sorts so that you don't grow bored. I'll quickly touch upon each of them:

Manicure Prep - You file each nail smoothly and proceed to push back the cuticles. You know they've got the realism aspect down when I cringe at even just the sound of the nail file. (I can't stand them in real life, either.) Simple enough.
Manicure Color - Basically just as it sounds. You have to grab the nail polish color your customer wants and neatly paint their nails with it. However, with the time limit allowed for this, it makes it a challenge to paint the nails neatly. This is akin to real life, though. My mother was a beautician and always amazed me at how fast she was trained to paint nails. They evidently do train you to do it under a certain time limit.
Manicure Clean - You must chip away the old nail polish with a nail file before using nail polish remover to get rid of the rest. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for one small detail... It was brought to my attention by my brother as he looked over my shoulder at what I was playing that the way they animate the fingers for this part, they look more....um....how do I say this? They look like a very inappropriate part of the male genitalia to be putting in a children's game. I know, it's not SUPPOSED to be one, but once it's pointed out to you, you realize that it DOES, indeed, look like this. Freudian slip? Accident? Intentional subliminal message? You decide.
Face Mask - Slather on a facial mask, blow into the microphone to dry it, and then rinse it off. Easy stuff...except that each customer wants their rinse water a different temperature.
Blusher - Straightforward. Find the correct color of blush and apply it to the cheeks. Do it too fast, however, and you'll have to blow away the excess cloud of dust you've just created.
Eyeshadow - This one's a little misleading, as you'll be spending more time applying the mascara here - and not with a wand, either; you have to trace it onto every lash... - than doing the actual eye shadow.
Lipstick - Another fairly straightforward one. Get the customer's shade of lipstick, apply it, and coat it with clear lipgloss to make it shine.
Henna - Now here's an addition that I can't say as I've ever seen in another beauty game! I really enjoyed doing this part, although I wish they'd of had more designs. You would take the dark henna and trace the outline of the design your customer wanted, and then fill it in with a pre-determined color. Again, having to do this quickly and neatly so you don't run out of time.
Hair Wash - This part, although I knew it would have to be in the game, I wasn't too wild about. Set the water temperature accordingly, get the hair wet, apply shampoo, lather it up, re-adjust the water temperature, rinse out the shampoo, and then blowdry the hair dry. However, the blowdryer is powered by you blowing into the microphone, and having to continue doing it non-stop until the hair is completely dry. Not a very nice thing to do to an asthmatic...
Hair Style - Just like it sounds. You brush out the customer's hair and then either straighten or curl it, depending on what they want.
Cut & Color - Make sure to note the length on the top screen that the customer wants. It's unfortunately done a little bit subtley, so the first time around, it's a little tricky figuring out what they want. Once the hair is cut, dye their hair the color they want. (It's usually blonde.)
Pedicure Prep - See Manicure Prep.
Pedicure Color - See Manicure Color.
Pedicure Clean - See Manicure Color. Also, this one is particularly more disgusting, because the toenails always look like they're diseased or something until you finish cleaning them. (GAG.)
Back Massage - This game's salon is pretty much a full out spa, isn't it? Here, you must tap and rub your customer's back accordingly to the onscreen instructions.
Foot Massage - Pretty much the same as the Back Massage, with some circular rubbing thrown into the mix as well.
Hot Stones - Ooooh, nice touch! Match up the correctly-shaped stones with the outlines that show up on the customer's back, and remove them at the appropriate times, lest you want to burn your customer.
Sensors - Now this one confuses me. You attach sensors to your customer's back, twist them, wait for them to turn green, and remove them. Um... okay? Your advisor tells you that these are the top of line in massage technology, and that they can detect pain. So, wait, are these doing any massaging, or just telling you where the customer hurts? I'm so confused...

And that's it! While the game is a good time killer, career mode doesn't drag out so long that you wish it'd hurry up and end or anything. It strikes just the right balance for length. So, aside from creepy character eyes, inappropriate looking fingers and a few minor grammatical errors in the dialogue, the game is actually pretty good. :) I'm going to rate it an 8 out of 10 teasing combs.

DS Review: Discovery Kids Pony Paradise

2009-12-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

For a company that touts itself as being highly education, seeing as they're the same people who run the television station of the same name, you would assume at least that they would at least try to turn out a high quality product. But we all know what happens when you assume...

My very first thought upon booting up this game was that it seemed a little odd that there were only 3 breeds of ponies to pick from. On top of this, the only one I'd of been interested in, the Shetland pony, thanks to the way the markings were animated ended up looking like it had leprosy and was missing a huge chunk of flesh! Instant turn-off. I'd rather not play with a zombie pony... but at the same time, wouldn't that make an interesting premise for a potential new game? (You heard it here first if it ever happens!)

First impressions aside, once I got into the actual gameplay, I began to think that perhaps this is actually a pretty decent game. There was realism in the small details such as not stroking the pony too hard or fast, lest it not enjoy it (resist the urge to make the obvious comment here...I'm biting my tongue so hard right now). The foods were even more specifically fine tuned and realistic to what real horses eat than what most horse simulators offer, the bathing process was more or less accurate, you can teach them tricks (and actually have to memorize just how you got your pony to do them), and what caught my eye as being unique to this game... It appears you're able to teach your pony to pull a pony cart! (I'm biased. Some of my best childhood memories were spent riding along the nature trails behind our house in a pony cart.)

Or at least...you're supposed to be able to do this. What's the problem then, exactly? Well... the game is severely glitched. There's no way for you to end even your first day and put your pony to bed for the night. It won't let you. You're probably figuring I must have done something wrong, or overlooked something, but no. I hit up Google for the answer of how to end the first day, and it appears you can't. The few and far between reviews I found on this game all had the same thing to say about it, that it's glitched and therefore useless. :( Which is really a disappointment when you know that the game had a LOT of potential to possibly be amazing, but is useless. There's no way to update these games with a patch, being on the DS and all, so about all you can do is return them, get your money back, and hope that the company recalls all the glitched games and replaces them with fixed cartridges. But until when and if that happens, this game is getting a rating of 1 out of 10 ponies. I don't feel like I should even be rating it that highly, but what else can you do?

DS Review: Virtual Villagers

2009-12-24T14:09:00.000-08:00

While at a first glance, this may appear to be a Sims 2: Castaway knock-off, if anything, this may be where Maxis got the idea for their game for. I remember playing the PC version of this game when it first came out, and was fairly impressed with it as well, so naturally I was eager to try out the DS version of it when I learned that there was such a release.

For those who are unfamiliar with the premise of this game, a plane full of unfortunate travelers crashed on a deserted island far away from anywhere. Without a hope in world for being rescued by anyone, they're left to their own devices for attempting their own survival. There were only about 6 or so survivors, of varying ages and abilities, so you really must choose wisely in how to use them.

It's your job to guide these villagers through their daily lives and to help them build up a small civilization for themselves. They must build huts, forage for food, hunt, procreate, learn skills that will help them in their lives, and, possibly most importantly, unlock the secrets of the island.

The latter of these tasks proves to be the most difficult, as with the way the game was designed, there's very little in the way of even hints to give you an idea of what you need to do to unlock the island's well-kept secrets. This is probably your biggest challenge aside from getting your villagers to adequately procreate enough to keep their population steadily increasing. Why? Because they do get old and die off... so it's imperative that you get them to live as long as they can so they can accomplish as much as possible.

There are milestones that your villagers will celebrate, such as the number of years it's been since the plane crashed on the island, honoring their ancestors, etc. Not particularly necessary, but I thought it was a really nice touch!

Try as I might, I was never able to unlock quite all the secrets, so I'm not sure if there's an official end to this game or not or if it's just open-ended to play until all your villagers eventually die, but either way, it's very time-consuming. If this sounds like the type of game that would dig, then this game is probably for you! I'm rating this game a 7 out of 10 villagers.

DS Review: Pony Life

2009-12-19T13:44:00.000-08:00

In times like these when shovelware runs rampant and it's easy to find at least a dozen games with the same exact premise, it can be a little daunting to know where to even start to try and find a decent game from any one of these overdone genres. Which is where I step in: to find the few rare gems amongst all the fodder.

Last weekend, I had a nasty cold that left me curled up in bed, not wanting to do much of anything, and had about the attention span of a goldfish, which left pretty much any game requiring any considerable amount of thought or concentration completely out of the running for what I should try next. So I perused through my extensive game collection and picked up this one that I'd never so much as really looked at before: Pony Life.

I'll admit, I didn't have very high hopes for this game - I mean, really, there's so many out there seemingly just like it, I figured I'd play it for 15 minutes, toss it aside, and never look at it again. Wrong... A week later, here I am... having wasted just about the entire week on the thing.

The graphics didn't originally strike me as being anything particularly special, given that this is a DS game and all and we've seen their history with how most 3D game graphics look. But even so, there's a painstaking amount of detail paid to almost everything in this game; from the ponies themselves to the scenery to just...well...everything! As the seasons progress and change, so do the settings of each scene. They're not new maps; they're exactly the same, but recreated to reflect the changing seasons. This is done SO very well that it left me feeling nostalgic for the days when I was growing up and really did own a pony, and went riding on the trails behind our property. My favorite of the seasons, without a doubt, had to be the winter season, where all the maps are blanketed in a coat of white Christmas snow. Ice crystals hang lazily, yet elegantly from the weeping willow tree in the pasture. The only location not kissed by winter is the beach...which I suppose makes sense, but at the same time, doesn't, as all the locations directly surrounding it were all snowy. Small continuity error, but I digress.

You have to do the daily upkeep, naturally, with each of your ponies - feeding them, brushing them, cleaning them, petting them... The one thing that I couldn't help but notice is that it conveniently leaves out the fact that if you own ponies, you'll need to clean up their poop. A LOT. Anyone who's ever owned a horse will tell you that this is one of the very first things that springs to mind when you think about horse care and upkeep, because they do so dang much of it. To leave it out altogether like this? It almost immediately disqualifies the game as being realistic in and of itself.

That said, there are other qualities that this game possesses that help win back points in the realism department. Each pony has its own distinct personality and temperament based on breed, and they also each have their own personal tastes with things such as the type of food that they're fed. One pony may love a certain kind, another may hate it. If you pet or brush them in sensitive spots, they're liable to freak out a little and buck. It's the little things like this that most other similar games tend to leave out but this one put in that I appreciate. You also get to choose from a number of different styles of saddle blankets, saddles, and bits to dress them up in... or mix and match them! (Another thing many similar games won't let you do.) You can also change your rider's styles like this, but I wish you could've customized her appearance as well. (I definitely wouldn't have picked a blonde if it had been up to me.)

Of course, this is by no means the entire game. (What sort of game would it be? Ah yeah...another typical horse simulator.) Well, this one's better than that: Each season that you return to the ranch, there's a new competition to train for and take part in. You've got typical rodeo type games (stuff like having to pop balloons on a course while riding, collecting flags and dropping them into the matching colored cones, gathering rings on a sword), show jumping, dressage (for those not in the equine world, NO, this has nothing to do with fashion :p), obstacle courses... There's so much to do. And with each game year that passes, your competition grows stronger. It will eventually reach the point where unless you get an absolutely perfect score, you'll be beaten by your competitor, and it will take another game year to get back around to that competition to try and win the title. A little daunting, sure, but it does make this a more lengthy game than it probably otherwise would have been.

My only other real gripe with this game is one point that'd probably be a selling point with really little girls is that, there is a magical forest area that, if you can complete the course, you're rewarded with either a golden feather or a magic mushroom. Upon equine ingestion of either, they will either sprout wings and become a pegasus, or they'll eat the mushroom and become a unicorn. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems like a pretty bad idea to me to put the thought into little girls' heads that if they feed their ponies feathers or mushrooms in real life, that they'll turn into one of these mythical creatures. Just my opinion, I could be wrong, seeing as not too many kids own ponies anymore.

Overall, the game's not terrible. It's better than most in this genre, so I'm going to go ahead and rate it a 7 out of 10 little ponies.

DS Review: Angel Cat Sugar

2009-12-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

I'm just going to get it out in the open right off the bat to get it out of the way: with a title like Angel Cat Sugar, of all things, I was torn between a feeling of 'what the hell is this?' and a strong feeling that this game would be heavy on the Engrish, if you know what I mean. The fact that the cover even tells you that it's made by the creators of Hello Kitty only exacerbated this feeling. Not that there's anything wrong with Japanese games; I like them from time to time, but I thought this one might be pushing the envelope a little too hard.

Surprisingly, this game really isn't like that at all. Yes, it has very much Sanrio-inspired graphics (which are so cute, they just might make you puke) and the dialogue is actually coherent. I had no trouble reading it. The storyline is told in the style of a children's bedtime story, which makes this game good for younger players. There's no real chance of them getting freaked out or traumatized by this one; there's nothing that scary in it. The bad guy, even, is just a storm cloud with a moustache and a crown. (Not too scary.) Also, the majority of the characters in this game all have spice names, which is cute, if not kitschy. It does give it a definite sort of charm, though.

You more or less control your character, which is a little angel cat named Sugar (I'm guessing because she's so sweet?) through all the heavenly worlds (no, I'm serious...this cat is in Heaven), where she'll prance or leap around, leaving trails of sparkles in her wake. (Or is it sugar?) You collect hearts and such (it's different in each level) while helping out characters in each of the levels find their missing items, all working up to the antagonist of each level, who each have one of Sugar's friends held captive, which she must free. She is challenged to a type of duel each time that she must win to free her friends, leading up to the duel with the Storm King. It's all pretty straightforward.

My only real gripe with this game is the touch screen controls. Whenever you need to use the umbrella, or the watering can or anything, there's a small delay between when you try to summon the item and it actually shows up. It's more annoying than a real problem, since this game isn't exactly challenging in the slightest, but I thought that it would be worth mentioning.

Overall, the game is targeted for a very young audience, and for its intended audience, I will rate this game an 8 out of 10 angel kitties. Obviously, older players are not going to care much for this title, and they'd want it rated much lower. But this isn't for them. I'm rating this for the kids; they need something to play too.

DS Review: Candace Kane's Candy Factory

2009-12-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

Yawn... Another day, another Diner Dash knock-off. Sometimes, these type of games can work, as previously noted in earlier reviews of mine, but this one... I'm pretty much on the fence on.

Once again, you'll be playing the part of a generic main character whose job is to run a generic food processing plant--I mean, you'll be running a candy factory. (I know. You're sooooo surprised by this, right?) You'll level up, buy bigger and better equipment for your factory, yadda yadda yadda...

What makes this game any different from all the rest? Well, for a start, it's a candy factory instead of the usual restaurant, which appeals to the inner child in most of us. (Even the diabetics.) You'll be working along a conveyor belt to fill customers' orders, sort them by color and type, and wrap them in decorative gift bags for extra money. It's all really self-explanatory if you've ever so much as played a single game from this genre before. The only difference is you have to arrange the candies in the right order while on the conveyor belts, which gives this game a nearly Bejeweled-esque feel to it. Not necessarily bad, just a little different. The only problem with this approach is that with how small the DS's screen is, having to work with such small pieces is tricky, even with a stylus and a perfectly calibrated screen. It is not impossible, however. (I still managed to complete the game within several hours' time.)

The music is enough to drive anybody nuts. It's absolutely saccharine... but then, what else would you expect from a game based around candy? (Oooh, yes, I know. Painfully bad pun. I apologize. Almost as painfully cheesy as every single name in the game, as well as the different factories, being candy-related!) The graphics are decent enough... They're nothing fabulous or anything, but they're not bad. Given the genre, they're pretty standard, really. However, one thing I hate that brought this down from being a typical game of the genre to a mildly subpar one: the loading screens. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that this game should be taking so long to load every level! For how simplistic the graphics, the sounds, and the controls are, it should be an absolutely quick loader... and yet, you're sitting there waiting a minimum of often 10 to 20 seconds PER LEVEL for the screens to load. What gives?? I was NOT so wild about this. I kept putting the DS down and trying to multitask since it would take so long (oh yes, A.D.D. city, right here!) and I kept forgetting about it since the loading screens were taking so horribly long, which meant it'd be half-way into a level at times (my bad for turning the sound off I guess) before I'd notice this, and I'd end up having to restart the level...meaning I'd have to sit through the loading screens again. You can no doubt see how this quickly became a vicious cycle, no? So, that's a major drawback in the game as far as I'm concerned.

Another thing that I don't understand about this game, even after having completed it, is how your competition repeatedly sabotages your candy factory, and yet, you never get to sabotage them back! Why is this, exactly? I can understand the whole turn the other cheek mentality, but if this were a real factory, and I were getting sabotaged repeatedly like that? You can bet I'd be taking some action to either get even, or get the cops involved! But I guess the designers felt that there would be less of a game to do without this, so...whatever. I just don't even know.

The method for stacking your candies (which isn't necessary, it just garners you extra points) is also a little awkward, not to mention, wastes your time. I'd advise you to just not bother with it...I finished the game with barely ever even so much as remembering that I could do this. Instead, invest in your machines to make them run faster, and you'll be amazed just how much it helps.

One final noteworthy point: not to give out any spoilers here (and I'm being careful not to spoil the plot), BUT, the game ends on a very cliche "To Be Continued" note. However, I checked Nintendo's website, and despite it having been released over a year ago at this point, there's absolutely no mention of there ever being a sequel in the future. So why end the game on such a note? Just to leave the possibility open to there maybe being a second game someday? I'm not entirely sure just how much more you could do with such a limiting storyline, so I don't see how there ever could be a sequel...which adds to my argument that the game shouldn't be ended like this. Far as I'm concerned, unless you have a sequel in the works, don't end a game this way. It's just frustrating.

Overall, I think I'm going to rate this game a 6 out of 10 candy wrappers.

DS Review: Jojo's Fashion Show

2009-12-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Before you say it, I know what you're thinking. God, not *another* fashion designer game... AND it's by Ubisoft? This is going to be a trainwreck... I know. I thought this too. But you know what? I can honestly tell you that I was pleasantly surprised by this one... It really wasn't bad!

Despite my horrible skepticism about how this game would be before I even picked it up (I mean, c'mon. Just LOOK at the cover!) based both on appearances and the company that released it, I decided I'd do it anyway, if even just for having some new material to review. I swear I can vaguely recall a computer version of this game a year or two back, but the gameplay was nowhere near similar to this, and I don't even know for a fact if it truly was the same title or if it was just similar. Anyway, I digress.

First impressions were immediately made when upon starting up the game, I took note that the main character looks like a redheaded, younger version of the Supernanny. (I think this is the second game I've made such an observation on... Either she has a really common face, or I have issues. More likely, a combination of the two.) The defenses were up. Anyhow, upon entering the Runway Mode of the game, we're immediately thrust into the world of Jojo Cruz; former fashionista extraordinaire. After taking about 20 years off from the business, her work has been eclipsed by that of her rival, who's effectively taken over the fashion scene. At the urging of her daughter, she's decided to get her designs back out on the runway again and resume her rightful place as top designer. The question becomes, can she do it?

As you probably have already surmised, you will indeed be playing the role of Jojo as she spreads her designs through New York, London, Sydney, Milan, Tokyo, and of course, the fashion capitol of the world, Paris. In each level, you'll be presented with a theme (if not multiple themes) that you'll have to design your creations to accomodate. Some of them are simple as a color; others are prints vs. solids, some are based on eras, while others as mash-ups such as Flamenco Punk or Cowboy Glam. It is these latter types of themes that will force you to have to become increasingly creative in how you both approach your designs and in the way that you think about pairing your outfits together.

I'll admit that the plotline is a little dodgy; while I did try to skim through the dialogue bits at the beginning of each level, I also found that the dialogue screens scroll through too quickly to read in many instances, and I finally gave up trying. They're not really important to the gameplay anyhow; what matters is that you take note of which items will work for which cateories as they flash by at the beginning of every level. This is your only real challenge aside from every level being timed, and only having about 10 seconds or so to prepare your outfits and debut them down the runway. There's no time for dillydallying; speed and quick thinking are virtues if you want to want to succeed at this game.

The graphics were surprisingly better than I'd anticipated, given the animation style both used on the box and for the characters during the dialogue screens. During the actual gameplay, it's different and it's improved. Same goes for the runway shows. So I'm giving the game high marks in this area. I wish I could say the same for the sound. I played the majority of the game with the sound turned off. The music mostly isn't too terrible, except for one horribly annoying high pitched wail that goes off during the design screen about every 5 - 10 seconds that could trigger a bout of tinnitus in just about anybody. For how awful that sound alone was, I do have to deduct points off my final rating of the game for that.

As you complete levels throughout the game, more and more items will become available to use in the Dress Up Mode portion of the game. Although I only played with that for a brief time, I can safely tell you that it's nothing more than yet another virtual dress up doll game when you play it on that mode. It could have easily been left out of the final product, except for that with this game's length, I guess they needed something to help flesh things out a little more. I completed this game in three sittings of a couple hours each; I'm quite certain that if one were determined to, they could easily complete the whole game in a single day.

Overall, I think I'm feeling generous and I'm going to rate this game a 7.5 out of 10 couture outfits.

DS Review: Hysteria Hospital Emergency Ward

2009-12-04T09:29:00.000-08:00

As a gamer who's both a sucker for simulation games, and especially medically-themed simulation games, it seemed to me that a game with a title like "Hysteria Hospital" would be a surefire win! Leading up to its release, not much was said about what exactly the plot of this game was, nor much of anything pertaining to how the game itself would be played. Would this be another Trauma Center type game? (Oooh, I hope!) Would it be like Lifesigns? ...Not as good, but I could still get into that! Would it be like that awful Grey's Anatomy game? Oh, I could only pray the answer was no. Or, would it be its own special new type of game I couldn't even imagine yet? That could be exciting too! Needless to say, I was very excited to get my hands on a copy of this title, as it came up as being a 'related' game in every review I read of any one of the myriad of other medical titles out there.

Well... I can't say as that this game really particularly fits any of these descriptions. Rather, it's yet another Diner Dash-esque game. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad in and of itself; I like Diner Dash! The problem with this game, however, is sheer monotony that leaves you feeling like you may need to visit this hospital by the time you're done with it.

You're basically in charge of the most ghetto hospitals in the country, and it's your job to take care of your patients' needs with what little resources you have. Now, here's the added catch: you only have so long to play each level, and there's both a minimum number of patients you must see per day as well as a cash quota you must hit. Therefore, you have to get as many patients in and out of the hospital as quickly as possible. Sound familiar? I feel that it's a direct reflection of our country's current health care system. Anyone who's had to spend any time, ever, in an emergency room will quickly be able to see this. They don't care so much about the patients themselves as they do about the money. And if you don't have the necessary equipment to treat your patients, you send them away in an ambulance to a neighboring hospital for treatment instead. Of course, these patients will neither provide you with any much-needed money or boost your patient quota for the day, so this option should be used sparingly as possible.

What's more, you also have to adjust just how much your doctors get paid, as well as your pharmacist and general costs for hospital repairs. The more you pay out for these things, the more quickly you'll be able to treat patients, but at the same time, it also depletes your bankbook quickly. A perfect balance must be struck to succeed. One thing you should never skimp on in this game is the cost for repairs. If you don't pay the maximum price, your machines will break down frequently, and it often takes longer to fix them than a patient is willing to wait for before leaving angrily in frustration.

As you level up through the game and you accumulate cash, you'll be able to buy more and more machines for your hospital; thus increasing the number of patients who come to you that you'll actually be able to treat. This is a good thing! But, watch out: when you migrate from one hospital to the next, you do NOT get to take your equipment with you, nor are you reimbursed the costs. You're essentially starting all over again from square one each time, and the demands only become higher and higher.

What frustrated me most about this game is that unless you purchase things in an exactly specific order and know the perfect amounts to pay for everything, you will not be able to finish this game. You'll back yourself into a corner that there is NO way out of, and then you'll be screwed. Nice, huh? While I do like a challenge (who wants to buy a game they're just going to complete within a day or two?), if they'd of taken this down just a notch, it would greatly improve people's satisfaction with the game. Mine included. They should have included some sort of way to work yourself back out of the hole you find yourself in if you get that far, but alas, no. Even if you try and sell back equipment for cash, you don't receive full price for it, making this pointless to even attempt.

Now for the technical aspects: The animation style used in this game isn't bad...It's not great, but it's not bad. I found it rather cute, actually. However, due to the crammed nature of the pixels on a DS screen, it makes for some rather interesting results in the appearance of some of the individuals in your game. For example, your pharmacist is indeed a black man, but with both the animation style used and the shading in the game, it appears as though the game's developers gave the pharmacist some VERY stereotypically (almost to the point of being offensive) thick black lips. Also, when the quick treatment tables become dirty after use... Well, gross though it may be, they always look as though they've been defecated upon. Either the designers weren't very careful in just how they tried to illustrate the dirtiness, or every patient that comes in has some SERIOUS bladder control issues!

The patients themselves that come in are very limited. You see approximately the same 6 patients over and over again, and often end up with two of the same patient right next to each other in the waiting room. Somewhat strange demographics that they decided to go with here. And doesn't anyone else find it strange not only that the mothers who come in holding babies NEVER put the babies down, but that for all these mothers, none of them come in to actually have a baby? Very odd indeed.

The treatments approaches aren't even close to being accurate. Rather, they're supposed to be humorous (ahahaha, did you see what I did there? ...You didn't? Darn. Medical humor always goes over everybody's heads...), but unless you actually read the descriptions, then chances are the humor will have gone over your head and make the whole seem very amatuer. Let me give you some examples of the "treatments" this game offers:

Bed - This new hospital bed has 25% less bed bugs than last year's model!
Quick Treatment - Get patients in and out before you can say 'malpractice'.
X-Ray - It's 10 times more extreme than the Y-Ray!
CAT Scan - The CAT scan has three settings: regular, delicate, and permanent press.
Dentist - We never hear patients complain, but they sure do mumble a lot.
Steam Machine - Can you feel the heat?
Mechanical Cow - Stress is no match for this machine.
Electrotherapy - Make sure patients sign the fine print before treatment.
Operation - He slices; he dices. Patients won't know what hit them!
Cardiology - For patients with chest pains who haven't seen the bill yet.
Ultrascan - No one knows how to use it. But it's so high tech, we trust its diagnosis.
Physiotherapy - Gives patients a run for their money.
Skin Treatment - A dermo-treatment that smoothes wrinkles and smells like pine!

Definitely not the sort of place you'd want to be treated, I'm sure! (Unless, of course, you had a death wish.)

The sound effects in the game aren't too bad. Actually, in certain circumstances, they're disturbingly accurate. The dentist drill was enough to make me cringe EVERY time a patient got treated by the dentist, and in some instances, had to turn the sound way down. It's a game you can't really turn the sound off on without it affecting your gameplay. There's a sound that plays every time a patient arrives in the emergency room, and this is something you need to know. Therefore, if you turn the sound off, you're only hindering yourself.

The controls are fairly good, but a little bit glitchy in a couple spots. The most notable of these is with the operating table... you can put a patient on it no problem, but it can be a little more difficult to get them back off of it afterwards. I don't know why they occasionally just get randomly stuck on there, but they do. It's very annoying, since it mostly seems to happen when you're having an otherwise fantastic round.

The game overall is very average. Nothing special here, and there's not much I can say for it that makes it stand apart from the crowd. It lacks originality, but more importantly, it lacks the variation it so desperately needs to keep the gameplay fresh. I'm going to give this game a 5 out of 10 scalpel rating.

DS Review: My Dress Up

2009-10-26T11:54:00.001-07:00

The companion game to My Make-Up, My Dress Up is another title put out by the Oxygen line of games. Unlike My Make-Up, this one isn't practically impossible to play. Rather, it seems to have the opposite problem... it's so mind-numbingly boring that it's almost impossible to stick with for long.

Instead of coordinating different makeup and hairstyles, you're coordinating outfits. Shirts, pants, shoes, socks, dresses, belts, purses, hair accessories, earrings, necklaces, bracelets... Which could be decent enough if you didn't have to scroll through each item, one by one, to find what it is that you're looking for. If they were on a grid showing maybe 8 items or so at a time and you could scroll through different pages of items, it would have been a much better interface and much less frustrating. This seems like little more than the online doll dress up games that have been floating around for over a decade. You have to create different outfits for different scenarios (such as a beach day or a fancy dress party). Depending on how well you create the look, your client will either be happy or disappointed. (Your failures aren't met with as rude of reactions in this game as the other.) Your clients will earn your friendship over time and periodically send you messages about their everyday lives on your PDA, and that's about the only extra to this as opposed to online dollmakers. In small doses, this game is alright, I suppose. But trying to play it for any significant period of time, you'll find yourself being driven nuts by it. (The loading screens also take even longer on this game than on My Dress-Up.) Add to this that the girl on the loading screen resembles Barbra Streisand, and you have a fairly disagreeable mixture going on here.

I can't really say that I particularly loved or hated this game, so I'll go middle of the road and give it a 5 out of 10 models.

DS Review: My Make-Up

2009-10-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to throw it out there, make-up games are quite possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to the video game industry (well...aside from the Imagine games, of course). Ever since it was realized that there was a female audience, they've been making these. And remaking them. And re-remaking them, and so on and so on. But really, how much can you do to make sure a game original at this point? Not much, that's what. It's pretty much impossible to make an enjoyable one...and this is no exception.

First, let me note that the game jacket says that this game is for ages 3 and up. I will now also inform you that any parent who buys this game for their young child is a sadist. The way in which you're expected to apply the makeup is fairly realistic... to the point where you may as well just hand them your real makeup kit. If they're not good at drawing, they'll fail miserably here. Even worse if they can't color inside the lines. (And what three year old can?) And that's just the regular makeup. Most of the makeover requests you'll be receiving, you're expected to do facepainting. ...Excuse me, WHAT? No. This is bull. Especially since your actual artistic capabilities here are being severely challenged. For someone who'd normally venture to say she's a pretty good artist, I wasn't expecting this to be much of a problem. However, drawing on the DS has always been difficult, and I suppose probably always will be. And when you get it wrong? The clients are downright RUDE to you. For a little kid, I suppose this might be devastating to them. (At least the sensitive ones anyway.) On top of that, you're also at the mercy of slow loading screens every single time you have to do anything, pretty much. This was more aggravating to me than practically everything else put together here. I wasn't able to test out the wireless function since I don't know anyone else with this, so I had to stick to the game itself. And it's really not much of a game, at that. I'm pretty sure it's open-ended and there's no actual ending to it, but I'm not going to play it for months just to find out. I'm giving this 2 out of 10 lipstick tubes.

Nostalgia Corner: Austin Powers - Oh Behave! (GBC)

2009-10-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a 14 or 15 year old girl when this game came out (oh yes, I just aged myself big time by saying that), I was all sorts of excited. I loved Austin Powers, I loved video games, what could be better? (YEAH BABY! *cough* I'm alright. Really.) Apparently...a lot of things. Things that aren't this game.

My parents wouldn't buy the game for me not because they thought Austin was too vulgar or anything...they just thought he was "too stupid". (In retrospect, they're right.) My cousin, on the other hand, had both this and the Dr. Evil game that came out at pretty much the same time. I asked her if I could borrow it. Her reply?

"No, you don't want to."

"Why not?"

"It's too stupid."

.....Okay, did everybody just hold a meeting behind my back and come to a mutual decision that Austin Powers deserves a Darwin Award or something? I couldn't understand it. Unlike my parents, my cousin was an Austin fan! Why would she feel that way about the game? Try as I might, I couldn't get her to loan me the stupid thing. It wasn't very long before I forgot about it and never really gave that game another thought.

Until about a week ago.

Having finally learned how to do GBA emulation, that in turn led to figuring out oldschool Game Boy and GBC emulation as well, and guess what I ran across again in my travels? That's right. That old Austin Powers game I'd long since forgotten about. I downloaded it straight away before anything else.

Now I wish I hadn't and would have left well enough alone.

First off: this game had a teen rating. For some of the racier language in it, I can see why, but I don't think ANY teen would realistically enjoy this game. It is, dare I say it.......... "too stupid". And not just because it's horribly dated and the graphics are horrendous. I mean there is very literally almost no real game here. Here's a rundown:

When you turn on the game, it cycles through this mock-DOS loading sequence, complete with such ridiculous commands as: "Trendy Shagadelic Virus Guard Engaged", "Diskette Drive A: I like those figures 38-24-36 Oh behave!", "Display Type: I like the way you look, baby! It's very shagadelic!", "Serial Ports: Well connected baby! Have you topped and tailed?", and so on and so on. It clicks by so fast that it's no doubt the ONLY way they got past the ratings censors, I'm pretty sure. (I pity any kid's parent who unknowingly bought this game for them and ended up having to answer a million awkward questions thanks for the dialogue.) Then we're brought to a screen that mimicks the old Windows 98 opening screen (remember with the flying Microsoft flag in front of the clouds? You know you do...)

We are then plopped into what I can only describe as an assault on our senses. Horribly MIDI-fied music of....I don't know if it's even supposed to be anything, it's that unrecognizable. And the screen itself is every neon color, turned up full blast, full contrast. There's a very grainy 'video' (more like an animated .GIF file) of Austin making faces in the lower right corner of the screen, and it takes a moment to realize that you are, in fact, in the desktop of what's supposed to be Austin's computer. (Horrifying, isn't it?) There's 3 folders down the side; one with a die, one with a Game Boy, and one with a calculator. There's also a large male symbol in the lower left corner you can click as well as a small circular button beside it that simply reads "MOJO". This layout sure doesn't tell you a whole lot about what you're supposed to be doing, does it? Let's explore.

Clicking on the folder with the die will take you to the Games screen. Down the lefthand side of the screen, we again see three icons: the top being a rock, a paper, and a pair of scissors (gee, I don't know what game THAT might be!), the one below it looks like a primitive maze, and the one below that appears to be either tic tac toe...or bingo. Or some strange hybrid of the two. I don't know.

Selecting the Rock, Paper, Scissors game takes you to just what you think it will. You choose your opponent, you choose your move, and there you go. Unfortunately for you, they give you SUCH a brief time to figure out what you're going to do that more often than not, you'll miss your whole turn in a matter of mere seconds. More frustration than it's worth.

That maze-looking icon? Oh, it is. And it's just as terrible as you'd imagine it to be.

And for that bingo/tic tac toe hybrid? It's evidently a game entitled Domination. It's sort of like tic tac toe and chess put together. Actually, it reminds me more of the old 7-UP NES game Spot from forever (okay, 20 years) ago, where you had to fill the board with dots, and your opponent would jump yours to turn them their color, and you'd go back and forth to see who could get the most dots in their color by the end of the game. This is the SAME EXACT THING. Minus the cute factor and with much worse graphics. So what else is there?

We head back to the main desktop and click upon the calculator icon, and it brings us to a folder entitled, simply, "Groovy Stuff". Pity that not really one thing in there actually is groovy... All you'll find here is another 3 icons, Sounds, Cursors, and Color Schemes. These are all pretty self-explanatory...and as I already mentioned, these are very much un-groovy. What a waste of space.

Back to the desktop again, that brings us to the last of the folders. This one is simply Programs. Ah, but if there were any actual programs here, we might have something! These days, we'd refer to these as apps... at best. (I'm being generous here.) So now we have Austin's Pad, Internet, and the Shagulator. Wait....wait, wait, wait. We have Internet on this thing? This might not be so bad after all! Very much unlike myself, I explored something out of order and skipped straight ahead to the Internet app--I mean, "program". I don't know why, exactly, I had any high expectations here...about the closest thing to the real internet this function has is making mock dial-up sounds as it "connects". All this basically is is an excuse to tie the movie cast and such into the game in a very craptastic web 'browser'. How disappointing. I would've done SO much more with this, had I been the game's designer. But I'm not, so oh well.

Austin's Pad seems to be nothing more than a really primitive messaging system. I don't think there was ever a way to actually send said messages to and from each other... Maybe through the link cable. And an option to print with the gameboy printer. Another very overrated function of this game, along with the Shagulator....which is just a 60's looking calculator.

So, where is the actual GAME in all this? It's actually a little bit tricky to find. You have to click on that male symbol in the lower left corner of the desktop, and when it brings you to its screen, there will be a menu at the top of the screen with the options of Platform Game, Austin's Pad, and Sounds. Select Platform Game, and it will bring you to the actual game. For all the work it takes to find it, though... it's SO not worth it. It's a typical platform game, if you will...no, literally, you're jumping to and from platforms, collecting items, and diving through the time machine. That's it. That's the game. ...REALLY? Lord. I am SO glad I wasted no actual money on this trash.

I doubt that, this late after the fact, anyone would be going out of their way to track down this game, but just on the off-chance that you would? Don't. Just, don't. Trust me....it's too stupid. 1 out of 10 nerdy little Brit boys.

DS Review: Oktoberfest - The Official Game

2009-10-18T12:32:00.001-07:00

What better a time than October to try out and review such a game as Octoberfest? ;) Now, while I'll admit that my "vast" knowledge of Germany really doesn't span anything outside of what I learned from Cabaret, and that I have no idea whether the mini-games in this game are anything even vaguely similar to those of real Oktoberfest, when I hear the word "Oktoberfest" it brings to mind a very vivid visual image of beer, frankfurters, yodelers, and beer wenches. Stereotypical? Yes. But, as I was about to find out, so is this game!

Evidently, you start out the game as a typical German peasant (I guess?) and you have to play and win mini-games to win evolution points, leading up to the evolution into a Bavarian. What's a Bavarian? Who knows?? They never made this too clear....and I never did find out, as I ended up being a couple points short and never was able to manage to attain them. Anywho, first thing's first: anyone remember what I said about the electronic accordian in the Animaniacs game and it probably being the only game ever to use one? I take it back. This game also does. Given the subject matter of the game, it's fitting, but it's a little overwhelming in the over-immersion into German culture RIGHT off the bat. Next, you're playing in a place called the Wiesn Rally. ...I was honestly beginning to wonder if this game was even going to be in English or not. (It is, don't worry.)

Upon choosing whether to play as a blonde, buxom frauline or a short kraut with a crazy moustache and suspenders, you'll be brought to the Wiesn map. You'll find there 7 mini game and 3 food stations. On the top screen is your character, your name, your beer stein and how much you've drank (if it empties, you'll lose an evolution point!), along with your evolution points. To refill your beer stein (it empties as you play the different mini-games), you'll have to either drink some beer or eat pretzel and frankfurters. Which would be great...except that if you keep losing games without winning any in between, if you use up all of these, you're kind of screwed. (I learned this the hard way. Word to the wise.) The streets on which the festival is being held are even over the top stereotypically German: Wirtsbudenstr. and Schaustellerstr. Wow. Just wow.

You can choose to play the Bavaria quiz (good luck on that one; either you need to know this info already, or learn the answers as you get them wrong and view the right answers), Waiters (which is essentially just a German version of Root Beer Tapper), Directing (but not the directing you'd figure this to be... you're "directing" an orchestra), Finger wrestling, Ring the Bell, Schuhplattler folk dance, and Ghost Train. Not exactly all things you'd associate with Oktoberfest, ya know? Whatever. Let me go though them one for one (minus the Bavaria quiz, since I've already said about all there is to say on that).

* Waiters really is just like Root Beer Tapper...except that instead of being behind the bar, sliding the beer glasses down to your customers, you're expected to carry a bunch of beer steins all at once, weave in between VERY rude tourists who'll slam into you and make you drop glasses every chance they get, and try to serve these to your customers before they get angry and leave. Easier said than done.

* I thought I would be really good at Directing. I'm usually awesome at all the rhythm-based music games. Unfortunately, in this one, if you so much as make a tiny mistake, it can make enough difference as to whether or not you'll have enough points to pass the level. And it's not just as simple as you either hit the note or not (on top of the vagueness of what exactly you're aiming to do); if you don't get the timing 100% perfect, you'll only earn an increment of the points you would have otherwise. The only one I found beatable, for this reason, was the very first difficulty.

* Finger Wrestling: This doesn't sound like it should be THAT hard, right? Wrong. Until you catch onto what exactly you're supposed to do, you're going to waste a lot of beer. You aren't doing much of anything that directly affects the strength of your finger. You're supposed to interpret the signs written on the paper in front of you, and to quickly write the correlating number that goes with it. Unless you're fast, your opponent will get an advantage on you. Add to this that the symbols that go with each number swap around EVERY time, and pretty much you have to depend on being fast to accomplish anything here.

* Ring the Bell: Well, after I got over my initial giggling over thinking of Liza Minnelli's "Ring Them Bells" (sorry, little joke...'bout this big), I found that this game is probably THE most difficult one in the game. I had to wonder how exactly that game where you hit the target with a mallet to try and ring the bell at the top of the guage would work out the strength aspect... You can't really just slam your DS touchscreen without killing it. :p So this was curious to me. Turns out, you have to rub the strength guage back and forth fast as you can to fill it, and then just as quickly hit the target when the dot centers with the bullseye. Unfortunately, it moves all over the place very quickly, so getting it that accurate is near impossible. You're depending on luck here.

* Schuhplattler Folk Dance: Oh my. We're back at Cabaret now. (Told you my only German "knowledge" came from that movie!) At least we have something I'm vaguely familiar with now thanks to that! It's pretty much the 'slap dance' you may have heard of at some point in time. You have to memorize the patterns and get the timing right in this game. Not that hard until the final level.

* Ghost Train: Imagine, if you will, that the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion rides at Disneyland/world spawned forth a vile bastard child of a ride. That's pretty much what this is....with no pirates. The ghosts also remind me of Boos from the Mario games (except that their 'scary' noise is just them going, quite lackadaisily, "blah."). That's what this is. You have to dodge the ghosts by swatting them away (uh....what? I thought you couldn't touch a ghost?) while catching mystery flying pretzels and chicken in the air. .....I think somebody dropped too much acid before going on the ride personally.

That about sums the game up. I have no idea how it ends since I was never able to manage to collect all the evolution points, so I don't know if there's further levels beyond these or not. Overall...well, I can't say this game was even overhyped because I saw zero advertising for it. I'd say that if you're the German equivalent of a Japanophile, go for it, you might just love it (or, you'll be offended by the stereotypicalness). Otherwise, just skip this one and save your time for something you'll enjoy more. I'm rating this a 5 out of 10 fraulines.

DS Review: Science Papa

2009-10-10T08:23:00.000-07:00

Now here's an interesting title! I know that pretty much anyone and everyone has played at least one of the Cooking Mama games, and just as the name would imply, it is similar in both style and gameplay to those games...just reverse the gender roles and place the game into a laboratory instead of a kitchen.

The premise is pretty simple: you're playing apprentice to the world's top scientist as he teaches you to conduct various experiements to achieve different results. For instance, your first mission is to create some soap for the bathroom. Sounds simple enough, but as you'll be quick to learn, there's many more steps to this process than you'd expect. So goes the entire game. As you earn more reputation and money, you'll be able to unlock and purchase newer and more innovative lab equipment to make your job easier, which in turn will unlock new experiments to carry out. All of these lead up to 5 world-renouned science competitions you must take part in and try to win the coveted Helix award.

Overall, the gameplay isn't too difficult - but is it ever in a Cooking Mama game? I forgot to check and see if this was made by the same company or if it was a knock-off, but either way, it succeeds in being similar without being a full out rip-off or anything. The graphics are pretty good as far as the style the game is in is concerned - the actual experiments are done in 3-D while the characters are 2-D. Somehow though, this works out. My only complaint is that most of the game's length is used up in repeating and re-repeating the same experiments over and over again to try and earn enough reputation and money. Why not have more original experiments that you only have to perform once or twice instead of the same dozen or so that you have to repeat about just as many times as there are projects, essentially? That part didn't make too much sense to me.

I am glad, however (at least for copycat children's sake) that they didn't use REAL methods of conducting these experiments. They all looked legit enough for someone who isn't all that into the science field, but for anyone with some real knowledge of chemistry, you could nitpick this all day.

Overall though, I think it's a pretty good game, and I'm going to rate it a 7 out of 10 science beakers.

DS Review: Happy Cooking

2009-10-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

This must be some type of record for me, reviewing three Imagine games in a row. Oh? What's that? You don't see the Imagine logo on the box? Check out the UK release of the game. They dropped the brand from the title... perhaps so that it woudn't get lumped in as shovelware?

Anyhow, as you probably guessed by the cover alone, this is the sequel to Imagine: Master Chef. Lisa is a little bit older this time around (not to mention, she appears to have new parents...) and instead of working with the Rachel Ray knock-off, Lisa's entering a cooking competition this time, and is receiving help from an even higher up world-renouned chef. The game plays out pretty much exactly like Master Chef did, except that it feels like something is lacking this time around...I can't quite put my finger on what, but it seems to have somehow lost that magical childhood charm that made the first game so lovable. But as long as you're not feeling nostalgic for a similar storyline to the first game, you'll probably like this game just fine. You have the following dishes to prepare:

Tuna Sandwich
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Hotcakes
Salisbury Steak
Barbeque Ribs
Pork Chops
BLT
Shrimp Penne
Prime Rib
Spicy Tofu
Chicken Katsu
Hamburger
Beef Stroganoff
Banana French Toast
Chicken Marsala
Lotus & Shrimp Potstickers
Pizza Margherita
Spaghetti Carbonara
Maple Teriyaki Salmon
Beef & Broccoli
Meatloaf
Onion Rings
Garlic Toast
Sunny-Side Up Eggs
Ratatouille
Corn Fritters
Greek Salad
Potato Salad with Broccoli
Buffalo Wings
Chinese Chicken Salad
Potstickers
Rice
Fried Chicken
Coleslaw
Minestrone
French Toast
Garlic Toast Caesar Salad
Corn Soup
Chocolate Cookie
Consomme
Colorful Salad
Chicken Noodle Soup
Baked Apple
Hash Browns
Custard Pudding
Cobb Salad
Tomato Soup
Macaroni Gratin
Fried Apple Pie
French Fries
Egg Soup
Spinach Butter Saute
Cheese Cake
Potato Cream Soup
Strawberry Yogurt Cream
Coffee
Orange Juice
Black Tea
Jasmine Tea
Milk
Hot Chocolate

Nothing particularly new here, but if you're into cooking games, then this isn't too terrible. I'm rating this a 6 out of 10 spatulas.

DS Review: Imagine Detective

2009-10-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Know how I normally do nothing whatsoever but bitch about how bad the Imagine line is? Forget all that for a moment - or at least, for the duration of this review.

While I won't lie to you and tell you that this is a fantastic game or anything, I can tell you that it's considerably better than the usual tripe Imagine releases, and if you're looking for the better titles they've put out, this would be one of them.

In addition to not basing itself around a stereotypical feminine career path (unless you count Nancy Drew), may I just say that I LOVE the jazzy music they use for this game? (If there's one thing I'm a sucker for, it's jazz.) Any game with a cute cat as a sidekick earns even more bonus points. You go and name that cat Ozzy, and well... the levels of awesome are off the charts! (Especially when this cat has THE best attitude ever.)

Ignoring the fact that your character looks absolutely nothing like the chick on the box (she's a blonde and the girl on the box is a brunette, as you can see), the animation style in this game is superior to most of the rest of the series. I was quite surprised, to say the least! Sure, it's very comic book style, but I love it!

As for the game itself, think of it as Nancy Drew mixed with a hint of Phoenix Wright, as if it were watered down for little girls. An interesting combination, if I do say so myself. You're a detective who must collect clues and figure out mysteries, obviously enough. There's plenty of mini-games and searching for clues packed into the game to keep things interesting though. Even on the "easy" difficulty, there's an element of challenge to this that the other Imagine games don't possess. Maybe the company is finally starting to figure things out? One can only hope. There's even fight scenes which, for lack of better wording, give a whole new meaning to the term "fists flying". (You'll see what I mean if you play it.)

One of the only things I didn't like about the game is the navigation of the map. it's not TOO terrible, but it doesn't always move in the direction you want it to, and it takes a bit longer than you might like it to to reach your destinations. A small flaw in an otherwise pretty decent game. My other gripe is that you're unable to pause during mini-games but again, this is just a minor set-back. (I often play while multi-tasking, but for the age-range this game's intended for, that probably shouldn't be a problem.)

There's just one thing that puzzles me: The game ends on a "To Be Continued..." note where you're supposed to rendevouz with your character's father. I don't know if this means there's another mission you need to unlock in the game or if there's another game coming. What I did notice is that there's a special area to type in a code... Where do you get this code, and what does it do? Hmm... another mystery to solve!

I'm going to go ahead and give this game a glowing review of 7 out of 10 dectective's magnifying glasses.

DS Review: Marker Man Adventures

2009-10-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's not too often that I encounter a game that's so terrible, I can't even play it. Even with skullnumbingly boring titles, I'll usually sit through it and stick it out for the duration of the game to give it a fair shot. Most bad games usually still have some redeeming factor. But then, there's others like this one that I can't even say that about.

On the heels of Drawn To Life, this seemed like an intriguing concept. But here's the problem: You're dropped directly into the game with NO tutorial or even a clue of how to play whatsoever. Through trial and error, you'll find that you're able to jump, and that you can draw basic shapes of circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and straight lines in which to aid your navigation (which could be considered "unpredictable" on a mild day, at best) throughout the world. For each shape drawn, however, it draws away from your health points, as do the usual hazards such as running into enemies, falling on spikes, etc. You can erase what you've drawn for extra health, but it will use up your markers, which are too few and far between to depend on. So, how exactly DO you play this? Who knows! I searched high and low on Google for walkthroughs, tips, ANYTHING... and apparently everyone's come to the same conclusion: this game is virtually unplayable. What a waste. Should you be skilled enough even to progress past the first level somehow? That's okay - you won't make it far. See, this game is set up like the old NES games... If you die, you aren't returned to the same spot, or even the beginning of the level. Oh, no... You're returned to the start of the GAME. And with the navigation being as iffy as it is? It doesn't matter how many times you play it through. It doesn't make it any easier. Much of the problem lies in the fact that about 9 times out of 10, your shapes and lines will not register. You can sit there and draw them over and over for god knows how long before it'll finally show up. If you're lucky, it'll be the shape you were trying for. Chances are, it won't be.

The concept of this game was good, but in execution, it fails. Hard. Giving it a 1 out of 10 stick figure men.

DS Review: Imagine Teacher Class Trip

2009-10-02T09:43:00.001-07:00

Okay. Seriously, one of these days, I will learn to run away screaming any time I so much as see another Imagine title come out.

Unfortunately, today is not that day.

That aside, this game confused me greatly. With a title such as what this has, was I in the wrong to have assumed (well, you know what happens when one assumes...) that this game was going to somehow be about school field trips? That's what it sounded like to me! Evidently, I wasn't even close. You're a teacher who's overseeing her class on some sort of month-long camping trip. Um... I'm not sure what kind of camping trip a teacher could take her class on for an entire month (here in America, it's standard protocol for 6th graders to attend a 1 week long 'outdoor school', but that's it), so this was the first puzzling point to me. Especially since the kids look and act no older than 3rd graders, tops. Anyhow, it's never discussed what the point of this trip is or anything - just that there's an evil rival teacher who wants to bring about your downfall. It's very strange. I also haven't quite figured out why the students refer to their teacher on a first name basis...

It won't take you very long at all to find out that these kids are downright BRATS. They talk, play video games, dance on the desks, etc. ALL during classtime while you're trying to teach. Try to give them a test, and they'll all try and cheat off one another. (Also, what's with all the bees everywhere that sneak into the classroom? I feel like I'm stuck in an Eddie Izzard sketch - "I'M COVERED IN BEEEEEEES!") Add into this that they're CONSTANTLY fighting with each other, which you have to break up each time, and bedtime is an absolute nightmare... They're divided into three bunks, and at any given moment, they'll be jumping on the beds, screaming their heads off, losing items, etc. You're stuck to calm their asses down and get them in bed, lights out, lock down time. If I'd of wanted to do this, I didn't need a game to do it, I could've just walked upstairs and dealt with my siblings instead. Unless the point was to try and show kids what they look like when they're being totally bratty to their parents, I have NO clue why they included this in the game. It's just irritating and re-affirms my decision that I never want to have kids of my own.

There's missions you have to complete each day which include things like running, fishing, singing, climbing, digging, pitching tents, etc. At first, they don't seem so bad, but they get very old and repetitious quickly, and it feels like you're just going through chores. Since this makes up the entirety of the game, sans for the lame dialogue scenes, it seems like they could've added more variety to things. What about the typical camp activities, like arts and crafts, or canoeing, or archery? None of that's included here, and it's disappointing to me.

The climbing scenes, after the first few levels, begin to send out obstacles like birds pecking at your students heads, or snakes dropping down out of the trees and attempting to strike your students. Um, excuse me.... If you KNOWINGLY sent these kids to climb up trees that you KNOW there's snakes in, this spells out only one thing in my book: LAWSUIT!!!

The waterfall scenes don't seem much better. In addition to the waterfall itself looking like it was something that was drawn in MS Paint (surprisingly, it's about the only part of the game that I have an issue with the graphics on - this had strangely good graphics for an Imagine game), while you're trying to fish - and in such an odd fashion, might I add; who just holds a net in a waterfall and hopes for fish to land in them? - much debris comes flying over the waterfall as well. Flower pots, paint cans, fat kids... Unless this was a social commentary on how bad pollution is for the environment, I don't quite see the point of this either.

Both in the digging and tent pitching levels, you're bombarded by snakes and crabs who try to undermine your efforts. All you're left to fend yourself with is a measly fly swatter. I don't see how a fly swatter would help you fend off either of these creatures, seeing how smacking either of them with one would just piss them off and make them MORE likely to attack in real life, but I digress. Bad planning on Imagine's part.

The marathon races are pretty strange too. You'll have to crank a siren, blow a whistle (which always made me dizzy as hell trying to keep it up for long enough - asthmatics, beware), crank a noisemaker, clap a pair of oversized foam hands, blow an airhorn, amongst a few other things to try and make your kid run faster. Your secret weapon: CANDY! Oh yes. Teach them that sugar highs will win games! *FACEPALM* Honestly, what were they thinking? WERE they thinking? I don't think so.

And then there's the singing levels. Oh GOD, how I cringed at these. The 'singing', as it were, is nothing more than a poorly emulated "laaaa" sound from a midi program. (I used to have software to make such files with and remember the sound effects for voices perfectly. This sounds JUST like that did.) They also sing badly, even for kids. Add to this that the faces they make while singing looks like someone's coming at them with a chainsaw and they're screaming for their lives, and it's really not a fun level to have to play over and over.

After you sit through the horribleness that is this game? You find out there's NO ENDING.

Read that again.

NO. ENDING.

You just wasted hours - possibly DAYS - on this retarded game, only to find that there's no ending, no tying up loose ends, just a 'free play' for you to use. Why, pray tell, would you WANT to still play the same things OVER AND OVER that you've already been doing for the past who knows how long and driving yourself crazy with? No. Just, no. Skip this title, guys. Do it for your sanity.

2 out of 10 bratty students.

DS Review: Burger Island

2009-09-30T07:58:00.001-07:00

A few years back, I remember the sudden slew of Diner Dash knock-off titles that came out for PCs. Some of them were good, and others sucked royally. But they were coming out in spades seemingly every other week (hmm...inspiration for Imagine? ;) Sorry, sorry...). Some of these better titles that continued to sell well began to be made for consoles and handhelds, and one of these titles was Burger Island.

Released by Destineer Games, I didn't think that I'd heard of this company before until I looked at their list of releases on ther website. They've actually put out a good number of games that I'm familiar with! The Full Metal Alchemist games, Candy Factory, Cate West: The Vanishing Files, Emergency! Disaster Rescue Squad, Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine, Dino Pets, just to name a few. As I've liked almost every one of these games when I've played them, I was expecting a good game, and this one didn't disappoint! (What a nice change from what the usual has been lately...)

The premise is this: You're a tourist visiting a tropical island somewhere or other (it's never disclosed where exactly, but I pretended it was some tiny island off of Hawaii), and you somehow end up washed up on the shores of this island in the middle of nowhere with no hope of recovery. Instead, you make friends with the locals and try to make the best of your current situation. So what better to do while stranded on a strange island than to open your own burger joint, am I right? (Yeah, okay. I don't understand the logic on that move either, but that's neither here nor there.)

You train to learn to cook burgers, fries, and milkshakes. Never together; they always have their own levels. As you level up through the game, you'll pick up newer, more complicated recipes for each of these. The trick is to keep up with the speed of the customers without making a single mistake. Mess one detail up, and they'll get mad and leave. (Harsh critics!) It's not too hard until you hit the final bend on the map - that's when they REALLY speed up to an insane level! (And of course, they never want any of the simpler recipes by that point.) It's challenging and a little bit maddening at times, but in a good way.

The one comment I have to make that confused me is the way they divided up the difficulty system on this game. They aren't labeled as such; they're labeled by the different sizes of fast food meals. Who would have ever figured that "kiddie sized" would mean the hardest difficulty level? It's just a little confusing. With how hard it was on that difficulty, I was almost leery of how hard the others would be....only to sail right through them and go "that's it?".

Overall, I'd highly recommend this game to just about anybody! I'm going to give it a big 8 out of 10 burgers.

DS Review: Drama Queens

2009-09-27T10:35:00.001-07:00

You know, from a company such as Majesco, I tend to associate them with high quality level games. Silly sometimes, but usually pretty awesome. These are the people who brought us such titles as the Cake Mania series, Age of Empires (well, the DS version, anyhow...), the Cooking/Gardening Mama games, Operation Vietnam, just to name a few of the large myriad of games they put out. But, for every game company out there, there's bound to be duds. This, sadly, is one of them. A HUGE one.

My suspicions were already raised just from the fact that the cover art for this game looked like a cheap knock-off of the Bratz line (another bad influence for kids, but I digress...), and it was being touted around EVERYWHERE prior to its release. It was on tv, it was on internet ads in kids sites like Neopets, Nick.com, Stardoll, Gaia Online; you name it, and chances are it was there. I noticed there was a huge lack in these ads showing any gameplay or telling much of anything of what this game was about...just that there was a LOT of hype surrounding its release. I figured I'd try it out.

There's a reason you never really heard about this game again after it was released.

It SUCKED.

I'm not saying that to be catty, I'm not even saying that because it's a HORRIBLE influence for kids, I'm saying it because it sucked hard, plain and simple. So, all that cutesy cover art on the box? Forget about it. The only time you'll see it in the game is during the storyline sequences (which are vague, at best). Everywhere else in the game, you'll be subjected to a craptastic barrage of TERRIBLE 3-D art. I thought I'd seen bad in the Imagine line, but good lord. This ranks right up there with it.

The gameplay itself is more or less a virtual, 3-D board game. Every single level is laid out in a fictional mall, with more moving parts than the inner workings of a clock, and so many vibrant colors that it looks like a gay pride parade threw up all over the place. The game spaces span over multiple floors and have elevators and escalators to move between them, as well as shops every so many spaces where you can buy job promotions, BFFs, and/or hot new boyfriends. Okay, I cannot be the only one who thinks that this is a horrible message to send to little girls! Want that big job promotion? Buy them off! New friends? Lavish expensive gifts on them and they'll love you! Hot boyfriend? You can buy those too! Horrible. HORRIBLE message. But what can one expect in such a consumerist society anyway?

Add to this that all during your gameplay, you have to withstand terribly annoying music and even MORE annoying random voice clips that seem to have no rhyme or reason with the characters they're paired with. I had to play the game with the sound off because they annoyed me so badly. Imagine being stuck in a room with 4 valley girls who only say the same 4 or 5 phrases over...and over....and over... It gets on your nerves.

The rest of the gameplay is fairly straightforward. You spin a wheel, move however many spaces that the wheel lands on, and you'll either gain points, lose points/BFFs/boyfriends/secret cards, or have the option to shop. You get a goal at the beginning of each level to complete before the end of the round (oh, did I mention there's only 5 turns a round?) and if you fail to complete this, you'll have to play it all over again until you do. Sometimes your secret cards may help you, but usually...not so much.

To be honest, this is one game I couldn't play all the way to the end. It drove me so nuts with how incredibly stupid the whole concept of the game was. I played through the first 5 or 6 rounds and finally gave up after seeing that it's just the same thing over and over and really isn't even fun. The other 3 girls in the game will do nothing but take every excuse to backstab you at every opportunity that presents itself , and one ends up feeling quite victimized after playing. How exactly does that spell out fun? I'm giving this game a rating of 2 out of 10 raging hormal teenage brats.

DS Review: Imagine Music Fest

2009-09-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

Imagine this (pun intended), if you will: You are given an all expenses paid trip to girls only band camp. (Okay, okay, go ahead. Insert the obligatory "this one time, at band camp..." joke here.) Now that we've gotten that out of the way, you'll be spending a week here in this camp. You get to pick whether to join the punk, pop, or rock cabins, and from there, you'll be picking whether to learn drums, guitar, or keyboards primarily for your time here. (You'll end up playing all three at various points throughout the game, so don't stress too much over your main pick.)

Aside from the mostly pointless dialogue (and small assignments) that goes on with the other campers (I guess the makers felt they needed to round out a feeling of the whole camp cameraderie experience), you'll mostly just be playing and practicing music. Just like any other music-based DS game, everything's based on rhythm. You tap along with the drums, strum your guitar (while hitting the arrow keys at the same time to form chords) and plink away on the keyboard. It's all pretty simple stuff, but then, let's keep in mind that this game was made for kids. Even the hardest songs aren't that difficult to play. The game suggests that you put away your stylus and play this game with your fingers, but I ignored the suggestion and just used my stylus instead (and did just fine). I wouldn't advise the usage of fingers on the bare touch screen at any time.

You'll find that even with the endless amounts of dialogue, the game still progresses quickly, and if you don't bore yourself silly playing this, you can probably finish it within a few hours. (I couldn't sit myself through it all at once though, I'll admit.) This is a fairly run of the mill title, easily expendible. I'd skip on this one if I were you. 4 our of 10 guitars.

DS Review: Dream Day Wedding: Destinations

2009-09-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

When I first stumbled across this game, I was expecting something akin to the Imagine: Wedding Designer game, expect perhaps a little more maturely based (judging by the pictures on the box). Having been involved in the planning of several weddings in real life, you could say I've "caught the bug", as it were, and couldn't resist picking this one up.

While I can't tell you that it's even remotely similar to the other title (because it's nothing like it), I can tell you that it IS an interesting game! Your character is a wedding planner who has to help plan 3 couples' weddings. About 90% of the levels you'll play are pretty much like "I Spy" games, but in a good way! They're VERY challenging, even for someone who's quite skilled in these games. The items you find, however, are at random; they usually don't have anything to do with weddings. But that's beside the point! Adding to your challenge is that you are given a 5 minute time limit...not for just one, but completing TWO levels in the allotted time given. It's harder than it would sound, believe me! If you don't complete the second puzzle under the time limit, you have to do them both over again until you do get it. Eventually you'll learn the different hiding spots for most of the different items, which makes the game easier as it progresses, but it takes a while to catch on, since they're not always in the very same spot.

In between these puzzles, you must also fill your clients' requests that they email you (but they'll usually do this before a level, which will often distract you and make you forget what they wanted). In addition, there's other bonus mini-games such as having to bake the wedding cakes, stitch the wedding dresses, do last minute shopping in the middle of hectic rush hour, etc. As these 'disasters' happen in each couple's story, it makes me think one thing: you need MUCH better colleagues! ;)

I only have one real complaint about this game, and it's that the accuracy you need with your stylus is SO overly hyper-sensitive that even with a 100% perfectly calibrated DS (and now I've seen the difference between my old one and my brand new one), you might have to touch certain items a couple times in slightly different spots to get it to register. If your calibration's even a little off, chances are you won't be able to play this game. Most things like the search levels, you can get through trial and error, but for the stitching of the wedding dress? It will render you helpless if it's not precisely on it. (Just thought you should know!) But overall, it's actually a pretty good game. I found through a little bit of searching that there is apparently a whole line of different "Dream Day Wedding" games (although only the one for the DS as of yet) so who knows? There seems to be a whole array to pick from to try next, and I hope Nintendo will release some of these other titles for the DS as well. :) I'm scoring this game a 7 out of 10 wedding bells!

A quick update:

2009-09-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Apologies to any regular readers of this blog for my lacking in updates on this thing as of late. My poor little white DS Lite (whom I'd lovingly bestowed the monicker of "Lennon" to) passed on to the great video game portal in the sky about a week ago. After researching my repair options, it turns out the cost to get it repaired, plus shipping and handling, would only end up being about $30 less than purchasing a brand new DS altogether. So, after a moment of silence for Lennon....

....

......

.........

I bring you...

LIZA (with a Z!):

Sexy little thing, isn't she? ;) (Okay, I'll give; I googled "red ds lite" and grabbed the first picture that came up because I was too lazy to grab my camera. But she looks exactly like this, regardless.) The red DSes came out about a month or two after I purchased my other one, and I've been drooling and ogling over them ever since. I can't believe I finally own one! :D My only complaint is that the touch screen emits a high pitched squeal whenever it's turned on; no, this is not from a game or anything. It does this even with no cartridge in there. Through a little research, I found out that almost ALL the new DSes do this, apparently. So until someone finds a fix (y'know, apart from mailing it back to Nintendo to do it because if it's been going on this long with the newer ones, they clearly don't know what they're doing), I'll just play with headphones on to block that out. (I have mild tinnitus and vertigo, and this particular pitch aggravates it greatly after just a few minutes. Environment-blocking headphones work pretty great for keeping that noise out of your ears. Just a little heads up in case anyone else who reads this suffers from similar problems and has a newer DS.) If anyone could drop me a line if a fix is found, that would be amazing, thank you!

DS Review: Imagine Soccer Captain

2009-09-04T11:58:00.001-07:00

Keeping up with Imagine's line of very female-oriented games, the line has now brought us Imagine: Soccer Captain. (Bet you $5 they never touch on another sport unless it's something else equally as 'feminine', like softball.) Oh! But what's this? We have a celebrity endorsement by Mia Hamm this time around; that must make this one better than usual!

Ummm...no. There is nothing particularly special about this game whatsoever. In fact, I'm not sure if Mia Hamm even knows her name was borrowed for the cover - even in the game, the only hint to her likeness is that the coach's name is "Coach Mia". (You never once hear a last name.) Her character also looks NOTHING like her, might I add. Wowwww. Talk about false advertisement. Imagine is always finding new ways to re-define that term!

But back to the game in question. True to typical Imagine style, they've designed this game so that there is no real knowledge of actual soccer needed. Playing by their rules, all you have to do is run a ball up and down a field and know which goal to kick it into. Period. No caveats. Now, I'll admit that I have zero sports knowledge in pretty much any given sport, but even I'm pretty damn sure there's a hell of a lot more to the game of soccer than just that. In a line that prides itself on allegedly being "educational", it seems that they should be teaching ALL of the rules of soccer.

This is another Imagine title that depends solely on 3-D graphics. The opening title sequence is very misleading, as the animation used there is in fairly good quality, but not one bit of the rest of the game looks A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G like this! There are some characters you'll encounter that look semi-decent, but then others - your own character included - barely even look human. For the customization options being so limited, why are the graphics so terrible?? The music in the game is about the same: sounds fantastic at the opening screen, and lousy everywhere else. What a let down! I was expecting more with how it started.

You're placed onto a team with very cliched other players. There's a totally stuck up snob who's only on the team because her daddy owns a (rival) soccer team, a timid girl, a gamer geek (who seems like she was only included to throw out free PR for Nintendo), and one other fairly normal girl who's supposed to have been your character's best friend since grade school. Sure, the mix sounds pretty realistic to real life, but in execution, it falls flat. Every team you play against is the same way: you have a team of over-caffeinated speed junkies (I'm NOT kidding!), a team of old grannies who should be in a retirement home, a team of girls with anger management issues, a team of midgets, a team of Amazonians, a team of hippies, etc. The first time you encounter each of these teams, they seem a little interesting. However, for how long you'll be playing this game to completion, you'll grow VERY sick of them quickly.

You'll play through an entire season of 14 games, plus a championship game. I assumed this was where the game would end.... That's what I get for assuming. (You all know the old phrase about what happens when you assume!) You enter season 2, only to find that ALL the dialogue with other teams is now being recycled and shortened to the briefest lengths possible. Had the dialogue stayed fresh, I wouldn't have minded wasting almost a week on this game, but it didn't. I figured that surely, the game would end after season 2... NOPE! You play for 5 seasons, with the option to retire or continue playing. As I figured the storylines would keep on going if I continued, I opted not to retire. Big mistake. (Now I'll never know how the game was supposed to end. :p)

Each season has a new dilemma for your team to face. In the first season, your character and Amie get swept up into a bitter popularity contest of their fans, all of which sparked from a stupid comment Amie had to make on a public blog. Season 2 sees Sasha and her father through their differences about his loyalties to his team and why his daughter doesn't play there. Season 3 is spent on a reality show following your team around and starting drama just for TV ratings (the producer looks suspiciously like the Supernanny, AND her name is Mary Jo. Coincidence?). Season 4, the team owner dies and as his son takes hold of the reins, he wants to relocate the team. The local community barely scrapes up enough cash to keep them local. And then season 5, groundhogs have ruined the stadium grounds and a crazed groundskeeper blows everything to bits in an attempt to get rid of them. Seems like an odd place for the game to end, doesn't it?

The gameplay itself is less than incredible. In addition to the lousy graphics, the controls aren't up to snuff either. Your players don't turn on the stop of a dime (which makes navigation difficult, especially when the other team's players are surrounding your active player), can't aim worth a damn, and the methods for shooting and blocking are pretty lame. To shoot into the opposing team's goal, normally you'd have to aim, then are brought to a screen where you adjust the strength of your kick, and you have to line up the ball with a specific pre-determined point inside of the net. If you're off by a little bit, you will not get the goal. Even if you DO line it up, more often than not, the goalie will still block your kick. Your other option is a quick shot where you just aim and shoot while running, but it's virtually impossible to make this method work, so you may as well stick to the long way of doing things. To attempt to block a kick from going into your goal, you're brought to a screen with a grid of about 12 squares. They'll light up at random, and you have about 5 to 10 seconds to hit them all as they light. Miss some, and the team will probably make their goal. Get all of them, they still might make the goal. Somehow, this game is seeming VERY one-sided, doesn't it? Take into account the redundant quick tips that appear on the upper screen before each match, and you'll be frustrated with this thing in no time.

As you rank up through the different matches, you'll earn points for each win. Every time you wi the fan popularity meter, you'll unlock a new sponsorship. This seems pretty cool... until you find out that these sponsorships are just leading up to a game deal with Ubisoft, who RELEASE THIS VERY GAME. Um, excuse me....what?!

I can't imagine (pun intended) anybody going wild over this game. Soccer enthusiasts won't have their needed adrenaline rush that makes soccer a wonderful and exciting game for them in the first place, and non-sports buffs will quickly lose interest. Who was the target audience here, then? Once again, I will issue this open plea to Imagine: PLEASE, hear our cries to just slow down on trying to crank out as many games as quickly as you can, and focus on putting more emphasis into the QUALITY of your games! You'll get much further with fewer high quality games than many crappy ones. You're just shooting yourself in the foot. Thank you.

I'm giving this game a rating of 3 out of 10 soccer balls. Honestly, do yourself a favor and don't even waste your time.

DS Review: Rockin' Pretty

2009-08-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

In the advent of games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero, one would imagine that music-based games would both be picking up more speed and improving in quality in order to beat out their competitors. I've found the former to be true, but the latter... not so much. (It's becoming like the cooking game franchise: a dime a dozen, and most of them are mediocre.)

If you judge games by their covers, you might think this game has some potential. The Japanese usually know how to make pretty good games, right? It appears to be animated in anime style. A winning combination! The promises made on the back of the box also seem appealing:

A Tale of Music and Love - A great family story of teenage proportions, will our girls pick love, or their love of music?
To Trade or Not To Trade - Using local wireless connectivity, players will be able to trade items, outfits, and instruments they unlock with friends and family!
Fame Is All You Need! - Earn your audience's love and watch your girl's appearance change!
On The Road To Stardom! - Perform your heart out at eight tour events, ranging from basic open-mic nights to stardom arena venues!

Not to burst anybody's bubble before even playing this, but I will point out that this is evidently a lying kind of game. There is no dating for any of your girls, nor does there appear to be any option to connect wirelessly to other users. Unless the original Japanese release had these features and then removed them before the U.S. release, then this is false advertisement, and an immediate dock-down in points.

Upon booting up the game, you'll be greeted by four colorful girls: Mio, Mai, Kara, and Reena. Like the Powerpuff Girls, each girl has an assigned color. You'll also be treated to the following prologue:

This town first grew to prominence as a center of international trade.

The city planners saw its potential and designed the city to be a bustling metropolis. As it grew, more and more businesses moved in, and the city became a center of culture and commerce.

Every year a contest is held in the center of town where bands from all over the U.S. compete at the "Rock of Fame" to be the best band in the country.

The contest is called "Rockin' Pretty". It is also known as, simply, "RP".

The band that wins gets a record deal.

Not only that, but the fame of the contest guarantees several hits for the band, and total stardom.

Winning Rockin' Pretty is the dream of musicians the country over.

One of those musicians is Mai, who dreams of one day winning the Rockin' Pretty contest.

Today, Mai is in the lobby of Rockin' Hits Studio, watching the DVD of Rockin' Pretty with Kenneth, who works at the Instrument Center.

With a prologue like that, who wouldn't be lulled into a false sense of expecting something great here? I mean, this game has a storyline! That's more than Rock Band or Guitar Hero can really say for themselves! Unfortunately, the game is a disappointment. Not only does it play right into the hands of the American Idol mentality (read as: you don't need real talent, just so long as you're popular!), but the execution of this game is just downright poor.

Level 1 is performed as an Open Mic Night. Your girl, Mai, is sitting watching the Rockin' Pretty contest, and wishing that she could someday compete. The shopkeeper, Kenneth, just happens to have a younger sister (Kara) who has a band already formed who are just short a guitarist, but ready to rock. Without much consent, Mai gets shoved into the group and expected to play, same night, no practice or anything. In the real world, this would no doubt spell out disaster, but in the video game universe, it works out okay.

You find that your first song is entitled, "See You Again". Now... I'm certain I'm not the only person who expected to hear the Miley Cyrus song of the same title when I saw the name of the song, right? Well, it's not the same song... It's not even remotely similar (which I suppose is good for copyright reasons), but the song - as well as ALL the songs in the game - sound as though they were thrown together with cheap MIDI software.

You have the option of either playing guitar, bass, keyboard, or drums. There's three difficulty levels for each song, which comes in handy when you're saving up points from each song you perform for outfits, hairstyles, and instruments, but otherwise becomes nothing more than a pain in the neck to continue playing through over and over when they're not even good songs.

Just like in real life, to play each instrument, you must play in a different way. Choosing the guitar, you'll see 3 colored rectangles on a guitar neck (I'm suddenly having a feeling of deja vu back to Guitar Hero....I don't know why...). Unlike in Guitar Hero, however, these are not buttons. As your song progresses, you'll see colored boxes sliding up the guitar's neck. When they line up with the rectangles of the same color, strum in the same direction that the boxes are coming from. Oh? What's that? Direction?? Ah, did I forget that you're apparently playing a double-necked guitar? They're parallel to each other, but the boxes appear on the necks at different times, which makes it trickier to keep up with when you're still learning how to play.

Choosing to play bass is incredibly easy. It's the same concept as choosing the guitar on here, except that you have a single neck, and the only other real difference is that occasionally, you'll be tapping the boxes instead of strumming, sans for boxes that have diamonds in them. You'll strum those. The problem is that the controls are a little wonky in this game, and it doesn't ALWAYS register when you hit the notes.

The keyboard is my most loathed instrument in this game, which is quite a turn around from how I feel about them in real life. With this, you have lines coming from either end of the screen, aiming towards one another on specific keys you're meant to hit. When they come together, you hit the note, or notes if there's more than one. The problem here is that it's virtually impossible to get the timing right! If you wait until the lines come perfectly to the center of each key, you've waited too long. If they're just hitting the top and bottom of the key, you have some shot of it telling you that you got the note(s) right, but especially in cases where there's multiple keys involved, it will still tell you you're wrong.

The drums in this game are alright, I suppose. You have four circles, which are meant to represent your drum kit. With the exception of the yellow one, which is very obviously your cymbal, good luck telling apart what's supposed to be what in actuality. So you get colored circles you need to hit when they line up with the matching drum of yours, and on occasion you'll find a circle with an arrow in it. Just swipe your stylus in the direction of the arrow at the right timing, and you're good to go! It's not very hard, but much like with the bass, it will occasionally not register your notes.

You will also take notice that, regardless of what instrument you're playing, that on the top screen will be two lines dividing up your screen into 3 horizontal sections. In reflection to how well (or badly) you play, you'll have stars fall from the ceiling whenever you hit a correct note. If you play well, you'll have a big pile of stars up to the top of the screen by the end of the song. As long as your stars hit anywhere in the top section, you'll get a quick bonus at the end of the round: shooting stars flying in every direction! Catch as many as you can for that many additional points. The more points you have at the end of the song, the more cash you've earned for that gig. Pretty straightforward, right?

As you progress through the different venues and complete the songs, you'll unlock things to buy as well as watching your story unfold. Unlike in real life, no matter what you do, you're going to end up on Rockin' Pretty and win it. You can't fail. At worst, you might have to replay a song to get through it on a passable level, but there's no real options in anything that change the outcome of the ending of the game... which seems a little odd for something that's based on a competition.

At the end of the game, after the credits roll, you have the option of re-playing any song in the game that you might have enjoyed and want to play again, as well as hosting a photo shoot for your girls. You can set them up in different poses in different locations, but it's all fairly limiting, and if you're above the age of, say, about 5, you'll probably find this pretty boring. I'm glad I only had to waste a few hours on this game to complete it... I'd of been pretty upset if it had taken me weeks, only to discover that.

Overall, I found this game to be a snoozer. Even though it's rated for everyone, I'd say that the ideal target age range that should play this (that would get the most out of it, anyway) would probably be about 5 through 8 years old. Any younger and I think it would be too difficult for them to play, and any older and I think they'd be bored with it. I'm rating this game a 6 out of 10 Japanese pop stars.

DS Review: Princess Debut

2009-08-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Before I even start this review, okay. I know what you're thinking. I'm incredibly and painfully immature for still geeking out over princess games at the age of 24. Well, on the one hand, you're right, but just trust me on this one: this one's worth it.

First of all, "Princess Debut" was put out by Natsume. You know... the same people who brought you the smash hit that everybody and their mother loves, the "Harvest Moon" series. This immediately raises the bar of expectations from this game, and it does not disappoint!

The very first thing that struck me about this game was the animation style. It's very heavily anime and sickeningly cute, but for most of us females who play these titles, cuteness is a virtue. ;) Anyway, it immediately reminded me of the old DOS-based "Princess Maker" game. As it turns out, the animation style is not the only thing about this game that's like "Princess Maker". The way that the game itself is played is very, VERY similar as well. You play the role of a girl who fantasizes about princess life with her schoolmates, only to suddenly find herself thrust into an alternate universe, where there's doubles of not only herself, but all the boys at school that she knows, going under very similar aliases. The real princess has swapped places with her for a month, as there is a huge dance competition coming up, and she doesn't know how to dance, and wants your character to take her place. So you do, and this is where your adventure begins. You meet all the different princes and pick any one of them as your dance partner. They all have distinct personalities and storylines that come along with them (although, the main storyline essentially stays the same, no matter who you pick). With whomever you choose, you must attend daily dance classes to improve your technique, stamina, and learn new dances. As you go along, more and more side-storylines unfold, as do unlockables. Every relationship with each character is very in-depth, varying depending upon your previous interactions with them. This is another major bonus in my book.

The 3D graphics used during the dancing scenes leave a lot to be desired, as do the equipment scenes whenever you change outfits (I always have to skip those, as they manage to trigger vertigo with me), but the 2D graphics are exquisite. I was struck by the level of detail used in each and every scene - seriously, NOTHING is left out. There's always something new to notice each time you play it. It's absolutely stunning in comparison to most DS games. The music, while very much in oldschool MIDI format, somehow manages to work for this game. Maybe it's because it also adds to the throwback feel of this being a new-generation "Princess Maker" game, I don't know. But it doesn't cheapen the feel of the game like most games do when they use MIDI music nowadays. Natsume definitely knew what they were doing! (But then, Natsume are pretty much masters of their craft. ;))

As for the gameplay of the dancing scenes, the technique quite reminds me of playing "Elite Beat Agents". It's a little tricky when you're first starting out, because you never know quite what moves are coming up and where you ought to be, and what you need to prepare to do. But, much like with "Tetris", you quickly discover the small box off to the side with the next few upcoming moves, and this helps immensely in most cases. It's hard to keep up both reading those and performing the moves for the faster dances, but that's part of the fun! It'd be pretty boring if they were all slow, monotonous dances.

Another thing that I liked is that all the locations on the map are named after different dances. They include:

Viennese Waltz Lake
Tango Garden
Samba Square
Jive Park
Rumba Beach
Cha-Cha-Cha Arena
Waltz Castle
Foxtrot Forest

Pretty cute, huh? I thought they were, anyway. As a dance nerd, it was a pretty nice little novelty.

I only have about 2 complaints with this game. Well, maybe 3, but the third hardly counts. First, I wish you could customize your character (although, truth be told, she looks about how I would have made her anyway. I have a type.). Second, try as I might, I can't seem to figure out how to unlock everything, despite having re-played the game several times through, choosing different dance partners each time. And third....I wish the game were longer! I won't give a spoiler and say how the game ends, but I'll just say that I wish it continued on further from where it stops, or that there were a sequel. (Who knows, perhaps they'll make one if this game sells enough copies!)

Overall though, it's a pretty fantastic game. I'm going to give this game a 9.5 tiaras out of 10. Not quite totally perfect, but pretty darn close!

DS Review: MySims Party

2009-07-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

While Maxis/EA Games have created quite a franchise empire with the Sims series, one of their newest endeavors has been the MySims line of games. Maybe the Wii versions of these are better, I don't know, but as of yet, I haven't been too impressed by a single MySims title yet.

As you may have surmised by the title alone, MySims Party is basically yet another Mario Party rip-off. Everybody's gotta jump that bandwagon while it's still rolling, right? In this (and any MySims) game, you'll notice that the characters look absolutely nothing like their regular Sim game relatives. They're much shorter - chibi form, really - and cuter than normal Sims. There's a heavy Japanese anime interest here. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is your own call. I personally think they're awfully cute, but at the same time, think they're trying to appeal to a much younger age demographic here.

So, here you are, placed in this new Sim Town (oh, am I allowed to call it that? I remember the actual Sim Town game...) and you create your own character. You'll find yourself doing this quite a bit - you'll need at least 3 characters to build teams with later on in the game, but I don't think there's any limit to how many you can make. So knock yourselves out - make a bunch of MySims with varying skill levels! (I personally made 4 different MySims, and true to form, I based them off real people. "Team Liza Minnelli" had a nice ring to it. ;) I made Liza, Judy Garland, Goldie Hawn, and Gene Kelly for use in my teams.) Your level of customization is both limited by what clothing and hair style items you've purchased for usage as well as the game itself not having a huge variety in styles either. That was one downside to me.

Now, you can cruise around town, chat with other villagers, and generally explore things. This is mostly unnecessary, but it's a good time-waster. What you really need to do is go to the center of your town, inside the huge castle. Guess what? Now you're REALLY in the game. You'll find each time you go in, a new festival has opened up for you to play.

What's this? Festivals you say? Yes, festivals. Each one has a certain number of mini-games which you must play and beat to win the festival. This, more or less, is what the entire game is all about. To continue in my review, the rest of my focus is going to be on each of the mini-games, as this is where 99% of your gameplay is going to take place.

Pass and Check - You're more or less playing teacher's aide here. You compare the top and bottom screens and place a check mark when the documents match. If they do not, you slide the document to the left. Very easy game, it should give you a quick win!
Hush Hush Library Rush - You clean the floor of the library, but if the librarian catches you making too much noise or running, she'll come yell at you, costing you precious time. It's a pretty simple game once you get the hang of it.
My Mix Masters - It's more or less a record scratch beat game. If it worked correctly, I'd probably really like it. It doesn't always pick up when you hit the correct buttons though.
Haunted Hunted - This sort of makes me think of what I thought "Ghost Hunters" was going to be all about. You go inside a haunted mansion, equipped with a gun. Don't hit or run into the ghost, or he'll attack. Try to hit the other players for points.
Sushi Scramble - Memorize customers' orders and make sushi! Customers get upset if you're slow, or you get their order wrong. Ever played Diner Dash or Burger Island? This mini-game is a lot like those.
Chemistry Calamity - You must mix the chemicals in the same exact order as those on the top screen, and then mix the test tube in the same direction as the directions indicate. As long as you can remember the colors, the only part that might give you any trouble is the actual mixing.
Spaghetti Spin-Off - Maybe it's because I'm of heavy Italian descent that I viewed this mini-game as painfully stereotypical, but...it is. Not all Italians exist solely on spaghetti. Regardless, in this game you must twirl the spagetti up onto your fork without dropping it, and attempt to eat more spaghetti than any of the other players. It's harder than it sounds...
Soft Service - Another Diner Dash-esque mini-game. Check the customer's order and place ice cream on the cone. Hurry and bring it back to your customer, and don't get the order wrong! You'll do more running and pushing the other players out of the way in this game than anything.
Vroom Service - Bring the guest's orders to their hotel rooms! Be sure to check the map on the top screen. This mini-game more or less has a very maze-y feel to it.
Skull Finder - You get to play archeologist here! Use your pick-axe to chip away all the surrounding dirt from the bones, but be careful not to hit the fossils themselves! You'll also be employing the microphone for blowing away the excess dirt you've already knocked off.
Clap Happy - Famed MySims fashion designer Nikki is putting on a fashion show! Every time she poses, you must clap (using your L and R shoulder buttons) as quickly and accurately as possible, trying to out-clap the other players.
Air Guitar Star - I'm pretty sure everyone's familiar with Guitar Hero at this point, so I'll just sum this one up as being Guitar Hero without the guitar.
Okay Bouquet - Customers come in and request very specific bouquets. Fill their orders, tie the bouquet up with a bow, and ship it off! Easy peasey.
Petal Platform Peril - I don't like this one much. Jump from platform to platform, collecting as many flowers as possible. But watch out! The other players may jump on your head and knock you down, as may falling boulders.
Keys to Success - I think they were running out of mini-game ideas by the time they got to this one. Pick up various keys and look at the tip: if it matches the lock on the treasure chest, try it out and see if it opens it or not! Personally, I really can't stand the sound that plays when you rotate the keys. It sounds like a ratchet.
Mallet Melee - Let's rip off a little bit more from Mario, shall we? This is pretty much a poor man's Super Smash Bros.
Signal Search - Cell phones have become such an integrated fixture in our lives that I'm sure all of us have had to run around, trying to find a signal at some point or another. Why not make a game out of it? Well... EA Games did!
Spotlight Please! - Maybe it's because I'm a theatre geek, but I loved this one. You have to follow the little Shakespearean actor around the stage and try to keep the spotlight on him at all times. But! He immensely enjoys messing with you, so be prepared for him to randomly bolt across the stage at any given moment, just to make you sweat.
Sim-Fu Showdown - Try out your kung-fu --er, Sim-fu -- moves on a bunch of wooden robots! ....Yes. I did say wooden robots. (I don't know how exactly that works out, either.)
Fashion Mogul - Trace the designs on each shirt as closely as possible. If you mess up, you'll be forced to repeat it. This mini-game feels more like work than a game. Is EA Games training kids to work in sweat shops? Hmm...
Crystal Clear - Oh, I like this one! (Probably because I always win it. ;)) Each player is sat down in front of a dirty crystal ball. Your mission? Clean that sucker up as quickly as possible before anyone else does! You have to rotate the ball to get the whole thing. Be careful not to miss any spots!
Sudsy Salon - This mini-game, I have yet to successfully win. It sounds simple enough... You're in a hair salon, lathering up a customer's head with shampoo, and then rinsing it. But you have to completely cover 100% of the hair AND finish first. The latter is what keeps messing me up.
Skater Scamper - Bleh, I hate this one, but then, I suck at most skater games. You're on a skateboard and must perform tricks as well as not run into anything, while at the same time trying to cross the finish line first. Did I mention that you'll have to use the button controls AND the stylus to do this? I think it's that coordination that's rendered this game impossible for me to win.
Soccer Bounce - Pretty easy stuff - you hit the correct buttons while the soccer ball is still up in the air to hit it again. Don't let it fall to the ground!
Bus! Stop! - Ummm....you chase after a bus as quickly as you can, trying to make it stop. (What'd you think this game would be with a title like that?) It's a total button masher; you just hit any and every button in sight to run.
Catch the Crook - This one's pretty fun, albeit a little challenging! Just like it sounds, you must chase after a crook that's on the loose. You can collect power-ups that he drops, but watch out! He also drops obstacles in your way when you least expect it. If you fall too far behind, you're out!
Clothing Cut-Out - Very similar to Fashion Mogul, you have to trace the patterns on the fabric to cut the pieces out in order to make clothes. A steady hand is absolutely crucial for this game (as is a properly calibrated DS screen).
Pretty Pottery - When I read the title of this game, it conjured up images of spinning clay into fine works of art. Not the case here. All you're doing is taking potted plants and planting them in a garden according to a map of where each plant needs to go. Yawn.
Gone Fishing - Well, there's not much to say here, is it? It's exactly what it sounds like.
Hidden Treasures - This one's pretty fun. You're unleashed in a darkened warehouse full of boxes, and it's your job to run around and open them all, searching for treasure! First player to 5 hidden treasures wins.
Sleeping Sophie - This is another L and R shoulder button game. Use L and R to jump a balloon full of air quickly as possible until it pops and wakes Sophie.
Pastry Puzzle - I like this one a lot too. You're working in a bakery, and with each order that comes in, you have to figure out which way to place the pastries in the box to make them all fit. (No, you cannot stack them.) Try it! It's more fun than it sounds, I promise.
Hang Gliding Hurricane - OMG, I hate this mini-game with a burning passion. As an asthmatic, I do not have the greatest lung capacity in the world. In this mini-game, you have to steadily blow into the microphone (for I think 30 seconds or a minute straight) while trying not to crash. The harder you blow, the faster your hang glider moves. I always end up out of breath and dizzy as hell every time I try to play this one. :( I don't like it at ALL.
Fortune Finders - This mini-game takes a little bit of luck to win it. You and the other players are unleashed in some woman's yard to dig and try to find buried treasure. Each piece has a different value. Whichever player collectively finds the most treasure wins!
Shuffle Cup - Remember that old 'ball under the cup' trick? This is that game...except that it's played in a seedy casino where the power goes out and you're unable to see what's going on for a moment. Hardly fair play by any means.
Plane Pop - You fly a plane in this mini-game and try to pop as many balloons as you can. Each balloon you pop helps fill a meter at the bottom of the screen. When it's filled, you can use this built up energy to zoom through other planes and birds, which would normally knock your plane out of the way.
Bumper Boat Battle - I wouldn't have used the term "bumper boats" here - that would insinuate something akin to bumper cars. This is nothing like that. You simply sail your boat around the islands, look out for whirlpools, and try to reach the goal first.
Fashion Reaction - Grab the clothing from the bottom of the screen that matches the pieces listed on the left, and model them in the dressing room! This should be another easy win for you.
Perfect Slot Jackpot - This slot machine doesn't so much rely on chance (as real ones do) as it does on good timing on your part. You decide when each wheel stops turning.
Spotting Safari - The whole point of this mini-game is to spot as many animals as possible. If you find one, quickly hit the A button before it goes back into hiding! If you move around the jungle quickly and have a fast reaction time, winning this game should be a cinch!

And that's all of them! Overall, I wouldn't say that I particularly loved or hated this game, I'm fairly neutral on it. I guess it's alright if you really need something to pass the time, but otherwise, I think I'd leave this one to the younger kids to play with. I'm giving it a 5 out of 10 Mysims rating.

Nostalgia Corner: Felix the Cat (NES)

2009-07-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

In thinking about my old NES game collection and remembering which games I have the most fond of memories of playing, Felix the Cat has always ranked pretty highly on that list...even if in part because it was the very first video game that I ever completed all on my own, with no help from either my dad (who was, at the time, the biggest gamer I knew) or from the Game Genie. (I don't think there ever were Game Genie codes for Felix...I could be wrong.) Regardless, upon recently figuring out NES emulation for my DS, Felix was the very first game on my list that I went out of my way to track down a copy of.

Instantly upon booting up the game, I was greeted by that friendly opening screen that I'd seen so many times before during my youth. It made me smile. That aside, once beginning the initial gameplay, I was immediately taken aback by how similar the gameplay is to the old Mario games, or even Mega Man. In modern games, you don't tend to run across side-scrollers too often anymore, so it was quite refreshing to play one again. The premise also reminded me of Mega Man, in that we have an evil scientist hellbent on destruction (who, in this case, is keeping Felix's girlfriend Kitty hostage). So, of course, Felix must save the world. (What else would this game be about?)

So here you are, in this Felix bizarro world of hamsters and cannons and sombrero monsters and walking trees--was somebody dropping acid when they created this game? I'm pretty sure that somebody was doing some heavy drugs. (Then again, this was all based off the old Felix the Cat cartoons. I'm pretty sure that opium was legal back then.) Like Mega Man (and unlike Mario), you cannot jump on your foes. Oh, no. Instead, all that you are armed with is your little yellow magic bag (we'll get back into that in just a second), out of which you can punch with a spring-loaded boxing glove. (It's all based VERY much off the old cartoons, which, if you've ever seen them, you'll understand.) Its range is VERY short, but it'll get you through long enough to either find a random heart or a power up bag.

Oh, what's this? Power up bags? Well, you know how in Mario, you travel through pipes? In Felix, you travel through giant versions of your magic bag. Once inside, you will find many powerups, usually a heart, and some milk cans. With each heart, you power up to the next ability level. (When you hit the last one, any additional hearts will just give you extra lives.) However, their usage is very limited. As soon as you get one of these powers, 10 hearts will appear in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. Each one stays for about 5 seconds, and when the hearts run out, you lose the power and are bumped back down to the next lower one. HOWEVER! You can get around this with those trusty milk cans! Each milk can will give you a few extra hearts, and I think if you manage to hook all three, it powers you back up completely. Not a bad deal....except that when you need them most, you can never seem to find the damn things. Sometimes these magic bags have a second bag on the righthand side of the screen that serves as a segway to further on in the level - again, much like the Mario pipelines.

So now that you've found your first heart, wherever it may have happened in the level, you'll no doubt notice that Felix's appearance has suddenly changed. He now wears a black top hat and carries a cane. No, not a cane, a magic wand. He's a magician now. (But according to my 10 year old sister, it's "totally a cane - Felix turned into a pimp!" Wowwww.) You will notice that when you go to attack an enemy now, you no longer get the springy punching bag. Instead, you throw a ring of stars out around your being in every which direction, creating a brief force field that will hit anything in close enough proximity. Still not a great power, but it definitely trumps the glove by a long shot.

Your next power up gives Felix a car. This vastly increases your mobility speed as well as gives you a projectile missile which shoots from the front of the car whenever you beep your horn. (It's one of the only vaguely realistic sounds in the game that doesn't sound like a bleep or boop.) I think that of the power ups for the regular ground levels (you have different powers in different levels, such as sky or sea), the car is my favorite. It's the most versatile and is easiest to work with.

Once you surpass the car, you get a tank. Sounds pretty awesome, right? It's big, it's heavy, it shoots cannon balls. What could be better? Um... the car. Seriously, the tank is bulky and cumbersome. You have to really work at making sure the trajectory on your cannon balls will actually hit your targets. You can't jump very high in it. It baffles me that this is the top power up in the regular land levels.

Of course, the power ups are different in different levels. In air levels, you start out with an umbrella (think: Mary Poppins) and upgrade to a hot air balloon which looks like Felix's head and throw what appear to be frisbees at enemies, and finally are upgraded to an airplane. I love that little plane... Then in the water levels (above water), you only have 2 power ups: you start out in a little inflatable raft, and you upgrade to a dolphin who you ride on the back of. Underwater, you start out with a snorkel, upgrade to riding on the back of a bubble-blowing sea turtle, and finally to a submarine that, like the hot air balloon, looks like Felix's head. This one, by far, is the best of the underwater abilities, as even though it's big and cumbersome, you can't beat this thing's missiles. They're long range, they shoot straight ahead (which is more than can be said for most of the projectiles in this game), and they're powerful. It's about the only thing that will really help you during boss battles.

It's overall a pretty typical oldschool NES game. You defeat bad guys; if you fall down holes or land in water, you die; your levels are timed, etc. All stuff that usually was a part of any video game back then. The levels are divided up in similar fashion to Mario as well (i.e. 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, etc) with three parts to a level...in most cases anyhow. There are 9 levels, and I suspect that since this is a game about a cat, 9 levels/9 lives. Get it? The last two are sort of a joke though. As you spend the game trying to reach the Professor, you reach level 8, and I think it only has one part to it. You just fly around in a spaceship and try not to die. (Easier said than done.) Level 9, if I recall, only has 2 parts before the final battle. Should you have had an easy time defeating all of the other bosses throughout the game, this will be a cinch for you. Especially since you have not one, not two, but THREE magic bags in the actual battle screen to duck down into to grab power ups and extra hearts inside of. You can come in completely unprepared and still get the tank to fight the Professor with. He takes a little bit longer to defeat than the other bosses, but it's the same general concept.

There's only two possible outcomes for this game. If you lose, you'll see a screen with a sad little Felix being tossed out into an alleyway while Kitty looks on longingly from the moon. However, should you succeed in beating the game, you'll reach Kitty, who's still all tied up, but hopping around in excitement for you finally have saved her; hearts floating up out of her head. "Congratulations! At least FELIX! You rescued Kitty! I love you, FELIX!" And then you watch a cutesy little sequence where Kitty and Felix fly off into the sunset--no wait, scratch that. They fly back home to Earth together, all smoochy and everything in the spaceship, and "THE END" flashes across the screen. Yes, it's short, but it's sweet, and a lot more memorable than a lot of other NES game endings of that time period. The ending has stuck with me over the years for some reason, and I didn't realize just how vividly I remembered it until seeing it again. This game, which took me all day to beat as a little kid, took me a grand total of just barely half an hour to complete this time around - playing it for the first time in about 17 years, to boot! (Damn, I'm old.) It's a pretty simple game, overall, and I'd say it's still a good early starter game for kids. Know your roots!

This was by no means the greatest ever game created for the NES, but I think it has quite a bit of quality to it that's stood the test of time. I'm going to go ahead and rate this 7 out of 10 little kitties.

DS Review: Imagine Boutique Owner

2009-07-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

Okay. With as much as I've whined and complained about the Imagine line of games, you're not doubt asking yourselves why I keep putting myself through this torture time and time again every time they put out a new title. Masochism, maybe? I don't know. And yet, I jumped through hoops to score a copy of this one pretty much as soon as it was released. I honestly can't even answer the "why?!" question anymore.

Anyway... It would have appeared that Imagine finally put out a better title than usual. You play a girl named Katie who inherits the family boutique from her grandfather, and has to keep one-upping and outdoing the city rival, Mr. Cheepo (who looks creepily like Alec Baldwin). This "boutique" eventually turns into somewhat of a mini-mall in which the mayor, the elite (Miss Van der Velt, who looks suspiciously like Paris Hilton), and pop star Ashley all shop at and increase the popularity of. You have to thwart off shoplifters (who are sent to your store by Mr. Cheepo), keep all your customers happy, and generally do a LOT of running back and forth between departments.

I find it interesting that you spend more time having to guess what exactly your customers want to buy than anything else. Even when it fits the bill, there's times when they still don't like what you present them with. What-ever. More curious is in your toy shop, where Katie creates her own stuffed animals, not a single stitch goes into those plushies. You just stick them together willy nilly and they magically hold. (Wow, I hope no kid gets the idea to try this out at Build-A-Bear or anything...) And no matter how you sign your name on your creations - even if you just scribble, it will still use the signature you used on the initial contract you signed when you inherited this boutique. (Better sign it neatly, or it'll mock you in the face every time you sign anything for the rest of the game!)

I guess I have no room to complain here because it's the same way the real world works too, but for every holiday, your boutique gets all pimped out and commercialized for each respective holiday. Which I think is just further perpetuating things a little bit more with the current generation, but oh well. Also, Katie must be awfully uncomfortable. Any time she's not moving around, she automatically strikes a model-esque pose; one leg extended far in front of the other.

Overall, I had very little to complain about with this title. The accuracy of the stylus even seemed to be fixed for this game! The loading screens are a little slow, but anyone can live with that. My only gripe - and this may just have been my cartridge, I don't know - is upon completing the jewelry store chapter, my game ALWAYS locks up. No matter what I do. I even created a new file and started again, and it did it at the same spot, 3 times. If anyone else has had this problem, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise, I'm going to try and get a refund, or else just sell the sucker on Ebay. What a pity.... I knew there had to be a catch.

Since I don't know whether or not the glitch was because of faulty programming or the cartridge itself, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume I got a dud here. The game, APART from that, I will rate a big fat 7 cash registers out of 10. Which is much more than I can say for pretty much any other Imagine title I've tried this far.

DS Review: Emma at the Farm

2009-07-02T17:13:00.000-07:00

You know, I grew up a farm girl. (Horse ranch to be exact, but I digress. We always had lots of animals around.) Even though this game was probably meant for, oh, I don't know... 3 year olds probably, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and try it out anyhow. Free import from the UK to review. Why not?

Observation number 1: The girl on the cover of the box doesn't even look like the girl in the game, strangely enough. What's this? False advertisement already? The guard is going up, and the game hasn't even begun yet. But the music sounds nice enough, so I'm still keeping an open mind.

There's three difficulties on which you can play this game: easy, medium, and hard. (Truth be told, with the exception of about 2 activities, it's exactly the same thing and difficulty on each difficulty level.) You have to play through the game to unlock each of the upper levels above it... Which wouldn't seem to bad IF THE GAME WERE DIFFERENT ON EACH DIFFICULTY! Seriously, would it have been that hard to give Emma three little adventures instead of...well...one?

Oh yes. You heard me. You play it through just to find out YOU GOT CHEATED. Who wants to play the same fairly-lame game through more than once? Not me, but for you lovely people, I did it anyway. The plot essentially is that Emma has come to visit her Uncle Jules (whose laugh makes me think of Charles Aznavour big time - he seems to be the lone Frenchman in this otherwise very British game) on his farm, and that while she's helping him tend to the animals, one of the mother hens has lost her chicks and needs Emma's help finding him. There's more emphasis on finding the chicks than the chores. The storyline is VERY short, even for a little kids' game. You could seriously complete this game on any difficulty in half an hour, tops. The lasting appeal for re-playing is not very high.

The dialogue in the game is almost laughably English. I keep getting mental images of all these animals (plus Emma) being uppity, snobby characters with the highly upper crust British accents. For example, my favorite line in the whole game is said by the noble horse: "I'll greet this fox with a firm hoof! A good thump with my iron shoe and that will be the end of him!" A close second would be the donkey's poem:

Oh sweet grass on the path of the barn!
You are so nice when I eat you!
When I look at you,
my soul is at peace!
Ah, how lovely it is to graze near the barn!

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I giggled over it. Anyway, throughout the game you go through a sequence of chores: you must collect eggs from the henhouse, catch falling eggs in a basket before they hit the ground, call the donkey to you, collect bundles of hay and place them in a cart, race a bunny against a fox, blow dandelion fluff into the wind, milk a cow, match animal sounds with the animals that make them, feed the animals, round up piglets and sheep, identify different vegetables, water the garden, shake apples out of the trees in the orchard, collect ripe tomatoes, and build a scarecrow.

All of this builds up to a very moral-ish ending of that it's bad to run off to play and leave for somewhere without telling your parents because it will make them worry. (Told you it was aimed towards little kids.) The opening and ending videos aren't the best quality I've ever seen, but they're not too bad, all things considered. It looks really low-budget, but if they'd had more money to play with, they might have been pretty nice.

I'm pretty sure the bonus features take longer to completely play out than the actual game. There's an Animal Families game (which has nothing whatsoever to do with actual animal families - it's a typical memory card matching game), a Dress Up Emma screen (which makes absolutely no impact on what Emma wears in that actual game at all...that was a letdown to me), real life recipes, and a virtual vegetable garden to water and grow. The best of of these is probably those real life recipes, which include:

- Grapefruit cup
- Potato pancakes
- Fruit ice cream
- Pound cake
- Quiche
- Steamed fish in foil
- Orange salad
- Apple tart with a moustache
- Tomato soup
- Beefburgers in breadcrumbs
- Mini-gratin
- Chocolate cake with glasses

Overall, I'm pretty sure I'll rate this game a solid 4 milking cows. Not too strong, but the bonus features are at least a little bit redeeming.