Tiny Wings

Title: Tiny Wings
Platform Played On: iPhone
Release Date: February 18, 2011
Date Played: Summer 2011
Time Played: 1 hour
Completed (Y/N): No
Score: 2/5

Opinion:
For some reason there was a bunch of buzz about Tiny Wings when it launched in the winter of 2011. It was the next big thing after Angry Birds, and it seemed that everyone and their mother was playing it. Naturally I had to check it out.

The premise of Tiny Wings is simple. You are a little birdy dude that cant fly. So instead of flapping it's wings the little birdy uses momentum and hills to glide forward (cant imagine how that would work in real life). As the player you have only one action and that is to force the bird to the ground. If done right the bird will use the hills for greater momentum to go faster and faster. If you are too slow the time runs out and you lose.

Under all that Tiny Wings boils down to the following. It is a side scroller with the goal of getting to the end as fast as possible and at the same time collecting as many little suns as you can (basically coins) on the way. The level generation is procedural, which ensures that you can not win through memorization or muscle memory.

Personally after a couple of rounds I fell completely bored with Tiny Wings. It was extremely repetitive and the rewards seemed lackluster. After giving it a few tries I felt no desire to keep playing.

Even those that really enjoyed Tiny Wings seemed to get bored of it pretty quickly. Perhaps that is the nature of the games in the "Canabalt" genre. It looks great, and runs smoothly; however lack of variety makes it boring rather quickly. If games like Canabalt, or Jetpack Joyride are your type of thing, then perhaps Tiny Wings is worth checking out; however if you never liked those games, Tiny Wings is unlikely to change your mind. 

PlanetSide

Title: PlanetSide
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: May 20, 2003
Date Played: Summer 2003
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 3/5


 

Opinion:
PlanetSide was a pretty big sensation when it came out. As a pretty hardcore Counter Strike and EverQuest player I could not wait to see how this game was going to merge the MMO and FPS genres.

You start PlanetSide by creating a character. After choosing a faction you spawn at a base, ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum. There isnt much of a tutorial, or direction. You are given a vague idea of where to go to get some action.

For me personally MMOs at that point in time were associated with a PvE environment, although I have dabbled in Dark Age of Camelot with its Realm vs Realm mechanics, my enjoyment of MMOs came from running quests and raiding huge bosses. That being said it was weird to play an MMO and not being able to do any of that.

Instead of dungeon crawling and slaying crypt bosses PlanetSide is all about territory control. I remember opening the map and heading to where the action was. BAM... dead... What just happened? Ok whatever, check the map and take off for the hotspot again... BAM... dead... OK this sucks... Ill head this other way... oh look a tower... I'll head up the stairs... BAM... dead.... This basically sums up my experience with PlanetSide. And even when I did get a jump on someone, the terrible network lag would make it a bunny hopping cross your fingers and pray your bullets hit them type of encounter.

Even when it launched PlanetSide's graphics already looked a little dated. Majority of the landscape was flat and deserty, with muddy textures and polygonal environments. "Boring landscapes" would be a good way to describe it.

My entire experience was basically a single player experience. None of my friends were big gamers and I would be surprised if they even knew what an MMO was. Now and then I speak with someone that played PlanetSide, they say that traveling as a group was the best part of it. Thats something that I unfortunatelly did not get to experience.

I have spent roughly 10 hours with PlanetSide, most of that time was spent running from the spawn point to the battle, just to get sniped or killed in an unfair network lag battle. Needless to say it would be generous to say that I had even a little bit of fun. The idea of a huge FPS world, with hundreds of players battling over territory and every battle actually making a difference was intriguing; however in practice it was nothing like that. PlanetSide was a great experiment, but perhaps it was ahead of its time. Games have evolved since 2003, and a lot of progress has been made in game design. While PlanetSide was a good idea poorly executed, I have really high hopes for PlanetSide 2.

Puzzle Quest

Title: Puzzle Quest
Platform Played On: Nintendo DS, PSP, iPhone
Release Date: March 20, 2007
Date Played: 2007, Spring 2012
Time Played: 5 hours
Completed (Y/N): No
Score: 2/5


Opinion:
Puzzle Quest interested me from the day it came out. I first played it a bit on the Nintendo DS, then on the PSP, and finally on the iPhone. I would pick it up about once a year, but every single time I ended up putting it down. Now 5 years, and many attempts later. I can say for sure that Puzzle Quest is not for me.

Puzzle Quest combines the addictive gameplay of a match 3 game (such as Bejeweled), and sprinkles some RPG on top. While most of the gameplay takes place on a match 3 board rest of the game consists of traveling on a overworld map, and conversing with NPCs via chat bubbles. There is an overarching story dealing with the threat to the kingdoms and you of course are their only salvation.

The RPG elements are present in every aspect of Puzzle Quest. You start of by choosing a character class, which impacts your stats and dictates which spells you have. The battle board has pieces that can be used to earn experience, other pieces (skulls) are used for dealing damage and the rest of the colored pieces are the different types of mana. You earn spells through leveling or items/creatures, and each spell needs one or more types of mana to cast. You earn said mana by matching gems. For example matching 3 blue gems will get you 3 blue mana. Generally the more badass the spell the more it will cost to cast. You can travel to shops to buy new equipment (or sell the old), and Inns to gather rumors.

Now that Puzzle Quest's mechanics are clear I am going to get straight to the point. Puzzle Quest sucks. The idea is original, it is very cool and interesting; however every single time I pick it up I end up at the same spot by the name of boredom a few hours into it. The game mechanics are unnecessarily complicated and are not descriptive enough. The stat screen is filled with arbitrary numbers that mean very little, which makes it extremely hard to tell if dumping 5 points into "Battle" stat actually increases your damage a lot or just a little. While there is the main quest line, which is alright but does very little to keep you interested, and the side quests (which there are a ton of) are just plain dumb. They are not interesting in any way, not in concept, nor by their gameplay. The map usage is very minimal, and the NPC conversations do not feel even remotely interesting. On top of all this Puzzle Quest's AI is brutal, and not in a fun way either. The AI straight up cheats. I have had numerous occasions where it would make moves building 5+ chains of match 4 using tiles that arent even on the screen yet.

Basically Puzzle Quest sucks at the feedback loop. Things that you do are not exciting and the reward is basically nonexistent. As soon as the novelty of a match 3 RPG is gone there is absolutely nothing interesting or fun in Puzzle Quest. Moreover I find it's gameplay very frustrating. I think its a great idea, but not a good implementation of that idea. It is way too repetitive, with little to no incentive and quite frankly a very boring run of the mill story. I have yet to give Puzzle Quest 2 or Puzzle Quest Galactrix a try, perhaps they address my issues with this one.

Bottom line... Puzzle Quest... is not for me...

Dead Island

Title: Dead Island 
Platform Played On: Xbox 360 
Release Date: September 6, 2011
Date Played: June 2012 
Time Played: 28 Hours 
Completed (Y/N): Yes 
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
Dead Island made quite a splash with its early 2011 trailer. Not only did it graphically look amazing, it was also very emotional. A few months after the trailer stunned the world, the game came out, and surprisingly got forgotten fairly quickly.

Dead Island was developed by Techland, the company behind the Call of Juarez series. The action is set on a tropical island, a prime vacationing spot and also the location of the world's most notorious prison located in the middle of the bay (akin to Alcatraz). Four people from completely different backgrounds ended up on this island by a strange twist of fate, and all four are immune to the zombie bite. You can choose to play as one of the four. Each has his or her own playstyle, his or her own strengths and his or her own background. The character I played receives bonuses to thrown weapons. Other choices are, bonuses to blunt weapons, sharp weapons or firearm bonuses.

First thing that I noticed when I started playing Dead Island is that the game is gorgeous. The entire island is very detailed and every place looks as you would expect it to look in real life. Second thing that I noticed about Dead Island is the fact that the game world is ginormous. It is broken up in several locations, resort, city, jungle and the prison. Each location has its own quest hubs and each looks distinctly different from the others. Introduction of new environments is very well paced and overall Techland did an excellent job keeping the gameplay fresh.

Skill Trees For Logan

Third thing that I found rather interesting in Dead Island is the RPGingness of it. Not only does it have the colored loot, and leveling mechanics, but it also features skill trees. Each character has 3 skill trees they can dump points into (each level gives you 1 point), which allows you to further customize your character to suit your play style. Speaking of the tiered loot. Items can drop from zombies (if they are wielding them), picked up from chests, found in the environment (pipes, bats, paddles etc), and received as quest rewards. They can vary in quality from White -> Green -> Blue -> Purple -> Orange, with Orange being the best and rarest. I only picked up 4 of them in the first playthrough (not counting about half a dozen or so that I received as quest rewards). Almost every piece of loot can be modified and improved, most with a variety of mods, plans for which can be either found or received as quest rewards.

Example of Loot

Dead Island features two different combat styles, a whats called analog style and a digital style. The digital style behaves as you would expect it to behave, left trigger to aim, right trigger to swing or shoot. Analog style though completely changes the experience. In analog mode left trigger becomes a "ready" button, and the right stick becomes your swinging arm. In analog mode you can direct each blow precisely where you want it to go. It gives you granular control in combat, which allows you to strategically damage the zombies (which has its benefits).

Most of the game I stuck with slicing weapons, such as cleavers and swords. I found that one precise slice to the neck is far more effective than trying to bludgeon a zombie to death.

I played as Logan an ex-football player who ended up on the island as a celebrity promoting a blood drive. I played through the whole game single player, which was a very enjoyable experience. But playing Dead Island co-op and rolling around as a 4 player posse could be extremely fun. Dead Island is a very good game, I would go as far as saying it is the best Zombie game I have ever played. It just has so much to offer. It looks amazing, the character variety offers over a 100 hours of replayability, the random tiered loot, weapon upgrades and leveling mechanics keep you coming back, the analog battle system, variety of weapons and environments give Dead Island depth. I think it is pretty clear that I had a very good time with Dead Island, and think that Dead Island should be in everyone's collection. I can not wait for the sequel (Dead Island: Riptide).

My Stats After Finishing The Game For the First Time (As Logan)

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Title: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: August 29, 2007
Date Played: June 2012
Time Played: 1 hour
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 3/5



Opinion:
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is a Street Fighter themed spin on the game of Tetris.

SPF2THDR... I just wanted to acronymize that thing...  anyways, this game has very little to do with Street Fighter. It does feature weird kid versions of the Street Fighter characters, but they do very little aside from standing there. They do an occasional move or two (tied in with awesomeness of your moves) but quite frankly I was pretty disappointed with how little Street Fighter there is in this seemingly marketed as a Street Fighter game.

Right off the bat, if you have never played a Super Puzzle Fighter (like myself) it is very hard to understand the mechanics of the game. There is no tutorial or any sort of explanation as to what the difference between the characters is or how exactly the game mechanics are set up. I basically had to figure it out via trial and error, which was not the most pleasant experience.

The basic mechanics are as follows. You drop color blocks (always set of 2), then occasionally you get glowing ball blocks. When you touch the ball to the blocks of the same color it will blow up all of the touching blocks (like a snake), and then depending on how bad ass your explosion is it will cause blocks to get dropped on top of your opponent's screen (to screw them up). Sometimes you get blocks that will remove all of one color, but that basically is the gist of it.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, has a needlessly long name, and very little variety. After playing a few rounds (10-20minutes) you basically get to see everything there is to see. But to be fair this is not the type of game with variety (although other puzzle games like Peggle and Puzzle Bobble do tend to keep you interested with new and interesting things). Yes Tetris doesnt have much variety either, but lets not forget that Tetris comes from a completely different era of gaming with completely different expectations and technological capabilities.

I would only play SPF2THDR for the Tetrisnesness of it. If you are looking for more Street Fighter, you will not find it here. This is a decent 15 minute distraction, or a quick party game break. But I dont see anyone enjoying playing this for hours, especially by yourself.

Puzzle Bobble

Title: Puzzle Bobble
Platform Played On: Arcade
Release Date: December 1994
Date Played: 1999 - present
Time Played: 2 hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
When you walk in to a local Donut shop or a Pizza parlor and see several beat up arcade machines in the corner, there is a very good chance Puzzle Bobble is on one of those machines.

I dont even know where it was that I first played this great game... it was probably at the Donut shop across from my High School. There were two machines there, Metal Slug, and Puzzle Bobble.

Puzzle Bobble falls into the same category that Tetris would. The concept is simple. You control a little turret at the bottom of the screen. You shoot different color balls from that cannon onto the existing array of balls. Once there are 3 balls of the same color touching they go away.

Unlike Tetris, in which you never really finish stages, you just keep going and going, the goal in Puzzle Bobble is to clear the entire screen. In Puzzle Bobble once you clear the field you advance to more and more complex levels. One important mechanic is that in order to prevent you from taking a lot of time each turn and to add tension to the gameplay the ceiling constantly pushes the balls downwards. If you are unable to clear the field before it reaches your cannon you lose.

If you find yourself in an Arcade parlor, Puzzle Bobble is definitely worth checking out. Its is by no means a game that one will spend hours and hours on; however as far as 15 minute distractions go PuzzleBobble is a great choice.

Advance Wars

Title: Advance Wars
Platform Played On: GBA
Release Date: September 9, 2001
Date Played: Fall 2001 - Spring 2002
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5

Opinion:
Wow did this game really come out 2 days before 9/11? That really sucks. I am sure it would have sold better than it did if it would have come out at a different time. Terrible timing.

Advance Wars is one of the greatest handheld games ever made. At its core it is a simple yet very addictive turn based strategy game. You control an army consisting of dozens of different types of units, and your goal is simple, to destroy the enemy headquarters. You can use factories to build more units, and different terrain types to use strategically. Each game can last anywhere from 30 minutes to couple of hours making the game's time to dollar value incredible, and the skirmish mode adds limitless replayability. Each unit type moves and attacks uniquely. This variety makes every game entertaining and unpredictable.

Advance Wars is missing only one thing, asynchronous multiplayer; however, it would be wrong to knock it because of that since that is limited by hardware, not the developer. The game did come out at the time when few had internet, and even that was 99% dialup.

Even now, over a decade later, Advance Wars remains one of the best portable games. I wish they would port it to iOS with all of the benefits (asynchronous multiplayer) that it could offer. Advance Wars and its sequels on GBA and DS are a must play, no question about it.

Peggle

Title: Peggle
Platform Played On: Xbox 360, PC
Release Date: March 11, 2009 (Xbox 360)
Date Played: Summer 2009
Time Played: 5 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
Peggle... a game that came out of nowhere and conquered our hearts and souls.

Pop Cap (developer) is a small company, known for releasing such casual sleeper hit games as Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies. But before PvZ, in the distant 2007 they had Peggle, the game that established Pop Cap as the juggernaut of casual gaming and made it clear that they were not a simple one hit wonder with their Bejeweled.

Goal of Peggle is simple. You have a ball that bounces around a field. That field has pegs of three different colors (blue, orange and green). The more rare green pegs give you powerups which are determined by the animal you play as. The orange pegs are the most important ones, once you get rid of all of them, the level is complete. And the blue pegs are your standard pegs that dont do anything special (aside from the cool sound when you hit them).

Overall gameplay in Peggle can be described as inspired by 1970's Breakout, and its many clones. However, instead of controlling the paddle and trying to bounce the ball, the paddle moves on its own, and you pick where to drop the ball from at the top of the screen. I always liked Breakout/Arkanoid type of games, and Peggle is no exception.

Peggle in my opinion is one of the best puzzle games ever. Not only is the gameplay a lot of fun, but Pop Cap did an excellent job with sound and overall game design to make you feel amazing about every shot you make.

For a casual game Peggle is basically perfect. It is easy to understand and easy to operate. It has been ported to virtually every platform out there, and you can play it on PC, consoles and mobile devices running iOS and Android. Peggle has plenty of levels to keep you occupied for hours and at a low pricepoint (compared to $60 releases) it is a must have puzzler in everyone's collection.

Saints Row

Title: Saint's Row
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: August 29, 2006
Date Played: May 2012
Time Played: 21 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5



Opinion:

My Stats
After Finishing
The Game
(click to zoom)

Saint's Row saw an opportunity and went for it. What's that you may ask? Almost a year of new hardware (Xbox 360) out in the wild and no GTA in sight.

When GTA 3 came out nothing could touch it with a 10 foot pole. Rockstar had the formula nailed and the only thing that would improve upon it were it's own games Vice City and San Andreas, both released on PlayStation 2 (initially), both using GTA3's engine. All were incredible. But it was the year 2006, and two years since San Andreas has been released. New consoles, which are dozens of times more powerful than the PS2 were noew in gamer's hands, and all of them were jonesing for the new GTA. Saint's Row was there to fill that need.

Volition (developer) took the GTA formula, put their own wrapper on it and released it to fairly good reviews and critical acclaim, at least good enough to follow it up with (as of today) 2 sequels.

Saint's Row takes place in the city of Stilwater. You are a random dude that is in the wrong place at the wrong time. You get saved from certain death by no other than the Saints from 3rd street, after which you find yourself as part of the gang. Following this basic set up the game world opens up and you are free to travel wherever you want and do whatever you want. You can steal whatever cars you see and largely do what you would expect to be able to do in a GTA game.

Saint's Row tries to be more comedic than the Grand Thief Auto series with making puns at real world events or locations (such as Wendy's restaurants, and radio personalities.) It has no shame, and goes over the top wherever it can, which to me personally meant a lot of funny moments.

The cars, guns and controls in Saint's Row feel just about right for a 2006 title and I had no problem with them. The missions cover your basic range of go kill that guy, go steal that car, go escort that girl, go drive that thing. Saint's Row does not go over the top with creativity, and I dont blame them. While it would have been nice, I can completely understand that learning and programming for the new hardware is not an easy task. Now that they got the basics, they have the sequels to innovate the genre.

Saint's Row is a good game, and from what I understand the sequels are even better, with 3rd one being amazing. However; playing this game in 2012, it is easy to tell that it was developed more than half a decade ago. There are numerous occasions where game-play design feels like a last generation game. For example, none of the missions have checkpoints, so you can find yourself being put back 20 minutes because someone turned the corner and shotgunned you in the face at the very end of a mission. I found myself frustrated a few times having to go through that.

Another silly mechanic is that you are required to do repetitive side missions in order to take on the story missions. While the side missions are mostly fun and give a decent variety, I feel that you are required to do way too many of them, which ends up being pretty mundane.

Saint's Row is a little rough around the edges, there are a couple of game breaking bugs that I encountered such as a car that I was supposed to escort ramming into a building and getting stuck forcing me to restart the missions, losing 15 minutes or more of progress. AI simply ramming your car, and even though they are driving the exact same make and model as you, somehow they are able to go 30 miles per hour faster than you. Inability to jump out of a flaming vehicle because the driver's side door is blocked by the 999 AI cars that have been ramming you during the mission (in GTA4 for example you are almost always given enough time to jump out).

All in all if you are able to look past these rough edges (which I was able to do without much effort), underneath of it all you have a great open world 3rd person shooter. It is much more lighthearted than the Grand Thief Auto series and I would tell you to go play it if you haven't; however, seeing that story is basically self contained, and with the third game being genre defining, I will say that you should just read the plot of this game on wikipedia, and for sure go play "Saint's Row The Third", released in November 2011.

100 Floors

Title: 100 Floors
Platform Played On: iPhone
Release Date: May 4, 2012
Date Played: May 2012
Time Played: 1 hour
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 3/5

Opinion:
100 Floors is a clever puzzle game designed to take advantage of iPhone's capabilities.

100 Floors is a very simple game, constructed of what seems to be stock images and about 3 different sound clips. Dont panic though, that's totally fine... the graphics and sound are just barely good enough to get the point across and to be honest they are of least importance. What is cool and impressive though are the puzzles themselves. 100 Floors consists mostly of logic puzzles, where you are given a couple of objects and sometimes a hint. Your goal is to use these objects in a clever way in order to open the door and go up to the next floor. A lot of the puzzles have you manipulate the phone in real life in order to solve them, and I found myself amazed a couple of times at the cleverness of the puzzles. I found few floors at a time sessions with 100 Floors a lot of fun. It is a perfect "I am waiting in line" type of game.

That being said though, 100 Floors suffers from numerous problems. The biggest problem with it is the fact that there is very limited feedback as to what you are supposed to be doing, or whether what you are doing is correct or not. Yes I do understand that the idea is to figure out what you are supposed to be doing; however there needs to be some sort of feedback that what you are doing is the correct thing or even that it is doing something at all. There were several occasions where I had to use an object on a piece of background by hammering on them many times. When I do that, there needs to be some sort of feedback letting me know that its doing something. Otherwise after hitting the object a few times I think that its just a piece of background art and give up.

100 Floors is free, you do get non intrusive ads scrolling on the bottom of the screen trying to trick you into clicking on them. 100 Floors, is simple yet entertaining diversion from all other games, and a good bathroom buddy. It will make you use your iPhone in ways no other app will and at times even make you feel proud of yourself that you have figured it out. With being free 100 Floors is a must check out.


PS - As of this writing there are 51 floors. I imagine there will be many times more in the future.