Reviews & Articles

I don’t mind the occasional casual game here and there. Sometimes, I just need to relax and cool off from mashing combos or firing headshots. And what better way to cool off than guiding some water through pipes? Droplitz proves itself to be quite refreshing in more ways than one.

I hate Tetris. There. I said it. And every ounce of that statement is true. I do not understand how arranging blocks of four is fun. It quickly becomes boring to me. After five minutes, I fall asleep. However, I have been playing a new puzzle game lately that doesn’t bore me at all: Droplitz.

Here's the thing: I have had Peggle on two of my mobile phones, my computer and now it is on my Xbox 360. I love it, but it is no ordinary kind of love. It is a time-suck kind of love. I sit down to play and then find myself half-comatose several hours later with atrophied muscles and five o'clock shadow. Okay, maybe not the beard stubble, unless the game causes hormonal imbalances I am not aware of yet, but my time rapidly disappears while I play the game. It won't let me go! I can hear it whispering ...

We football fans, we're in that rough time of year. The Super Bowl was over a month ago - a dimming memory even as I write this (unless you're a fan of either team that was in it, in which case it's still a glorious moment or a festering wound). The draft is a weeks away, which means until then it's just listening to Mel Kiper go on and on about the possible college recruits. And despite the weekend of the draft, it's still solid months before the preseason starts. The good news? The preseason has already started on my Blackberry with EFL Preseason, thanks to Enigma Games.

There are three types of games that I review:

Good games are games that I just have to keep playing and don't want to stop even to write the review. It takes me forever to get around to writing the review because I'm having so much fun playing the game. I usually keep playing the game after that, too.

As a kid I had a Commodore 64C. Amongst the other classic games I played on a regular basis was a game called Miner 2049er. I didn't know the "story" behind it, but it was a simple game. You were a miner-looking guy (especially relevant for my family, as a good number of my family were coal miners, and we lived in West Virginia at the time). Your goal was to walk on every little block of the ground, going up and down ladders and down chutes — all while jumping gaps.

Tilelander feels kind of like an old style arcade game. The vestigial background story is that I'm saving my home world of Tileland from the invaders of the evil Xyzom empire. "Great! Defend the world from the Xyzom bad guys," you might think to yourself. "Where's my army? Bring it on!"

When I read that Peggle was listed as one of the top five most addictive games, I had to check it out. Afterall, I play Bejeweled and I've broken a million points. How difficult or addictive could this be? In one word. Very. It's challenging. More challenging than you'd think; and more skill than luck is involved.

In 1942, the United States and Japan fought the Battle of Midway. Japan's Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto came up with a clever plan to defeat U.S. naval power. However, Japan's cryptography (naval code D) was cracked by the United States, and therefore, U.S. Adm. Chester Nimitz knew where the Japanese Navy would be and when. After four days of fighting, the United States — at the loss of one carrier and one destroyer of its own — had sunk four enemy carriers and one cruiser, plus myriad other ships as well as destroying a good part of the Japanese naval air power in terms of both planes and pilots.

If you're of a certain age then Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" is one of the most recognizable songs of two generations. We didn't grow up on the Peanut's comic strip, but if there's a holiday, we had a TV cartoon special. And where there's Peanuts, there's the indefatigable Snoopy on his Sopwith Camel dueling with the Red Baron. I know that my first knowledge of the Red Baron comes from Peanuts. I know my first knowledge of WWI comes directly from this.

There are times when working in this industry makes me feel old. I am about 10 years older than the average writer/PR rep/designer/coder and even producer. They don't make me feel old. Seeing Popeye and Olive Oyl on the floor at E for All with my 8-year-old son in tow and having him ask me, "Who's that?" makes me feel old.

Then there are the more-frequent times my age makes me feel very, very lucky. Heading to the Namco booth at E for All for a presentation of their new mobile titles and being presented with the new Popeye title ... starting to play with a confused notion as to why this is a remake and having that lightbulb-over-the-head-sensation as all of my old strategies kick in and I start to kick Bluto's behind! These are the times when I know that I'm lucky. I have more than nostalgia; I have an appreciation for just how far games have come and how fun they were and still are.

It's a cardinal rule of this site not to mention other games when doing reviews. You let a game stand on its own merits. However, it's prudent to mention that I am a Zuma fantatic. Not a fan, a fanatic. It's on my PC, laptop, Xbox 360, PDA and mobile phone. I also own Luxor and Magnetica. Apparently, this is a game mechanic that is part of my genetic makeup.

That being said, you can imagine my glee when Namco pushed their demonstrator off of Atlantis Sky Patrol (people were in line for this game) and put it in my hands. Wee! Colored marbles to shoot. Queue maniacal laughter ...

Circle Popper by Plazmic Games is one of those fairly simple games. You’ve probably seen one of the types before.

The top of the screen has a pattern of colored balls. They stick to each other and to the top of the screen. If you get three of the same color touching they’ll disappear, dropping any balls attached to them (that aren’t attached to anything else, like another column of balls or the top of the screen). Periodically, the top of the screen gets closer to the bottom.

Electronic Arts Inc. has announced that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be available on your mobile phone in the form of an RPG. It’s set up as a quick and easy game where you can pick up and play. All that is required is that you use the handset to make selections and move Harry around and talk to others. The storyline follows the book where Harry is helping students form “Dumbledore’s Army”. It can be finished in about two and a half hours.

Have you ever heard that eternal debate about what the most played PC game is - Minesweeper or Solitaire? I wonder what it is on a cellular phone? Tetris? Pac-Man? I've mentioned in previous reviews that I like mobile games (because they keep my kids quiet for one thing) but I think I just may have found my new favorite…and it's an oldie! Extreme Hangman.

I like cell games, they keep me occupied at airports, restaurants, doctor's offices, you name it! They keep my kids occupied whenever I need quiet. But, I've always been a player of puzzle games. Infinitely replayable, short bursts, and nothing really to "lose". Stargate SG-1: Entropy Syndrome is the first linear, story driven mobile game I've played. I think I like it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to say one thing:

I’m not very good at poker.

Magmic Games’ Texas Hold ‘em King 2 didn’t help me with that, unfortunately, as the apparent randomness to the computer opponents makes it so hard to actually play that, honestly – I’ve never gotten past the first round.

Somehow the first time it came around I totally missed out on the whole N-Gage craze, so when I went to meet with the people from Nokia this time around, I was determined to catch up. Or at least try my best to. Thankfully it seems that Nokia's goal this time around is to reach people just like myself. That is, people who are gamers, own a cell phone, but so far seem to have been missing combining the two experiences into one. My thoughts on mobile phone gaming are that it has always been too hard to find the games, to know what games will work on my phone with my carrier, and know ahead of time exactly what it is I'm paying for. Solving these problems is one of Nokia's primary goal with their new N-Gage system.

The most difficult part of reviewing a mobile phone game is in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the platform while also looking at the value the game provides. For example, XIII for mobile phones costs $3.00! When a game is that cheap, it is more difficult to evaluate because after all, what do you expect? Thankfully, the bottom line on XIII is that it is worth a purchase but you won’t remember the game beyond the time you spend playing it.

At the end of my previous review of Brickbreaker, I mentioned a coworker of mine:

There are some newer versions out. My coworker got his Blackberry upgraded and claims to have over 50 levels and upgraded graphics; when I get that, I’ll have to see how it does. But for now, I spend even more time than I do in MMOs playing the same seven levels over and over and over again.

When I was growing up, Doom was the PC’s equivalent of the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat franchises- it didn’t matter where you lived, you knew of Doom. Even if you weren’t fortunate enough to have a PC to play it, you knew someone who had it. Before the days of multi-player gaming over the Internet and $500 video cards, Doom was a shining example that computer games could offer an experience not replicable on consoles and in the arcades.

When it comes to Batman games, I am an apologist. That said, I know the difference between a good game and a bad one, and Batman Begins Mobile is fun game. Batman Begins is able to take the movie’s emphasis on stealth and implement solid action and controls into the gameplay to create an enjoyable experience.

How long do you usually play a cell phone game at a time for? For most people, it’s not long, and that’s part of the appeal of Agent Disco.

In the 1990s, probably the most popular game out there was Solitaire. Installed on almost every Windows machine, it became infamous for the fact that the poor people stuck at a computer all day would play it constantly. There were also the variants, such as Tut’s Tomb (my personal favorite).

One of my best friends introduced me to the Metal Slug series via an emulator on his PC when we lived together. The Metal Slug games featured a cartoon-ish (dare I say anime-esque?) graphic style. You selected one of two people in the first ones; later they added two more characters. You ran forward, carrying the default gun in this side scrolling game. You saved prisoners of war, found around the levels tied up, with thick beards and nothing on but boxer shorts, they’d whip out a heavy machine gun, flame throwers, extra grenades, all kinds of fun stuff.

At the Game Developer’s Conference I had the chance to sit down with Daniel Pfeiffer, Co-founder of ThwartPoker, Inc. and check out his new game… you guessed it, ThwartPoker. Twenty years in development, ThwartPoker takes the game that we’ve all grown to know and love, and gives it a twist. It removes the chance and makes poker a primarily skill based game.

Just because a game is on a cell phone doesn’t mean it necessarily has to be simpler, even if the concept is fairly straight-forward. You can see that in Engima Games’ Warriors, a game of 3 on 3 combat.

It’s really all Doom’s fault.

Honestly.

Believe it or not (I’m walking on air…gah, no I promise that this is a review of a video game, not “Greatest American Hero”) I really wasn’t a gamer, or at least, video gamer all of my life.

So, I was in training this week. By about mid-afternoon I’d be hyped on caffeine and bored, so I found myself surfing to see what games were highly rated on my cell phone. I saw Super Bomberman and figured, hey, what the heck, I’ll try it out.

Every now and then a video game becomes a phenomenon. If you haven't been living under a rock, you may know of a little game called Bejeweled which earned that distinction a few years back. It wasn't just a game for geeks. People from all walks of life became obsessed with it: managers, bankers, lawyers, CEOs. It appeared on PCs and PalmPilots and PocketPCs in every corner of the world. Even today, people in the next room can hear a few chords of its catchy music or sound effects and know immediately what game is being played.