Super Meat Boy is quite a ride. Let me lay this out for you — It’s a fast-paced platformer where you play as a chunk of meat trying to save Bandage Girl (your girlfriend) from a fetus (with a doctorate) named Dr. Fetus who, already at his age, has a very negative disposition on the world and just seems to be pissed all the time. He walks around in a robot suit… thing.
Along the way, you are met with many different obstacles, ranging from flying sawblades to meaty enemies and quite precarious heights. It’s… Silly. And awesome.
Let me explain why.

The gameplay in Super Meat Boy is freakin’ fantastic. It’s a platformer with an emphasis on speed and precision in movements, making you rely on skill to get the job done. The learning curve isn’t too steep, in that you don’t have to learn a whole lot at once, but you are constantly figuring out new tactics and just little bits of information about gameplay that will help you out along the way. (You figure these out on your own, through exploration and experimentation — the only levels with tutorials are the first few.)

Once you get past the tutorials, the gameplay will get progressively harder, and beating levels gets progressively more and more satisfying. Completionists will have a blast with this game, as there’s a ridiculous amount of content! First, you’ve got the basic levels. No big deal there, not incredibly difficult on their own. Now add bandages, and the difficulty has shot through the roof. Some of the bandages are just found through exploration of unnecessary bits of the levels, but a lot of them are intentionally placed in locations that make them near impossible to get. I’ve spent upwards of an hour on one level just trying to get the bandage — the level itself I could beat in about ten / fifteen minutes. (But, if you’re a completionist, you have to get the bandages. Bandages unlock characters! We’ll get more into the characters later…) Then there’s also a speed aspect to it, where you’ll get a grade of A+ if you beat the level in a short amount of time, which is less and less and the levels fly by. Once you get A+ in a level, you unlock the “Dark World” counterparts to that level. There are 20 levels in each world, and the Dark World versions are essentially all of the levels with the same layout, but with lots and lots of traps added in there to make it a much more difficult experience. You’ll want to tear your hair out at some of these, but that’ll pass.
There are also “Warp Zones,” which show up every now and then and bring Super Meat Boy to a different dimension. Sometimes the art style is even different. In these Warp Zones, you’ll have the opportunity to collect bandages or unlock characters, but the levels are quite difficult. Hell, even spotting the Warp Zones is sometimes a challenge. Keep an eye out for ‘em.

Unlocking characters is an amazing feeling in this game. Not only does it give you something new to look at as you play, but each character has unique abilities that can help you overcome specific situations. It’s incredibly helpful to be able to play a level with a character better suited for getting that almost impossible-to-get bandage, rather than spend hours trying to get it with Meat Boy. Each character is fully capable of completing each level and grabbing each floating bandage, but some of them will make your life that much easier.

Now, before we proceed, let’s take a general look at Super Meat Boy. It’s a platformer with awesome physics and a heavy focus on speed and wall-jumps (which are executed brilliantly here). It’s got an unbelievable amount of content, and will take a completionist quite a while to fully experience everything that it holds. The development of such a game was, in my opinion, a very bold endeavour — it was undertaken by only two people, and it’s a very unique idea, gameplay-wise. They put a lot on the line, and it’s surely paid off, as it was one of the most popular games of 2010, winning several awards on different websites, including IGN’s “Most Challenging Game” category of their Best of 2010 awards. And not without good reason, this game is hard as hell! But it’s not, for me anyway, the kind of game that will make you ragequit and never return. Every time I died (and believe me, there were plenty), I realized that it was due to my own ineptitude. The game never feels unfair. You just have to focus and not suck, and when you finally get that bandage and you finally reach the end of the level, you will sometimes want to celebrate. That’s a milestone in your life right there.

Let me break this down for all the completionists reading this review… In Super Meat Boy, there is a total of about 350 levels. Within those levels, you will find 101 bandages, and 20 warp zones, which will help you unlock the 25 unlockable characters. There are also dark world counterparts to each of the levels, which you have to score A+ on said levels to unlock. In order to reach 100% completion in Super Meat Boy, you will have to dedicate a hell of a lot of time to playing, and you’ll have to muster up more patience with yourself than most other games require. This game is chock-full of content, and there’s even more to come.

In an upcoming update for the PC version of Super Meat Boy (which will also be compatible with Mac OS X soon), there will be a fully-featured level editor put into the game. This means that players will be able to create and upload their own near-impossible levels that anybody else can then download and enjoy, thus making Super Meat Boy a game that theoretically never ends, as long as the community picks up, which I’m sure it will. A stipulation to upload a level you create will be that you have to beat that level at least once, to prove that it’s not impossible, which is definitely a fantastic idea from Team Meat.

In conclusion, this is one of the best games I have ever played. It’s inventive, incredibly long, has awesome unlockables, and has just the right amount of frustration. I wholeheartedly recommend this game, especially for PC users who will soon be able to utilize the level editor, making the experience that much more amazing.
The story isn’t much, but it doesn’t have to be. The characters themselves are great, and the nonstop action keeps the fun going. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a game with this much content for the price of $15.
Super Meat Boy is available for PC through Steam, and on the Xbox 360. It’ll be coming to the Mac sometime in the first half of this year, but we unfortunately won’t be seeing it on the PS3 or Wii (which they had planned, but canceled).

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Game Dev Story is exactly what it sounds like. But the simple presentation is highly deceiving — this game has got a lot going for it, and is one of the most addictive iOS games I’ve ever played.

You start off a humble game development company, with four employees (not counting your secretary) and low review scores. But as you progress, you hire more talented individuals, level up the employees you’ve already got, and unlock many more types of games to create. Eventually, with enough patience and hard work, you’re rolling in dough, constantly bringing in fresh money from the new releases.
But… It’ll take a while.

Game Dev Story is fun as hell, let me get that out of the way right now… This game is incredibly satisfying in every way. There are random events that can, at times, be infuriating, but with enough dedication to your fictional game development company, none of that will matter.

As I said earlier, you start off with just four employees. You hire them in the beginning of the game, and can get to work immediately.
Working on a game is a pretty hands-off process… There are different attributes to a game. The success of said game relies on how high the numbers attached to these attributes are. There’s Fun, Creativity, Graphics, and Sound. Your employees are all specially-trained in different parts of creating a videogame, and will, through the process of development, increase these attributes accordingly.

The development process starts off with a game proposal. You can either have somebody create a proposal in-house or outsource, if your employees aren’t skilled enough. The proposal gives you your initial attribute points, and this sole process of development does a whole lot to decide how the rest will go.
After this, the development proceeds with your employees randomly achieving attribute points. This goes on until the game is 40% completed, at which point you exit the “alpha” phase. This step forward gives you a chance to work on your graphics.
This is very much like the proposal, in that you can do it in-house or outsource. Whomever you assign to the Graphics will primarily work on them, as such, but you’ll also get some Creativity and Fun points.
Again, the development from your team continues, up until 80%. At this point, you exit the “beta” phase, which gives you a chance to work on the sound for your game, very much in the same way.

After the development is complete, you have to spend time getting rid of bugs that accumulate throughout the developmental process. You then ship the game, titling it if you wish (otherwise the title will be “Game #x”). You then receive reviews from four different magazines, ranging in score from 1-10, all with a little comment. The higher these are, the more likely you are to ship lots of units.
You can ship a bugged product, but don’t expect great reviews.

Throughout development, you’ll also accumulate Research points. You can use these points to level up staff members, or you can occasionally use them on random Boosts.
A Boost is when an employee comes up to your desk and says “I’d like to work on improving our sound / graphics / fun / creativity.” If you agree, you spend a good bit of money to give them that opportunity. You then choose how many research points to give to their efforts — the more you give, the higher the probability they’ll succeed. (And the more skilled they are, the less they’ll need.) The maximum probability that they can succeed is 80%, so there’s always a risk. If they, by chance, happen to fail, you’ll rack up a good bit of bugs from their mess-ups. (But in the debugging process, you regain 1 research point for every bug eliminated, so it’s not THAT bad.)

As you work your way up in the industry, you’ll eventually move to a new office, with room for two more employees. Eventually you’ll get an even bigger office, with room for two more employees, giving you a total of eight workers at your disposal. Things will get done much faster, and you will be much more successful if you properly train your staff.

Another large part of success is advertising. There are many options for advertising your company and video games, from demo distribution to writing your name in the sky and more. Advertising will effect your audience — how many fans you have. The more fans you have, the more sales you’ll make.
You will also occasionally get a nice, free increase in fans. These are usually prompted by receiving a fan letter, all of which are nice and actually make it feel like you’re making these games for a reason.

Back to development itself… Something that will greatly help your development process if the items included in this game. Every now and then there will be a traveling salesman who stops in your building to try and sell you his wares… The more you buy, the more expensive they become, to be careful about the order you make your purchases.
There are several items you can get. My favourite is Dead Bull, which reinvigorates your staff so that they work more efficiently. But there are also the much more useful boosts that you can purchase and choose to use on a staff member, at the expense of some research data.
The good part is that it definitely works, 100% of the time. The bad part is that you don’t benefit as much as you do from random boosts.
The items will make your life much easier, as long as you can learn how to use them properly.

But once you get all that down — once you learn how to make a great game — there’s gotta be a reward other than virtual money, right?
Of course! Virtual trophies!
There’s a yearly event in which trophies are handed out to developers in several different categories. Winning one of these trophies will greatly increase your fandom, as well as put a bit of that virtual money in your pocket. Virtually.
The trophies alone are sometimes what drives me to make a new game. It’s very rewarding, winning one.
And if your game does well enough to win a trophy, that means it might have done well enough to make it into the Hall of Fame.
Depending on review scores, your game could make it into this very Hall. Being in the Hall of Fame means that your game will, guaranteed, do well on the market, AND you can make a sequel.
Sequels are the best. They automatically start off with a good bit of points in each attribute, so they’re much more likely to do well (and then get into the Hall of Fame so you can make ANOTHER sequel).
This system makes me feel kind of bad, though, as I realize that, in this virtual world, I’m just like EA Games is to Madden. Releasing just about the same thing every year and still making mad money.
Regardless, it keeps the people happy and it keeps my company expanding.

Speaking of expanding, once you get far enough into Game Dev Story, games may not even be your primary focus, depending on how you choose to play. You can eventually create game consoles. These bring in a lot of money, and, unlike videogames, do not go off the market ever, until you create a new one. This means it’s a steady stream of money that you can use to fund the next console development, or game development. Once you get to this point, you’re pretty much set for life.

But if you’re ever not doing so well, you can always take up contract work. You develop something for a third party for cash money. Normally it’s simple, but don’t ever accept a job you don’t think you’ll be able to complete — failing to meet a deadline for a contract job means lost respect for your company. That’s never good.

Graphics-wise, this game’s got it covered pretty nicely. It’s nothing spectacular to look at, but it’s simple, appealing, and gets the job done. Besides, most of the time you’ll just be watching numbers and reading words — the graphics honestly don’t even matter that much. But, for what they are, they’re nice.

All-in-all, this game is fantastic. It’s only $3.99 on the App Store and is worth far more than that. I’ve gotten countless hours of gameplay out of this, and don’t intend to stop any time soon. I’ve completely drained my battery doing nothing but playing Game Dev Story. Very much worth a purchase, especially if you at all enjoy simulation games or the idea of feeling like you’ve accomplished something.

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When I first bought VVVVVV, I was a bit skeptical. I had enjoyed the demo (which is free to play on Kongregate, or to download on Steam), but I couldn’t see the lasting appeal. However, it was only $5, and I’d heard so many good things, so I decided to buy it.

I’m so happy that I was wrong about that “lasting appeal” thing. One of my favourite things in VVVVVV is the level design — every screen makes you think in a different way, and it gets progressively more difficult, sometimes to the point of being frustrating, but overall satisfying as hell.
The puzzles in this game never get old. I was constantly amazed at how “fresh” each section was… Some of it was so difficult that I can only imagine how big a pain it must have been to playtest this game, making it only just possible to succeed.

I’m sure that, if you’ve looked into this game at all, you’ve heard about the “Veni, Vidi, Vinci!” sequence of screens. Everything that you’ve heard is correct — it’s incredibly difficult. Hands-down the hardest part of the game, and developer Terry Cavanagh knew it. I’d venture almost as far as to call it torture, if it weren’t for how great it felt to finally overcome the challenge.
And, while that is the hardest part of this game, that’s not the only time you’ll get that feeling.

Let me get into the general gist of the game… In the beginning, you and your crew are all happy on your spaceship — but then you hit interference and the threat of a crash is imminent, forcing you to evacuate. You all go into the nearest portal room and teleport out. The only problem is that everybody teleports to different areas, and the whole place is huge. It’s up to you to find everybody, going through traps that somebody for some reason installed in the ship and other parts of the game world.

VVVVVV is a 2D sidescroller with a twist — you can essentially “flip” gravity, causing you to float to the ceiling and come back down to the ground on command. You use this power to overcome obstacles and weave your way through traps and complex deathly happenings. It’s somewhat of a free-roaming sidescroller, in that you have a goal — to save everybody — but you can go about it however you please, for the most part. You can find challenges at different parts of the game than other players, which is pretty interesting.
As you travel, you’ll come across teleporters. These allow you to travel to previously found teleporters, getting around the map very quickly if you realize you’ve missed something or need to backtrack to find trinkets. (We’ll get to them in just a bit…)

Every challenge is incredibly well designed. A few of them are simple, many are not, requiring cat-like reflexes and sometimes superhuman patience and toleration for failure. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s one very much worth experiencing.

Aside from the main goal of saving all of your coworkers, you can also collect aforementioned “trinkets” — there are twenty in all, scattered about the world. They have special sections of the world, special challenges of their own, leading up to them. In fact, the “Veni, Vidi, Vici!” sequence that I mentioned earlier is for nothing but one trinket. The hardest part in the entire game is for a collectible item that is completely optional. Although, they’re not useless — through collecting the trinkets, you unlock other ways to extend VVVVVV’s playtime. Believe me, it will hold your attention for quite some time if you’re a dedicated completionist.

There’s a certain charm to VVVVVV, as well. It’s an audio-visual joy, with humour in both dialogue, terminal messages, and, most prominently, screen names. Each and every screen has a name to it, and some of them are quite funny. I’ve gone through and read almost all of them, and that’s one part of the game that I’ve really enjoyed.
Back to the audio-visual aspect… The graphics in this game are simple but effective. Okay, VERY simple, and equally as effective. Each screen has its own colour, which is pretty neat. It’s a nice break from the all-brown-and-gray world of first-person shooters, and definitely gives the game a nice quality.
Sound-wise, this game is fantastic. It’s got one of the best chiptune soundtracks that I’ve ever heard. You can actually buy the soundtrack, titled PPPPPP, for only $4. (Very near future purchase for myself.) Collecting trinkets in-game also allows you to unlock new songs, which is a big reason I went around collecting them.
The sound effects are about as simple as the graphics. In fact, there are probably only five or six sound effects in all, but they all fit the simplistic theme of VVVVVV very well. No complaints there.

In fact, the only complaints that I do have about this game are that it’s pretty short (took me but two hours to beat) and the story isn’t great. (It’s sufficient, but nothing special.) I would pay another $5 just to get a level pack DLC, but as it is, this game’s pretty short-lived if you just play through once, and don’t play the other game-modes you can unlock.

All in all, it’s a pretty fantastic game. One of the more popular games on the indie front, and not without good reason — it’s charming, intuitive, fun, and has amazing music. The music alone is worth the purchase price.
This game is purely sadistic, but you won’t be able to put it down.

I give it a

9.5/10

Buy it on Steam or on the official website.

Related posts:

1. Indie Mini-Review: Windosill
2. Indie Game Review – Spelunky
3. Super Meat Boy Review

Spelunky caught my attention initially for two reasons — for one, it was the first game selected for the Indie Gaming Club on Reddit. Plus, it’s a game about mining, and Minecraft has pretty much run my life since I discovered it, so this wouldn’t be going too far out of my recently established comfort zone.

Plus, it’s free. So I decided to give it a download, and was up and running very shortly.

When I first began, things were a bit confusing. Lacking any previous knowledge of this indie title, I was a bit thrown off by the structure of the game. I didn’t know what to expect.
Once I got that sorted out and got the hang of things, I never looked back.

The tutorial level does a pretty good job of showing you the basics. You can pick stuff up, open chests, jump, run, throw bombs, and so forth. However, once I got into the game itself, one thing kept throwing me off. I’ll save you the possible confusion (unless it’s just me) — Each time you play, the levels are randomly generated. I feel like that’s one of the things that gives this game its true beauty. Keeps it fresh, and keeps you playing for incredibly extended periods of time.

But you’ll figure that last part out yourself. Let’s move onto talking about what makes this game so great…

For one, the gameplay is relentlessly difficult and unforgiving. For some, this may be a turnoff, but I love a challenge. It takes inspiration from roguelike games in this respect, and if you die, that’s it — you’ve gotta start over. (Luckily, the randomly generated world makes it feel new each time.) It can get frustrating at times, but I feel that it makes even the smallest accomplishments feel much more monumental, and I get tons of satisfaction from completing much of anything, let alone beating my previous high score.

The basic objective of this game is to rack up as much money as you can. You’ll go around the mine, collecting gems and gold coins, each worth different amounts of money. You can change the terrain by use of timed explosives, to allow easy passage to other parts of the mine, or to access riches previously blocked off. If you find yourself needing to get to higher ground and there’s no ladder nearby, you can even toss a rope up in the air that will connect itself to the walls of the cave several feet above you and fall back down for you to climb.

The money serves little purpose other than acting as a score. Oh, except that you can buy stuff. And gamble.
There are shops set up in some levels (or all levels, maybe I just don’t see it sometimes) that allow you to buy things like extra bombs + rope, glasses that let you see hidden gems, parachutes so you can survive long falls, weapons, and so forth. Most prices are reasonable, and the items are definitely good to have. If you try to walk out of the shop holding an item you haven’t paid for, the shopkeep instantly jumps down and fires at you with a shotgun. It’s possible to escape, but not the easiest thing in the world, and you’ll spend the rest of the game looking over your shoulder. (I won’t give away too much — discovery is half the fun in this game.)
As I mentioned, you can also gamble. You’ll find areas that are set up like shops, but with two large six-sided dice. You can put up some of your money to win it back plus some, win an item, or lose everything. I normally take the chance. I’ve got a problem with videogame gambling. (Pokemon started it all…)

While the golden coins and the gems and so forth are your main sources of cash, you can also go Indiana Jones style and steal a golden artifact. However, like Indy, there is the ever-present threat of being crushed by a boulder shortly after picking up your treasure. Watch out for that.

Speaking of Indiana Jones-style traps, there are also some blocks with heads carved in them. If they see any motion in front of them, they let out a high-speed arrow that can take away two of your precious hearts. There are ways to avoid this (note: any motion), but they still get me sometimes by surprise.

And they’re not the only threat — there are different kinds of monsters for each area. In the first area alone, you’ll face snakes, neanderthals, bats, spiders, and g… Wait, no, I’ll let you figure that one out yourself.
However, keep in mind that anything you pick up is a weapon. A rock, an arrow discharged from a trap, a treasure chest… Worse comes to worst, you can just jump on them, Italian plumber style. (But that gets pretty scary once you realize the consequences of a screw-up…)
However, if you get injured, there’s still hope! You can find a helpless girl throughout the levels that requires your help. If you bring her to the end of the cave, she will grant you one kiss — which equates to one heart. Plus, she’s fun to use as a weapon.

As you progress, you’ll notice things get much, much harder. Especially once you change areas — I’ve only made it to the second area twice. It gets real tough.

But anyway, I think I’ve covered the gameplay enough… Let’s move onto audio. The sound effects in this game are charming. Very much similar in feel to the retro graphics that the game presents. The same can be said for the music. However, that unfortunately gets pretty repetitive after a few hours. It’s not that it’s bad music, it’s just that you’ll spend a lot of time in the first area, and the song for each area is always the same. It’s very well-made, but it gets to me sometimes to the point of me just muting it.

The graphics in this game are also quite nice. As I said, they’re retro graphics — very simplistic, not a huge amount of colours, and so forth. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (Just look at Minecraft!) It fits the gameplay style very well, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

All in all, this game is amazing. It’s incredibly addictive, while maintaining a ruthlessly evil approach. You’re rewarded for experimenting, but harshly punished for the smallest of mistakes. Everything is incredibly well thought-out and executed, and the amount of polish in the gameplay is outstanding, especially for a free game.

This game tortures the hell out of you, and forces you to enjoy every second.
I’ve a good bit of the secrets up to you to find out. Whether you decide to acquire knowledge of them from another source is beyond my control, but allow me to advise against it — What I’ve provided here has been, by my discretion, required for the review. However, allow the game to surprise you. Half the fun is not knowing how the game will react, and whether or not you’ll end up dead. (Nine times out of ten, you will. Trust me.)
Due to the randomized levels and awesome feelings of accomplishment, the replay value on this one is also quite high. I’ve played for hours on end, and I haven’t gotten bored of it yet.

Perfect score.

10/10

Go download it.

Related posts:

1. Indie Game Review – VVVVVV
2. Indie Mini-Review: Windosill
3. Super Meat Boy Review

Windosill is an indie game available on Steam. I had a couple extra bucks and decided to pick it up, since it’s only $3.

First off, let me tell you — I wasn’t expecting much from a $3 game. That’s not to say I didn’t think it could be a quality game, I just didn’t expect a whole lot. Man, was I surprised.

Windosill is a puzzle game that has you playing as a small car, trying to get from level to level, solving awesome contraptions along the way. Every puzzle has one objective — get a small cube that fits above the door, and acts as a key, allowing you to progress. Everything is interactive in a way that made me laugh out of sheer enjoyment more than once, and some of the puzzles are absolutely ridiculous. It’s not insanely difficult, but some of the puzzles kept me guessing for a few minutes.

The animations are incredibly smooth. So much so that I frequently played with objects just to see them react, again and again. The sound is also pretty spot-on, and fits the whole feel of the game very well.

Let me give a quick example of the interactivity… Please note that I am about to give one of the levels away, so if you want to go into this game fresh, don’t read this paragraph. In one of the rooms, you find yourself with an odd object that has a pole with a ball on top of it. Clicking the ball makes a “Ding!” sound, which causes a chirping bird to come out of a hole in the object. Clicking it causes it to chirp. There are clouds in the sky — if you click one of them, it begins to rain. You build up a good puddle on the ground, and then click it a few times to have a worm flop out of it. Pick up the worm, and feed it to the bird — the bird then rewards you with the cube necessary to proceed to the next room.

This is just one of the many examples of the interactivity in this game, and sometimes it gets to a ridiculous level. It’s all very polished and fun to just mess around with.

The one downside of Windosill is its length… It took me roughly an hour to complete, and that’s being generous, as I messed with everything along the way, multiple times, just for the hell of it. If you play straight through without all the exploring fun, I don’t think it would take you more than a half hour, so long as you don’t get stuck on some of the more difficult stages. (A few actually had me going for a while. But when I figured it out, the solution was so incredibly simple that I sighed in disbelief and kept trucking.)

This game never has a dull moment. Provided, it doesn’t have many moments at all, but it’s all a lot of fun. The ending is very satisfying, and gives you a good bit to do with the end screen.
It feels like more of an interactive art display than a full game, but that’s nothing against it. It was all very cleverly thought out, wonderfully designed, and brilliantly polished.

For $3, I don’t think that you could go wrong. I got more than my money’s worth out of this game, and I’ll surely show it to many friends. It’s the kind of game that’s overall pretty simple, doesn’t take long, but it’s a very satisfying experience, and I know I’ll be going back to play it again in the near future.

I’ll give it a 9/10. I honestly didn’t expect this much fun out of Windosill, and I’m very glad that I picked it up. I recommend you do the same, especially if you can appreciate the fact that some videogames are, in fact, art, and just have a good time without the need for adrenaline-inducing action sequences.

If you’re unsure, there’s a demo on the official website that shows you about half the game, but some of the most satisfying levels aren’t there. For $3, it’s more than worth it.

Related posts:

1. Indie Game Review – VVVVVV
2. Indie Game Review – Spelunky
3. Puzzle Dimension Review

Here’s our video review for the very much loved Minecraft. This is something that’s much easier to present as a video rather than text, so I’ll leave the review at that. If you want to read an overview of it that I typed last week, you can do that, too, but that wasn’t written with reviewing it in mind, and it’s not as detailed.

Now, between the time I recorded the audio for this and the time I finalized the editing, there was an update to the game. Near the end of the video, I mention that the multiplayer still has some bugs, such as chests not working. Well, they do now, as do furnaces, and your inventory does save. (Don’t think I mentioned that one in the video, but it’s worth knowing.)

Other than that, everything’s accurate. Take a look, and show it to your friends whom you wish to turn onto this game. Hopefully it’s informative enough. This is my first attempt at a video review, so any constructive criticism will be appreciated.

Related posts:

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Puzzle Dimension is a puzzle game (no way!) that has you rolling around 3D levels as a metallic ball on a grid, looking to collect all the sunflowers in the area. Simple enough, right?
Well, there’s a bunch of stuff in your way, of course!

The traps in this game are what make it interesting. There are many different kinds of trap squares; from squares that just crumble after you roll off of them to squares that catch fire after you’ve touched and left them. You have to strategize when you’ll activate which traps (because most of the time you WILL have to activate them) to allow yourself access to certain squares in certain sequences, in order to safely complete the level. Sometimes it can get hectic, confusing, and downright frustrating.

The visuals in Puzzle Dimension are fantastic. Squares and things on them are stylishly pixelated until you come within reach of them, at which point the pixels all come together and form an HD texture. It’s pretty sweet.
The music is also deliciously retro and has some great variation to keep things interesting.

But I just can’t seem to enjoy the gameplay.
I’ve really tried to enjoy this game. I was very excited to try it out, after being excited by the screenshots I’d seen. But I guess you can’t judge a book solely based on the contents of the information easily visible. Err… The cover. Or in this case, the screenshots.

Whenever I played Puzzle Dimension, I normally spent half the time frustrated. And it wasn’t due to the game itself being confusing, it was just the gameplay. The controls are pretty simple. WASD controls the camera, while arrow keys control your movement, and the space bar is jump. But, since this game is set in a grid, your freedom in movement is slim. And once you start moving in a direction, if you suddenly realize it was a mistake (be it a slip of the finger or a misunderstood situation), you’re screwed. You can’t hit the opposite arrow to go back, and you die. And you restart the entire level.
This happened to me far too many times while I was quite far into the level. It’s incredibly frustrating, and it was a huge factor in me not enjoying this game.

I can definitely tell that a lot of effort went into this game. As I previously mentioned, the graphics are freakin’ beautiful and the music is fantastic. Not to mention the fact that the traps are incredibly inventive. Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing that kept me playing — learning what traps there were. It sure wasn’t the gameplay, which I can’t seem to get by to enjoy the content of this game.

It’s unfortunate, but I have to advise you against purchasing this game. I would definitely try the demo if you have any interest at all, and if that doesn’t completely shatter your hopes for this title, I’d go for it. Maybe even wait for a sale in that case, however, because this game’s appeal, while interesting to me for a bit, died out pretty quickly as I just was unable to enjoy myself.

4/10

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Red Dead Redemption was a widely-anticipated Rockstar game that hit shelves May 18th this year. Rockstar are the same guys that brought us the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto series, as well as Max Payne, the Midnight Club series, and others. Although it is a spiritual successor to 2004′s Red Dead Revolver, not much relates back to it, other than the western setting.

You play as John Marston, an ex-gangster in the early 1900′s who is being forced by government officials to hunt down and kill the surviving leading members of his former gang if he ever wants to see his wife and son again. As such, your overall mission as John Marston is to save your family and kill your once-friends.

I’ll start off on gameplay… Red Dead Redemption is, overall, a fantastic game, and a lot of its successes and high points boil down to the gameplay elements that hold everything together. I feel that this game is the first that has gotten down the formula of open-world gameplay down to a T. In-between missions, you can do just about anything… Ride around on your horse, start trouble in towns, and even play minigames (such as Texas Hold ‘Em, Five Finger Filet, and Liar’s Dice). It all holds the gameplay together perfectly and keeps things going, even if you’re not currently interested in the story.

But I think the thing that makes this one of the best open-world games available is the random events that occur. Indicated by a blue blip on your minimap, random events occur pretty often in the Red Dead world. These include men asking you to help them catch a thief to stealing a wagon for them, and sometimes to just duel in the middle of town. This really helps the game feel more alive than anything, and gives you something to do (or even just to ride around and look for) when you’re not playing a mission.

These random events, as well as other things in-game, will affect your honour. Red Dead Redemption has a morality system that’s based on how you act toward other people. This changes how people act around you. If you’re a generally good person, you’ll be treated with respect. If you go around shooting old ladies and robbing card dealers, your presence will be met with fear.

Aside from random events, another great gameplay element in Red Dead Redemption is the gunfighting. Gunfights can escalate to huge numbers and are always a blast. There’s a quick-aim system in place, which helps a lot in the midst of battle. You can also choose to take out specific body parts to reach a desired outcome. For instance, if you’re looking to hogtie a hostile, you can temporarily take him out by shooting him in the kneecap. This will put a damper on his short-term fire as well as give you an opportunity to get up close and throw the lasso. You can also just shoot their guns out of their hands if you want to avoid any bloodshed and have enough time to get away. There are so many variables in each showdown, which keeps the gunfights incredibly fresh throughout the entire game.

A feature that will help you achieve these accurate shots with time to spare is Dead Eye. The Dead Eye targeting system allows you to slow down time (think max Payne) to take out enemies with ease, or to make your aiming more precise to fit certain situations. There are three levels of Dead Eye — In level 1, time simply slows and allows you to get a shot off with a huge upper hand. Level 2 of Dead Eye has an auto-target system, in which targets are placed on your foes as your cursor runs over their body, and you can execute the shots with a button press. In Level 3, you are able to manually seek out and place targets on your enemy’s body, and again execute the shots with the press of a button. Level 2 is a bit of a pain, as it feels like you lose a lot of control in the transition (which, of course, you do), but once you get to level 3, you’ll feel like the best marksman ever born.

One of my favourite parts in this game is also one of the most often encountered. Horse riding. It’s an incredibly refreshing break from driving a car to get from Point A to Point B. The mechanics are fantastic and it feels incredibly authentic, at least with a controller. The running animations are also incredibly well done. All-in-all, it’s a whole lot more fun than driving a car around. It’s something different, and Rockstar pulled it off incredibly well.

Taking a trip with a companion is also a lot of fun. Just like in GTA4, the mission dialogue as you make your journey differs from time to time, meaning that each play-through of each mission may contain a slightly different conversation, and it makes me want to not throw the controller at the TV when I fail a mission that had a long transmit.

When it comes to multiplayer, Red Dead Redemption delivers very strongly. You start off online in a “Free Roam” mode, which allows you to hook up with other players and cause general mayhem with formed possies battling it out or just going around shooting NPC’s and avoiding the law with a character completely separate from your campaign.

From here, you can take the battle to one of several different kinds of play, one of which is a gang shootout. This particular gametype begins with both teams in a faceoff in the center of a town. You draw your weapons simultaneously and quickly try to take out the other team. The last man/men standing represent their teams in victory, all of whom get an XP bonus. After this, you begin a typical team deathmatch kind of gameplay, but with certain elements that still help to differ it from the competition. For instance, you can still use Dead Eye in multiplayer, although it’s a bit dumbed down. There’s no slow motion, but the auto-target system is in place, allowing you to quickly acquire several targets on an enemy’s body before they’re able to aim down their sights. This is incredibly useful.

Through getting kills you get experience points. With experience, you’ll level up. Your higher level will unlock you things, such as new horses. A faster ride can give you a huge advantage in the midst of battle (especially if you intend to flee).

Overall, the online play in this game is one of many elements that will force me to play it for a long time to come.

Now, if you haven’t been able to understand this yet, Red Dead Redemption is absolutely gorgeous. The immense attention to detail that the designers paid is astounding, down to the fibers in clothing and individual strands of hair. All of the animations are also excellent, and it has a very life-like feel to it.

There’s also an immense amount of variety from location to location, which always keeps things interesting throughout your multinational journey across the lands. Each town has a distinctive layout to it, with recognizable NPCs and unique buildings that really allow you to easily memorize each location. I love that.

But good graphics and gameplay can easily be torn apart by poor audio design decisions or recording issues. Fortunately, there’s none of that here. All of the audio in Red Dead Redemption is top-notch, down to the piano tunes that boom through the saloons as you drink yourself unconscious.

As far as voice acting goes, I’ve heard almost nothing as good as Red Dead Redemption in the past. Rockstar has always been known for having great voice acting, and Red Dead takes it a step further, I feel. All of the characters are incredibly believable, and I’ve actually been quite sad to part with a few of them due to the personalities they develop as you spend time by their sides.

But one of my favourite bits of audio gold in this game is the ambience as you sit in the wild at night. It has a very immersive feel to it. It’s all very realistic and well-done. If you have a surround-sound system, this is a game you’ll quickly be able to appreciate.

Overall, I have to give this game the highest possible score. It blew me away around every corner and I don’t find myself tiring of any of it. The replayability is through the roof, with the online play and the morality system to make sure this one stays in your collection.

If you enjoy third-person shooters at all, this is a game to pick up. A video game that has distractions in and of itself (comprised here of many hours of texas hold ‘em) is more than worth it’s salt.

Keep an eye out for a video review soon.

10/10

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“Skate” is the skateboarding series that overtook the subgenre of sports games, knocking Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater out of the public eye. (They also helped to do that themselves with their latest failure of a rebuttal, Tony Hawk: Ride.) With its very advanced and refined Flick-It control scheme, it eliminates the button-mashing trickgasm that once was skateboarding video games. Precision and skill overtaking randomness and luck, it gives users more control, and… Well, they like it. In fact, they love it. The Skate series has been highly praised for its addictive gameplay.

Well, EA Black Box put out another game in the series just a bit ago, and I’ve been playing it almost nonstop. In this review, I won’t compare it to the previous two Skate games too often — I don’t want to dwell on minor things, or isolate anybody who hasn’t played them. (Plus, they were very similar and I find my memories of them blending together.) So I’ll just review this as if it was a brand new game in a never before seen series.

The game starts up with a pretty nice video (not a cinematic, an actual live-action video) of skateboarders building things and creating skateboards. It’s pretty neat, and is a nice start to the game.
The cinematic ends with your character taking an incredibly harsh fall off a huge ramp, and opening his eyes to the idea of starting his own skateboard company.
You are then introduced to Coach Frank, played brilliantly by Jason Lee (of “My Name Is Earl” fame, who actually turns out to be a retired pro skateboarder). In his knee-high socks and short-shorts, you can’t take his character seriously, but he runs you through the motions of hopping on your board and banging out some basic tricks.
After learning the ropes, you can compete in a various number of challenges. Each completed challenge equates to sold skateboards for your company (sometimes in ridiculous numbers for the challenge completed), which help you achieve landmarks in sales and new challenges along the way.

In the photo challenges, you are given a very good control of the artistic direction of the shot. You can manipulate many controls, even depth of field, to get the desired shot on the billboard, magazine cover, or whatever.
Unfortunately, if you want to share your creation with the world, you’re gonna have to shell out $10. Yes, $10 of your real money. I despise when developers do this, but Black Box has chosen to release DLC that could very well have been included in the initial release, right alongside the game. For $10, you get the ability to share any photos, videos, and skateparks you create with the community. Something that very well could have and should have been included in the game.

However, I digress. As I furiously mentioned, you can create skateparks in this game. It’s pretty sweet… They give you a lot of control with what to do, and I’ve found myself able to build up some pretty hot spots. It’s much more satisfying to pull an awesome line off when you create a spot just FOR that line.
However, I only find myself messing around with the park editor every now and then. Most of the time, I like to find ways to make due with what the world throws at me. Either way, both ways of accomplishing awesome tricks have their own sense of creativity, and that’s what I love about this game.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Tony Hawk. THPS (original for N64) is one of my favourite games of all time. I had some great times with it as a kid. But the series is unable to keep up with the immense momentum that EA has kicked so hard to achieve with Skate. Everything you do feels like you actually did it, because it takes some now-how in the controls. Sure, you can randomly flick around the right stick, but that’s not NEARLY as satisfying as going and intending to do a specific set of tricks, and then flawlessly pulling them off. (And even if you don’t want to buy into EA Black Box’s profiteering to share your videos of these sick tricks with the world, you can just show them to a friend or two when they’re next to you.)

The campaign mode always finds new challenges to throw your way. I’ve found myself struggling for a while, not knowing how to do something that a challenge requires. I then go to another challenge and end up accidentally figuring it out, only to go back once more and defeat it with my fist in the air. It’s a great feeling to overcome challenges in this game.
Playing online is a whole other story entirely. My favourite game mode, by far, is S.K.A.T.E. This is very similar to HORSE in basketball, in that you have to set a specific trick (flip only, no grind or grab), and everybody else has to mimic your trick to avoid gaining a letter. Five letters and they’re out of the game.
It’s a ton of fun playing with other people, and it also leads to learning new tactics and tricks. Every once in a while I get bored with the missions. Hopping online for a while fixes that right up.

A great new addition to the series that I’ve been dying for since the beginning is the ability to do a darkslide grind. This is when you flip the board upside-down, onto the grip tape, and grind on that. A flip is required to get out, and it’s a lot of fun to pull off, especially at long distances.

All in all, this game is awesome. If you’ve played and enjoyed any of the earlier iterations, I highly recommend you pick this one up. I wouldn’t even bother renting, it’ll turn into a purchase.

9.5/10

See larger image Skate 3 (Video Game) List Price: $19.99 USD New From: $12.99 In Stock Used from: $12.69 In Stock Release date May 11, 2010.

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Plants vs. Zombies currently is the most popular download at the Itunes store and for good reason. The game was released in February of this year, and in this short period of time became the number one downloaded App in the App store, the number one downloaded game at the Itunes store and is the number one paid application on average. In other words; the game is Apple’s top item and bestseller all around! This being said, I think the popular game is going to take a shot at becoming the most popular zombie arcade game in history.

The game itself is simple enough to get the hang of, but it’s addictive qualities are quite amazing, in fact, since its proven success, lots and lots of new games are coming out, copying the game’s gaming system, adapting it to their own variant of the game. It is starting to look very much like Tetris all over again! Strictly speaking, the Zombie game can be categorized as a Tower defense game. There are plenty of those to play already, but the twist Plants vs. Zombies uses to set the game apart from the rest is that instead of using all kinds of missiles, arrows, or other projectile shooting weaponry, the Zombie survival game uses plants to accomplish the same task, which is; keeping the waves of zombies at bay. There are several types of plants(49 to be precise), each with their own unique capabilities either for defensive or offensive purposes. Like other Tower defense games, the plants have to be placed strategically in order to provide protection from the undead creatures, who will invade your house if they break through. Upon being successful in keeping the bloodthirsty zombies at bay, sunshine points are gained, with which more and different types of plants can be purchased.

Game play – Rating: 9/10

As the game advances, it will become harder and harder to stop the Zombies in their tracks, and a player will need all of his strategic skills for keeping the zombies from breaking through. Using the right plants in a good defense/offence combination, will do that job. There are 49 types of plants to choose from, which are shaped to make it easy to remember which plant does what in terms of offensive or defensive capabilities, and because the level of difficulty increases very slowly, players will have plenty of time to master the basics and enable themselves to maximize the usage of the plants.

Despite its unique features, Plants vs. Zombies has all the advantages arcade games have over regular games. Rounds play within minutes, and after a round is played the game can be left alone, and picked up at a later time, making it a perfect game for all intends and purposes, whether you want to play a few quick rounds during a break, or sit down with a cup of java and put in a few hours of quality gaming. Plants vs. Zombies will deliver.

As the player enters the higher levels, the game gets harder, and the playing fields will also become more complicated, making it harder to defend.

Graphics and Sound – Rating: 7/10

Technically Plants vs. Zombies is a zombie killing game, but the style it uses, to do this is funny, cartoonish and there is no blood at all. Watching zombies get dismembers, arms fall, without the accompanying blood that is almost mandatory in a zombie game, works more for making the zombies cute, rather than frightening. Perhaps the youngest should refrain from playing, but overall the game is pretty much harmless, and suitable for all audiences.

The plants are functionally shaped and colored, making it easy to remember their uses, and all the different zombies are easy to recognize. Shielded zombies are tough to kill, those without are easy. It’s all very functional, though never graphically challenging. In other words the graphics are adequate and serve their purpose, but no more than that. A game like this, does not rely on being graphically attractive, it relies on sheer addictiveness, because it is simply a lot of fun, to test your strategical abilities and find out if you are smart enough to keep the zombies from your doorstep.

As with the graphics, the sounds of the game are the same way. Functional, adequate, but nothing to write home about.

Overall – Rating: 9/10

Overall the game has turned out to be a very entertaining Zombie arcade game in the Tower defense category, with highly addictive qualities, that are typical for games in the genre. The version I tested was made for the Ipod and Iphone, but the game is available for free on most platforms like PC, handheld and Ereaders. It basically plays on anything capable of making an Internet connection. Judging by its popularity I think it is safe to assume that many of you already played a few round of the game, but if this is not the case I highly recommend for you to do so, because you are missing out on some good old fashioned arcade fun!

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