Archive for Reviews

Game Review: Infinite Undiscovery (Xbox 360)

{ February 24, 2009 @ 8:03 pm } · { Reviews }
{ Tags: , } · { Leave a Comment }

This review is one that I posted over on GameFly.

I’m not sure exactly why this game received such poor reviews. The only thing I can think of is that people came to this game expecting a Final Fantasy system and got a Kingdom Hearts clone. What do I mean by that? Let me try to explain.

For starters, everyone knows there is a major shortage of good RPG games on the Xbox 360. Infinite Undiscovery was, I’m sure, in most people’s mind a good stop over until the release of the next Final Fantasy game. People who have played any of the recent FF games are aware of the complex system of skills that the games have all had in the past handful of games.  Skill trees, classes, combos, and whatnot. Infinite Undiscovery has none of those. Combat is simply two attacks with possible ‘connect’ combos with one of your party members. Very much like Kingdom Hearts. Leveling up means the possibility of unlocking new skills, but you don’t have a choice in them. What skills you do have are leveled up by use. This includes both combat skills/abilities as well as the crafting skills. This can be a pain since the only way to ‘rest to full heal’ is to buy a room at the inn. I think perhaps there might be later food items you can craft that will do this, but i have yet to find a vendor that sells enough of the food items to seriously grind the low level cooking skills. There are two free game addons through Xbox Live that allow you to buy the materials you need for armor and (most) weapons from -any- vendor. Crafted items are exactly the same you can buy from the vendors, in fact most the time I found myself with better equipment through crafting than buying.

The best thing I found about the game was the story itself. Since I rented the game through GameFly I didn’t possess the booklet so I had no real idea what the game was about at all. It was disorienting at first, but I found it immensely fun because I was able to learn the story along with the main character. And what a story it was. I really loved it. Give this game a chance.

iPhone App Review: Aurora Feint

{ September 23, 2008 @ 10:16 pm } · { Reviews }
{ Tags: , , , } · { Leave a Comment }

Title Screen

Hailing itself as the first iPhone MMO, Aurora Feint isn’t too revolutionary other than the eventual multiplayer aspect. It’s gone through a few versions, each one fixing bugs as well as improving the game play. This game has also had it’s share of controversy, which I’ll go over later in this article.

The game itself is currently only a few minigames, two of which are in the “match three” style and one which is a logic problem though still a type of “match 3”.

… continue reading this entry.

iPhone App Review: Twinkle

{ September 21, 2008 @ 10:58 pm } · { Reviews }
{ Tags: , , , } · { Comments (2) }

Home Screen

Update: I’ve finally figured out that this isn’t just a Twitter App. It has it’s own network that, sadly, seems to be attracting more and more harassing users. Due to this, I’ve actually stopped using this app and have moved to another one.

Twinkle is a Twitter application for the iPhone. By far it is my favorite. While it seems a bit lacking in a few features I like, what it does have is pretty awesome.

… continue reading this entry.

iPhone App Review: Mandelbrot (Now iFractal)

{ July 25, 2008 @ 12:48 am } · { Reviews }
{ Tags: , } · { Leave a Comment }

Note: Mandelbrot has changed it’s name to iFractal and even more features have been added since this review was written.

Mandelbrot1A few friends of mine and I were talking about our eagerness to see  Apple fix the code to allow for true IM clients to run on the iPhone. The big thing is that Apple doesn’t want anything running as a ‘background process’ so they are doing a few different things that the App developers are going to have to do differently to get it all to work. One thing that someone said off hand was “you won’t be able to do anything like render a fractal in the background”. Not to long after that I was perusing the App store and found Mandelbrot.

… continue reading this entry.

iPhone App Review: Satori Sudoku

{ July 23, 2008 @ 10:25 am } · { Reviews }
{ Tags: , , , } · { Comments (1) }

IMG_0007

Note: This is updated to reflect the App’s current version.

Ever since I had my old Palm Treo 650, my first requirement when I had any handheld device was a game of Sudoku. Same thing goes for my new iPhone.

Scouring the App Store uncovered dozens of Sudoku games for a range of prices, but none were free. I looked through the reviews and found one that seemed to have an overall good review by the users: Satori Sudoku. Most of the reviewers said it had a pretty good interface, better than the other sudoku apps out at the time. For only $1.99 I was willing to give it a shot. … continue reading this entry.

Game Review: Endless Ocean

{ June 7, 2008 @ 9:28 pm } · { Crossposts, Reviews }
{ Tags: , } · { Leave a Comment }

This was originally posted in my LiveJournal on April 16, 2008.

I heard about Endless Ocean not long after the Wii came out. Mostly just the lines of “A game where you’re diving in the ocean”. Considering the way the Wii works, sounded pretty cool and perked my interest, but since we didn’t get a Wii I just never thought of it again. A bit ago [info]rhast rented it from Blockbuster and was telling me about it. Sounded something right up my alley.

So, as y’all know, I got the Wii a week ago. Wii sports is fun and all, but, truth be told, I seriously needed something soothing to escape the stress of Mom. I -was- going to go to blockbuster and rent some Wii games, but they don’t HAVE a blockbuster here. It closed down sometime this winter. The nearest blockbuster is down in South Bend, IN, which is around an hour away. Er, sorry but no deal. Well, I had a really bad day, so I just went over and picked it up at Best Buy.

After putting it in the Wii, the first thing I’m introduced to is something that blows me away.. the intro song. I’ve already posted the lyrics to it: “Prayer” by Hayley Westenra. Haunting, enticing… the perfect song to go diving to. Character creation was somewhat customizable. More than I expected, but still pretty limited. Doesn’t matter though. There are more costuming options that are unlockable throughout the game and you’re able to change everything about how your character looks except gender.

… continue reading this entry.

Overview of The Sims Online

{ May 4, 2008 @ 9:43 am } · { Reviews }
{ Tags: } · { Leave a Comment }

Over on Terra Nova they had an article about EA Closing EA-Land and here’s my reply on the subject of The Sims Online.

Lethann says:

I remember when TSO was first announced. As a big “The Sims” I was excited to hear it was going MMO. Back then, no real details about the game were released, but I could simply imagine how well it could do. I even bought the “charter” edition when it was finally released. Sadly, like everyone else I was highly disappointed to find out it was little more than a glorified chat room. As Nick said, it was apparent to me after playing for only 15 minutes that it looked like they had started to make it and then simply abandoned all the really amazing features that would have made it truly great.

Here are some of the things that I had been anticipating, but of course never made it in:

1) Properly done homes – The comparison between Second Life and The Sims Online has already been brought up. What I had anticipated was something of a mediation. In The Sims you have a limited pallet of objects to use in the game, though expansion packs were released with more objects as time went on. This would eliminate the SL problem of ‘huge flashing sighs’ and so forth. It also would have been a perfect opportunity to have TSO just like TS where expansion packs could be released for more objects, clothing, etc, and be more of a money maker for them. Also, the scripts and everything in SL can be eliminated by simply not allowing custom content. That might have been the HUGE draw of the original Sims, but I think it’s an acceptable price for a smooth running MMO. The only thing is that you HAVE to make up for that by constantly including new items. They started at first, but it slowed down till I think they stopped. Not too sure as I quit long before it went belly up.
2) Cities – One of the wonderful things they could have done is pre-populate the cities, complete with businesses, parks, landmarks, NPCs etc. This would have created a sense of community while giving people things to do. They had the cities, but pretty much it was just player housing (if I remember correctly). Nick is right in that you need to have landmarks. If they had made the “downtown” area then had player housing more like the suburbs it would have been much better.
3) Businesses – It would give people actual uses for skills other than simply hammering out gnomes in someone’s home/sweatshop. It could have been done in a way like puzzle pirates: place an order, then people who work in the shop can work to ‘create’ the order. People could also then work the shop to create access so people could buy off the shelf rather than just place orders and wait for someone to fill them. TSO started off in the right direction with the work benches and whatnot, but they left it at that. More variety was needed, but never implemented.
4) NPCs and/or Solo Play – Another thing that would have been good is putting in NPCs for people to interact with. Yes, the whole idea that the only people in the game are other players, but it can create a vacuum. One of my big problems with SL is that very same fact. My experience with MMOs (EvE, WoW, LOTRO, SL, TSO , COH and more) is the importance of not only multiplayer activities, but solo play. You need that balance or you get this situation: You login and make friends. Later you log in and your friends are offline. Bored, you log off. One of your friends log in, and they don’t see anyone on, so they log off. The cycle repeats until people just get bored and don’t log in.

Ok.. That’s all I can think of for now.

Posted May 2, 2008 1:04:17 PM | link

All in all, I really wish TSO had been actually finished rather than given up on before it was out the door.