Hamlet Review

Posted by Ruff on May 10th, 2010
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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HamletIt wouldn’t get any funnier than some random hero saving the day, especially when that random hero came from the future in order to, well, do adventure in the past. That’s the theme of Hamlet, a game coming from Alawar and mif2000. And if you still think this is just some boring game adaptation of a famous Shakespearean novel, then think again.

Hamlet the book is a famous tragedy novel about a prince and his quest to exact revenge against his uncle Cladius. Hamlet the game however, is about an alien-like man-from-the-future which caused quite a disturbance in fictional past, and now tries to make it all better again. The same characters are present in the game: Hamlet, Ophelia, Cladius, and other villains, but the thing is, they are not like the characters you might have known them to be in the book. So yeah, let’s just talk about the game from now on.

The game is a brain-teaser puzzle, which I must say, does great in its job to keep me focusing all of my remaining IQ in solving every level. The first two or three levels will test you out, but after that, it just goes weirder and weirder as you must figure out level solutions with minimal or no clues at all. And if you think you’ve had it made when the little round “?” button lights up, think again because all it will give you is another hint – a key to solving the level, but still a hint that you need more brain cells to figure out.

HamletIf that last paragraph comes out negative, my bad. All the challenges are good. Great in fact since I can’t recall the last time that I came face to face with a game that I enjoyed playing even though I’m barely moving through the levels. Although, a good step by step walkthrough will definitely ruin it, Hamlet still offers enjoyment to those people not habitually Googling themselves out of every brain-teaser game.

As for the storyline, all I can say is that it’s pointless, and its pointlessness makes it very funny. The story drives away from the book and that’s a good thing. The game features a damsel-in-distress kind of adventure wherein villains die in ridiculous ways during boss battles. And don’t let that villain life bar fool you. Consider boss battles as regular levels. Do what it takes to complete the puzzle, and you’ll see that life bar whither away. Just as pointless and fun as the story is.

Hamlet does great with its overall presentation and style. The game presents simple cartoon-like characters that suits the funny plot very well. You might complain that the hero of the story doesn’t really do anything than just stand on a corner, but well, I guess that’s part of the overall weirdness of the whole adventure. Besides, anything you do won’t kill him, so I guess standing on a corner doing nothing works in his favor.

As for gameplay, sometimes there are levels that requires you to click fast and these levels are a real pain. Try to click through fast moving and sometimes random dots and you’ll wish for the day they can develop some auto-random-dot-tracking mouse for your PC. A wrong click may also mean you’ll have to restart again, so it’s kinda frustrating in many ways.

Finishing Hamlet is rewarding but there’s this feeling that it needs more levels. Maybe because I enjoyed the game too much and find that enjoyment ended prematurely after spending more than a week playing and finishing the game. Maybe the game is really lacking. Well, as for the final say in maybes, I’ll leave that one up to you.

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Deep Blue Sea 2 Review

Posted by Ruff on May 2nd, 2010
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Deep Blue Sea 2We’ve previewed Deep Blue Sea 2, the sequel to The Game Equation’s Deep Blue Sea match-3 game, in the past. Now, we’re opt to give a much deserving review to this brilliantly developed casual game. Because really, it’s not just a simple sequel, it’s much more “deep blue” than what you may have come to expect.

After 2 years from the original Deep Blue Sea, Deep Blue Sea 2 stars Jessica’s sister Melissa as she tries to find her missing sibling. After receiving an 8 month-old postcard from Jessica, it seems that Melissa will now be able to meet her sister again. Little did she knew that the postcard will start her own adventure, a long and hard but mystifying journey beneath the sea.

Like its predecessor, Deep Blue Sea 2 is a match 3 game. The objective of each level is for you to collect artifacts and meet the artifact quota before time, or in this case – air, runs out. To collect artifacts, you must be able to make them fall to the bottom of the board. Matching tiles will be able to accomplish this feat, so try to break them bottom tiles as fast as possible.

Matching tiles can also provide other stuff for our heroine too. Some tiles may be used to charge your power-ups and some can be used to fill up your treasure chest. Treasure chest money can then be used to buy additional power-ups and upgrades from the shop, so try to fill up the treasure chest in every level to max out your buying power.

Deep Blue Sea 2One cool thing about Deep Blue Sea 2 is that there is more than 1 character you can play, with each of them having their own unique specialties. Each character can gain experience as you play them and gain additional skills too as they level up, so try to level up all your characters for a powerful line-up at the final parts of the game. Some levels are very easy to play when a certain character is used too, making this game very dynamic your own strategy.

Hazards are typical challenges in match 3 games, and this game has quite a few that will surely test your wits and clicking speed. Chains are basic ones, and there is also the freeze hazard that can get very annoying when left around for too long. You see, freeze spreads around when left for a few seconds, and has the ability to cover the entire board if you’re not careful.

Another innovation I found very effective in affecting strategy for Deep Blue Sea 2 is the ability to rotate the board whenever the rotate talisman is charged up. In some stages, it may be impossible to make an artifact fall on the current state of the board, so be sure to rotate it to a much advantageous position as you see fit. There’s even a character that can rotate the board much faster than the others, so use him when a hard board is on for the next level.

The storyline is another big big factor for making this game as addictive as it is. I found myself truly engrossed in the adventures of Melissa and her merry crew of unique individuals. Not only that, there are also twists in the storyline that makes it fun to play through. The number of levels between each installment of story is also not that big, thus giving the feel that you’re actually flowing through the game as you wanted to.

Deep Blue Sea 2 is really a fine work of art and I loved every minute of playing it. It has a great storyline, an addictive gameplay and offers dynamism in how you play each level through leveling up the characters you deem necessary to finish the game. I just wished I could turn off that annoying help message during the actual match 3 game though – just one of my silly wants, not much of a hassle really.

Anyway, I guess you need to play the game for yourself now.

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The Tarot’s Misfortune Review

Posted by Ruff on March 28th, 2010
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The Tarot's MisfortuneDuring the preview of The Tarot’s Misfortune, I said that the game is “still the same hidden object gameplay we all love”. Well, I guess that’s true to a point; but after playing through many of its levels the previous week, I think I might have to rephrase that previous statement.

You see, The Tarot’s Misfortune is not just a hidden object game. It’s actually more of an adventure, masked as a hidden object because, well, you’re trying to find hidden objects in order to go through each level. Drawing the line between the two genres is harder than you might think. It’s not like there are a set of rules to categorize the game between the two. It’s just something you feel after going through most of the game; and that’s definitely what I feel for this game – it’s an adventure.

The game puts you in the shoes of a girl, a fortune teller of sorts that uses tarot cards in order to predict the future. Of course, in every story there’s a bad guy, and for this game, it’s some weird, definitely evil looking musician that possessed the whole townspeople out of their wits. Long story short, you’re off to save the people because for some magical reason, you’re not affected by his evil music.

In my opinion, it’s not the most original of stories since even the characters are all cliche, but the game pulls you into the story enough to make you interested in developments. This is a good thing since it succeeds in its aim to get players playing from beginning until end.

The Tarot's MisfortuneThe Tarot’s Misfortune employs a straightforward hidden object gameplay. Find all the items in the list that are marked blue. Some of the found items will go into your special inventory and will be used to interact with locked parts of the environment. Gray items cannot be found until you uncover them, so that’s another problem where you’ll have to think of a way in using inventory items. Well, all of that is nothing new, so I guess we’ll move on writing about the new stuff starting here on out.

Something I noticed since the beginning is that all the game environments won’t fit into a single screen. This means that you’ll have to scroll left and right searching for hidden items instead of just a bland, messy area on most games of this type. This presents quite a challenge, so two crystal balls are placed on each side of the screen to help guide you on where most hidden items lie. It’s not as easy as it sounds though.

The feature is very innovative but there’s a downside to all these. Sometimes, because of the perspective, objects are completely blocked from plain sight by stationary stuff that’s nearer to your point of view. I guess this is intentional, but it kinda gets frustrating unless you use a hint to reveal the object’s actual location. With the unlimited hints, the game can be too easy for lazy players also. Makes you wanna think whether playing the game is easy or not.

Again, The Tarot’s Misfortune feels like an adventure because each of its chapters is composed of multiple intertwined rooms filled with puzzles and clues to aid you moving forward. The idea is for you to move back and forth between rooms until all of them are completed; but be warned, this also means having a good sense of direction, or even just a good memory of the name of each place you visit.

You may think this as annoying, but it’s actually more fun. The storyline develops whenever you visit key rooms to your current objective, and just finishing a chapter gives a sense of accomplishment due to the hard work you’ve been through just to finish up. Besides, a finished chapter will also reward you a tarot reading – something that will give you anticipation on what lies ahead for our courageous heroine.

As an ending note, The Tarot’s Misfortune has a great storyline, deep and challenging puzzles, and a hidden object gameplay that will keep you interested from beginning until end. It has all the elements that makes up a great adventure game and I would very much recommend playing it. It has some of its unlovable points too, but all that is greatly offset by how fun the game is in overall.

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Deep Blue Sea 2 Preview

Posted by Ruff on March 14th, 2010
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Deep Blue Sea 2The Game Equation proudly announces that development is currently underway for the sequel to their fantastic match 3 game, Deep Blue Sea. Deep Blue Sea 2 follows a new story than the previous game (but somehow related), as you now play Jessica’s sister, Melissa – deep sea diver extraordinaire, in search of her missing sister.

I’m not that familiar with the original Deep Blue Sea game but basing from the Beta build of Deep Blue Sea 2, I must say that The Game Equation is doing a fantastic job in making it a match 3 game worth waiting for. It’s not just your average match 3, with so many elements that expands the gameplay to  levels rarely experienced for a puzzle game.

In Deep Blue Sea 2, players collect beautiful buried treasures and artifacts and progress through over 200 levels of match-3 puzzle levels that are easy-to-learn, yet challenging, and discover three different hidden object locations with over 60 different levels, hand-painted and designed with impressive detail.

Just a hint – it even features RPG elements of character development. Now, that would mean a great deal of re-playability, control and so much fun if you think about it. And another surprising hint – Melissa is not the only character you’ll be developing in this game! Well, I guess more will be revealed once the final build is released, but for now, time for some screenshots.

Deep Blue Sea 2

Deep Blue Sea 2

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Strimko

Posted by Ruff on March 7th, 2010
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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StrimkoStrimko is a puzzle game that you might be able to recognize being derived from the popular past-time game Sudoku. It has numbers, a gridded board, and follows a basic rule that no number should be repeated based on a specific formation. Now, before anyone says “rip-off”, it should be mentioned that Strimko is a unique puzzle game all on its own. And as we explore it more, I bet you’ll know what I’m talking about here.

Like all modern casual games, Strimko also has a backdrop story to give the audience the impression of progression after racking their brains out in solving the puzzles. You play to aid the Princess Luana as she tries to save her planet from famine and drought. An object called the Astrolable will make the planet prosperous again; but before anything else, you have to find the Astrolable’s amulets, locked away in chests guarded by puzzles.

This will then bring us to the gameplay.

Strimko plays very much like Sudoku, so I guess Sudoku fans will appreciate the familiarity and added twists to Strimko’s gameplay. All numbers on each row should not repeat; this is the same for all numbers on each column. But what sets Strimko apart is the stream that connects some of the cells in the board. Not only are you going to follow the aforementioned rule, but also to make sure that all numbers on a stream won’t be repeating as well.

StrimkoIt is very ingenious actually, since the introduction of streams will open up a lot of opportunities for the player and puzzle-maker alike. For instance, it can serve as an additional clue, giving you faster means of solving the puzzles. All the same, it can also act as a whole new level of challenge, since confusion will play a major role when tackling most of the harder puzzles.

As a matter of fact, Strimko also introduces 4 different game types to choose from during adventure mode or through quick classic play in the archives. There’s the Zen puzzles, which is Strimko classic gameplay; Pave puzzles, which is basically the same as Zen but with a jigsaw puzzle mix; Fit puzzles, which will supply you with complete streams instead of usual numbers, and your task is to fit them streams correctly on the board; and Tri puzzles, which are twisted Zen puzzles with, well, a twist you have to find out for yourself. :)

All in all, it’s not just same Sudoku style gameplay you’re getting, but a lot more to keep you fascinated and grinding away through puzzles. Gameplay is simple and very easy to master. As you go through the levels and get more confused, you’ll even begin to make up your own techniques in order to leisurely finish each level.

One thing the game lacks is good sound. The graphics and environments are simple enough – that’s understandable; but without good accompanying sound, the game gets the feeling of being too bland. Graphics alone is not that flashy too, so it really won’t carry that missing element from the whole of the game.

Strimko also employs a replenishing hint system that will instantly answer a part of the board for you during each trigger. Since levels are not timed, it’s possible to finish a level without even thinking too hard on solutions. It’s a longshot but that’s not impossible for those who have really large chucks of time in their hands to waste.

Anyway though, I still loved the new twist in Sudoku-like puzzling that Strimko introduces in this game. It’s fun, it’s addictive and it’s challenging. Really recommended for puzzle gamers to get their hands wet on.

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