Burrito Bison Burrito Bison

So after the rant from monster galaxy, I shall now review a game I actually had fun playing!

Available on: Kongregate /Not Doppler 

I would like to begin by stating this is a casual game, and by far some of the most mindless fun I had in ages, its simple relentless fun, but don’t write it off just because its no masterpiece, if you give this game a chance you may just have a shock at how much you enjoy it. You play Birrito the bison (Duh) who is out shopping one day when it gets kidnapped and taken to candy land, but this candy land is a nightmare world where you must fight for your life in arena battles. Bison being a smart guy decides to escape and thus the game begins. Its at this point I would like to point out I HATE Gummy bears, I hate the sweets I hate the stupid fucking song, I even hate steve in cloudy with a chance of meatballs because he likes bloody Gummy bears! So you can imagine my total joy when I discover that this game has you murder the little pricks!

The game itself is simple you launch yourself out of the arena and try and travel as far as you can in order to escape, you do this via squishing gummy bears and utilising an array of items to get the the exit. As you play you earn money and the money is used to buy upgrades to help you get closer and closer to the escape. This aspect is what kept me playing so long earning more and more funds to buy more upgrades and watching them be used really was great fun, and I loved how you could upgrade the items the gummies could hold giving you new items such as rockets and pogosticks. Sadly the game has no replay value once you escape and/or obtain all the upgrades it becomes dull and mundane, since by that point you probably obtained all the achievements anyway.

When all is said and done this game is a fun waste of a couple of hours but can be repetitive and some people might not enjoy that 6/10

Monster Galaxy

Been caught up in a huge backlog of games just lately so I haven’t had much time to play free stuff, so lets get back into this shall we?

Available on: Facebook (ugh)

I want to start by saying when I first made this blog I wanted to avoid social games because quite frankly I think there a massive waste of space, However a friend of mine advised me to play this so I did, am I pleased I listened to her?
Nope….

This review is probably going to turn into a full review of social gaming to be honest, since once you played one social game you played them all, so lets start with the parts of this game that make it different to every other social game shall we?

Monster Galaxy plays like a very dumbed down version of pokemon, you travel the land collecting little monsters and force them to fight in order to prove your the best and that your dick is bigger than everyone else’s. And I really mean it when I say this is dumbed down, imagine pokemon with all tactics removed and then you have monster galaxy. There is a fun Zodiac feature that I think I should mention, there are 12 star signs and each one is strong versus some and weak versus others, like the types in pokemon, or to be more exact a blatant rip off from Magical Starsign (But again dumbed down) You would think this feature would add some more tactics to the game but sadly it doesn’t since unlike pokemon or magical star sign if your type or zoidac is weaker you can still maul the opponent with your basic attacks. So now we reviewed the parts that make monster galaxy different (and by different I mean copied from other better games) lets move on to the core of this.

Facebook games have a long standing tradition of all being exactly alike, they utilise the same core aspects in order to make the game longer than it needs to be. Almost every facebook game uses a timer forcing you to wait real life time before you can continue, in monster galaxy’s case it forces you to wait real life time for your creatures to heal, other games you have to wait for energy to return crops to grow or food to cook, and with all due respect this aspect can fuck right off, could you imagine if other games used this redundant feature, what would pokemon be like if when you took your pokemon be healed and nurse joy said “Okay I’ll take your pokemon for a few hours, please put the console down and wait 2 hours for your pokemon to be healed” this feature breaks flow and serves no purpose other than to lengthen game time.

The next feature is one that is beginning to blight other games nowadays too, paying real life money for extra content. This feature is mostly used by MMO’s in order to make more money and its not needed there either! during my play of monster galaxy I ran out of star seeds (basically pokeballs) and a message popped up saying if I wanted more it would cost me a minimum of £1.50 to get them. Of course this feature can be bypassed by the final blight of social gaming; having friends. This is the final nail in the coffin for me, its what makes social games…well social but its truly annoying and unnecessary, having enough friends who happen to play the exact same game as you means you can get free gifts and save yourself the need to buy most of the items, and some games you can’t get further in your game unless you have the correct amount of friends, speaking as a social reject and a nerd I don’t have many friends so this game openly mocks me for it….to quote a famous online game critic “There is no middle finger big enough!”

The bottom line is this: The game is fun if you have money and friends and hours to waste in real life, its the kind of game I imagine businessman with no idea of what fun is playing to pass the time while they work. but gamers like myself wont find any fun here and indeed in any facebook games at all 2/10.

Update: Just wanted to add, the monsters are very well designed and the game could actually be great fun if it where not a facebook game.

You Have To Burn The Rope (Bonus review)

available on: Newgrounds/Kongregate

So I had a spare couple of hours so I decided to dive into this mammoth of a game. now I have to say I when’t into this game thinking it would be another bloody indie platformer, but after playing though the huge story with no end it sight I really was taken in by the shear depth and complexity of this game. You play as Lord -issat- ur – face, who discovers his kingdom is in huge peril from an unknown evil, and without wishing to spoil too much of the game has a very moving moment late on that nearly had me in tears.

this is probably the best free game I have played so far, its good enough to stand along side classic games like mario and zelda. In fact if I was Nintendo I would keep my eye on the designer of this game, he it a real genius, seamlessly mixing story with roleplaying and even platforming. this is without a doubt the best game I have ever played and everyone should play it. Its just that good. 10/10

 

The Company of Myself

available on: Kongregate / Newgrounds / Armorgames / jayisgames

Well its valentines day, if you’re like me then you’ll be sat alone and online, so lets celebrate the lonely day, with a game about a very lonely man. The Company of myself is a artistic puzzle platformer game, that delivers a truly amazing story. and i cannot emphasize enough how this story effected me. You play a socially awkward hermit (a character that might hit a little close to home for some people) as you travel though the world the character gives you some background on his life delivered via on screen monologue, and trust me when I say you will want to read every last piece of text in this game.

In terms of gameplay it doesn’t do much new, you jump over stuff and reach the goal, there is however one fun innovation when you hit the spacebar. All of your actions (right up until you hit [Space]) are being recorded, as though by an invisible video camera. As soon as you reset the clock, the level starts anew, except now there’s a phantasmal double of yourself scurrying about, re-enacting your first playthrough move for move. This mechanic really brings a great feature to the platforming table, and its a feature I hope to see again, since it was so well used in this game.

Sadly there are only about 20levels to play though and you’ll burn through them in no time, however in a way this is a good thing because it doesn’t overstay its welcome, everything is there that needs to be there, unlike games such as braid that pad out the game with levels just to make it longer. But I want to come back to the story again because its just so good, Not many games literally have me staring at the laptop in shock, but the ending of this game did that and more. so much so I am still feeling the effects of this game even while writing this, it might be because the ending hit a nerve with me due to my nature and my severe depression or because I too am a socially awkward hermit, but whatever the reason it effected me, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. 9.5/10

Save the pencil

available on: iPod/iPhone

Last night was very productive for me, my sleep disorder coupled with a neck ache meant I could spend the night playing this little masterpiece. Save the pencil is a fun little puzzle game that plays very much like join the dots, if while joining the dots you where being attacked by evil paperclips. The Goal in each level is simple join all the dots, however the game gets difficult by introducing a feature where you collect up to three stars in every level (a feature fans of cut the rope might recognise) If you just want to beat the game every level is easy with minimum challenge, but if your out to get the stars then the game becomes a real challenge. there are four worlds in total each with fifteen levels to play, and for a free game that’s quite a lot.

The Graphics are simple yet cute, and the boss battles while simple are a nice little touch. this game is not perfect though, and suffers for its flaws, the hit detection is too harsh and sometimes you’ll die for being 1 millimeter to close the the enemy, and the dots arn’t big enough so sometimes when you touch them your pencil just sits there not realising you touched the dot, an issue that will cause problems on some of the levels that require you to move fast. If you can see past these faults you’ll have a blast with save the pencil even when some of the later levels phone it in, in regards to difficultly. I personally had a great time with it, even devoting myself to collecting all the stars, each enemy brings a new factor to the levels that keeps it fresh and interesting, my advice give this game a try. 7/10

The secret of grisly manor

Available on: iPod/jayisgames.com/Android

Last night was a pretty restless night for me, as I seem to currently have a sleep disorder, the upside to this is the fact that I got to spend most of the night playing  the secret of grisly manor on iPod. I discovered this game while browsing the top free section of the iTunes store, Judging by the title I assumed it to be a horror game and downloaded it to see what it was like, boy was I wrong.

Grisly manor is actually more of a throw back to the days of point and click adventure games, a huge surprise given its obtuse name, but a very nice surprise nonetheless. The game starts of simple enough, you get a letter from your missing grandad asking you to come see him in his manor, and you have to solve various puzzles in order to explore the house and find its secret.

I am a huge fan of point and click games, so I don’t mind telling you how overjoyed I was to see a modern one, the game itself has come smart puzzles, and good use of items, most point and click games you’ll end up rubbing every item in your inventory on every item in the world, hoping to stumble on the one combination that works. Grisly manor doesn’t fall into the this trap however, every item that you get makes perfect sense and you’ll know exactly where to use it the moment you obtain it.

The game however is criminally short and providing you don’t get to stuck on any of the puzzles, you should be able to blaze though it in an hour at most. The ending is also a huge let down, and goes alongside monkey island 2 in terms of most disappointing ending I have ever seen. But these complaints are very minor and you shouldn’t be afraid to give this game a look, because inside this game beats a cold heart of point and click. 9/10

 

Super Karoshi

available on: Newgrounds/kongregate/ armorgames.com

Super Karoshi is a simple flash platforming game, pretty standard right?

WRONG 

Unlike most platforming games where the goal is to reach the end of the level, super Karoshi has one goal….to die.

sounds simple right? well you would think so but super Karoshi does the amazing trick of seamlessly mixing platforming and puzzling.

let me elaborate, in every level there is a way to kill Karoshi, however as you get further into the game the ways of killing him become more and more obscure, you start off simply jumping into spikes and soon enough you are forcing him to eat hamburgers in order to die of a heart attack. You may think this sound’s sick, but the game itself has very cutesy graphics and nothing you do to Karoshi results in too much gore, add to this a truly laugh out load sense of humor and you have a great little game that will have you eagerly waiting to see each level.

Pros: Funny game, amazing levels, has some great puzzles.

Cons: No replay value, some levels are repetitive.

8/10.