PixlBit

Grrr!  Rar!  Let’s all stomp around and pretend to be dinosaurs!  Yeah!  You know what else dinosaurs like to do?  They like to read game reviews!  (I promise that’s not why they went extinct).  So to help you along in being a dinosaur, here are some games I’ve been reviewing lately at GamerDad!  Please click on the links and read as many as you can and maybe even post a comment or two.  I would really appreciate it.  Thanks!

LEGO Jurassic World (Wii U)

This plays just like any other LEGO game, and even has lots of bugs (maybe even more).  But the silliness factor is through the roof!  It’s probably the most absurd LEGO game as far as humor goes yet!  And that’s OK!  Games need more humor in them, I think.  Even when they have to cut the violence down in the game to make it less scary for kids; it’s still silly and funny.  For instance, any time in the movies where someone gets their limbs ripped off by a dinosaur, in the game, they just hold a sausage or chicken leg and the dinosaur grabs that instead.  And you should see what they do with the raptor feeding scene with the cow in the first movie!

Inside Out: Thought Bubbles (iPad)

Inside Out is a very thought provoking movie and I really liked it.  But when I went to see it in theaters, they had a commercial for this free-to-play game.  In the movie, memories are represented by colored bubbles, so I guess someone had the idea to make a game out of that which plays similar to other bubble popping puzzle games like Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move.  Since Puzzle Bobble is one of my top three favorite puzzle games, I decided to give this one a try, especially since it was free.  Unfortunately it has a lot of problems other free-to-play games have, like getting impossibly hard after a while and you can’t progress unless you start buying stuff.  So I stopped playing after that.  Oh well, at least the movie was still good.

Never Alone (Wii U)

This is a really neat 2-D platformer puzzle game where you play as a Native Alaskan girl and a white arctic fox.  The story and characters are based on Native Alaskan myths and legends, and they even have pictures and videos you can unlock that show their way of life.  It could even be considered educational, like a Social Studies class.  The game is a little short and easy, but it’s still a neat experience and one of my brother Jeff’s friends even said it was “very calming.”

Life of Pixel (Wii U)

Speaking of games that are surprisingly educational, here’s a 2-D platformer about a green pixel who ventures into a gaming museum and has adventures inside each console with graphics and gameplay to match.  You’ll start with black and white early 80’s PCs, then move on to the Atari 2600, NES, SNES, green and white Game Boy, and more!  They even have facts about each console, so that’s how it’s educational.  I’m surprised they were able to use the names and likenesses of each console and PC.  You’d think there would be some copyright issues.  You can tell the game was made in Europe because many of the gaming PCs you play in were more popular over there, like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Amiga.  I’ve also noticed that a lot of European platformers, including this game, use a lot of garish background colors.  The game also gets annoyingly hard later on, too, but that has nothing to do with where the game came from.

Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure (3DS)

This is a downloadable collection of Dr. Mario games, including the original, Dr. Luigi, and Virus Buster, which was on the Brain Age games.  To keep things fresh, they also added miracle cure pills that can clear out lots of viruses.  But Dr. Mario purists can turn that feature off if they want to.  The game could’ve used more single player offerings, but it’s a nice collection of puzzle fun anyway.  Dr. Mario is one of my mom’s favorite video games.

Veecaloid Pop! (iPad)

Cristina Vee is a popular voice actress and has done many characters in anime shows I’ve never heard of.  She’s also voiced a lot of video game characters, too.  Most of which I don’t care about or haven’t heard of either.  But she does do the voice of Shantae so that’s pretty cool.  And now she gets her own game, too!  It’s a simple falling object catching game with an Ikuraga-like color changing gimmick.  It’s a little too simple for the price, but if you’re a fan, you might as well get it anyway and support what you like, you know?  I think the artwork was done by an ex-WayForward employee, too.  Now I’m just going to sit here and be jealous that I don’t have MY own video game starring me yet!  If I were in a video game, what kind of game do you think it would be?  Let me know in the comments section.

Speaking of voice actors and actresses, I’ve met a few in my day.  I got to meet Don Messick, who did a bunch of voices of classic Hanna-Barbera characters, including Scooby Doo, Scrappy Doo, Papa Smurf, Boo-Boo, Muttley, and tons more!  I’m glad I got to meet him before he passed away.  I’ve also met Charles Martinet at E3, who does the voice of Mario.  And I’ve met Cathy Wesluck, who voiced my favorite Dragon Ball character (Puar), as well as my favorite My Little Pony character, Spike the Dragon (and no I’m not a ‘brony’ so don’t EVEN say anything).

Lines (iPad)

This is a fun and relaxing touch screen puzzler where you must make ink travel through lines and make sure your color ink covers more area to win.  There are lots of gameplay modes, variety, and levels, so it’s a nice little simple game.

Badland: Game of the Year Edition (PS3)

This was originally a cell phone game, but got ported to consoles recently.  You play as a bat-like creature and must flap around mechanical obstacles in a swamp-like setting.  I really don’t know why people complain about stuff like Flappy Bird when this is not that much different.  Granted, it’s a lot better, but I don’t know if it was good enough to warrant a ‘Game of the Year’ Edition.  Oh well, what do I know?

Conclusions

And that’s all for now!  Thanks for reading my reviews and posting comments on them and my blogs.  I really appreciate it.  I’m kind of running out of blog ideas for the moment, so if you can think of anything for me, please post them in the comments section.  If I like them, I might use them.  I do plan on talking about the movies I saw this summer later on, and I’ll have another game review blog in August, but that’s it.  Thanks again!