Free Dum is a great title.
Electronic Adventures Reviews
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 On 05/14/2014 at 05:52 AM by Cary Woodham See More From This User » |
Here’s another batch of game reviews I’ve written lately. Please click and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a comment or two, I’d appreciate it. The title of this blog stems from the fact that a lot of the games reviewed in this batch have an adventurous feel. Also, when I wrote game reviews for The Dallas Morning News, the title of the game reviewing section was called Electronic Adventures. I didn’t make up that title, though. However, when I wrote game reviews for The Daily Texan, UT Austin’s college newspaper, there were already a lot of music reviews since Austin is a pretty big live music town. The music reviews section was called Sound Bites, so when I wrote game reviews for them, I came up with the title Game Bytes. Get it? Oh well, on to the reviews.
May 3DS StreetPass Meetup in the North Dallas/Plano, TX Area
But first, an announcement. This may have already happened by the time you read this, but Saturday, May 17 is another one of those 3DS StreetPass Meetups in the North Dallas/Plano, TX area that I help run. Click on the link for more info. If you’re in the area and have a 3DS, you can stop on by to get more puzzle panel pieces, maybe play a round of Kirby Fighters or Mario Golf, and even see ME in person!
It’s pretty much like any other LEGO game but it does have more adventure elements to it. You can equip weapons and gather materials by breaking blocks that you can then use to make other items or trade them. Middle Earth also serves as the overworld and hub for the levels and it’ll probably be the closest thing to a LEGO Zelda game that we’ll get. And you can probably tell that I never read any of the books if you read my review.
The Witch and the Hundred Knight (PS3)
An evil swamp witch wants to take over the land, but she can’t leave her swamp. So she summons a magical being called the Hundred Knight to fight for her. YOU get to play as the Hundred Knight in this top-down viewed action-RPG from NIS. The Hundred Knight is actually very cute and naïve, and can’t talk. But he can fight all manner of critters. I liked the graphics and music, and the action is pretty fun. But some of the item management and gameplay aspects felt more fiddly than fun. Also, sometimes it’s fun to be the bad guy, but I didn’t like the swamp witch very much. NIS America’s brand of humor doesn’t always grab me.
Ragnarok is one of the oldest online multiplayer games around, and has received sequels, cartoons, and spin-offs. This game is one of those spin-offs and is a 3-D action RPG that is similar to titles like Phantasy Star Online and Monster Hunter. You get to create your own character. I made a woman warrior with pink pigtails and named her Ulala. Although Ulala must’ve ate a can of spinach because she hefts around a hammer that’s bigger than she is because I made her class be a Hammersmith. It’s an all right game, but the bosses are way too hard. I do like the monster and human character designs in the Ragnarok games, for some reason.
Reader Review: Adventure Time: Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest (PC)
I always talk about my brother Jeff, because he lives closest, but I have other brothers, too. Many of my brothers (maybe all) are big Adventure Time fans (I like Regular Show myself), so I had one of them review this Adventure Time Steam game. Check it out!
Earth Defense Force 2025 (PS3)
Normally I don’t like third person shooters, but you can select a very easy difficulty mode on this game so even I could enjoy it. The game is very campy and Godzilla-like, and I enjoyed it much better than the previous EDF: Insect Armageddon game that came before it. I picked the class of fighters who could fly, and it was a lot of fun to dart around in the air shooting bugs from below. Reminded me of that dumb Starship Troopers movie (Rifftrax even made fun of that). Just goes to show you that a game doesn’t always have to be a triple A five star title to still be fun.
This game is such a Pokemon rip-off that it’s not even funny. There are some Zelda-like dungeon puzzles, and the game would’ve been way more fun if it didn’t adhere to the annoyances that a lot of tablet games have. Meaning, you have to pay more money to fully enjoy the game. For instance, in order to evolve your monsters, you have to spend a certain amount of gems. But in order to get as many gems as they ask to evolve your monsters, you’re going to have to spend money to buy them. Plus, the monster designs aren’t very interesting. Pokemon still wins.
BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma (PS3)
I talked about BlazBlue in a previous blog, so I won’t go into it much here. This is just my official review of this newest in the 2-D fighter franchise. Litchi’s still my favorite.
It’s basically Tempest. Or more accurately, Tempest 2000 without the cool thumping soundtrack. It was kind of hard to control as a touchscreen tablet game, but then, I’ve never been very good at Tempest anyway.
Just a cute, simple bowling style game where you use a slingshot to send a polar bear in an inner tube sliding on the ice. You can steer him around after that to avoid obstacles and knock over as many pins as you can. What’s weird is the way they promoted this game to the press. They sent me a plastic Polar Bowler lunchbox with an ice pack and kids lunch food items inside! Kind of an expensive and impractical way to promote a cheapy tablet game, don’t you think? Usually only the big companies do things like that, and even they don’t do that very often anymore. They did that more frequently in the days I was at The Dallas Morning News, and I kind of miss those times every now and then.
With his beard, tattoo, and tough guy clothes, Lance may look pretty lethal if it weren’t for the fact that he’s still a stubby little marshmallowy man. This game is a pretty standard 2-D platform run and gun, but it does control better than most. Not amazing, but not bad either.
Now this game is bad. You play as the unfortunately named “Dum” the ladybug and try to escape a mean kid’s room (think Sid from Toy Story but with bugs). Use your finger on the touchscreen to guide Dum past nails, razor blades, and other dangerous objects. The hit detection is awful and if you lose you have to start over at the beginning of the stage, so it wasn’t very fun for me. “Dum” is a very good way to describe this game.
Conclusions
And that’s all for now! Thanks for reading and commenting on my reviews. I can’t think of anything for you to comment on this blog, though. How about this? If I were an RPG character, what kind of RPG character do you think I’d be? And let me know what kind of RPG character you’d be like, too! Later! --Cary
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