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Zuma's Revenge

Susie Ochs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:44:17 -0600

The name might remind you of an unpleasant side effect of drinking the water in Mexico, but this Zuma’s Revenge won’t make you run for the bathroom. Instead, you’ll be glued to your chair, clicking away at ever-harder levels in four fun game modes.

The sequel to Zuma doesn’t change the fundamental gameplay: You’re a frog who shoots colored balls at an advancing train (or trains) of colored balls, trying to match three colors to make them disappear. The trains double back on each other, making it hard to get the right shot, and the balls just keep on coming until you rack up enough points to fill the Zuma meter. Then no new balls emerge from the start point, but you still have to clear all the balls on the board before they advance to the end point--or you lose.

All we wanna do is Zuma zoom-zoom-zoom.

To assist you, Zuma’s Revenge tosses in power-up balls, including three new ones not seen in the last game. You’ll get to explode parts of the train, shoot lasers, fire cannonball spray, eliminate all the balls of one color, slow down or reverse the train, and so on.

The frog doesn’t even stay fixed. In some levels, he jumps between two vantage points to shoot from. Other levels let the frog slide back and forth on a track. After every 10 levels you’ll fight a boss character, who showers you with obstacles that slow you down, make the balls wildly change colors, and more. The linear, 60-level Adventure mode doesn’t let you progress until you beat each level, but save points, free lives, and a generous continue system ebb the frustration.

Once Adventure mode is complete, you can play Iron Frog mode, and Heroic Frog, more difficult twists on the main game. Challenge mode offers one-off levels, where you try to achieve a set score within a time limit. The more you beat, the more are unlocked, 70 in all.

PopCap’s bright, tiki-inspired graphics and island music give the game polish, with the 3D balls seeming to glow against the backgrounds. We experienced a crash or two on our 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, but for the most part the experience was smooth.

One Arm Battle

Susie Ochs — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:49:02 -0600

The computer is beating us by $1,000 right now, but we just hit Bop Till You Drop, so we're about to rack up a huge risk-free score.

It's you against your phone, racing to bank $5,000. You first roll a goal and then spin the slot machine's reels. When the reels stop spinning, you click on individual reels to hold those points, and then either tap the Stop button to end the turn and bank those points, or the Spin button to re-spin the reels you haven't held. So in that way, it's like a cross between a slot machine and video poker.

If the slot machine shows no points on any reels after a spin, you lose that turn. So it's a gamble after every spin: You either tap Stop and bank any points into your permanent total, or keep spinning to increase your points but risk losing the turn and not getting any points at all.

If you "sweep" the machine, or score points on all 6 reels, you usually get a bonus. Most of the goals, in fact, are to sweep the reels and get a bonus, and you can stop the turn and bank your points anytime. Other goals change things up a little, offering huge bonuses but not letting you stop.

For example, Bop Till You Drop keeps spinning the wheels until no more points can be scored, but you can't lose the turn—all the points will be banked, even when the wheels don't show any more points at the end of a spin. And the Grand Force goal will give you a 1,000-point bonus if you sweep, but you can't stop the turn so if you don't sweep you get nothing.

Tap the Pay Table button for a reminder of how that particular slot machine awards points.

The game has multiple slot machines you can play—they look the same but offer different scoring and bonuses. You start with one and then unlock eight other machines as you play. When playing, you can tap the Pay Table button to see a list of how that machine pays out. And a scrolling information bar gives you prompts on what to do if you ever get stuck or confused about if it's your turn or not.

I dug One Arm Battle. The music is cheesy, but we just turned off the sound effects and went back to listening to our iPod tunes -- if you leave the sound effects on, they'll play right over your music. It'd be nice to be able to play single-player, maybe in a timed race to a certain dollar amount. Or to play against a friend, either with two devices connected via Ad-Hoc, or by passing one device around.

The graphics aren't jaw-dropping—they reminded me of a dressed-up version of the pocket-sized casino videogames my dad used to get in his Christmas stocking and play at the breakfast table. But the gameplay is fun and has moments of real excitement, like when the computer-controlled player is up by $3,000 and you hit a huge winning streak and catch up in one turn. We did experience occasional crashes, but the game saved our progress every time, so it wasn't too annoying.

Apple vs. Nintendo for Handheld Market

Liam Widman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:45:26 -0600

The Wall Street Journal reports that Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo Co., doesn't see Apple as a competitor for control of the handheld market, but Apple sure does. According to Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP were "so cool at first" but "don't stack up" to the iPhone and iTouch's vast variety of different games. With the iPhone and iTouch, people can design thousands of games and most go for $10 or under, while the DS sells most it's games new for $20.

Nintendo, who plans to release a new version of the DS handheld, has survived many competitors in the handheld market including Sega's Game Gear and Nokia's N-Gage and none have succeeded in taking the market. But Nintendo isn't invincible to cellphone games. Last month, Nintendo reported a 52% decrease in profit for the first half of it's fiscal year, which ends in march, as sales of the Wii and DS cooled. Nintendo also expects it's annual profit to drop for the first time in six years.

Mr. Iwata says that Nintendo has an experience that no other device can mimic. And with famous franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon, Nintendo is pretty confident that it can stay ahead of Apple.

Industry analysts expect Nintendo to release an all-new handheld in 2010, even while Nintendo has been making changes to improve the DS since it came out in 2004. Global sales of the DS were recently down 15%, though that is nothing compared to other handhelds, like the 38% drop in sales of the Sony PSP.

Nintendo and Sony say that since their systems are designed to be game machines, "from the actual game play to the games themselves, [they] don't see any real overlap."

Nintendo is preparing to debut its new DSi LL model, which has a larger screen to enable more group play and web browsing. The new DSi LL will go on sale November 21 for 20,000 yen, which is about $222. It will then be expected to go on sale in other regions next year.

When asked if Nintendo will add a phone to the DS, Mr. Iwata said they will not because it will cost money for the plan. He is interested in the Amazon Kindle's system because they don't have to pay to directly receive and send data. "My job is to find the potential in something that others can not see, to secretly pour our resources into them and turn them into hits before anyone else catches on."

Spore: Galactic Adventures

Zack Stern — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:08:19 -0600

Spore’s first true expansion pack--and we’re not counting the weak Creepy & Cute, an assortment of extra body parts--fundamentally changes the game. In the original Spore’s final stage, you’re bound to a spaceship, but Galactic Adventures lets you park on planets and stretch your legs. These away missions beget a whole new universe of gameplay, including combat-based action sequences and story-driven adventures heretofore unseen in Spore. Unfortunately, the quality of these tweaks is just as open-ended, often resulting in frustration and untapped potential.

Like the millions of creatures that can inhabit your game, these new intraplanetary missions are largely created by other players. Galactic Adventures includes fairly understandable tools to script these sessions, and the tutorial does a good job of explaining the basics.

Just don’t expect adventures to congeal as easily as sticking legs on a creature and watching as the game makes it dance. In fact, crafting an enjoyable adventure that lasts just a few minutes can require hours of work on your part. At the very least, you’ll write all of the dialogue and events and pick all of the objects and characters from Spore’s huge catalog.

In a Robot Chicken story, you've got to conquer a malfunctioning intergalactic rest stop.

A simple checkpoint system lets you advance as a player by killing or befriending another creature, bringing two objects together (such as a key to a gate), or otherwise interacting with your story. Layer small events like these together, and you can create complicated adventures--although they all result in linear stories.

Still, you can personally craft nearly everything in the game: individual creatures, planetary environments, background music, ambient structures, building interiors, and more. If you have the time and creativity, Galactic Adventures can generate astonishing, unique results.

But at what cost? As a player in other people’s sandboxes, you’ll encounter many more first-draft worlds than masterpieces. Theoretically, a ranking system should help you find crowd-approved favorites, but weak organization somehow doesn’t bring the best to the top.

Spore’s developers built in a few dozen adventures, but even those include some duds, such as the high-concept retelling of The Metamorphosis that mostly leaves you scurrying between characters to read their dialogue. An adventure by the creators of the off-kilter TV show Robot Chicken mixes a funny story with terrible design: You pick from several doors to progress, but we spent a half-hour wandering around without knowing we’d lost. Worse, we regularly had problems moving in many adventures, getting stuck behind objects, walls, and ambient characters.

Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword

Zack Stern — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:27:57 -0600

Beyond the Sword is the Costco of expansion packs: You’ll get more than you asked for, and for a really top-notch experience, you’ll have to suss out pockets of quality rather than stuffing yourself with sheer quantity. There’s a lot going on in this game--and there’s a lot to like.

This Civilization IV update twists the game’s global-dominance strategy with new nations, buildings, and other alterations. Changes to the franchise’s fundamental gameplay turn this iteration of Civilization into various new games, from space conquests to fantasy adventures. Without a good index, the add-ons can feel overwhelming, but with persistence you’ll find new favorite ways to play.

Boldly go beyond a typical Civ game in one of many completely converted modes.

Beyond the Sword’s basics are similar to Civilization IV’s, but some clever changes improve an already excellent game. As before, you use a turn-based strategy model to build up a society from meager beginnings. In the end, you can win by defeating others with a military, getting the most votes in a U.N. popularity contest, dominating the world economy, and more.

A single game, made up of tiny turns that last between seconds and minutes, can stretch to 10 or 15 hours. One of the new updates lets you begin in a later stage, moving past some of the dull opening turns. It can be a lot more fun to buy cities, units, and technologies from a fixed allotment, instead of earning your way up from the dawn of civilization.

Beyond the Sword adds additional victory conditions too, although most are moderate updates. For example, instead of just being the first to launch a spaceship to colonize a foreign planet, you now have to add enough engines to be the first ship to reach Alpha Centauri. The upshot is that a faster ship can win even if launched after an opponent’s.

Outside the standard games, a dozen new scenarios provide overwhelming variety. You can play in space with altered rules, swapping the global map for a star chart. Tactical combat scenarios add dozens of new units re-create historical situations (such as WWII) or take fighting into a sci-fi future.

A Great Game...If You're About to Reformat Your Hard Drive

J Keirn-Swanson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:40:14 -0600

The rules of the game are simple, as simple as the game's title Lose/Lose. Here's how creator Zach Gage describes the game: "Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted."

Posing as questioning our assumptions about our behavior when we "are given a weapon an [sic] awarded for using it, that doing so is right, " Gage's game also seeks to get users/viewers to think about what it means when we begin to prize our virtual possessions, our data, as much as if not more than actual physical possessions. Part meditation on virtual data, part philosophical tweaking on shooter game mentality, the game is considered plenty dangerous by many.

lose/lose from zach gage on Vimeo.

Even the creator reacts that way: "I'm surprised anyone has played it," Gage said. "I'm shocked."

While the game clearly spells out in multiple steps prior to installation and prior to playing what the game will do to your files and your hard drive, apparently there are people who are curious or dumb enough to install the game and play. Enough concern has been generated that the game has attracted the notice of Symantec, Sophos and Intego, who dub the game malware, each of them calling it a Trojan.

According to Kevin Haley, Symantec Security's director of product management, "We are concerned that somebody could take this and modify it in some way where users aren't aware of the consequences." While we admit that that is technically possible, at that point the file in question isn't Gage's, nor can we see how the security firms came about their classification of Trojan.

Now, having said all that, any takers? Who's up for a quick round? Anyone? Anyone?

Luxor

Susie Ochs — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:17:17 -0600

Some of the App Store’s 12,000-plus games are new ideas conceived expressly for this new platform, while others are retreads of more familiar fare. Overnostalgic for the Neon ’90s, we were excited to play two recent remakes of classic puzzle games.

Combining elements from Zuma and Breakout, Luxor has you firing your own colored balls at advancing chains of other colored balls. You’re trying to remove balls from the chain by matching three or more of the same color. The chains move along tracks that twist and turn and double over each other, so you can’t always get a clear shot. And if you don’t clear them fast enough, they reach the end of the track--and you lose.

Luxor's marble-matching gameplay is set against an Egyptian background.

Luxor for the iPhone plays well, with 88 levels and sharp graphics and music. You can catch falling coins and power-up tokens that slow down or reverse the chains or give you more powerful ammunition. And Luxor supports the Plus+ gaming network, letting you challenge your friends on Twitter and Facebook.

See also: Bust-a-Move, another recent remake of a classic puzzle game.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert iPhone

Zack Stern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:16:04 -0600

You can hide the clutter on the right, but you'll often need to use those commands.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert translates a great Mac and PC game into an adequate iPhone title. Instead of designing the action around the portable device, this version feels like developers crammed in as much of the full computer game as possible. We wanted a nimble, portable, action-strategy blitz, but got a clumsy game that frustrates as much as it entertains.

Red Alert casts you as commander of either a U.S.-European alliance or Russian threat in an alternate-history battle for the world. Fanciful sci-fi units, including attack bears, zeppelin bombers, and electrified turrets create most of the excitement.

You'll occasionally need to construct buildings before battle.

The strategy unfolds from those units' specific abilities. Bombers go unchallenged unless you have fighter planes or surface-to-air guns available; and tanks roll over rocket-launcher infantry in close range but are in danger if the soldiers are perched in buildings. This depth is the best part of Red Alert, although if you just amass enough powerful tanks, for example, you can often muscle past strategic attacks.

Red Alert downplays its building construction. You'll still want to strategically place defensive turrets to keep foes out of your base, but in the story mode, most everything is built for you already. And in those situations, you'll almost never run out of money, so you don't have to create buildings that mine resources for money. The cost per unit feels irrelevant; just keep buying more to slowly chip at the enemy.

Select missions cast you as an army of one, tossing strategy aside.

While sufficient, the game controls left us wanting a mouse and keyboard. You'll tap single units to make selections, and tap an enemy to attack. Double-tap a unit, and the game will select all of the same type. A mode lets you draw a box around units, select everything on the screen, and even toggle between three collections of your own choice. But we needed more precision, getting frustrated by trying to tap a vulnerable engineer out of a cluster of tanks. And a big palette of building commands often gets in the way of on-screen action.

The game felt buggy and slow on an iPhone 3G. Especially after creating a big army, audio effects stuttered, and we had to make multiple scroll and zoom gestures to see results. Red Alert took about 35 seconds to first load, and often 30 seconds to begin a level. It crashed occasionally, too.