January 4th, 2009
Duck: Think Outside of the Flock is another puzzle game that’s just so darn cute that it sucks you in like a bad heroin habit. Not that heroin is cute but I’ve heard that it’s mighty addictive - oh, hell. You get what I’m saying.
The game has 25 levels and took me maybe an hour to complete from beginning to end. Two levels took me FOREVER - one of the levels where you have to switch the ducks around where all of them are facing you and the last level where you have to play Tic-Tac-Toe to the DEATH. Not really to the death but you have to win the stupid game in order to beat the level.
Some of the levels are matching; some are memory. Almost all are fun.
I’m sure that if the game’s characters had been stones or pieces of coal then it probably wouldn’t have had as much of a draw for me. The music is also whimsical - The Nutcracker - and I found myself humming it throughout the game.
All in all, Duck: Think Outside of the Flock is a genuinely fun game that doesn’t take up too much of your time and like a good casual game, it’s one that you can pick up and then put down without much worry that you’ve missed something.
Factory Balls 2 looks deceptively easy. Take a plain white ball and preform a sequence of actions on the ball to recreate the design of the ball that’s hanging out on the box.
Like all puzzle games, things start out easy and quickly build to insane. And by insane I mean rip your hair out because you can’t get the daisies to grow at the correct rate. What sane person gets THAT upset over some stupid flowers on the internet?
Each puzzle challenges your thought processes by presenting what you think is an easy design..until you’ve wasted ten balls while trying to get the colors JUST right. I had a pretty major issue with the challenge below. I spent WAY too much time attempting to figure the stupid thing out.
I got my handy dandy “Industrial Rotation Badge” for kicking the game’s butt and I particularly liked that you don’t ever “die” in this game. You get as many chances as you need to figure everything out and I think that rocks.
Try it out yourself; I particularly liked the bunnies.
3D Logic is kind of like a Rubik’s Cube - an EVIL Rubik’s Cube. The point of the game is to match two of the same colored blocks by creating a line of color between the two blocks. However, the lines cannot intersect
or the chain will be broken and you’ll be screwed.
I was alright initially. Things were rosy and I was smoking through the levels. I think it was at level 16
that I started to sweat. And cuss. Yeah, there was lots of cussing.
I found myself twisting that damn cube around and around like it was going to give me some kind of clue as to just where I should place that next block.
Never happened.
During this twisting, I also found myself wishing for some kind of background music. Even Tetris’s music wouldn’t have been bad. Just something to keep my mind off of the fact that I was stuck at level 16 and from the looks of it, I would ALWAYS be stuck at level 16.
Maybe this is 3D Logic’s EVIL secret [until now] plan? Drive the hapless player insane by making sure that the game is silent? Well, it’s not totally silent since the thing makes noise when you match the colors but when you haven’t managed to match a color in 15 minutes things are pretty damn quiet.
In the end, I FINALLY made it to level 18 but that was only because I threw up my hands [literally] and passed my laptop off to Tucker.
When playing these types of games, it’s always best to have a back-up brain on hand.
If you haven’t discovered the zaniness that is Bloons Tower Defense 3 then you are missing a really cool take on the classic “tower” game.
The idea is that you have a butt ton of balloons that you have to pop. The way you pop the annoying multicolored bags of air is you randomly strategically place monkeys [towers] around the track and then upgrade the monkeys so that they can do your evil bidding.
I started off with three of the regular cute monkeys and upgraded them as far as I could and then added random other killing machines with the ultimate goal of purchasing the Super Monkey that really should have been called “Badass Balloon Killing Monkey Ninja” but I can understand why they went with the much shorter Super Monkey name.
Super Monkey is all that and [a bag of chips] saved my balloon popping butt from the second I placed him in the middle of my screen. He’s a very impressive dude with lots of “bloon” killin’ power.
Somewhere around level 40, even Super Monkey started having problems keeping up. That’s when I brought out the spike strips. These cheap little bastards have 10 pops per strip and come in REALLY handy when you’re being overran by massive amounts of rainbow colored balloons.
Prime example [note the huge number of spike strips down at the bottom]:
Notice that I have 14 lives left at that point - you get 100.
Next, I present to you proof that I RAWK[!] :
Those little tack strips saved my ass and just barely. Check out my lives count. Yeah…four. I was SO close to dying. But, I still got my purty badge and that’s all I care about. Who cares if it was on the easy setting?!
I read about Hardboiled today while I was reading the reviews at Jay is Games. Psychotronic did such a great job on the review that I popped on over to give the game a try.
In my rather vast experience of playing games, I’ve found that sitting at a desk and using a mouse is the best way for me to play a casual game requiring any skill past what an earthworm might possess in its pinky -if worms had pinkies…and hands and arms for that matter.
I blame my dismal performance on Hardboiled on the fact that I was sitting on the living room floor with my laptop on my legs and my two year old in between me and said laptop. The furthest I was able to get was to where you have to “make grey” [You'll understand when/if you get that far - hint: open the door.]
I played this stupid game time after time after time and kept going back for more punishment fun.
By the time I finally called it quits, Cara [the two year old] and I were bopping our heads in time to the music and cheering each time “we” passed a level. My ultimate suggestion to you with this game is to take the time to read the instructions. Trust me. Half the times that I “died” were caused by me plowing into a mini-game without really knowing what I was supposed to do. In those instances, instructions REALLY were for losers - me!
Give Hardboiled a try but don’t say that I didn’t warn you when you come up for air in about an hour.
Tiki Towers is here on WiiWares [as well as your phone].
The next game in the Konami’s stable of Metal Gear Solid games is in fact a PHONE GAME! No need for a 360 or PS3 if you have an iPhone Touch.
Metal Gear Solid is set right after Metal Gear Solid Four and will have eight different levels of custom content. Kotaku is claiming unlockable Metal Gear iPhone wallpapers and there might be more levels at a later date.
I think that this is a smart/bold move for Konami. Not only are they tapping into the MGS crowd of fanatic fans but they are also tapping into the fan base of the iPhone Touch that might not buy a MGS game for a consold. Smart, very smart.
Release is set for Spring ‘09 with no news yet of price point. Details will follow as I get ‘em.
Image Source: Konami
Tags: casual game, Iphone, iphone touch, Konami, kotaku, Metal Gear Solid, metal gear solid touch, phone game, PS3, XBox 360A pretty sweet game is coming to the Apple App Store tomorrow.
Rolando brings four worlds and 36 levels to your phone for the rather low price of $9.99. I say low price because 36 levels is a HUGE game especially for a phone app and if you consider that people routinely pay over $30 for a crappy DS game that has half the levels then you can see how I can call $10 for a phone game cheap.
The game works by you moving your phone so that you can move the “rolandos” around the screen. I can’t help but wonder though if I’m the only one who thinks that Rolando looks an awful lot like Loco Roco. I’ll look for some screens and see if I can do a side-by-side.
Until then, go ahead and get ready to download this game for your iPhone. It looks like a really cool game and there has been an awful lot of buzz about it for the past months.
Gamerlite is b5media’s casual games blog. It’s all here: puzzle, action, card games, board games, and many more! You name it, we have it.
Written by Amy Tucker for b5media.
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