Tag Archives: inexplicably and slyly adding k-pop videos to reviews

Other

REVIEW: More Fun With Twins

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Hmm, More Fun With Twins ($1.00), you say? I mean, it sounds like a challenge, so let’s go ahead and dissect that affirmative statement posing as a game title that’s posing as a game, the reality of it being a lazy match-2 card thing with tits, a blatant cash grab of the worst sort. I’d rather re-play Date The Boss, another of developer DUALHAZE’s projects that seems to defy the odds (and good taste) and continues to be a popular read here at this site1, but I digress.

More Fun With Twins - Screen

Sure, there’s plenty of things in life that are improved by twins. Gum commercials from the 1980s, Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Crayon Pop, cute pet viral videos, proponents of large families, kids shows (with each twin playing the polar opposite of the other; ha, so easy to mine for comedy gold!2); the list goes on and on. More Fun With Twins does not belong on that list, or in anyone’s game library.

Here’s the setup: a woman named ‘Illiana’ tasks you with matching sets of ‘twins’ cards (i.e. ladies in lingerie) over the course of twenty stages3, supposedly to learn her ‘deepest secrets’. Basically, you flip over cards ad nauseam. Every few rounds, the timer speeds up and another set of cards (and twins, natch!) is added, conceivably to increase the challenge and longevity of this tired exercise. It doesn’t. Even more baffling, the game keeps score, and gives you bonus points for tapping on ‘bonus cards’, which serve zero function and actually cost you the time you waste clicking on them. Baffling.

More Fun With Twins - Screen2

Reach the end, and you get to see Illiana’s milky jugs! That’s not hyperbole or sexual slang of any kind. Suffer through More Fun With Twins and you simply earn an image of two jugs of milk. Seriously. Once again, no joke, no trick. Two jugs of milk. I would have put ‘spoiler alert’ before that big reveal, but the only thing potentially being spoiled here is that digital milk, and your good name. I’ve now saved you from that tragedy and this travesty. You’re welcome.

  1. Which, yes, is a continued contradiction. I absolutely abhor these games and everything they stand for, yet I cover them here, giving them exposure (…hehe, exposure) and me page clicks. So, in actuality, am I just as guilty as these developers? Am I this terrible person lamenting the fall of XBLIG while simultaneously dragging it down further!? Am I the Trojan Horse parked inside my own house!?! Of course… of course… of course… ↩
  2.  Sarcasm ↩
  3. Yes, I really played through the entirely of this drivel for you guys. The things I do for the sake of thorough indie journalism! ↩
Puzzler

REVIEW: T-Kara Puzzles

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I’m not exactly sure what the ‘T-Kara’ in Mexond‘s T-Kara Puzzles ($1.00) stands for, but it sounds like some KPop Supergroup culled from my beloved T-ARA1 and fellow group KARA2. Sadly (for me, at least) it is not. Rather, it’s a Match-4 puzzler in the vein of so many Match-4 puzzle games that have come before it. That said, it’s still not a bad time-waster / brain-twister at that.

T-Kara Puzzles - Screen

T-Kara Puzzles is comprised of a variety of play modes, most built around the idea of matching four similar colors in a row and / or column. This is accomplished by ‘dragging’ said rows or columns in either direction3, sliding blocks into place and removing matched-up blocks from the board in order to increase your score. The robust ‘Campaign’ setting takes this simple idea and expands on the theme, adding in modifiers like scoring within a preset zone, maneuvering around ‘locked’ blocks that cannot be moved, and forcing you to acquire a certain amount of each ‘color’ to move on.

Besides being a much needed refresher (this type of game can tend to wear on you over time), these clever conditions for victory inject a fair amount of strategy, considering you usually only have a certain number of moves to make per round. The difficulty ramps up as you unlock the next stage in line, natch, but the game does an adequate job of explaining the rule sets and giving you ‘hints’ on which row / column to move next. Often times, you’ll need to play it off like a long con, setting up ‘combos’ that can save you a turn and clear larger parts of the board like falling dominoes.

T-Kara Puzzles - Screen2

Impressive, old man.

Outside of the dozens of levels found in the Campaign, you’ve also got a ‘Score’ and ‘Picture’ mode to mix things up. The Score scenario gives you one life to— you guessed it— score as many points as possible4, while the Picture gametype scrolls back the match-4 rules and modifiers, and just has you dragging puzzle pieces to eventually form a completed picture. Both modes are worthy accessories to the campaign, adding even more variety.

The game has charm, too, and working smartly around the various conditions and caveats that each board requires definitely gives you a sense of completion and satisfaction. It still boils down to being ‘another match such and such’ game, and I really wanted it to be a KPop supergroup, but if you’re hard up for a thoughtful and clean-cut puzzler, T-Kara Puzzles is a nice fit.

  1. T-ARA video included for… um… footnote purposes. ↩
  2. KARA video included for… um… footnote purposes. ↩
  3. A mechanic obviously meant for mobile platforms, so it’s no surprise the game is also available on the go. ↩
  4. Also includes a ‘Time Attack’ modifier and another that limits the number of moves you can make. ↩
Strategy

REVIEW: FarmFury!

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Weighing in at just over forty pounds of quirkiness and furriness, FarmFury! ($1.00) finally answers the burning question of what people in the ‘old days’ did to settle farmland disputes. If you thought they dressed up as animals and then threw mice and cows at each other, all Tower Defense-like, until only one man-imal’s farmhouse was left standing, you would be one hell of a disturbed chap, and you’d be correct.

The game’s anime-style characters are merely window dressing to be pitted against each other, as there is no overall plot or story to follow. Whether or not you’d actually want to learn the backstory of someone named ‘Froggy’, obviously dressed in a frog costume, is a matter of preference (…I kinda would), though the lack of any overarching cohesion between the combatants, or why they’re fighting, means all you’re left with is the Tower Defense part.

And that aspect is rather plain and undercooked. TD games are known for their overly-complex setup and steep learning curve, sometimes dumping obscene amounts of knowledge and rock / paper / scissors formulas onto your plate, then trusting you to sort it all out. FarmFury! is the exception to that rule, giving you only two units, mice and cows, to play both offense and defense with.

FarmFury! - Screen

Rodent problem? Should’ve used d-Con.

As you’d expect, the mice multiply more quickly, whereas the cows are slower to spawn, but pack a bigger punch. Both units can be upgraded a handful of times, and, in a novel approach, everything is bought with the ‘gore’ you and your opponent vacuum(!) up. Yes, finally, we have an in-game economy funded entirely by the viscera of dead animals you Hoover-suck off the battlefield! This injects a little extra strategy, as well, since you’ll need to be proactive to earn cash. It can also turn the tables in a match, as a losing opponent will obviously have much more ‘gore’ on their side of the field to build with.

Unfortunately, all the blood and guts and cat-eared ladies in the world can’t be a substitute for shallow gameplay. Each character carries his or her own ‘special move’, such as the ability to heal units or slow down the unit production of an opponent, but it’s just not enough to maintain a lasting interest when so little differs from match to match. The novelty fades quickly, as once you’ve sparred with the AI or against a friend locally, you’ve seen all there is to FarmFury!

Other

REVIEW: War Rapier 43210

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Although it might seem that way at first glance, with mentions of a futuristic New France, space Musketeers, and the implication of bestiality (…yeah, read on), War Rapier 43210 (240 MSP) is a cohesive product, if your interpretation of ‘cohesive’ is more like two subpar minigames in one infinitely-overpriced package. It does come from the makers of Torque Quest, which should tell you all you need to know.

War Rapier 43210 - Screen

Hmm, two choices, neither of which will be intelligible.

The first part of the game, a graphic ‘adventure’-style point-and-click concept, stars Lieutenant Uceda, a man that hates everything and everyone to the point of mania, and is convinced of his own superiority. Very lovable and relatable chap. To stop an invasion force of Vetustians (the bad guys), he has fifteen minutes to solve the various personal problems of the men in his unit, in order to make them better soldiers and save the world. It’s all trial and error, however, hidden behind an obscure wall of flat humor and very unintuitive puzzle logic. I need to give a doll to one man, beg a first aid kit for drugs, etc., without much rhyme or reason to be found in the environment or its characters.

Strangely, everything in the game world is, in some manner or another, related to sex. It’s one of those great universal truths regarding humanity or some such thing, and War Rapier embraces that idea with a handful of tactful (this is sarcasm) conversations regarding condoms, sex with animals (dead or alive is not specified), promiscuous wives, homoerotic acts, enemas, and the inappropriate touching of a ball of yarn, meaning yes, sexually (what would that be called, yarn-iality?).

All of these profound statements are steeped in a warm vat of profanity that seems in place only to placate a younger crowd that enjoys flaunting and freewheeling their expletive-laced vocabulary. I’m not a prude with swears by any means, but I use them chiefly as adjectives (What car? That fucking car.) and adverbs (How did I run? I fucking ran.), never for the sake of littering sentences or to propagate a conversation beyond its natural conclusion. To do so is just fucking childish.

The second ‘minigame within a game’ is an action / RPG, though calling it such is only to streamline the description, not to say that either genre is represented in a meaningful form. In it, you can swing a sword or fire your gun based on how many skill points you have. You fight enemies in ‘horde’ form, their numbers and strength increasing as the waves go on. Alone, you won’t stand a chance. The goal is to ‘fix’ the men in your squad enough that they’ll shoulder more of the burden, using their increased power and skills learned in the first half of the game, via your help. Curiously, I seemed to do about the same (wave four) whether I played psychoanalyst with my squadmates or not.

War Rapier 43210 - Screen2

Getting there, though, isn’t worth the time or effort, thanks to the terrible everything that precedes it. The best that you can say about War Rapier is that it does get its crayon, and it does have seven different endings (shooting yourself in the face is one of them, fittingly), though most of you will never see one, let alone all, of what the game has to offer. This is a good thing.

Add up the juvenile ‘humor’, the asinine dialogue and design, and what you’re left with is the realization that War Rapier 43210 is an abhorrent, ridiculous excuse for a game. Really, the trial will establish this fact early on. I’m not sure what prompts me to throw away three dollars to fund somebody’s poor in-joke of a project (…some days, I hate myself), despite numerous warning signs and my own good taste, other than to warn you off of it completely. I’ll let my limited French do the talking here— Merde.