Middle Manager of Justice

Middle Manager of Justice is by the often hyped Double Fine Productions and it is all about superheroes. It sounds pretty awesome but the genre they have chosen is the freemium pay more not to have to wait type strategy. Could even the likes of Double Fine pull this off?

The answer is no, not really. Whilst the gameplay promises to be interesting with ideas like: hire your silly super hero, beat up thugs and upgrade everything, the game brings absolutely nothing new to the genre. The best thing that can be said about the game is that it is not bad. I just don't really feel compelled to do anything in it. One of the core problems is that someone is always doing something when you want them to be doing something else. The game only lets you have four super heroes running at once, add to this that missions are on a timer, plus training takes time and the gameplay just amounts to being annoyed. I had honestly gone into this game thinking I would spend some money if it was fun but there wasn't even that early enjoyable romp before hitting the paywall. In fact even if you spent all your money on the damn game it wouldn't be fun.

The game has sounds, the visuals are okay.

There are worse things you could be doing but you'll realise you are wasting your life playing this game well before you become borderline obese and desperately lonely, like we are used to with top quality titles 6.5/10.

The Walking Dead, Episode 1: A New Day [iOS, PC, Mac, PSN, XBOX]

Episode 1 of The Walking Dead is now free for iOS device owners so I decided to grab it . It's only for a limited, unspecified amount of time, so be quick if you want to pick it up. This review is applicable to all of the different platforms though I will be mainly focusing on the iPhone version. If you're not a fan of the T.V. series, you probably will be after playing this game...

The game is heavily story driven and it's gameplay is reminiscent of the much maligned quicktime event. The quicktime-esque gameplay actually works in the games favour. Though this kind of thing has always been clunky, unpredictable and a little imprecise this game feeds off of that. It does make it scarier when you aren't 100% sure what you need to do next. This will probably get on your nerves at times, scrolling around the screen seems a little slower than it needs to be and sometimes it's a bit unclear what you are supposed to be doing before it has all gone wrong.

Graphically the game looks great, it has a realistic yet painterly style to to it and there is plenty of detail. The animations really let it down though, as quite often they are jerky and break up your suspension of disbelief. The audio is great and really sets the tone. What is that beep? What the hell was that!? The audio really conveys what is happening on screen and greatly increases the tension. The voice acting is superb too, with only a few lines that sound out of place.

I had a lot of fun with The Walking Dead but it's just a little short. Releasing it free has definitely tempted me to buy the whole series, I guess $16 isn't too bad, though it's $25 for the PC/Mac. The experience is top quality but if each episode is that short it is a bit lacking in content still it gets an 8/10.

Short Reviews for Phone Games

Montezuma Puzzle [iOS] A simple relaxing puzzler for free, just place the blocks where you think they'll fit. Ask for hints if you need them. The music is a little tiring and of course it is funded by ads. but other than that it is a great game for a lazy day 7.9/10.

Bombshells Hell's Belles [iOS, Android] A sort of FPS/flight-sim, Bombshells is a fairly cheesy blast through the skies type game. You have the choice of surprisingly good tilt controls, or a terrible joystick option, either way you feel like you are never 100% in control. Graphically it's great, the sound-bites consist mostly of terrible jokes and although the game is free, it constantly reminds you that really, it isn't 6.5/10.

 

Age of Zombies Anniversary [iOS, Android] Halfbrick were giving away their iOS catalogue for free so I picked this up. It is very reminiscent of the Super Nintendo classics Super Smash TV and Zombies Ate My Neighbours in that it is a silly multidirectional shooter. It has no iPhone 5 support which creates problems with the joysticks, which are placed wherever you touch. It's fun though and the humour is good often enough to call it funny, though only just 7/10.

The Top 5 Games of 2012 as Reviewed by AGS*

Like all journalists, when it comes to the end of the year I am too lazy to do anything but make a compilation of the top videogames for the year. Well that isn't entirely true, there are more reviews coming but for now all you get is this.

Puzzle Craft [Android, iOS] A simple little puzzle game that has a lot of depth and it's only going to set you back 99 cents. I do wish this trend of putting 'craft' at the end of everything would end though.

Mechwarrior Online [PC] Although I didn't technically review it, I did make mention of it and it has been one of my favourite games throughout the year. It has just come into open beta which for a game like this basically means it's launched, so I will be posting a review soon. It's safe to say that if you like stomping around, blowing things up and in general feeling all powerful this is a great game and can be played totally for free.

Faster Than Light [Mac, PC] The product of a Kickstarter initiative FTL is a space sim that sees you in control of a ship and it's crew. At full price it is only ten bucks, you will definitely get your moneys worth.

Dishonored [PC, PS3, XBOX 360] This is probably the first stealth shooter I have ever played that felt really satisfying. The story was great, the world was magnificent and it actually has replay value.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown [PC, PS3, XBOX 360] Blasting aliens in turn-based strategy, building up your base and managing your resources. At lot of classic games and gameplay elements made a come back this year and if done right it makes you wonder why these concepts disappeared from the mainstream.

Any of these games would make a wonderful Christmas present for your favourite gamer (no don't buy them for me I own them all) but if you want to get something for someone you hate try Prison Ball.

*Australian Gaming Scene makes no claims that these games were released in 2012, are the best, or are even games.

Clay Jam Review [iOS, Android]

Clay Jam is a cutesy roll your ball over things game made entirely from clay. It uses the formula from Katamari, roll your ball over things smaller than you and become bigger so you can squash more things.

You direct your ball of clay by swiping a path across the screen for it to follow. Hopefully you are squishing little cute things along the way and avoiding the things that are too big for you. As you gain more clay you can squash bigger things adding their clay values to yours. At the end of each level is a boost zone where you boost your clay ball into the end boss of the stage, hoping to knock him as far as you can to gain power plays. A power play peppers bonuses across the stage, which you roll over to gain abilities such as extra clay, or shrink enemies.You are also given quests to fulfill, things like bounce off this many objects or squish this many monsters.

I absolutely love the style of this game from the quirky clay animations to the cutesy sound effects, it is very enchanting. Whilst still shots of the game don't look very impressive the animations, lighting and shadows are very nicely done. A lot of effort was put into production and creating all of these clay figures and animating them must have taken a huge amount of time. There are lots of new creatures for you to unlock with the clay that you earn through the game and they are all quirky and interesting with lots of sound effects to accompany them too.

A lot of thought and effort went into this game yet it seems a little disappointing. At the end of the day all you are doing is drawing a line in the clay to direct your blob. The upgrade system is interesting yet incomplete, why can't you upgrade your ball of clay? It would have made the game a lot more compelling. Children will probably love this game, it is bright and colourful and cute but it's gameplay just holds it back 6.5/10.

Free Games Reviews

Skylanders: Lost Islands [iOS] Are you a fan? Then you need it. Everyone else has played a game like this and is over it 5/10.

Pocket Trucks [iOS] There is a surprising amount of depth to this game, it just lacks the polish to make it truly shine 7.5/10.

Totem Runner [iOS] Help bring nature back to the land, using a wide variety of controls including the always terrible tilt controls 5.5/10

Coaster Crazy Review [Android, iOS]

Coaster Crazy is a theme park sim which focuses only on the roller coaster. You buy parks and then get to work building the ideal coaster for that land. Each park has resident "Crazies" and you need to tailor your design to meet their needs before you can launch it to the public and start earning cash.

 

The music is quite nice with a big band and jazz type sound but it is quite repetitive and offers little in variety. The sounds effects are quite nice too and are very indicative of what is going on around you, cheers and applause when you get things right, shouts of disdain or even vomiting sounds are heard when things go wrong. The visual style is quite nice too. It is chunky, sill and nicely polished. Overall the aesthetics have quite a high level of production and it is something that draws you into the game.  

 

You start out with a plot of land, some cash and away you go, building your first roller coaster. The game's tutorial is fairly lengthy and slowly introduces new concepts. It's a good and a bad thing, it eases the player in but also leaves some things unexplained until later in the game.The controls are fairly intuitive and easy to use at first but when it comes down to finely tweaking things (which you will need to do on some levels) it is a bit of a pain. It is hard to get your camera angle correct to start the tweaking process and often when you do the tweak, the camera changes to a different angle or zoom setting just to frustrate you. It isn't too bad but it is bound to annoy the perfectionist in us all.

It is an interesting game with plenty of variety but it is all so slowly introduced, it just can't compete with a lot of other games out there in the app markets. You spend so much time being schooled and not enough time being rewarded with something new and interesting to do. The game is free so it's well worth it's price of admission but it is best left to the roller coaster fanatics 7.4/10.

Battle Cats [iOS]

Battle Cats is normally the type of game that I would hate, it is just a simple tower versus tower, produce as many units as you can and send them marching in a straight line kind of game. Yet it's cute style, addicting upgrade system and even to same degree the push pull game mechanic have got me hooked.

If you have ever played flash games on a site like Armor Games you have probably played a game like this. It has got be one of the easiest game types to program and they are ubiquitous. I am not sure exactly what the genre is but it is a cross between tower defence and perhaps RTS. The gameplay is fairly simple, you churn out units and try to upgrade your economy at the right time, plus you get to use your tower Cat Cannon to blast enemies from time to time. The thing I like about this particular take on the genre is that your timing of certain things such as buying a unit or upgrading your economy seem to make a difference. Having said that though I think it is a genre that is, at least currently, quite limited and you can't expect the latest and greatest gameplay features from it.

Where it really hooks you is the upgrade system. You get experience for beating stages that lets you upgrade all kinds of things. You can buy new units and upgrade your old ones. You can upgrade just about everything including but not limited to your cat cannon, your economy and unlocking the powerful abilities of God Cat. God Cat's abilities require cat food and although you do unlock some cat food for free, it is the main currency that you need to purchase with real world dollars if you want a lot of it. You don't need to buy any cat food to complete the game so you can play entirely for free.

The game features a lot of Engrish and this can be both a good thing, because it's hilarious and a bad thing, because it is distracting and often outright terrible. Mostly it adds a bit of charm and the game is otherwise quite bug free and runs smoothly.

I won't little kitten, I won't.

Considering that the game is free and any in-game purchases are more or less unnecessary I think it is well worth a play. It is still limited by it's genre though so I think a well deserved 7.7/10 is the highest score possible for such a game.

Really short reviews that are simultaneously terrible. However they are of no defined length, unlike this title which is far too long and I really wished it had ended some time ago.

Frontline [iOS] Late term abortion is illegal amongst humans yet unfortunately this is not the case with iPhone games. Why? What? How? Is that random people babbling in the background, do they not understand the purpose of short term rewards building into longer ones, is that sound effect from my favourite 1992 classic? All of these questions and more can be answered with a score of 3/10.

Pac-Man [iOS] It's not like the original game, the AI is different and it gives you a range of unplayable controls, one of which is acceptable 4/10.

Galaxian 30th Edition [iOS] See above.

Knights of the Pen and Paper [iOS, Android (PC/Mac coming soon)]

Knights of the Pen and Paper is a turn based RPG based on playing an actual game of Dungeons and Dragons or other such game. You have all the basics you would expect from the genre, the classes, loot, skills etc. plus they give the game a bit of a twist by partly putting you in the role of the Dungeon Master (DM) as well. It does all this from the perspective of an old school video game RPG with it's sound and graphics appearing as if they were from a Super Nintendo game.

Like I said this game is a bit different in that it gives you some DM like control over the gameplay. You get to choose which quest to do, and how many and what type of monsters you should fight. It does add a little bit of excitement to a game that otherwise uses very tried and true gameplay mechanics. There is a lot of  traditional RPG grind to be found in this game though the quests and loot help break this up a bit. The skills your characters have are fairly stock standard for their class type and you unlock them all fairly fast giving you little to look forward to later on in the game. Loot comes in a range of forms though and you get to power up everyone's armour, as well as load them up with bonus trinkets, and in the most interesting twist buy objects for your gaming room that effect everyone. But again I found that I had every piece I needed of this pretty fast. In it's current form the game offers two quests though only the first one is of any really note.

In it's current build the game has a host of problems. I am sure some of these things will be patched but unfortunately due to their nature many of them will still remain. Judging from their domain name Behold Studios are a Brazilian company and their translation into English is extremely poor. They didn't even manage to spell "yawn" correctly. I encountered a bug where an enemy would succumb to damage over time injuries but the battle wouldn't finish, to counter this I found if you hit defend, it would end properly, hitting anything else caused a crash. Game Centre would constantly reload all of the achievements I had received at the start of every new load.

Bugs and poor translation aside, the game really is a very standard sort of RPG grinder. There are many people who are fans of this genre though and it will appeal to them greatly but it doesn't reinvent the wheel. It is a good little title that will keep you playing for hours and there is a threat of bonus content to come later, though this may be paid DLC. For $2 you still get enough content to justify the purchase just steer clear of it if traditional RPGs aren't your thing 7.7/10.

Free stuff in two sentences.

Punch Quest [iOS] Punching, questing, punching, getting sweet new loot and punching some more. It's a simple idea executed well but there are some setbacks, hitting lock-screen destroys your game, saves sometimes go missing and there is an ominous update coming out to help monetise the game 8/10.

Train Conductor [iOS, Android] It's free and if you really want some train directing action it isn't bad. Honestly I get bored of the concept very quickly 5/10.

Weird But True [iOS] Packed with so many facts you could remember them all after one viewing. You know what is really weird but true about this app, you used to have to pay $2 for it 3/10.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown [PC, PS3, Xbox 360]

Why have friends when you could have XCOM: Enemy Unknown? Your squadmates will become your friends, every time one dies, you will die a little too, when they wipe an alien of the face of the planet you will cheer with them. This game has great gameplay though it's not as fluid as it should be let's find out why.

In XCOM you play as the commander of an elite force of alien exterminators. Your goal is to find out what the aliens are up to and put a stop to it. Part of the game is spent in turn based battles, blasting alien scum and the other part is establishing your base, researching tech and other mission critical things. It makes for a good mix, though I found the turn based missions a little bit repetitive towards the end. There is a lot going on in terms of strategy and you will need to balance your tactics and play style within the turn based components with your broader strategy of the base.

There are many exciting moments during the turn based battles of the game. You might stumble across a new type of enemy or succeed in beating the odds and making a great shot. You'll start off with a four man squad but you can upgrade this later on. Each member of your team gains experience and if you can keep them alive they become very powerful. The graphics look great and the sounds and music are extremely chilling.

When you are back at the base there are still plenty of things to do. You will be updated on story progression, there is research to be undertaken and troops to be outfitted.There is even a sort of mini-game in which you launch interceptors to take out alien space ships. I found myself at the mission control centre hoping I could watch another spin of the Earth go by so I could research that latest piece of kit before my next battle.

It truly is a terrific game but there are a few issues that bring it down.When you are moving your characters to squares of different heights you need to fight with the camera to get them exactly where you want them.. The returning to base loading screen often flashed violently between an image of the battle and the actual loading screen.Finally the game crashed right on the last mission and this is a known issue. Despite 3 patches these problems still persist.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown includes so much variety that it kept me wanting for more, except for by the end, where it had become a little tedious to do the random missions, as there are not as many variations on them as there could be.That being said up until that moment every time I got bored of something, the game added something new. There are a lot of twists and turns in XCOM and I honestly wanted to give it a higher score. However the bugs took away a few decimal points, 9/10.

Two Sentence Reviews

Dishonored [PC, PS3 XBOX 360] You can actually play this game in different ways and your choices do matter, but killing everything is a lot more fun. It does commit a few cardinal sins, such as unskippable cut scenes (most are skippable though) yet it is still great 9/10.

Lost Winds [iOS] It's now free and all they ask is for is a little information about your phone. A pretty puzzle platformer that feels frustrating and repetitive at times yet still innovative and compelling enough to keep you playing 8/10.

Mo' Monsters [iOS] I think maybe I should stop playing these free pocket monster clones and just get the real thing. It's okay, you get to fight battles but even the original Pokemon was more interactive and it came out in 1998 5/10.