Aramation Games

World of Goo is one of the most innovative puzzlers to hit the PC in a long time. Your goal is to guide these goo balls to extraction point by basically turning goo balls into scaffolding. Each stage gives you a required number of balls to save and if you fail, you need to start from the beginning. Core gameplay depends heavily on physics and gravity as you combine goo balls together in a towering structure, you will quickly realize gravity is not your friend. Since the structure is made of, well, goo, it is very jiggly and unstable. It is up to you to determine how much risk you’re willing to take vs. building a pretty stable structure in order to save an extra goo. A goo ball that you use for construction probably won’t be saved at the end of the stage.

There are other types of goo balls apart from the regular black goo: green goos can be moved and detached from built structure, white goos drip down, red goos can float, yellow goos can stick to vertical surfaces as well as horizontal, and skull goos are impervious to spikes. At later missions, it becomes a challenge to quickly and properly use all these different goos in order to reach the end. The game requires a lot of trials and errors if you do not plan your structure properly.

Unfortunately, the game is marred by control issues: you click on a goo, and drag it to where you want to place it. However this becomes infuriating when the time is running out, your structure is toppling, and you grab the wrong goo as they scurry about on the structure you’ve just built. The game also has an undo function when you click on a time fly that’s buzzing around your structure. It is sometimes too easy to click on them by mistake instead of selecting a goo.

In the end, the charming visuals and physics-based puzzles will give you a very different experience. You’ll soon fall in love with those goos.

Rating: 80%

Eternal Sonata is not another generic RPG from Japan. It is set in the dream world of Chopin, the famous composer as he lies in his deathbed. The biggest strength of the game is the incredible visuals and audio afforded by the setting. Intermixed with the game’s original scores are very recognizable Chopin piano pieces: as a fan of Chopin and having played all of these masterpieces, it was a delight to hear them so intricately used in a video game.

Game mechanic mixes turn-based combat with real time battles. You control a party of 3 characters and on your turn, the timer kicks in and you need to make your moves such as move, use items, attack and use special attacks. When it’s the enemy’s turn, you need to block and later in the game, counterattack when you’re prompted to do so. This mechanic is interesting, but it gets pretty annoying very fast as you continue your grind. The difficulty sometimes spikes but it’s generally a pretty easy game. You won’t die too often and you won’t need to hog too many healing items.

The biggest downfall of the game is the storyline. Even though the dream world of Chopin afforded an interesting world, the characters in it are shallow, one dimensional and irritating. Worse, the story of a nation bent on war vs. a nation trying to avoid war at all costs is interesting but doesn’t lead to any resolution. In fact, the ending of the game has infuriated me as I was expecting something better to resolve the stories. Throughout the game, Chopin wonders if the dream world is real or if his real world is a fabrication. But by the end of the game, Chopin doesn’t reach the conclusion of that debate and the game finishes abruptly.

This pretty linear game could have definitely used another or two script revisions as the setting deserved better characters and more fleshed out storyline. As it stands, the game’s innovative combat system that relies on real-time reflexes and light/dark mechanic is the saving grace.

Rating: 55%

Buzz! Master Quiz is the franchise’s first entry into portable trivia gaming, and it’s mostly disappointing. The core gameplay of answering questions based on clues, pictures and videos isn’t broken: the problem is the package surrounding the core gameplay is too shallow to be recommended.

The game ditches the game show format, and instead present you with a bunch of challenges for you to complete. Most of the screens consist of text and your host Buzz, and that’s about it. It is a passable interface but doesn’t do anything to spruce up the experience. Single-player mode consists of set number of questions that you must answer, by yourself. You are not even playing against computer opponents so the only incentive to continue playing is to… beat your own score.

Multiplayer is where the game fares better with 3 multiplayer modes, 2 of which can be played with only a single PSP with contestants passing it around. It’s passable but it isn’t an immersive experience like passing the controllers on a full-fledged console version. Game sharing mode is incredibly limited, and it isn’t worth the price of admission which involves multiple PSPs in the same room.

Buzz! Master Quiz, with its 5,000 questions, boring single player and limited-appeal multiplayer could be improved upon all areas and I hope the developers will correct all these issues. Until then, it is just a passable collection of trivia.

Rating: 45%

Red Alert series was always the fun and absurd loving member of the Command & Conquer series, and the latest entry in the franchise takes thing to the extreme (Xtreme?). Set in the fictional world where time travel is possible, the game starts with the desperate Soviets travelling back in time to erase Einstein out of existence in order to defeat the enemies. Of course when they get back, they realize they have reduced the Allies’ powers (by eliminating their nukes) but it gave rise to the Empire of the Rising Sun. This new faction seeks to destroy Western forces to claim supremacy over the world, and Allies and Soviets are forced to confront the threat together.

One of the guilty pleasures of C&C series was the live-action full motion videos featuring pretty well known actors. This time, EA has outdone itself by hiring George Takei, Peter Stormare, Tim Curry and other B-level stars to portray in-game characters. The end result is exciting and fun to watch as, thankfully, these actors don’t take themselves seriously and play up the campness. If you buy games based on the amount of real cleavage and legs, then RA3 may be your only choice on the shelves this Holiday.

Gameplay wise, the biggest addition apart from a 3rd playable faction is co-op. The entire single-player experience is designed to be played with another commander: you can either find someone online, or let the AI take over while you issue basic commands. This makes more sense in the universe - after all, if you’re fighting a war, there are bound to be other commanders on the battlefield - and it helps offload some of the work for you.  Another addition is the bigger emphasis on naval combat as a lot of the units are amphibious, and you can even build buildings on the water. This forces you to change your tactics as that shoreline becomes another route for invasion.

The highlight of the game is the units as we’re talking about a game that features armored bears, sonic dolphins, helicopters that can shrink enemies, anime-inspired hovering schoolgirl with psychic abilities and even battleships that can walk on the ground. Almost every unit has secondary functions and it can get tough to properly use all the units’ abilities in the heat of the battle. However it can be a delight to counter the enemies’ tactics by simply changing the function of your unit (such as making it go airborne).

Red Alert 3 feels just like the other RA games, only bigger, badder and faster. Once you set up your economy by building refinery right next to the ore mine, you can focus on churning out units and attacking the enemy. If you’re looking for a fast-paced action with pretty crazy units and George Takei playing a crazed Japanese emperor, this game is a definite must play.

Rating: 90%

Will Wright’s latest simulation game Spore tackles evolution as you control a single-cell organism, evolve it into a space-faring civilization. Such an expansive journey fits in a single DVD, which is both a blessing and a curse for this game.

It is more accurately described as 5 games tied together into one package. First game “Cell stage”, your goal is to first choose whether your creature is vegetarian or carnivore, then start gobbling others and grow. At pre-defined points, once you have enough DNA points, you can evolve your creature so that it could move faster, or attack better. After the cell stage, your creature will sprout legs and move in-land in the “Creature stage”. Here you will either befriend other animals or eliminate them: most of the customizations are done by this point. After you eliminate others or befriend other animals on your continent, you develop group skills and enter “Tribal stage”.

Starting with tribal stage, you can no longer change the appearance or the different body parts of your creature. Your job as the tribe leader is to direct your tribe to conquer others, or become their friends in order to be the only village surviving. After you complete the task, you enter “Civilization stage” where you control a basic city, produce military vehicles and conquer other cities, or convert them to your side. It is pretty simplistic as you only have 3 vehicles: land, sea and air. Winning a battle is simply a matter of bringing the most vehicles to the fight. In the end, the “Space stage” allows you to visit other planets, collect specimens and abduct other creatures. This is the most open-ended stage of them all, although there is a basic narrative in place (about helping out a distressed civilization).

The problem with the game is that it is very simplistic. In each stage, you only have a few things to do and it gets tedious after awhile. Mostly in the tribal and civilization stages, you will wish that you could just skip those boring parts and move on to the stars. Luckily, after you play through the game once, you can choose to play a specific stage.

Spore’s accomplishment is its creature, vehicle and building designer as this incredibly flexible tools basically allow you to create anything you can imagine. Already a list of designs available online is astounding in its number and creativity. Even though this is a single player game, you can choose to have creatures other people have designed to be downloaded into your game and populate your planets.

In the end, treat Spore as a flexible and fun design tool and you will be rewarded with the best experience available on the market. If you consider it solely as a game, it is repetitive, simple and too boring to sustain hours and hours of repeat enjoyment.

Rating: 80%

Think of Lost Odyssey as a traditional JRPG for Microsoft’s console, and you’ll understand perfectly that this isn’t a Mass Effect or even a Fable 2. Featuring turn-based battles, random encounters, an epic storyline that pits you against the forces of evil and plenty of leveling up, the creators of Blue Dragon have delivered a very competent RPG.

This is the story of Kaim, an immortal that has lived a thousand years already in this world. When Kaim survives a meteor crashing in the battlefield, he’s tasked to inspect the potential source of the problem: the Grand Staff, a device that seeks to amplify the magic energy in the world. The universe of Lost Odyssey is rich and well-detailed, featuring fully-fleshed characters, different continents and countries with diverging interests. As you progress through the main story, you’ll meet other immortals (and mortals) who will join your party, and slowly rediscover your memories.

As mentioned before, the game features random encounters and turn-based battles where you issue an order, wait for the enemy to go through, and then repeat the whole cycle. While the battle mechanics aren’t overly new and exciting, character progression is quite different from other RPGs on the market. As an immortal, you don’t learn new skills as you level up: instead you must learn a skill that a mortal character in your party already knows by linking to him/her. This system forces you to micromanage your party as the only way to improve your immortal characters is to make sure mortals are leveled up as well. The game favors a more even character development. There is also a ring system which grants special abilities on physical attack (such as stealing gold, inflicting status damages…) based on how well you time your attack.

The game isn’t perfect as there are few annoying design choices: you do gain access to the world map (and various ships) but they do not add much to the game as exploring is minimal. Most of the times, you’ll just select a destination from a drop-down list. Some dungeons feature annoying water spouts or falls: coupled with narrow pathways, you’ll easily be frustrated having to go through the same path over and over again.

In the end, if you’re looking for a traditional JRPG and don’t expect too much innovation, you will be happy with Lost Odyssey. Through the adventure that spans 4 disks (yes, 4), the main quest will easily take you over 35 hours. The storyline has some rough spots but overall it’s marked improvement over the previous effort Blue Dragon, with more adult themes and interesting characters.

Rating: 75%

Space Invaders Extreme does a lot of things right and I can even forgive Taito for using “Extreme” in the title (at least they didn’t spell it Xtreme…). To celebrate 30 years of Space Invaders, one of the earliest videogames returns in the most satisfying remake since the original release.

Space Invaders Extreme doesn’t change the core concept: you still move left to right, enemies descend in waves, and your job is to shoot them all down before they either kill you or reach all the way down. What’s new is the whole audio and visual experience. Your actions such as shooting and destroying a space invader will produce synchronized sound effects, perfectly blended with the up-beat techno soundtrack. It is no black static background either, as the field you play on is incredibly colorful and perfectly matches the sound. It is an experience very similar to Lumines, which speaks volumes about how this game is successful.

Gameplay mechanic is tweaked as well by giving you power-ups: kill 4 of the same colored enemies in a row, and you will receive power-up based on the color of the enemy. Green will give you spread gun, red gives you a bomb, and blue allows you to shoot laser beam that you can sweep the field with. Shooting down those pesky alien ships will take you to the bonus stages (basically minigames) where you can try to exponentially increase your score.

At just $20, this is the best Space Invaders since the original. You shouldn’t miss out on this re-imagineering of the classic franchise.

Rating: 85%

Chef Gordon Ramsey’s reality TV show pits 15 aspiring chefs to outcook each other for a chance to be Gordon Ramsey’s new favorite chef. Ubisoft has announced that the game based on the Fox TV show will be released this September for Wii, DS and PC. The game will feature authentic recipes, some of which were exclusively created by chef Ramsey himself for the game. Expect to see less of the swearing if the game aims for a family-friendly rating.

The Settlers is a long running franchise, now in its 15th year already. Numerically speaking, Rise of an Empire is already the 6th entry in the franchise and it attempts to streamline the resource gathering mechanics, inject some RPG into it with 6 heroes you can choose from, and less emphasis on combat than the last game.

The Settlers is, first and foremost, all about gathering resources. You hunt animals, catch fish, grow grains and then transform them into food. Food makes the villagers go do their jobs such as woodcutting, tanning, and soap making. The more stores and workplaces you have, the more taxes they pay. Taxes are used to hire soldiers, or trade resources with nearby villages.

If you think the mechanics sound too complicated, The Settlers does a good job at managing it all by itself. After you construct a few buildings, everything happens automatically. Resources are gathered, goods are produced and distributed to every villager. Even when your hero enters a friendly village, trade negotiations are automatic so all you have to do is sit back and relax. Of course creating a village and watching it run smoothly is fine for the first few missions, unfortunately that is how every mission starts. You only have a lowly castle, storehouse and a cathedral. You must construct everything again in every mission which can get pretty repetitive. In addition, the de-emphasis on combat means there’s actually not much you can do in the game apart from resource gathering. Campaign tries to tell the story of rebuilding the Darion empire but progressing through the campaign is an odd feeling since your progress in each mission is wiped clean in the next one, even though they’re interconnected.

In the end, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire tries to simplify and get rid of the micromanagement, and it does it too well. If you can play through the technical bugs (and there are plenty in this game), you still won’t find a satisfying experience. It is better than the previous Settlers game, but that’s not saying much.

Rating: 45%

Creators of the popular webcomic Penny-Arcade brings their first effort into game-making with Penny Arcade Adventures Episode One: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. Apart from the long title, the game offers an unique blend of RPG elements with role playing. You can customize your character, and you fight alongside Gabe and Tycho. You explore the game’s 4 world and fight enemies in a turn-based fashion mixed with real-time components. There is an active timer that control what actions you can take: using items is the fastest, then regular attack and finally specialty attack takes longest to recharge. To use specialty attacks, you are presented with a minigame, such as pressing spacebar at the right time, or pressing buttons as they appear (a la DDR). With each successful battle, your characters will become stronger and gain new and powerful attacks.

The best thing about PAAEO:ORSPD is the visuals as they are faithfully accurate to the comic strips. You’ll encounter everything from fruit fuckers to hobos, and be treated to the universe of New Arcadia. They wisely avoided using voice actors to portray the main characters since, the original inspiration being a comic strip, everybody is free to interpret the voices of the characters.

In the end, the game is strongly recommended for Penny-Arcade lovers, and adventure game fans. Others may be turned off by the universe of New Arcadia, or unwilling to go through with the gameplay mechanics that can be sometimes frustrating. Especially the ability to block and counterattack by pressing the spacebar in the split second that the enemy’s health bar flashes, it can lead to unjustified defeat just because there were too many enemies on screen. At $20, it isn’t a bargain, but this is the most authentic Penny-Arcade experience you’ll receive outside of the comic strips.

Rating: 65%