Game review: Kindergarten

Way back in October, I played Carrie the Caregiver 2, which was nothing spectacular. Figuring it was going to be along the same lines, I tried Kindergarten. Let me start off by saying that my daughter is currently in kindergarten so I have a pretty good grasp on what kids that age can do. This game should have been named Daycare or Babies or something. Parents drop off their little darlings and it is your job to feed them bottles (?), change their diapers (?!) and put them down for naps. While kindergarten kids do take short naps, they definitely are not bottle-fed nor are they wearing diapers. It's rather offensive to kids to put a kindergarten title on a game about babies.

The game itself is boring. In the early levels, you spend a lot of time standing around waiting for one of the babies to want something. Then it gets annoying when, for example, one child is playing in "the box" and another one immediately wants to play in it. Well, the thing only fits one kid at a time so you have to wait for the first kid to stop playing in it. Of course, this upsets the second one. It is also annoying to have to click on the rug to put one child on the floor before picking up another. You should be able to click on the second child and have them switch places. It would have made the gameplay a lot more streamlined.

Also, about this clicking on the rug thing, there are no "slots" for the kids to fit in. They basically sit wherever you click. This makes it possible for you to have two children sitting directly in front of each other. Then, if the child in the back wants something, you can't click on him/her. You need to move the front child in order to get to the back child. This could have easily been avoided by dividing the rug into invisible slots. Each child would automatically fit into the slot closest to your click. Since the children don't move around on their own, there is no reason to not have a specific spot for them to sit in.

I think that there were a lot of good intentions with this game. However, the developers just didn't pull it off very well. There were so many problems with the gameplay that I quit the game halfway through my 60 minute trial. That says a lot right there. While I would like to see the problems listed here fixed, I'd rather see them fixed as an entirely new game instead of a sequel. They need to get rid of the Kindergarten title on this one.

Game review: Sprill: The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle

Despite it's cartoony appearance, I decided to play Sprill: The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle without my daughter. This was a good thing. Sprill is a sort of cat-looking creature. It's possible that he is a cat but I'm not sure why a cat would be doing this. What is he doing? He's searching the sunken wreckages of boats that have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. You need to find objects in each wreckage in order to open new boats and planes.

This was so much more difficult than it needed to be. Each location is jammed full with various objects so there are times that an object on your list will be mostly hidden behind another object. Of course, that makes the game extremely aggravating. There are some easier levels, which are pretty fun. But overall, the game just isn't worth all the unnecessary effort it needs. There doesn't seem to be an end to it....you just keep searching more and more sunken boats and they all seem the same after awhile. There must have been a better way to do it.

Game review: Ice Cream Mania

Heading back into time management games after a short break from the genre, Ice Cream Mania caught my eye. After all, I like ice cream so it can't be that bad, right? And, to tell the truth, it's not. You play Cindy, one of the heirs to an ice cream mogul. Cindy is competing with her sisters to win her deceased father's fortune. The gameplay is fairly easy. Make a scoop of ice cream in your machine, put it on a cone (or in a bowl, whichever the customer prefers) and top it off with some flavored cream-type stuff. As the levels get harder, you'll gain the ability to add things on top, such as orange slices or gingerbread men. The customer will also be able to order two scoop sundaes as well.

For the most part, the game is easy. It gets a little more difficult when you get to the two scoop levels but that is mostly because it can be daunting keeping track of which order the scoops go in. Otherwise, the game is fun. I found myself buying new toppings instead of upgrades to my ice cream machines, which may have hindered my progress a little. Considering I made it to the second store before my trial ran out, I didn't notice any hindrance if it existed. Since your character doesn't move around any, the graphics can get a little boring. It's basically just a row of customers sliding into place in front of you with either a daytime or nighttime beach background. So it wouldn't be a game that you could play for hours on end. But it's a nice time distraction for a half hour or so at a time.

Game review: Fashion Solitaire

I thought Fashion Solitaire sounded interesting so I gave it a try. Basically, you are given a deck of cards with various types of fashion on it. Some cards are dresses, some are pants/skirts, some are tops, some are jewelry and so on. Three models at a time are presented to you and you need to properly attire them with the cards you have available. As with all solitaire games, not all of the cards are available. You need to uncover the cards by using the ones on top. If you put a skirt on model #2, the card under that will become available to you. However, each model has a preference of what they would like to wear. Perhaps model #3 wants to wear something white while model #1 wants some jewelry. You get bonus points for fulfilling these wants. After each round, you get the opportunity to create your own fashions and you'll get more bonus points for using those cards in the game. This game was a lot more fun than I expected. To be honest, I expected something along the lines of Greek Goddesses of Solitaire but this was nothing like it. You end up being focused more on the fashion than the solitaire portion of the game. It's just as much fun designing your own pieces as it is dressing the models. Granted, the game had some annoying parts. For example, I got stuck when I needed some shirts for my girls but all I had available were pants and skirts. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to rearrange things to get the unavailable cards to pop up. So, while it was a little aggravating, I think it gave the game that needed bit of difficulty to keep it from being tedious. I might actually have my daughter try the game out. After all, she likes dressing up her dolls. This isn't all that different really. Dress up is always fun!

Game review: Natalie Brooks: Secrets of Treasure House

In Natallie Brooks: Secrets of Treasure House, you play Natalie Brooks. Her recently deceased grandmother left a house to Natalie, who now has to unravel all of the secrets around it in order to save it from being taken by the bank. This is another hidden object game that has taken gameplay to another level. Each location has a list of objects you need to find but, in order to find the big object in each location, you need to find other objects that will open a drawer or something along those lines. It changes the game from a hidden object game to more of a role playing game (RPG) much like King's Quest or Zork back in the day. The only difference is that you don't have to travel to different locations to get the items you need. They are all right there in front of you. You just need to find them.

This is one of the few games that I actually enjoyed the storyline. Most of the time, I just skip past the cut scenes because they are boring and don't add anything to the gameplay. However, I found the story here to be rather compelling. I wanted to know what grandma was scheming before she died. Treasure House is definitely a game I'd recommend to anyone.

Game review: Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper Game

Every once in awhile, I get the urge to try a different genre of game. The hidden object and time management games get boring after playing them for too long. So I decided to give the childish-looking Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper Game a go. I do my best to not judge a game by its graphics. There are a few 'childish' looking games that I enjoy playing. However, this game was terrible. It's not really a 'crossword' game in that you aren't trying to solve a puzzle with clues. It's a 'crossword' game in the sense that the words literally cross each other.

Bullies have stolen pieces of a machine and it is your job to retrieve the pieces. You start on a square in the corner of the board. Using 3 or more letter words, you need to get your character to the other side of the board while picking up objects on the way. You can create any words you want to as long as you have the letters available and you need to use a letter from the previous word. Kinda like Scrabble.

This game was so annoying to play. Mostly because it was fairly difficult to get the words to line up with the objects you need to pick up so you spend a lot of time roaming around the board. In the higher levels, there are dogs that move those objects making it even more difficult. I'd rather just play Scrabble or a good crossword puzzle. Leave out the objects, they are unnecessary. The childish graphics would have been fine if the game itself was enjoyable. Sadly, that is where it is lacking.

Game review: Megastore Madness

There are a ton of time management games out there but I've never seen anything like Megastore Madness. Your parents have left for a couple of months so it is up to you to run the family store. In the beginning, there are three workers to help you. One restocks shelves, one helps customers and one is a cashier. Juggle the three of them to keep your shelves fully stocked and your customers happy. I went into this thinking that it could be a lot of fun. Instead, it's annoying. In a normal time management game, you only have one player to pay attention to in order to help customers or stock shelves or whatever. However, in this game, you have three that you have to control. It's not particularly easy to keep up with the items flying off the shelves, the little kids tossing toys all over the place (which the stockboy cleans up), helping customers find what they want and still cashing them out before they get angry. As a result, I ended up focusing mostly on the stockboy and customer-helping girl and completely forgetting about the cashier. Then the customers would get mad. To make matters worse, the game adds workers as the customers get more difficult.

This would have been a good game if there were fewer people for you to control. A person's attention can only be focused in so many places at once. Having to focus on up to 6 people is rather difficult. If you want to have that many helpers, then there should be some non-controllable characters in there. There is no reason for us to control the stockboys. They should be able to see what needs to be restocked or what needs to be cleaned up automatically. That would leave us, the player, to deal with just the customers' needs. It would still give us up to 4 characters to control but then our attention isn't focused absolutely everywhere and we can get things accomplished in a timely manner. As it stands, the game is just too chaotic to play properly.

Cruisin'?

I've always wanted to go on some cruises. Well, kind of anyway. See, I have a problem. I don't like deep water. Water that I can stand up in that is below my head is fine. Water that is over my head is not cool. Sadly, cruises don't occur in my bathtub. I suppose I could go on a cruise and just lock myself in my cabin or stay in all of the indoor areas but I don't know how much fun that would be. It seems like a waste of money to do things that I can do cheaper on shore.

Game review: Can You See What I See?

As geeky parents, our kids often see us doing geeky things like playing video games. Many times, the kids want to play too but, a lot of the time, the games are just too difficult to the child to do anything besides watch. Can You See What I See? is different. The premise of the game is that you are helping run a collectible store. It is your job to fill each customer's order. Each location is broken into four areas. You click between the four corners in order to find all of the objects on the list. While the areas are generally pretty cluttered, the list of objects is fairly easy to read. So, at worst, the child can pick which area to look in and probably read the list to you. And, chances are, they can probably find the objects faster than you can!

My daughter absolutely loves this game. I think that she kind of likes being able to find the objects faster than I can. She still needs my help once in awhile but, for the most part, I'm just there to tell her that she's doing well. That's OK. There are still a lot of games where I can find things faster than she can. Can You See is still a nice game that we can play "together."

Game review: Escape The Museum

While it may not seem like it, I did stop playing casual video games for a couple of days. That meant that I had a lot to catch up on. I decided to start with Escape The Museum, a hidden object game. This was probably the most interesting hidden object games I have played in a long time. Instead of just being a straight-forward game requiring you to find a list of objects in a location, there are different levels to each location. Your character has been trapped in a museum by an earthquake and she is trying to get to her daughter, located in a different area of the museum. Unfortunately, parts of the museum have been badly damaged by the quake and, therefore, you need to figure out a way to get to the next room. This is the part that makes the game interesting. You do get a 'shadow list' - where your list is just shadows of the objects you need - of objects that you need to open the door. In some cases, it's the key to the room; in others, the objects work together to lift a heavy object out of the way. Of course, some of the objects are needed to interact with objects in the room in order to find ANOTHER object. For example, you'll need to find a coin to use in the soda machine to get a soda to spray on an electrical box to short out the door lock. See? You need to do a little more thinking for this game!

There are also traditional hidden object pieces in the game. The museum curator will call you on your cell phone asking you to save some of the museum pieces. Then you will get your traditional list of objects to search for. I found this part to be a little more difficult than other hidden object games. Mostly because some of the items were so small, it was difficult to see them - especially in some of the messier rooms. But you can always call for help if you need it.

I thought this was a really great game. It kept all of the aspects of a hidden object game but changed them up a bit to make it more interesting. This isn't a game that kids would be able to play easily. However, it is a good game if you are an adult looking for a little more oomph in your hidden object game.