Game review: Pet Shop Hop

Lately, a lot of pet-themed time management games have relied on grooming pets. You wash a dog, cut its hair then give it back to the owner. Pet Shop Hop is a pet-themed time management game but it is completely different from the others. Instead of grooming a pet, you are trying to sell them. However, you still need to feed each type of animal and clean their cages/tanks/pens. At the same time, you need to make sure you find the right pet for each customer. It sounds like there is a lot of work involved in playing this game. There isn't really. Your character doesn't move for the feeding and cleaning actions so there isn't time being wasted with her just wandering around the store. She only moves when she is preparing an animal for a customer. While this may seem like it's not a big deal, it is. Most games force the player's character to wander around the "game board" for every single action. This usually ends up making the player aggravated because the character doesn't move fast enough to fit everything in within the alloted time. Customers get angry because your character is busy in the corner feeding the fish or something. By allowing the feeding and cleaning to be done by the player without the character moving, the player can accomplish those tasks while the character is moving to a tank or cage to prepare an animal for the customer. We don't have to wait for the character to do something.

I did enjoy playing this game a lot. It's a slightly different take on the time management type of game but it makes all the right changes to keep it interesting and fun instead of aggravating.

Game review: Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier

A couple of weeks ago, I played Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier. This was another type of Sims game but with a wild west touch to it. You play one of three characters trying to turn a patch of desert into a thriving western town. Despite failing miserably during my few first attempts at the game, I had way too much fun playing it. Combining the variety of challenges with the 'open sandbox' type of play, you can do just about anything you want to with your town. If you want to put your farm far apart from where the townspeople live, you can. Obviously you need to put your lumberjacks near trees and your gold mine on top of a gold vein but other than things like that, you are completely free to do what you want to. I think this makes the game a lot more fun than if they had laid everything out for you and you just have to complete what they tell you. I'll be buying this game in the near future!

Game review: Flower Stand Tycoon

I used to enjoy playing Tycoon games. Yes, I purchased Monopoly Tycoon many years ago. Flower Stand Tycoon sounded like it might be a bit of fun. However, the game isn't like any Tycoon game I've ever played. You don't purchase new flowers. Heck, you don't even purchase the places where you sell flowers! Here you are a meager flower salesperson, traveling to various locations to try to beat your competitors. Every location where you have a higher rating than your competition, that area turns your color. The goal is to get as many squares to turn your color as possible. Oh, and you want to keep them your color.

I actually found this game quite boring. I guess I was looking for something a bit more exciting. It's difficult to steal your competitor's locations while making sure you visit your locations enough to keep them. You only get new flowers when you spend enough money "researching" them. Why should we need to research flowers? We should be able to just buy them! I think there was a possibility for a good game here but it definitely should not have been under the Tycoon name.

Game review: Magical Forest

Once in awhile, I get an urge to play a Sims type of game. It doesn't happen to often but it does happen. This time I got the urge, I decided to try Magical Forest. It's a game where you raise magical sprites. There are different types of sprite and each one gives different coins. You use these coins to buy food or upgrade your caretakers or buy new sprites. I honestly thought this game was going to be a lot like Insaniquarium over at Pop Cap Games. In a way, it is. You are basically feeding a critter and trying to get them to level up. However, in this game, there are a ton more upgrades to your weapons and you can obtain spells to help you defeat your enemies faster. There are also more types of sprites, which you can buy and resell as you wish.

Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun playing this. I'm not sure why I enjoyed it, I just did. It's one of those unexplainable things in life. Give it a try, it's very fun.

Game review: Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year

Last year, I really loved playing Build-A-Lot so I had really high expectations for the sequel. Luckily, the game not only met my expectations but exceeded them! The gameplay is pretty much the same from the first game. You are given a variety of tasks and you need to get the materials and workers to complete them within the time limit. This time around, there are new buildings for you such as a playground. These buildings will effect the buildings around them. For example, if you build a playground between two houses, those houses will each get an extra "happiness" rating. However, if you build a factory near the houses, they will receive negative "happiness" points. This actually makes the game a bit more fun because now you have to figure out how to rearrange your development to make everyone as happy as possible.

This will probably be my favorite game of the entire year.

Game review: Cooking Academy

Cooking Academy, much like Family Restaurant, is a time management game similar to Cooking Mama. You are given a set of cooking instructions, such as chop the carrot or fold the pastry, to complete within the set time limit. When the recipe is finished, you are graded on how well you prepared it. As much as I don't like cooking, this was actually pretty fun. It's not as difficult as Cooking Mama since everything is controlled by the mouse yet it was more enjoyable than Family Restaurant. The instructions are very basic so anyone should be able to understand them easily. I was able to make all of the appetizers and most of the breakfast dishes with no less than a C grade. And I'm pretty bad at games like this! For some reason, I can never get the little line to stop in the green spot, which means I end up burning a lot of food.

While I didn't let my daughter play this one, I think kids might enjoy this game as well as adults. I know my daughter likes Cooking Mama on the Wii and this was definitely easier than trying to manipulate the Wiimote into doing things like stirring a pot. Unfortunately for them, their parents will find the game too fun to share!

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: 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: Doggie Dash

Yet another game from the makers of Diner Dash. This time around it's Doggie Dash. You play one of two new business owners, Walter or Scarlett. The two have joined forces to open a pet grooming store. It is your job to make the pets pretty while growing your business. This game plays a lot like Paradise Pet Salon. You start out with two bath stations, two cutting stations and two ribbon stations. Since you already have all the tools you need for the business, you simply need to upgrade them each level. Yes, you can even upgrade the employees so they will move faster. In some of the higher levels, you can purchase items to keep the pets/customers happy while they wait their turn.

I found the beginning levels very easy to play. A little too easy, really. I was able to get gold stars on every level, which is nice but a little tedious after awhile. I want to be able to really work to get the gold star. However, this is off-set by the next store level being rather difficult. I'm actually stuck in the game because there are too many pets coming in and none of my stations move fast enough to accommodate them before they get angry. Perhaps I need to start the entire level over again so I can re-upgrade the stations but that's a little ridiculous. You should be able to pass a level no matter which stations you choose to upgrade first.

Looking at it in a general sense, the game is just OK. I think it just needs a few tweaks before it can be a great game. Instead of just being able to upgrade the stations, give the option to add a third station when the customer load gets heavy. Stop having so many cranky pets that require immediate attention before they leave the store. Get rid of the pieces to entertain the customers. The employees don't have time to use them anyway. Or, even better, add an additional employee to help with the overload. The game would be a lot better with just a few of these little changes. Until then, I'll stick with Diner Dash instead.

Game review: Coffee Rush

Coffee Rush is a weird sort of mash up between a time management game and a match-three game. Your customers come up to the counter and request a specific drink. In order to make the drink, you need to collect a certain amount of each ingredient. The ingredients are collected by matching three like items in a row. Once all of the ingredients for a drink are collected, you click on the drink to serve it to the customer. I found this game to be extremely annoying. Mostly because there are certain ingredients that are impossible to collect, which results in ticked off customers. If there were more opportunities to match three of an item, it wouldn't be so difficult. For example, the sugar ingredient pops up all the time so you can have tons of sugar. However, the whipped cream item doesn't pop up very often so if your customer wants something with whipped cream, they will have to wait a long time for three of that item to come together.

This is definitely an interesting concept for a game. I wouldn't mind seeing more of these sorts of mash ups between different types of genre. However, the developers need to make the games fair. If you're going to force us into creating recipes with specific amounts of specific ingredients, give us the tools to make it happen. Don't let the player flap in the wind, hoping that what they need pops up now before the customer storms off.