Two Words, One Answer.
Windows Teenage
 Teenage Zombies $12.99 I bought this game on a whim, not knowing anything about it (it was on sale :)). I thought it looked like a really funny concept. The whole "Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys" had me chuckling. After playing it, however, it just isn't complex enough for my tastes. The graphics are good, the zombie characters are "cute", and the storyline is interesting enough, but the gameplay itself is just way too repetitive and uninteresting to keep me playing for longer than a few minutes at a time. I actually really wanted to love this game, so I'm a tad disappointed in the gameplay. Plus, having to change zombies every 30 seconds gets a little old. I would have like it more if it were a bit more like, say, Yoshi's Island where you switch characters once or twice per level. I still give it 3 stars just because the idea and storyline are fun. I just wish the creators had given the game a bit more diversity with the gameplay itself.  TMNT $19.99 I'm a complete sucker for anything TMNT, especially playing as them. For all their flaws (and there are a number) the first two games based on the '03 reboot were very fun and I played through happily without pause. I was a little put off by the Prince of Persia-ing of this game as witnessed in the demo (mostly because it felt like a cheap knock-off, instead of a re-use of the mechanics on a similarly qualified game), but forgot that and purchased the game later anyway, simply because I do so enjoy playing out fight scenes with the turtles, monotonous though they may be. The game is mostly oriented, as many have noted, toward the casual and younger gamer. This doesn't bother me much, as this is inevitably the audience that the turtles continue to be marketed to (a bit of a shame, as casual perusal will lead you to many of us who are at least somewhat older than 10, or even older than teenagers, who are interested or still interested in the turtles). I was pleased to find the game is pretty fun, combat being overly simplistic, but amusing in small doses. Except then we come to the acrobatic portions. Some are bothered by the perceived lack of challenge (ie, you can fall any number of times, as well as lose all health, and still finish the game), but I'm a little more bothered by what seem to be incontrovertibly technical flaws. First of all, the controls are set in stone. This is insane on a PC game, port though it may be. Having your left hand on Z,X,C and spacebar for much of the game works well--but then you "need" to use alt for teamwork and a few other odds and ends. Underneath your hand. Maybe this works for others (smaller hands, perhaps?), but it was frustratingly unintuitive for this gamer. Second, the camera is awful. It is set on rails, with turns scheduled for point X, so if you are looking ahead and think, "Ah, I'm going to jump across here!" and prepare yourself to do so, you may find at the last moment that the camera is turning at that ledge and in fact you are going to one side or the other on your pre-determined path. Depth perception, angles and distances are often inscrutable because of bizarre camera angles, disrupting the flow of moves like wall runs and ledge-swinging, which aim for a parkour-like sense of momentum. It's hard to maintain that momentum when the camera suddenly switches and you're now technically heading in a different direction (thus requiring a different directional key). The controls are probably the worst element though. Beyond the fact that they cannot be changed, they are occasionally sluggish and further hamper that "parkour" element. Wallruns are simultaneously too easy and too hard, (often I found myself running along a wall I meant to jump alongside, overshooting a ledge and falling to my non-death, or jumping at a wall and scrabbling at it to fall to my non-death instead of running along it) with ledges having pre-determined points for jumping off and grabbing on that don't always make themselves readily apparent. It's the worst kind of frustration to half-enjoy a game, to see and even have some fun in it but to have what is best described as a small child flicking you constantly for its own amusement in the controls and camera. It's not debilitating and can be circumvented (or at least plodded through), but it's incredibly annoying and makes concentration and fun difficult. |
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