Review Archives (All Reviews)

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	Quattro Arcade review (NES) Reviewed on December 27, 2009 Quattro Arcade, being a compilation, was one of those games nobody wanted to finish for the NES FAQ Completion Project. In attempting to give something of everything, compilation carts invariably serve up one game that just stinks. Too many NES multi-game carts feature games with too few levels or too little attention to graphics or, in Action 52's case, both. I'm not aware of any perfect cross-genre compilation, but QA is clearly above average.	4/5
	Xyphus review (C64) Reviewed on December 27, 2009 In Xyphus--part hexagonal board game, part RPG--four character tokens move across six lands in succession. Finally, they kill the demon Xyphus with his own heart, behind an invisible maze. Strategy rules: forget towns, separate combat screens, tenuous or reheated riddles, or experience mills. Supplies are limited. So are enemies and magic. Death kills.	3.5/5
	221B Baker Street review (PC) Reviewed on December 27, 2009 The problem with many text adventures is that you can only solve them once. Even the creative geniuses at Infocom could only fit in so many alternate solutions, in-jokes and Easter Eggs. 221B Baker Street offers thirty such adventures, each with fixed solutions. Memory constraints ensure they are neither worth remembering or replaying, or both. In this board game-slash-text adventure within a miniature London, even Inspector Lestrade could notice the too-evident formula, which culminates ...	2.5/5
	Yo! Noid review (NES) Reviewed on December 27, 2009 The Noid is surely the dorkiest hero I've controlled in a while. He's Matt Groening's Bongo the Rabbit in red with a goofy buck-toothed smile, flinging his yo-you at equally odd enemies. Unlike his commercial counterpart, he prefers eating pizzas to ruining them. And saving the city will get him a few! Well, it's a better reward than a burger for saving the President.	3/5
	Times of Lore review (NES) Reviewed on December 24, 2009 Times of Lore for the NES is an example of addition by subtraction in a port. The PC/Apple versions took too long to get between towns, and monsters were too lethal and numerous. Futzing with the admittedly innovative interface was a handicap in fights. ToL for the NES tweaks the world map to create shortcuts and also makes townspeople harder to kill by mistake. The result is a satisfactory, if bland RPG.	3/5
	Flappy review (NES) Reviewed on December 24, 2009 At 200 levels, Flappy lasts far too long, but it's decent enough that I wound up playing in longer stretches than I'd planned. It's a simple enough puzzler: push squarish boulders in half-width increments, possibly balancing them on the edge of the boulder/platform below. Gravity affects them but not you, and each level has a shiny boulder you must push some way to a shiny platform to advance.	2/5
	Might & Magic II review (APP2) Reviewed on December 05, 2009 Might and Magic II overcompensates wildly for its predecessor's insane difficulty, and the poetry even scans and rhymes. With more organized and rewarding side quests, you won't notice how stupid the two new character classes are. The formula remains intact: FPRPG, five towns, several castles with quests, dungeons that may or may not be relevant, and all manner of weird nooks that give items or raise attributes--temporarily or permanently. While it's not appreciably bigger than the original, MM2...	4/5
	The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate review (APP2) Reviewed on November 22, 2009 I'm fortunate enough to have enjoyed Bard's Tale III (BT3) twice and in different ways. As a teen fanboy, I reaped the benefits of destroying far too many Dream Mages in BT2.	4/5
	Wizard's Crown review (APP2) Reviewed on November 21, 2009 Well before sports websites existed, I loved live box-scores. The top-down RPG Wizard's Crown used a feature called Quick Combat. Easy fights required no work. Tough battles could see-saw with each combatant knocked unconscious. I'd cheer as the chief enemy went down or groan as he killed my last three players. Sometimes my super fighter with the Frost Greatsword held off the last four enemies. Or I'd gain an important magic item and forget how morale loss affected my party, making for a ...	3/5
	Bureaucracy review (APP2) Reviewed on September 18, 2009 Douglas Adams's name is not featured prominently in the packaging for Infocom's text adventure, Bureaucracy. He got distracted from it by the Dirk Gently books, and eventually the game got written by committee. The result was a game that showed the downside of corporate muddling the wrong way--an extended whine where puzzles rely too heavily on the defeatist "whatever can go wrong, will" maxim. It features the sort of jokes you laugh at if they are buffers for more sophisticated jo...	1.5/5
	A Mind Forever Voyaging review (APP2) Reviewed on September 11, 2009 I don't believe A Mind Forever Voyaging is more profound than the emotionally apolitical Trinity or even the wildly clever Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it's another successful text-adventure experiment from Infocom. It features you as PRISM aka Perry Simm, a computer built to simulate human experience in the future. It is another example of an Infocom game doing what a book would like to do but cannot, and here it creates an interactive dystopia with social comment...	3/5
	Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It review (APP2) Reviewed on September 05, 2009 Graphics would probably have ruined Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It--it's a pure text adventure which relies on puns and figures of speech. Though it's text-focused, it feels more like a fun quiz than a real text adventure. The plot is, nominally, about rescuing a city named Punster from out-of-control words. Still, I would bet Nord was really an excuse to serve up clever word play that didn't quite fit in other games. If that's true, it was a good one.	4/5
	Wasteland review (APP2) Reviewed on August 28, 2009 Vegas is a wild place, so I've heard. If the top-down classic RPG Wasteland is to be believed, not even nuclear war can keep it down. The surrounding towns that survived the blast have panicked, but Vegas's gang bosses still have the upper hand on the invading robots--just--and may even have information on destroying them for good. That's Wasteland: a game which skewers not only fears of nuclear war but also stale RPG conventions----and you, if you try to cheat.	5/5
	Robotron: 2084 review (ARC) Reviewed on August 20, 2009 Robotron: 2084 has lasted and evolved for me well beyond my expectations. It's the only arcade cabinet I'd still throw money into: an overhead arena shootout, dazzling when you suck at it and intricate once you actually get good. You, a cyborg from a failed genetic experiment, must protect wandering humans from Robotrons, whose logic circuits have dictated that destroying their human creators is the next step in the quest for perfection. The double-joystick controls--one fires, one moves-...	4.5/5
	Ballyhoo review (APP2) Reviewed on August 15, 2009 Infocom's text adventure Ballyhoo turns a circus into a deadly kidnapping mystery, never sacrificing reality for dramatic tension. Chelsea Munrab, the daughter of circus owner Thomas Munrab, has been kidnapped. As a straggler from the show's crowd, you hear a conversation between Munrab and the detective in your town. Munrab blames the locals and suggests the detective do the same.	4/5
	It's Mr Pants review (GBA) Reviewed on July 29, 2009 It's Mr. Pants, a garish cacophony of destructive glee, trashed my lingering Tetris habit with love, weirdness and dented trophies. Imperfection, too, from the scribbled backgrounds to the game strategies. The Cockney kibitzing of Mr. Pants, an egg-chested fellow with stick limbs and red underpants bigger than his head, combines with several trombone-folly tunes for an upbeat yet relaxed experience.	4.5/5
	Rocky's Boots review (APP2) Reviewed on July 25, 2009 Rocky's Boots, like Warren Robinett's more famous Atari 2600 hit Adventure, features you as a cursor running through rooms of many wall textures and colors. It's an educational game, though, not an adventure. You build logic machines to sort shapes with positive and negative values. Or you don't have to. Even the tutorials and sandboxes can keep you wrapped up for a while. Though the end puzzles get maddeningly difficult for the targeted age group, Rocky's Boots provides han...	3.5/5
	Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon review (TG16) Reviewed on July 23, 2009 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) provided a formula for RPG's, but unfortunately the licensed computer games focused on the formulas without trying for anything approaching creativity. Order of the Griffon (OotG,) a Turbografx-16 only entry, is fun without being especially good, largely helped by ignoring the more arcane AD&D features nobody cares about. With nothing resembling original plot (hunt down a vampire) or items, and a relatively small world, it sputters along with li...	3/5
	Olympic Decathlon review (APP2) Reviewed on July 19, 2009 Everyone knows about the free card games you get with Windows, but they are nothing compared to Microsoft's wonderful early Eighties game, Decathlon. It simulated all ten events of its namesake, and you could practice or play through them all; Decathlon telescoped a grueling two-day affair into an intense thirty minutes. Even friends with the latest consoles enjoyed getting better and almost beating me, and I had fun mostly winning. We took breaks between events, just like real ath...	4/5
	Munchman review (TI99) Reviewed on July 17, 2009 Many home maze-chomp games in the eighties tried to emulate Pac-Man, maybe adding something, with weird mazes, one-way doors, turning walls, keys and so forth. In theory, at least. Some pretended like giving more frequent extra lives was a big bonus over the arcade, when really they'd just gotten your money anyway. Most barely went beyond adding graphic detail, shifting point values, or changing sounds or the reward in the center. Some subtracted it, like the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man. Munch...	3.5/5

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