Review Archives (All Reviews)

You are currently looking through all reviews for games that are available on every platform the site currently covers. Below, you will find reviews written by aschultz and sorted according to date of submission, with the newest content displaying first. As many as 20 results will display per page. If you would like to try a search with different parameters, specify them below and submit a new search.

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	Defenders of Dynatron City review (NES) Reviewed on May 15, 2009 As bad as Defenders of Dynatron City was, it was just a totally unfair judgement call away from being middling to good. Somehow, though, a game that tries so hard at being weird just wouldn't WANT to be average, if games had feelings. The description promises "Nobody's normal...six really cool superheroes...and an awful lot of enemies." The imagination is there, with Gatomorphs and Loogiehawks and some amusing backgrounds. About what you'd expect from the folks who brought you Sam and Max...	2/5
	The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight review (NES) Reviewed on April 26, 2009 As a kid I liked Bard's Tale 2(BT2) and dreamed of getting an NES. But I never imagined someone would put the two together. So imagine my surprise twenty years after playing the game that, indeed, someone else had had the same idea I did! They'd had to shrink the dungeons down, and the riddles had to go, but what was left was a game that was pretty fun both before and after I knew what those weird hiragana and katakana spell glyphs meant. Though it was probably a bit easy after someone translate...	4/5
	Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise review (NES) Reviewed on April 24, 2009 Lots of games give you characters that kick butt, but only Secret Scout forces yours to. If you groaned at this pun, it is not as painful as trying to solve this game. The game almost could be good. It has a sizable map, items you have to ration, and a variety of scenes. It features a real underdog, too--your scout can barely kick in front of himself, and enemies quicker than him can hit him multiple times. Once you figure out how to navigate this mess, though, the game quickly gets repetitive.	1/5
	Gegege no Kitarou 2: Youkai Gundan no Chousen review (NES) Reviewed on April 17, 2009 Gegege no Kitaro 2(GGG) starts as a simple quest to rescue your girlfriend, but you know how it is in RPGs. The scope gets bigger, and to get her back you have to banish a dragon-fellow named Kyubi Kitsune to save the world or, in this case, an island shaped a lot like Japan. Not that you have to know any Japanese history, or anything about the anime series Gegege stars in. You just cut down monsters, find items, and roam through cool underground caverns to get to places you're not quite suppose...	4/5
	Progress Quest review (PC) Reviewed on April 15, 2009 Have you ever played an RPG for two hours and not managed to get anything done due to trying one more fight before your next save, or just losing your way in a maze, winding up worse off than you started? Perhaps you've spent frustrating time trying to break into a top-ten score list in a shooter or puzzler. Well, with so little guaranteed in this crazy world there are still things you can rely on. Simple things.	4.5/5
	Beyond Zork review (APP2) Reviewed on April 15, 2009 Being an RPG and Zork fan, I was thrilled to learn of Infocom’s plans to combine the two in Beyond Zork (BZ.) You get levels and player stats instead of the usual points for a text adventure, but even crazier, there’s no elvish sword or brass lantern-and most of the game’s completely above ground! Finding your ultimate goal, the Coconut of Quendor, is exhausting, and even with a cluebook, BZ provides many dead ends despite a few too many puzzles that are little more than manual-based copy-protec...	3.5/5
	Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz review (APP2) Reviewed on April 15, 2009 The Zork series spawned an impressive group of knock-off products which, although never destined to make a killing, made Infocom notorious. The packaging itself was always worth savings, with its jokes and going so far beyond the expected instruction cards(later it would provide a useful stab at copy protection.) The 'New Zork Times,' which later under threat of lawsuit was forced to change its name. And gamebooks that helped me score the most points I'd ever gotten in an Infocom text adventu...	4.5/5
	Zork III: The Dungeon Master review (APP2) Reviewed on April 15, 2009 Sadly, Zork lost its humor and spontaneity somewhere between II and III. The final game, in which you must seek to take over the Dungeon Master's mantle, was a disappointment for me even discounting that the packaging wasn't as cheery as before. Most of its jokes are homages to the first two games, and there are two frighteningly hard puzzles required to win. And the worst part is that, unlike the previous installments, the score is not terribly complex. In Zork I and II you got points for f...	2.5/5
	Zork: The Great Underground Empire review (APP2) Reviewed on April 15, 2009 One of the first computer game series ever starts in front of a white house. You need to discover twenty treasures and find the passage to the sequel, Zork II. There's not a ton of plot, but you'll have to deal with two odd mazes, a lantern that dims as the game goes on(once it goes out, you may be stuck by grues--who engendered the word gruesome, of course--that roam in the darkness,) two opponents, a nasty river and even some undead spirits. There's enough of an assortment of items, from th...	4/5
	Jawbreaker review (APP2) Reviewed on April 15, 2009 When I was a kid, I liked playing with a calculator. I had enormous fun finding out that 1/9 was .111 repeating. Then I got brave and found that 1/7 was, in fact, .142857 repeating. Which I made sure of it several times. One crazy day I tried 1/17. It took several long minutes of grueling long division, souring me on calculators. But then I discovered video games, which were even more fun than typing in 773440 on an LCD calculator. As much as I loved arcade games, though, some were mean. Even th...	2/5
	Galaxian review (APP2) Reviewed on April 08, 2009 It's hard to imagine an arcade game I hate more than Galaxian. In fact, after completing a couple of levels on an arcade machine(free, no less,) I walked away out of exasperation. The Apple version, however, is patently different. It's faster and more intense, and the aliens swoop maniacally at you. So Galaxian feels more like Galaga than its arcade namesake, though without the memorable bonus rounds. You feel it shouldn't be hard and can vacillate between "this is easy" and "oh no, going to die...	4/5
	Champions of Krynn review (PC) Reviewed on April 07, 2009 The AD&D Gold Box games never evolved terribly much, but on the other hand, they never did anything too wrong, either. And though the Krynn series moved to a different continent, you really have more of the same. You have a new race and moon phase-dependent magic classes, and some new monster names and character classes. There's a tricky end series it's hard to turn back from, but all in all it's a comfortably little game you should be confident you can plug-and-chug through. It's great to feel ...	2/5
	Gamma Goblins review (APP2) Reviewed on April 07, 2009 So many early Apple games copied arcade games that weren't much good, and I am sorry to that Gamma Goblins is not a successfully entertaining port of Astro Blaster. It almost makes it, though. The idea is straightforward and sensible, with waves of different monsters coming down in formation. But you have too many random scenarios where you can be trapped into losing a life. Having seven lives does not mitigate this, though the game has a nice ending scene after you go through four iterations of...	3/5
	Taxman review (APP2) Reviewed on April 06, 2009 Pac-Man, in a sense, has lasted beyond just its name. You have the occasional conversion to 3-d bearing the name proper, but you also have a lot of games where the object is to find everything. The fun of avoiding four palette-swapped meanies never really dies, and in fact many people made a different game on the various Pac-Man rip-offs just by speeding up and slowing down monsters, or giving them a different starting pattern. Such games deserved to be, and were, pirated, but at no great gain t...	3.5/5
	Miner review (APP2) Reviewed on April 03, 2009 Anyone who's had a favorite author and really wanted to learn more about him probably read that author's juvenalia. Which was not very good, but you could make excuses about how it shaped what was to come if you wanted, or you can say "Heck! Even I can do better than this!" and be inspired to write something. Works for software, too. Doug Smith, the creator of Lode Runner,(LR) admitted Miner was not so hot in an interview in the PS1 version of the game. You can see flashes of somet...	1/5
	Secret of the Silver Blades review (PC) Reviewed on April 03, 2009 My AD&D computer experience stopped a game too soon, as I laid out several weeks' allowance on the first two, Pool of Radiance(PoR) and Curse of the Azure Bonds(CoA). Most of the fun from them was probably because my mother had warned me off paper AD&D as a kid. She'd have been glad to know how ridiculous combats fighting fifty goblins on the Apple got. I assumed a sequel would be bigger-badder-more, and I figured the combat was just something I had to sit through to appreciate the mapping and s...	3.5/5
	Wally Bear and the No Gang review (NES) Reviewed on June 15, 2004 Few games invite self-parody from first impressions as readily as Wally Bear and the NO Gang. You may have bad or frustrating games, such as Hydlide or Action 52, didactic efforts with a legitimate streak of imagination such as Bible Adventures, or funny ones aware they're a bit simple. But a bear on his skateboard, out to convince other animals with lower self-esteem(their words) that drugs and gangs are a bad idea seems naive. Or perhaps it's just trying to market itself to naive types. In oth...	1/5
	Bubble Bath Babes review (NES) Reviewed on June 11, 2004 Bubble Bath Babes(BBB) is well-known in hard-core NES gamer circles for featuring frontal nudity. It's a puzzle game featuring bubble tetrads that rise up into a formation, and if you get a clump of four or more connected bubbles of the same color, they disappear. After several plays, I found the generic nude woman very annoying because she blocked my view of the piece I needed to rotate and quickly place in the right spot. Her friends who disrobe as you get further through a level aren't...	2.5/5
	Mr. Driller review (DC) Reviewed on June 02, 2004 I never liked to play with plain blocks as a kid, and I wasn't terribly destructive either, but knock me over if I don't find joy in the ways game developers allow the populace to bash endless computerized blocks together and make them vanish. Enter Mr. Driller, a cute little potholder-faced fellow that lets you do this in several ways and scenarios. But it's his first effort, so he doesn't have the concept of fun down pat, even though he looks like he could.	3/5
	Ceiling Zero review (APP2) Reviewed on June 01, 2004 As I became slowly disenchanted with Space Invaders, I looked to the Apple for new variants. I just wanted to shoot things up, which was good, because many early Apple games offered nothing more. Ceiling Zero(CZ) had lots of shooting and, worse yet, a flowerpot-shaped boss ship that went FWEEE to start things off. I suppose there was no shortage of shooters that trapped you unfairly with random incidents, but when I was young, that didn't bother me. I wasn’t good enough for that to be a factor.	1.5/5

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