Gamezebo
Open main menu
Search

I'm a video game critic, game designer and obsessive gamer. I play everything, but my real love is old school point-and-click adventure games so when the zombies come, I'll be hunkered down in a bunker with my Keurig, my dogs, and a copy of Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within.
  • Brave Tales Review
    Reviews
    Brave Tales Review

    By

    Social games are more or less dominated by the hidden object, sim, and match-three genres, so it's nice when something other than those comes along. Brave Tales, the new fantasy RPG by Avallon Alliance and Renatus Media offers an unusual kind of gameplay (for casual games anyway) and great-looking graphics. Unfortunately, its potential is limited by its over-dependence on in-game purchases and an overall feeling of incompleteness.What's likely to draw you to Brave Tales in the first place is its artwork. The game's characters are extremely well-designed (its red-headed female archer calls to mind Merida from Pixar's Brave) and its backgrounds are worthy of an animated series. Its orchestral music adds to these exceptional visuals, and the three together create an impressively well-made sensory package. Within this beautiful atmosphere, you're asked to take control of a party of heroes whose goal—as heroes' goals usually are—is to traverse the land banishing evil and protecting the weak."Brave Tales is a role-playing game as well as a social game, and considering it's meant for a casual audience, has a surprisingly deep amount of role-playing gameplay. You start with three heroes: Arthur the warrior, Diana the archer, and Peter the healer, all three of whom have different skills (these are determined by which skill runes you equip) and use different weapons and armor. Down the line you encounter other characters with even more skills and gear, and the look of everyone can be changed if you're willing to spend gold on new skins.During battle, all of your heroes can be controlled individually, so you can move them and direct them to attack specific targets. Each of them has special attacks on cool-down timers that can be executed provided you have enough Mana, and each will auto-attack by default. One of the cool things about combat is that downed heroes can be resurrected as long as you have the gold to pay for it, so if you're this close to winning, one dead party member doesn't cause a frustrating loss.
  • Numerity Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Numerity Review

    By

    It's funny how much money some companies will spend making complex video games when so often, simplicity is best. Then again, making something simple that's also sophisticated and entertaining isn't exactly easy. Zedarus Games' new number-based search game Numerity is a prime example of sophisticated minimalism—part math drill and part hidden object game, it spins an amazing amount of fun from some very basic elements.The main idea in Numerity is to find specific numbers hidden within a complex jumble of them. To begin with, the game assigns these to you and you simply locate and tap them. Tapping makes every instance of the number, wherever it's located within the numerical medley, appear highlighted in black. You continue doing this as an on-screen counter tracks your progress all the way to 100%, and then you watch in delight as the camera moves back and reveals the image you've been building. It's kind of ridiculous how satisfying that is, reminiscent in a way to finally seeing the image appear in those infuriating stereogram things."Anyway, at first the images are of famous faces like Audrey Hepburn and John Lennon; then they move on to animals, famous landmarks (like the Eiffel Tower), lifestyle imagery, and gadgets. Each category has ten levels (that's fifty levels total) and the game changes and becomes more difficult from one category to the next. Where at first you're merely given numbers, you're then asked to do simple math problems to arrive at them before being able to search. Before you math-o-phobes out there run away screaming, the problems here are no harder than 29 + 10, 91-17 or 3 x 5, a setup that's accessible to players of basically all ages.
  • Blue Rose Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Blue Rose Review

    By

    Visual novels are fairly new in this country, but thanks to the popularity of the iPad and other tablets, they're quickly gaining ground. A crossover between graphic novels and games, they emphasize story and give players the power to alter it to varying degrees. Blue Rose, the new visual novel from White Cat, has everything an A-list visual novel needs: nice graphics, pleasant music, and player choice—but it also boasts a collection of bothersome flaws that prevent it from rising to that same level of greatness.Blue Rose makes a good first impression with 2D graphics that are clearly indebted to Japanese anime. Men and women are attractively androgynous and have the typical anime googly-eyed, tiny-nosed, heart-shaped faces. Blue Rose is indebted to anime in other ways as well, such as in its melodramatic approach to storytelling. Anime stories are characterized by save-the-world plot lines filled with noblemen, magic, reluctant heroes, love triangles, and corny humor. Blue Rose has it all."In this scenario, you're Lena, a young Templar. Your story kicks off with an action-filled scene on the edge of a cliff. You and a cohort of Templar veterans are battling a dragon, desperately trying to protect a noblewoman called Lady Adale. Two kingdoms are at war, and it's hoped that the Lady can perform some critical fence-mending. During the battle, however, you're knocked unconscious and awake in a strange room. The owner of it is a handsome but defensive young hunter who seems to want to get rid of you. To his chagrin, you discover his village which is hidden in a mountain area believed to be inhabitable. Who is this surly young man? How has a village full of people kept itself a secret? After battling a dragon, why are you even alive?Blue Rose sets us up to solve these and many other interesting mysteries. It also serves up the promise of romance. Despite his hostility, the young hunter's obviously your first suitor. The antagonism between the two of you goes into typical Taming of the Shrew territory as it's clear the guy's being a jerk because he likes you. If he isn't to your taste though, you've got other hunky options. If you're not into the hunter, then why not the sly, wise-cracking rogue, or the stern-but-sexy Templar officer?
  • Juice Cubes Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    Juice Cubes Review

    By

    The new trend in match-three games is to draw lines through matching icons rather than shifting their positions. This interesting evolution not only gives players a new way to enjoy matching three, but it challenges them to solve similar issues by distinctly different means. Pocket Playlab's free-to-play Juice Cubes embraces the trend in hopes of attracting some of the Candy Crush Saga crowd; unfortunately, it fails to convince us that fruit is better for you than candy.Juice Cubes (which I keep wanting to call "Juicy Fruit") is born of a collaboration between Rovio Stars, the publishing arm of Rovio Entertainment (known for the Angry Birds franchise) and Pocket Playlab, the makers of another cube-themed game, Lost Cubes. (Fans of Lost Cubes, be warned—Juice Cubes' gameplay is completely different.) It's set among a series of small islands inhabited by things like sentient hermit crabs, pirates, and giant octopi, and these nautical natives all have one thing in common—they have problems. In their fancifully fluid world, those problems are solved by clearing levels using an easy-to-learn match-three technique, and who better to do that than you?"As mentioned before, Juice Cubes employs a match-three method wherein you connect static icons by drawing lines through them. The nine-by-nine board is covered with apples, strawberries, bananas, and coconuts and these can be connected vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. As "match-three" implies, matches require three or more of the same icon; matched icons burst, allowing the remaining ones to cascade toward the bottom of the screen. Unlike other games in the genre, in Juice Cubes there's no such thing as automatic matching, so cascades do nothing but rearrange the board. This makes for slightly different gameplay, but also eliminates the possibility of achieving the explosive random combo-chains achievable in games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush.
  • Westbound Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    Westbound Review

    By

    Kiwi Inc. may be a young company, but its games have already been numbered among the Top 100 Grossing applications on Google Play. This week, the company attempts to crack the Top 100 list once again with western-themed social sim, Westbound. This FarmVille-like mobile title features everything we've come to expect from town-building games; unfortunately, it does nothing to advance them.Westbound begins without preamble, and immediately upon starting, you're whisked away to a desert location where you find a guy trapped under a wagon wheel. You let him out, and he asks for help exploring the nearby cliffs. You go along with the idea (because if you don't, the game's over), and the two of you find a pretty lady trapped under some rubble. You help her out (while wondering if everyone out West just stands around waiting for something to fall on them), and then the three of you set about constructing a settlement.This all sounds fairly dynamic, but like everything in this kind of game, it's all accomplished by the repetition of two things: clicking and waiting. Westbound teaches you this click/wait technique in a brief tutorial that demonstrates building structures, planting and harvesting fields, removing random debris, and exploring the surrounding cliffs. It then introduces you to quests, which are simple assignments given to you by the main characters. You might, for instance, be asked to perform some kind of settlement-expanding task like "plant two apple trees" or "build a barn." While not particularly thrilling, these tasks do move the game along by giving you specific things to do. Once they dry up however, you're faced with a choice: extend your play time by spending money every few minutes, or stop playing altogether.
  • Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! Review

    By

    Tower defense games are well on their way to being as overused as endless runners, but this month Big Fish brings us another—the aptly-named, free-to-play zombie killer Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! Hoping to conquer the unpredictable social game genre, developer Game Forest succeeds in creating some amusingly chaotic, survival-style gameplay. Once things become more challenging though, they fail to make the free-to-play fun last long enough.There's always something that turns ordinary people into rabid, brain-munching monsters, and in Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! it's a space rock that falls from the sky. This glowing boulder lands in the desert where the military quickly transforms its desolate landing site into a high-security research lab. As happens so often at such facilities, something goes terribly wrong. The rock infects everyone there and soon after, scientists, soldiers, and lab technicians pour from the compound, googly-eyed and drooling. Your job—along with two of your most enthusiastic gun-toting friends—is to take each and every one of them out.Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! is played from a top-down perspective with a three person squad located at the bottom of the screen. The zombies approach from the top through rubble-filled city streets, over train tracks and across bridges, and you pick them off with standard-issue machine guns. It's pretty straightforward, but the game does offer an interesting twist in its unusual approach to match-three. Match-three here is much more organic, and completely avoids the whole colored icon/grid idea. It also eschews the notion of swapping icons and instead employs a uniquely dynamic method of matching three.
  • Spirit Stones Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    Spirit Stones Review

    By

    Generally speaking, match-three gamers don't run with role-playing gamers or trading card gamers, but Gamevil, one of South Korea's largest mobile game publishers, plans to alter that. Aiming to make these mismates mingle, Gamevil brings us Spirit Stones, a new three-genre mash-up that bravely blends bits of match-three, bobs of RPG, and driblets of TCG. Although occasionally brought down by repetition and missing sound and interface elements, Spirit Stones basically blows the doors off, thanks to dynamic deck-building and habit-forming combat.In terms of narrative, Spirit Stones falls on the match-three end of the spectrum—meaning, there's not much of one. The context is a fairly predictable good-versus-evil kind of thing, with you being tasked with using the power of the Ancient Gods (the Spirit Stones) to save the kingdom of Dulaz (a place that really should be re-named "The Kingdom of Busty Women," by the look of its subjects). To attain these powerful stones, you must first fight your way through various lands, past all manner of hostile undesirables. Fortunately, you don't have to do it alone: you get to take a party of your bustiest—I mean trustiest, friends with you."All joking aside, it's hard not to notice the 'amplitude' of your warriors since Spirit Stones has enthusiastically embraced an aesthetic that's highly stripperific. Even so, each card displays a great-looking character that's beautifully rendered, and there are an amazing number of them. (Incidentally, characters, 90% of whom are female, are also rendered in battle as weird—and slightly disturbing—baby-faced-but-boobsy bobble-heads.) Credit should definitely be given since a lot of work was put into creating the gorgeous character art, not only for the base cards, but for their enhanced variants.(The game's sound on the other hand, could use some work. Battle result screens seem to be completely lacking music and sound, and the music loop during battle is nothing short of maddening.)
  • Duck Dynasty: Battle of the Beards Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Duck Dynasty: Battle of the Beards Review

    By

    Duck Dynasty is now the most-watched non-fiction series in cable TV history, and the reason for that is a charismatic quartet by the name of Robertson. The Robertson family became millionaires thanks to their Duck Commander duck calls, and this month family patriarch Phil, his brother Si, and sons Willie and Jase become immortal in a silly but diverting little iPad game called appropriately, Duck Dynasty: Battle of the Beards.As you might imagine, Battle of the Beards isn't exactly the video game equivalent of A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, its modest collection of absurd mini-games makes it closer to a hairy version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but nonetheless, it's entertaining. The game starts by having you customize your own bland yuppie character: a plain old clean-shaven guy with short hair and a white t-shirt. After this, you're thrown into a series of mini-games, starting at intensity level 1."Naturally, these are all related to Duck Dynasty, so there's one that shows open company boxes gliding by on a conveyor belt, waiting for you to tape them up. Other games want you to scrub back and forth on the touch screen either to dye the beard of the image-conscious Willie or to wake Si up from an afternoon nap. There's a whole range of redneck activities like catching frogs and fish, shooting ducks, squirrels, and bucks, tossing hot chili peppers into Jase's mouth (or donuts into Si's), putting on Phil's hunting war paint, or blowing up hunting blinds and beaver dams. There's even a game that tests your ability to tell the difference between tasty wild berries and nasty raccoon droppings. It's not, as they say, "rocket science." Battle of the Beards is a collection of extremely simple activities, some of which take literally five seconds to perform.