![Headphones Review Round Up [Hardware]: SIVGA SV021, VR500, UX3000, and VR2000](/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/unnamed-5.jpg "Headphones Review Round Up [Hardware]: SIVGA SV021, VR500, UX3000, and VR2000")
Headphones Review Round Up [Hardware]: SIVGA SV021, VR500, UX3000, and VR2000
Update: SIVGA SV021 tested and rated!![Boulies Elite Max Chair [Hardware] Review – Assemble, Adjust, Relax](/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/boulies-elite-max-chair-review.jpg "Boulies Elite Max Chair [Hardware] Review – Assemble, Adjust, Relax")
Boulies Elite Max Chair [Hardware] Review – Assemble, Adjust, Relax
What do we think of the Boulies Elite Max Chair?![Red Magic 9S Pro [Hardware] Review – The New Standard For Mobile Gaming?](/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/red-magic-9s-pro.jpg "Red Magic 9S Pro [Hardware] Review – The New Standard For Mobile Gaming?")
Red Magic 9S Pro [Hardware] Review – The New Standard For Mobile Gaming?
My Red Magic 9S Pro Review puts this incredible bit of tech through its paces to determine whether it's worth your money.
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Category: Reviews
Fun Town Review
For younger gamers, sometimes it's okay if the line between a game and a learning app gets a little blurry. That "best of both worlds" quality definitely applies to Fun Town, the latest release from British studio Touch & Learn. Combining a colorful, engaging place to explore with some solid early life lessons turns out to be a winning formula, one that parents will appreciate no matter how they decide to classify it.The first thing people of any age will notice about Fun Town is that it has no instructions. That seems to be very much by design, as the whole idea behind the titular town is that kids should figure it out by jumping right in and interacting with it. That's done by touching out on the main street to see what happens, and all of the town's citizens and vehicles will respond with sounds and motion when tapped."There also aren't any letters in town, so reading isn't a prerequisite to play. The town's businesses can be identified by their signage - the candy shop has lollipops, the banks have big pictures of money, and so on. Tapping on a store gets you inside to play a mini-game, but there are others in places you might not first expect (like the phone booth and stoplight). Kids can and will figure out that nothing should be ignored.
Team Monster Review
Team Monster is another one of those combination games that hybridizes a couple of gameplay ideas, in this case monster collection with line-drawing strategy, and actually manages it to great effect. Within the first minute I was intrigued by the idea (and the lovely visuals). After a couple of hours, however, the glacial pacing had drained almost all of the fun out of it.When a lone human and a talking chicken wash up on the shores of a mysterious island, it doesn't take long for adventure to follow. Within moments of regaining consciousness the duo encounters and befriends a wild monster, who then jumps to their defense against some other far nastier denizens. Once the tutorial dust settles, players will have a team of up to four creatures to command as they fight their way through wave after wave of corrupted monsters and really, really large bosses. It's all about dragging a line from creatures to their targets (locations, enemies, or allies) and knowing when to activate their special abilities - which will vary depending on whether a monster is a Ranged or Melee Attacker, Healer, or Tanker."Aside from looking absolutely fantastic - which it does thanks to some great-looking creatures and animations - Team Monster also manages to nail the controls quite well. Dragging to various targets is a snap, and it's also possible to do the same using the monster portraits at the top-left portion of the screen. Dragging from portrait to portrait, portrait to enemy, ally to portrait, and so on ensures that it's always possible to issue the proper commands no matter how hectic the battlefield gets. And I have to say, being able to drag from the "All" icon is fantastic. It contextually issues orders to the entire team all at once - move or attack, with non-attackers (i.e. Healers) not doing anything.
Hatch Review
Hatch is a wholly charming, visually polished virtual pet simulator that will quickly take over your phone and heart. Its Disney-quality opening film sets the standard for the colorful, crisp, and youthful aura the rest of the app successfully maintains. The adoptable creature of Hatch, the Fugu, is a low maintenance, easy-to-please sphere of joy who exists solely to love and be loved by its owner—you. It's easy to be swept up in Fugu euphoria, enchanted by the adorable face that erupts from an egg and the gorgeous, interactive world that surrounds it. But this delight withers as the few ways to interact with your Fugu and its world become repetitive, its lack of growth becomes dull, and your time with it becomes more memorized patterns than playful discoveries.The beginning of your Fugu-owning journey, though, is engaging and whimsical. We learn from the app's opening film that "long before dogs or cats were domesticated, man had another best friend." That friend was the Fugu. Although they are somewhat doglike in appearance, Fugus were born from eggs that would appear almost magically in a nearby river. Upon hatching, the Fugu became completely loyal to the person that fed and loved it, remaining their companion for life. As Fugu eggs became precious, fought-over commodities, fewer and fewer floated downstream until the Fugu simply ceased to exist. "That is, until today—for some unknown reason. A young Fugu-fan named Max has stumbled upon a rare Fugu egg in the forest and wants to share it with you. Although he's too young to care for a Fugu alone, he knows all about their history and care and will gladly share this knowledge if you allow him to play with your new pet when you're away. Max acts as Hatch's mini-guide to the world of Fugus, announcing things like birthdays and providing items via his shop.
Demon Tribe Review
Demon Tribe is an ambitious attempt to combine collectible card battle games with MOBA-style action, and it works quite well - as long as you have the patience to figure out what's going on. I've played a lot of CCGs in my time - one of the hazards of the job - and I expected more of the same with Demon Tribe. It's not exactly a genre known for innovation and original gameplay, after all, and a quick, cursory glance offered little to suggest that this game would be any different. So it was a surprise to find that it boasts a far greater degree of complexity than I'd anticipated, and that my CCG autopilot would be of limited use.You begin Demon Tribe under rather hazy circumstances as the newly-chosen director of Omega Surveillance, a sort of secret, supernatural agency charged with monitoring the fragile border between the Waking and Dream worlds (or something like that - the introductory tutorial is pretty heavily loaded and blows by quickly); and long story short, the job of keeping our world from being overrun by demons is now in your hands.You don't defend the border directly, however. Instead, you direct a squad of agents into battle, controlling their actions in single-player "assault battles" as well as multiplayer co-operative battles and PvP brawls of up to six players. Each agent is a unique character and carries a "deck" of demon forms that they can assume during fights. This is where the CCG angle manifests: demons are "summoned" with gems that are acquired as you play and then added to your agents' repertoire. In a way, it's a bit like having multiple custom decks that can be used to handle different situations and combined for bigger battles.
Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas Review
Let's get this out of the way: Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas is the Zelda-like to end all Zelda-likes. Its similarities to and inspirations from The Legend of Zelda—especially Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass—are numerous, pervasive, and obvious. From its silent, sword-wielding, pot-smashing protagonist to its Zora-like Gillmen to its secondary B-equipment—bombs, bow, and boots—Oceanhorn wears its muse on its sleeve. Despite its substantial list of intentional similarities, though, Oceanhorn manages to come across as a self-assured action-adventure as well as a respectful homage to one of Nintendo's finest.The story begins shortly after our unnamed hero's father sets out to find and destroy the great monster, Oceanhorn. The hero—a young boy who's already lost his mother—goes to stay with a hermitic friend of his father's on a small island. This friend soon recognizes that the boy shares the same fate as his father, and must also seek out Oceanhorn before it tears their world apart. What follows is a lengthy adventure across the sprawling, aquatic map of Oceanhorn as the hero seeks out items of power that will help him defeat the beast. While Oceanhorn's story is not its strongest point, it provides reason enough to make this journey and fills in more interesting gaps via logbook entries your father left around the world."The real star is that world, and the islands, dungeons, and challenges that populate it. Uncharted Seas is exactly that: a world built on ocean, pockmarked by separate islands that are only accessible by boat. Even without the added traveling between islands—which is much faster than in Wind Waker—the world still feels vast and open, with each island featuring its own characteristics and secrets. The Withered Lands is a desolate, sparse desert with striking rock formations; Graveyard Island is foggy and silent, with notably flat terrain; and Gillfolk's Drop—the fishlike Gillmen's home island—is a sandy paradise surrounding their shimmering hideaway. Despite these distinctions, every island shares certain structural elements that tie it to the others to create a cohesive universe: items and enemies, puzzles and logic, and a verticality that gives each area a 3D depth.
Flick Kick Football Legends Review
Soccer, or football as they call it everywhere but here in America, is a funny game. Sometimes you lose sight of how humorous it can be until a game reminds you, which is what Flick Kick Football Legends does so well. The gameplay isn't too shabby either, but a veritable barrage of ads kills the mood a bit. Actually, the onslaught kills it more than a bit, which is rather unfortunate.You won't find a more pleasantly surprising set-up for a game than this one, which places you at the helm of a football squad seeking to reclaim some of its lost glory. The thing is, the rebuilding is only necessary because one of the star player's power-up shots went awry, killing the old manager in a fiery explosion. It's a clever bit of poking fun at video game conventions that's presented in comic book style, and as an added bonus, the tutorial is woven into it too.As you'll soon discover, the ghost of the old skipper is still around to help mentor you. With his help, you set off to advance back up through the league system in what appears to be a fictional 1970s England, building up your team with better players and winning promotions to ever tougher leagues. In between matches, you're offered some choose-your-own-adventure style decisions which could lead to added funds or bonus experience points for your players if you pick right, and cost you coins or debuff your stars if you don't.Castle of Illusion Review
Before we get into this, a disclaimer: This reviewer has never played Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse in its original release for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive. As such, no comparisons to the original game are to be found in this review, and it will only be judged on its own merits. That said, this iOS port of the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3/PC remake is good. Quite good, in fact, and perhaps surprisingly so. Platformers can be hit or miss on the iPhone, especially when they weren't originally made with the system in mind; and when they fall, they can fall hard.Such is not the case here, though. While not perfect, Castle of Illusion still works well in the palm of your hand, and almost feels like it's been optimized to compensate for its shortcomings. The biggest issue we had was with the controls, which feel a bit sticky when you try to move in just about any direction except to the right. This provides a bit of a problem when you need to duck, or worse, when the left-right portions change to full-on 3D movement, which the game does seamlessly otherwise."Even so, the game doesn't seem to have a standard lives system, as such games from the era of the original typically did. On occasion, including near the start, you might run into a situation where it feels like a checkpoint would be handy, but for the most part, they're frequent and the lack of lives means you can continue trying as much as you need to in order to get it right.
Skee-Ball Arcade Review
The death of arcades threw up a cloud of fallout that subsequently killed almost everything even associated with the neon-lit caves of old. Arcade cabinets weren't the only machines that dissolved into irrelevance: classics like Whack-a-Mole and skee-ball faded away with them. There are still a few ways to get your skee ball fix, however. You can hang around a Chuck E Cheese and push ahead of the kids lined up in front of you (not recommended), or you can download Skee-Ball Arcade by Scopely.Other skee ball apps have come and gone from the App Store, but Skee-Ball Arcade is the first officially licensed game. It honors its license, too; this is the most authentic skee ball experience you're going to find outside of some bowling alley's decrepit video game corner.Playing skee-ball is a bit like playing on a small, elevated bowling course (if you're Canadian, picture five-pin bowling conducted on a miniaturized lane full of speed bumps and holes). You're allotted a certain number of small balls, which you roll up and over a series of rubber barriers. Behind each barrier is a hole that corresponds to a score. If your ball goes into a hole, you're rewarded with the marked number of points. Generally, the smaller and further away a barrier / hole combo is, the more points it's worth. When your game is over, you receive a string of tickets you can exchange at a counter for a comb or mustache wax.