![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
Papa Sangre II Review
In the world of Papa Sangre II, there are no such things as video games, or mobile devices, or even games called Papa Sangre, because the sad truth of the matter is that you are dead. Yup, you bit the big one. Everything you're seeing around you right now (including this review) is actually just the last waning memory of your long-lost life that you've still managed to hold onto. The good news is that there's still a way for you to be brought back into existence, and it just so happens to involve playing through one of the most captivating, brilliant, and downright horrifying mobile games ever made by the living world you've left behind. Lucky you.I'll be talking primarily about sound in this review, because as a completely auditory horror adventure, Papa Sangre II comes devoid of any real visuals. But the biggest highlight of the experience is in listening to the eerie and gravelly narration of Sean Bean, the A-list actor who's appeared in such modern classics as The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Bean serves as the perfect companion for your unsettling adventure, and he provides an immaculate balance between helping you proceed with pertinent instructions and information on how to play, and being just grim and cynical enough to keep you on your toes and never completely trusting of this dark and mysterious voice in your head. I think this probably goes without saying by now, but Bean's vocal performance is simply astounding here.To play the game is simple, although there are a few minor prerequisites that you'll need to be aware of before entering the haunting Museum of Memories for the first time. For one thing, wearing headphones is an absolute must, as a large part of the gameplay involves determining which direction something is to your relevant location, and how the sounds ultimately travel around you from your left ear to your right. Second, the game is also based around your mobile device's gyroscopic features, so you'll need to be standing the entire time you play in order to give yourself the proper mobility for turning. When you turn around in a complete 360-degree circle, you'll actually be able to hear the many environmental sounds morphing and moving places around you, just as they would in real life. And lastly, as Bean will instruct you early on in the game, you have to keep your eyes closed, and you can't open them for any reason.
Echo Prime Review
It's been said that in space, no one can hear you scream. Supposedly it has something to do with science. But there can be echoes in space, at least according to Echo Prime, a sci-fi action game by Robot Entertainment. The echoes in this case are much cooler than simple reflections of sound, helping to make an otherwise run of the mill slash-and-blast fest into something a little more enjoyable.Though there's nothing immediately memorable about the protagonist of Echo Prime, he at least sports a character model that appeals to the little kid in all of us. Or as an actual little kid (my five-year-old son, to be specific) put it, "He looks like a guy in a robot suit with a gun and a sword!" His job is to set things right for humanity, or something of that nature, and fend off enemies called Slivers.The laser pistol and sword come in pretty handy for doing that, but the real alien-dispatching fun comes from Echoes, which are beings from another dimension who grant your hero special abilities thanks to a weakened barrier between planes. These can be passive or active and come in just about every flavor: simple buffs, heals, additional attacks, the whole enchilada.As your space warrior levels up, he can take more than one Echo into battle at a time, and they can be swapped out before each stage. On top of that, one extra Echo can be tapped into from another random player or a friend, adding both extra strategic options and an organic way to make the game more social. Other game developers, please take note.
Everyday Spelunker Review
It feels a bit eerie to be passing judgment on a game that has been on this earth for more years (and is therefore wiser) than myself. Yet this is the situation I find myself in, reviewing a special 30-year anniversary addition of Spelunker, previously available for the Atari, the Commodore 64, and the NES.Everyday Spelunker is a mobile version of the classic pot-holing game, with new touchscreen controls and slight adjustments to the difficulty: the only elements out of place compared to the original release. It's a decent conversion, but unless you're feeling nostalgic and want to pick this up for the memories, this is very much an experience that feels out of place in today's video game world."Players take control of an explorer who is plumbing the depths of a colossal cave. There's a lovely treasure right at the bottom, but to get there is easier said than done, thanks to a variety of traps, pits, and enemies that threaten your existence. Everyday Spelunker is all about dodging around, grabbing treasure, picking up keys, and making it to the end.Everyday Spelunker is very difficult. Holes will open up without warning and swallow you whole. Platforms teeter and ledges loom, all in aid of bringing about your demise. Just the tiniest of slips can lead to death, and while I haven't counted the exact number of things that can kill you in this game, I'm going to go ahead and estimate it at around 1 billion.
Stack Rabbit Review
Nature needed a palatable, easily-digestible meal for its carnivores, so it designed the bunny rabbit. That's not to say rabbits sit around and wait to be eaten. Anyone familiar with Watership Down knows the lapin race has its own blessings, including the ability to murder vegetable gardens with blood-chilling efficiency. Stack Rabbit is an action/match-three puzzle game about a rabbit that cuts down garden after garden (vegans: Viewer discretion is advised). This tasty little turnip from Disney is unique and highly addictive, though like the less healthy Candy Crush Saga, later levels of Stack Rabbitare obviously engineered to gobble up your lives in hopes that you'll buy more. Stack Rabbit's starring bunny is Ben, a fluffy white hopper who's been charged with babysitting his brother's kids. Thing is, Ben's brother evidently did not stop making it with his wife long enough to even breathe, and now there are a lot of hungry little mouths for Ben to feed. Luckily, there's a nearby farm with lots of vegetable plots ripe for raiding. Stack Rabbit's levels are set up on a grid. Most of the grid spaces are occupied by a vegetable, or by a sprout. When Ben hops into a fully-grown vegetable, he flings it upon his head (he's got a square head, and these are square vegetables). When he matches three or more identical vegetables, they go towards the total he needs to collect in order to move on to the next patch.There are conditions to collecting, though. Foremost, each patch is guarded by a dog that's not big on the idea of rabbits frolicking in his master's vegetable patches. Said pooch spends most of his time snoozing, but there's an alarm clock that goes off after a certain amount of moves, so Ben needs to do his thing before that happens. Every time you make a match, the move counter ticks down by one. The kicker is that most levels require you to collect vegetables in a certain order. So if the game calls for eggplants and you collect tomatoes, those tomatoes don't count towards your level progress.
Backyard Monsters: Unleashed Review
What was once a Facebook game is now a self-contained mobile experience. Backyard Monsters: Unleashed from KIXEYE is an upgraded version of the Facebook combat simulation game Backyard Monsters. The game has made the transition to the portable world without losing anything, bringing iOS gamers one of the most organized, satisfying, and hilarious freemium strategy games around.Backyard Monsters: Unleashed's setup will be familiar to anyone who's played a combat strategy game in the past: run your village, build and upgrade buildings, raise an army, go forth and conquer. Your little piece of property is a backyard surrounded by greenery. By placing resource generators, defense and miscellaneous structures, you can turn your tiny village into a sprawling war factory. One that's nigh invulnerable from neighboring backyards' attacks!"To go from zero to hero, Backyard Monsters: Unleashed spreads currency requirements out across four different types of resources: sticks, stones, putty, and goo. The first two make enough sense, as both are used to build basic and advanced structures, respectively. Goo is needed to spawn monsters, and it also serves as a currency for entering battle. Putty is used to construct certain buildings as well as to unlock new monsters. From what we can gather, monsters are basically just carefully shaped piles of squishy goop that live in stick houses. Doesn't stop them from being fierce on the battlefield, though.In addition to the resources above, Backyard Monsters: Unleashed also features "shiny," the game's "hurry-up" currency, along with an optional in-app purchase of an additional builder to let you work on more projects simultaneously. All resources are earned through normal play and as post-combat spoils, but you can also refill them with a quick microtransaction.
BIT.TRIP RUN! Review
BIT.TRIP RUN! is a shining example of how to port a game to mobile. The tightly responsive, elegantly fluid experience of BIT.TRIP Presents Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien on PC and consoles has been translated to iOS with nearly identical content, quality, and fun intact. Despite being best experienced with a controller/gamepad, the transition to touchscreen controls has been superbly executed, presenting mobile players with gameplay perfectly adapted to the platform without feeling watered down. That gameplay pits players against the same finite running levels found in Runner2 as they control the always-ambulatory CommanderVideo. The dangerous, robotic minions of Mingrawn Timbletot are spread across three worlds—the Welkin Wonderland, Emerald Brine, and Supernature—in an attempt to stop our hero from escaping his current imprisonment in an unknown dimension. Players of BIT.TRIP RUN! will be treated to the same story, Charles Martinet-narrated cutscenes, and even wacky commercials available in Runner2, although the final two worlds—the Mounting Sadds and Bit.Trip—will be released in a future, free update."Each level requires transporting CommanderVideo or one of his seven unlockable friends—like CommandGirlVideo and Reverse Merman—from start to finish while dodging everything from bottomless pits to boxing robots, spiked balls to wooden bot blockades. Our always-in-motion characters can perform most of the same actions they utilized in Runner2, with a few changes made specifically for the touchscreen format. Players will tap to jump, hold to glide, swipe down to slide, swipe right to kick or block, and swipe left to dance—a stylish move used only to rack up points, but one that BIT.TRIP RUN! would feel incomplete without. Because tapping is inevitably slower than button-mashing, many of the stairway sections of levels have been fitted with automatic trampolines that propel CommanderVideo up and over without requiring the player to tap themselves to death. Other springboards have also been automated, activating when run over instead of via player input.
King Arthur’s Gold Review
King Arthur's Gold is one of those strange indie titles that appears to be constantly in beta - i.e. not completely ready according to the developers, yet still available to purchase in its current state. The game was also in beta back when I played it more than two years ago as well, so it's anyone's guess when the "full release" will happen.Still, there's a lovely online multiplayer experience to be found in amongst all that treasure, especially if you can get a bunch of friends involved. It may be perhaps a little too "hardcore" for some players, but if you've enjoyed 2D sandbox-style games like Terraria and Junk Jack X, then King Arthur's Gold may well be up your street.You take control of a war-wager, part of a larger team that is looking to take out the opposing team by any means necessary and steal their flags. Everything provided is in a very medieval vein, from the classes you can select, to the machinery you can take control over. By working together with the rest of your team, it's possible to build up your castle's defenses, and then rain hell down on the opposition.The action takes place on a 2D Terraria-like plane, with each individual block in the world available for smashing up or building on top of. The Builder class is able to chop down trees and build grand-scale structures to keep the enemies out, while the Archers and Knights are tasked with keeping baddies at bay. It's all about balancing who takes what classes in your team of up to 16 bloodthirsty wretches.
Master Reboot Review
In the not-too-distant future of Master Reboot, death is no longer an end, merely a transition. Thanks to the Soul Cloud, a spiritual software storehouse, owners of Soul Cloud real estate can upload their very being to the database and then spend the rest of eternity re-experiencing memories from the time they were alive. Still-breathing friends and family can visit these memories as well, even sending messages to the deceased-but-not-gone inhabitant of the Cloud via luminous blue rubber ducks.Your experience in the Soul Cloud begins amidst disaster; you awaken unaware of who you are or why you're there, stumbling toward your personal memorial hub as bits of corrupt data flash within the scenery. A mangled voice taunt-whispers from nowhere, "Remember..." while a glowing glyph threatens you with a Hieronymus Bosch-style demonic calling card. What should be an idyllic induction to your eternal rest home has become a haunted, confusing space devoid of answers to the endless questions circling your mind.Master Reboot places you in the shoes and emotions of this unknown soul directly; there's no tutorial, introduction, or hint of what is going on to either player or protagonist. Until you pass through the empty Soul Cloud induction office, you may not even realize where you are. Because of this, from minute one, you're incentivized toward all aspects of this psychological horror puzzle adventure: perturbed by the not-quite-rightness of your surroundings, encouraged to figure out who and why you are, and motivated to explore further to do so.