It was only a couple years ago that I discovered that I absolutely LOVE pineapple. A couple of friends came over and made dinner for my wife and I that included grilled pineapple kabobs. The thing you have to understand is that I'm typically a pretty fussy eater, but in the name of being polite I had made the decision that I was going to eat whatever they made regardless of whether I thought I liked it or not. I stabbed the yellow fruit with my fork and put on my best poker face to hide the utter fear I had that I would have to eat this stuff I was obviously going to hate. It was about 4 or 5 seconds after the juicy amazingness exploded into my mouth that I realized it was probably the best thing I ever tasted.
We like to think that if any nasty germs gain access to our insides, our helpful antibodies will simply kill them all off and we won't even notice. Perhaps we'll get a bit of a sniffle, but that's it. Of course, then you get all the various movies and books and the like that envision the story of a virus that our bodies simply cannot cope with, and it ends up going on a rampage through the human race, cutting the world population down to size.
I'm a proud member of the original Magic: The Gathering generation. In fact, I've still got my original deck sitting around here somewhere, with its (incredibly dated) powerhouse cards like The Abyss, Vesuvian Dopplegangers, and a beat-up Black Lotus. As a result, I was really interested to try out Magic: The Gathering - Tactics, which promised an experience that's both simultaneously familiar and new. After spending some time with the game, I have to say that it's certainly not bad, but it's not nearly as much fun as I remember the original card game being.
Bedtime Stories comes with an interesting premise, or at the very least, a unique one. It's the Christmas season, but you're the only person in your family that's in the mood to celebrate; everyone else is in a state of constant depression. It turns out that each family member has been cursed with an unobtainable dream, with the curse only being breakable inside each person's subconscious. You'll enter into these dreams in an attempt to break the curses and bring happiness to your family, but will likely lose some of your own happiness while actually playing the game.
H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos has been undergoing a well-deserved resurgence in popularity lately. While books, films, toys, board, and video games have all seen the big guy's tentacles appear, iOS devices have been largely neglected… until now, that is. After a lot of build-up, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land arrived on the App Store last week and was immediately called out for some pretty big issues thanks to major bugs. Red Wasp Design has since then released an update which has done a lot to help the game ascend to its full glory.
Q-Games has been on a weird tangent lately. In the beginning, they made and released their Pixeljunk brand of games only on the Playstation Network for the PS3 and PSP. They enjoyed a decent amount of success that way, developing a reputation as a developer of niche, daring and interesting games. Since then they've branched out, announcing a version of Pixeljunk Monsters for Facebook of all places, and have followed that up by porting what some consider to be their best game, Pixeljunk Eden, to the PC.
If context and substance are what you're looking for, then DarkOrbit will immediately dull your interest. Without so much as a hint of plot to nudge players along, the game throws a laundry list of quests before you, along with an overcrowded screen full of features that are either poorly explained or not explained at all. When your first reaction as a player is to run off to the game's forums for help, it's a clear indication that not all is well in the universe.
The Big City Adventure series is one of the better known game series, and they've done something unique with their latest entry. They have released two versions of their newest game, London Story and London Classic. London Story is a hidden object/adventure game and you can read our review of it here. London Classic is a pure hidden object game, in the same style as the previous entries in the series.