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  • Enigmatis: The Mists of Ravenwood Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Enigmatis: The Mists of Ravenwood Review

    By

    A direct sequel to Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek, Enigmatis: The Mists of Ravenwood lets us put on the detective badge once again in a wonderful tale of intrigue and hidden object adventuring. On her continued search for the demonic preacher who eluded her at the end of the last game, our fearless detective comes across a frightened young girl named Becky at the edge of a campground. The detective's search for the little girl's parents ultimately leads her into the happy and idyllic campgrounds of Ravenwood, although everything is certainly not as it seems before long: from the oh-so-cheery camp workers, to the way the world seems to shift into darkness at regular turns, and of course, let's not forget the barrels of dead bodies and giant shadowy raven that tends to stop by from time to time.The game's presentation is particularly top-notch, with wonderfully painted visuals and smooth animations, not to mention impressive 3D character models that work like magic in the many engrossing cutscenes. What's great about this game is that The Mists of Ravenwood completely owns up to its rustic campground setting, and everything beyond it makes logical sense within the overall constraints of its own uniquely crafted world. Areas like the logging cabins, a giant tree that you can walk inside of, and even a short detour to the rocky beach below all feel realistic and connected, and you'll never veer off into that oversaturated futuristic temple that seems to make an appearance at the end of almost every hidden object adventure game these days."The Mists of Ravenwood does a lot of things that go the extra mile towards making the overall experience feel like so much more than your typical hidden object adventure. The most welcome of these features are in the deductions that your character can make by strategically placing found pieces of evidence on an investigative bulletin board of sorts (you are a detective after all!). While it's really just a matter of dragging the different evidence items over one of the various plot point circles until you find a match, it's still an extremely nice way of advancing the plot and giving players a nice refresher course at regular intervals as to what the underlying mysteries are.
  • Chainsaw Warrior Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    • PC
    Chainsaw Warrior Review

    By

    Back in 1987, Games Workshop released a solitaire board game called Chainsaw Warrior. It was an impressive innovation back then, before co-operative games or solo variants became common and it got bought and played for its novelty. Now it's been updated for the digital age, even though the intervening years have not been kind on the reputation of its cardboard parent.To play, you create a solider by rolling stats like hand-to-hand skill and reflexes on some dice and picking some equipment. Then you send your intrepid character into a skyscraper where an inter-dimensional rift has opened up, filling the building with zombies, rats, slime, and worse. Your journey proceeds by turning over cards and resolving the monsters and traps thereon, until you die, run up against the very strict turn limit, or meet and defeat the game's central villain for a victory."The original was cumbersome and time-consuming to set up and play, and gave you relatively little reward for all that effort. Mechanically, it communicated little sense of its action-packed premise and had virtually no strategy or decision-making, with almost everything being resolved by a dice roll. An app version obviously takes away the administrative overhead, which is a boon. And I was hoping it would follow up with slick presentation to get its sci-fi horror theme across.
  • Scribblenauts Unmasked Review
    Reviews
    • PC
    Scribblenauts Unmasked Review

    By

    In the ultimate example of the pen, or rather pencil, being mightier than the sword, Maxwell has used his magic notebook to entertain plenty of gamers in the Scribblenauts games. But even the most successful series need a spark to re-energize them at times, and Maxwell gets a literally super powered one in the form of the thousands of characters who come to life in Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure. It's an awesome if sometimes uneven combination of imagination and adventure that's sure to excite the comic geek in just about anyone.If you're a longtime DC fan, you no doubt know that Barry Allen was inspired to become The Flash because he read about Jay Garrick in comic books as a kid. See, meta was cool all the way back in the 50s! They eventually made comics history by crossing over with each other, and a similar setup is used to combine the powers of Maxwell and his sister Lily to get them to the DC universe. There's just one big problem: Lily's globe shatters upon arrival, scattering the Starites inside and forcing the siblings to team up with their four-color idols to get them back before they fall into the wrong hands.Your quest will take you to various famous locales, including Gotham City, Metropolis, and Oa, home planet of the Green Lantern Corps. Each place has a main mission that involves helping a famous DC hero defeat one of his or her arch-enemies, who have the assistance of Maxwell's Doppleganger. In-between the storyline bits, there are plenty of random citizens, heroes, and villains you can assist to earn reputation points. Those are needed to unlock new locations and costumes that grant Maxwell the powers of some iconic characters - also Aztek, who doesn't quite qualify as iconic.
  • Surface: The Pantheon Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Surface: The Pantheon Review

    By

    Elephant Games has rolled out another entry in the Surface series, this time bringing a more noir-flavored approach to storytelling. Surface: The Pantheon follows Gina as she travels through a world that is literally turned inside-out and filled with strange creatures, magical landscapes, and a unique mythology. The game easily lives up to the standards set by previous releases, providing a solid puzzle solving experience with great visuals and inventive hidden object scenes.A fantastic new tunnel has been built leading through the heart of the Ridge of Leviathan, and the Capital Express train is about to make its historic first run through it. Your husband and daughter are already aboard, but someone bumps into you and spills your luggage as you rush across the station. The delay causes you to miss the train, but that's not even the worst part. The Capital Express enters the tunnel but never emerges on the other side, vanishing somewhere in the mountain. For months researchers attempt to determine what happened, but eventually the tunnel is shut down, leaving the disappearance a mystery."Gina never really moves on from the loss of her family. A year later she's at the tunnel entrance when a strange man approaches her from the other side of the gate. Dr. Martin Bors, a somewhat radical sort of scientist, claims he has a way to find out what transpired on that fateful day. He needs your help to recreate the conditions at the time of the train's disappearance. Gina goes along with it, hoping to finally reunite with her long-lost husband and daughter.
  • Boson X Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    • PC
    Boson X Review

    By

    Boson X is essentially the spiritual sequel to glorious hair-pulling action game Super Hexagon. Cylindrically-shaped levels? Check. Fast-paced, randomly-generated action that keeps you on your toes every single moment of play? Check. A base difficulty so severe that you may accidentally smash your iPhone to pieces after you die for the umpteenth time? Oh yes, it's all there.But this rotational runner is far from just another Super Hexagon, as the game offers a massively unique take on the endless runner genre. The variety on show here is simply wonderful, and the difficulty factor coupled with the online leaderboards means that we'll no doubt be coming back for more again and again.You are a professor who has become caught in a massive particle accelerator. By jumping from platform to platform you can keep him safe from the high-energy particles dancing around him, and hopefully build up enough energy that you'll manage to discover some new particles along the way.
  • The Raven: Episode 3 – A Murder of Ravens Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    The Raven: Episode 3 – A Murder of Ravens Review

    By

    The final episode of The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief has arrived, and all the secrets of the greatest thief Europe has ever seen are finally laid bare! The third chapter in this international adventure doesn't finish quite as strongly as the first part began, but the payoff is definitely worth the effort.The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief isn't your conventional video game. Set in 1964, it's an Agatha Christie-style romp across Europe and into Egypt, starring a paunchy Swiss police constable searching for relevance in his declining years, a gentleman master thief who's taken a mysterious turn to vicious violence, his young, idealistic protégé, and a colorful supporting cast including an obsessed French police inspector, a German doctor with a dark secret, an Italian ship's captain left broken by two wars, and many others. It's interspersed with puzzles, as adventures generally are, but there's no question that in The Raven, the story's the thing."(Oh - There are spoilers within. Consider yourself warned!)
  • School of Dragons Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    School of Dragons Review

    By

    With all the hand-wringing that goes on about schools to educate our kids, at least we don't have to worry about a proper place to send our winged reptilian friends. That's because JumpStart's free-to-play, browser-based MMO School of Dragons has that covered, immersing players in the How to Train Your Dragon universe while also dropping some knowledge on them at the same time.Just in case you haven't seen the well-regarded animated flick it's based on, School of Dragons is set on the island of Berk, a place where Vikings and Dragons coexist - though not without some challenges, to be sure. Your character is a young Viking who gets the opportunity to raise and bond with a dragon, essentially growing up together."As virtual worlds go, Berk isn't a gigantic place, though it still has its fair share of interesting places to see. There's the titular school, the village where the locals live, a beach, and some surrounding wilderness areas. The early gameplay will have your Viking undertaking various quests that mostly involve gathering or delivering items while you find out more about dragons and their history with humans.Fans of the movie are in for a treat, as the main characters from the film are prominently involved as quest-givers, accompanied by their trademark dragons. Hiccup, Astrid, Snotlout and the gang have a fair amount of voice-acted dialogue, and they're instantly recognizable since the game's art style matches its source material to a tee.
  • Angry Birds Star Wars II Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    • PC
    Angry Birds Star Wars II Review

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    Rovio has released Angry Birds Star Wars II for mobile phones and tablets. We all knew it was going to happen. It was as inexorable as the final struggle between Luke and Darth Vader. After all, Rovio's first attempt at fitting Jedi and Sith into suits made of feathers and pigskin proved extremely successful.So will you enjoy a second go-around with an Angry Birds/Star Wars hybrid? Yes, provided you meet two requirements: one, you're not thoroughly sick of Angry Birds; and two, you've not taken an oath to destroy everything that references the Star Wars prequels. Whereas the first Angry Birds Star Wars revolves around Episodes IV, V, and VI, Angry Birds Star Wars II plucks from Episodes I, II, and III. That means you'll be goofing off with the likes of Anakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks. Sorry.Don't let it get you down, though. True to Angry Birds tradition, none of the characters in Angry Birds Star Wars II actually talk. That alone puts the game miles above Episode I. When you get right down to it, Angry Birds Star Wars II dishes out tons of fun and humor.