Everyone remembers their first SimCity. If you're a young whipper-snapper, you probably have fond memories of SimCity 4. 20-somethings spent countless hours of their youth on SimCity 3000, and most friends my age discovered the original SimCity when it hit the Super Nintendo in 1991. But my first memory of SimCity? That dates all the way back to 1989.
Up until an embarrassingly double-figures age, I was under the impression that Timbuktu wasn't a real place, thanks to the wonderful Timbuctoo children's stories series. Thank goodness I'm now aware of its definite realness, or else this review could have exposed my inner silliness to Gamezebo readers everywhere.
As it turns out, you're the chosen one! Accepting your role without much thought, you're quickly swept in to the drama that is Azada: Elementia, the fourth game in the long-running Azada series. This time around, your job is to save the world of Azada from Panoptes, an all-around evil character who controls the elements. He's obviously up to no good, so at Titus' suggestion, you head out to set things right.
Gamers have received a lot of imperatives over the years: the empire is evil and must be stopped, this threat to the galaxy needs to be obliterated, shoot everything that moves. But none is so simple, so noble, as Jones on Fire's single sentence tagline: "Kitties are cute and should be saved."
If you look up 'impossible' in the dictionary of human behavior, you're likely to find a blank page (or at the very least, some tear marks where the page used to be). Despite all the times we've collectively agreed something was impossible, human ingenuity has proven the collective wrong and time and time again. Take flight, for example. Or climbing Mt. Everest.
Scarytales: All Hail King Mongo may present itself as a dark and menacing hidden object experience, but the game is actually the farthest thing from scary, or even thrilling. As the princess in a medieval-style Kingdom, you'll be called back to the palace after your father's disappearance. Through a very short campaign, you'll learn the details surrounding the King's disappearance and will discover why your brother was so quick to take over the throne.
Protip: If you're ever going to rob a bank, try to make sure you don't do it on the same day as other burglars. As it turns out, nasty people aren't so good at sharing.
Whenever I play a game that affords me the ability to rewind what I've done previously, thus bringing me back from the dead and undoing the terrible jump I tried to make, or giving me an extra crack or ten at that last puzzle, I'm reminded of the fact that 99 percent of modern video games would probably be greatly improved with the addition of a rewind function. Besides having a silly name, Chrono Disfunglement plays around with the concept of rewinding time ever so gloriously, and is let down only by a combination of a slow start and an alarming brevity.