Assorted Short DS Game Reviews
Dec. 30th, 2013 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroFullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy
A side-scrolling beat-em-up with a few alchemy abilities (creating walls and cannons) used to solve simple puzzles; plus the occasional stylus puzzle. The story seems to be retelling random chunks of the anime without much coherency to the plotline. The game itself is rather short: Ten stages, two of which are minigames and two of which are just boss fights. The whole thing screams "Hastily-made media tie-in game."
Jewel Master – Egypt
It's a Bejeweled variant in the vein of Puzzle Quest, only you're destroying tiles to earn money and resources to build your Egyptian empire. Instead of a standard board, the game is filled with puzzle boards where you need to unlock "chained" (immobile) tiles, or destroy certain background tiles. Once you've completed all the puzzle sections on a board, a scarab tile appears and you have to get it to the bottom of the screen to complete the level. Many of the boards are odd shapes where the pieces "fall" in an unusual way.
Unlike Puzzle Quest (or most variants I've played), if there are no valid moves, the game destroys some pieces and creates valid moves, rather than sweeping the board. But it does nothing if there's at least one valid move, which often leads to the "pixel-hunt" problem, where you need to find that one valid move on the board, and then the one created by it, etc etc. (Puzzle Quest gives you a lot of options to escape this, between your spells, items and your opponent's moves. I find this style of game much more fun when you aren't playing Where's Waldo with that one last match.)
Another interesting bit: There are 100 levels, and they seem to be pegged; restarting a level may change the selection of tiles you get, but it doesn't affect the shape of the level or the locations of locked tiles. ("Winning" the game seems to consist of buying the four items in each of the five Dynasty levels before you run out of levels to each resources in.) I got stuck on Level 33, which I couldn't manage to finish before time ran out in half a dozen tries. (It took me half a dozen tries to clear level 30, too.)
Jewel Master - Cradle of Rome 2
There is no doubting that Jewel Master is a series. This is the same game, but with a different excuse plot (something about Romulus and Remus--it's Rome instead of Egypt, and in each "Epoch" you need to buy the four items to build civilization by collecting resources) and adding some new Trophies, bonuses and level shapes. They do try to make some of the challenges different; adding skull tiles that un-do your work and ice blocks that you need to form vertical chains on top of.
Like the other game, this becomes impossible for people with normal human reaction times around level 30, because your timer will run out while you're hunting down the single valid move on the entire board.
Might and Magic - Clash of Heroes
Reminiscent of Puzzle Quest in that the fantasy plot (and associated fetch quests) is kind of an excuse plot. Really, you're playing a lot of turn-based columns battles that are more puzzles than battles. If you like the puzzle game style, this is a great excuse to play a lot of it; but I had forgotten the plot ten minutes after playing. I'll admit, I have no idea why the "Might and Magic" name is attached to this game.
A side-scrolling beat-em-up with a few alchemy abilities (creating walls and cannons) used to solve simple puzzles; plus the occasional stylus puzzle. The story seems to be retelling random chunks of the anime without much coherency to the plotline. The game itself is rather short: Ten stages, two of which are minigames and two of which are just boss fights. The whole thing screams "Hastily-made media tie-in game."
Jewel Master – Egypt
It's a Bejeweled variant in the vein of Puzzle Quest, only you're destroying tiles to earn money and resources to build your Egyptian empire. Instead of a standard board, the game is filled with puzzle boards where you need to unlock "chained" (immobile) tiles, or destroy certain background tiles. Once you've completed all the puzzle sections on a board, a scarab tile appears and you have to get it to the bottom of the screen to complete the level. Many of the boards are odd shapes where the pieces "fall" in an unusual way.
Unlike Puzzle Quest (or most variants I've played), if there are no valid moves, the game destroys some pieces and creates valid moves, rather than sweeping the board. But it does nothing if there's at least one valid move, which often leads to the "pixel-hunt" problem, where you need to find that one valid move on the board, and then the one created by it, etc etc. (Puzzle Quest gives you a lot of options to escape this, between your spells, items and your opponent's moves. I find this style of game much more fun when you aren't playing Where's Waldo with that one last match.)
Another interesting bit: There are 100 levels, and they seem to be pegged; restarting a level may change the selection of tiles you get, but it doesn't affect the shape of the level or the locations of locked tiles. ("Winning" the game seems to consist of buying the four items in each of the five Dynasty levels before you run out of levels to each resources in.) I got stuck on Level 33, which I couldn't manage to finish before time ran out in half a dozen tries. (It took me half a dozen tries to clear level 30, too.)
Jewel Master - Cradle of Rome 2
There is no doubting that Jewel Master is a series. This is the same game, but with a different excuse plot (something about Romulus and Remus--it's Rome instead of Egypt, and in each "Epoch" you need to buy the four items to build civilization by collecting resources) and adding some new Trophies, bonuses and level shapes. They do try to make some of the challenges different; adding skull tiles that un-do your work and ice blocks that you need to form vertical chains on top of.
Like the other game, this becomes impossible for people with normal human reaction times around level 30, because your timer will run out while you're hunting down the single valid move on the entire board.
Might and Magic - Clash of Heroes
Reminiscent of Puzzle Quest in that the fantasy plot (and associated fetch quests) is kind of an excuse plot. Really, you're playing a lot of turn-based columns battles that are more puzzles than battles. If you like the puzzle game style, this is a great excuse to play a lot of it; but I had forgotten the plot ten minutes after playing. I'll admit, I have no idea why the "Might and Magic" name is attached to this game.
