Awesome Soccer is an austere soccer game available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Play is fast and easy. This is a fun game with some remarkable options for a game in its price range.

Reasons to buy the game
• Simple game controls
• Basic graphics
• Customizations

Reasons not to by the game
• Poor view of the pitch
• Limited player control
• Limited options

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Review

Control of game play in Awesome Soccer is very simple, involving only the four directions and an “action button.” During play, the focus automatically shifts among players depending on the location of the ball. A quick game option lets you get started without needing to select any options. Game length can be set, a major feature for someone wanting a brief diversion from a busy work day.

Graphics are simple in Awesome Soccer, giving the game a retro feel of the days when computer games were easy to understand and fun. No extraordinary graphics adapters are required, meaning that this game will run on almost any computer.

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Customizations available in Awesome Soccer offer additional entertainment to those who desire more than a fleeting pastime. Built in editors allow you to create custom players, teams, kits, formations, leagues and tournaments. You can substitute players and change player skills as well.

View of the pitch is restricted and inhibits game play. The user is not able to zoom in or out or utilize side and angled views of the match. The game displays an overhead view of just one section of the field at a time, causing the screen to be constantly shifting. The orientation of the pitch is vertical, leaving much of the screen’s horizontal area underutilized. Although a radar screen shows the location of players and an indicator points in the direction of the goal, these features are not enough to compensate for difficulty viewing the game.

Control of the players is very limited making advanced play almost impossible. As the match progresses, the software automatically selects what player is under control. There’s no way to change focus to other players and move them as you see fit.

Options for the game are limited. For example, difficulty levels are relevant only in tournament mode. Other options such as music, crowd, stadium, time of day and weather are nonexistent.

For $9.95, Awesome Soccer is a great game for those whose passions lie outside the computer gaming world.

World of Goo by 2D Boy must be seen to be believed. It started in 2005 as Tower of Goo; just another rushed-together game in the Experimental Gameplay Project. But thanks to its runaway success, this prototype mutated into a complete game that defies expectations and demands attention. World of Goo is a construction/puzzle game like nothing you’ve played before, and nothing you’ll ever play again.

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In each of World of Goo’s stages, all you have to do is get the little balls of goo from their starting base to a pipe somewhere else in the level. Building towers and bridges and whatever else the demented designers have in mind for each level is as simple as dragging one ball of goo to another ball of goo. But these aren’t your usual building blocks. They sway, they collapse, they shudder. They’re alive and they’re always watching you. Even when you sleep.

You never reach the goal the same way twice in World of Goo. Sometimes you have to build tall, sometimes wide, sometimes around things, and sometimes even move them around. And it’s always something different. And just when you think there couldn’t possibly be any other ways of playing with the goo balls, another new species of goo ball promptly introduces itself and throws everything you thought knew about the game out the window.

One thing World of Goo doesn’t do is take itself too seriously. The unseen Sign Painter offers hints, advice, and fourth-wall smashing in the signs strewn about the levels. Picasso-inspired people blithely play with dangerous World of Goo Corporation products. The levels in the game can be played through or skipped and revisited. Or for diehard goo architects, there are OCD (Obsessive Completion Distinction) criteria for collecting goo balls. The levels whimsically throw in everything from giant spinning stone heads to a blatant parody of the frog from Zuma. From subtle satire to broad farce, there’s enough humor for everyone.

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Not only does World of Goo play like nothing else out there, it also looks like nothing else out there. Kyle Gabler is a one-man environment machine, spitting out a world of creatures that look like extras from The Nightmare Before Christmas – creepy but strangely cute. The genre-bending music is as perfect a soundtrack as you could conceive for a game about building goo constructions, and the organic bloops, pops, and shouts from the goo balls constantly reinforce that all of these gooey things are very much alive.

What else needs to be said about World of Goo? It never gets boring, it never shows you anything you’ve seen before, and it looks like it’s worth $30 more than 2D Boy’s asking price. And it might even teach you the meaning of life. If that isn’t worth a 5 out of 5 rating, I don’t know what is.

What do you get when you mix Japanese school girls, plant-like aliens and RPG elements? Well, you get most of the anime that exists today, really. But you also get Science Girls, a game that roughly resembles said anime in most respects.

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Just, y’know, worse.

Science Girls is a strange, mishmash RPG in which a science club must battle their way out of a school under siege. The game’s girls find the faculty under assault by odd plant creatures (though as the game notes, they can’t be plants since they move around) and are consequently forced to locate their fellow club members and fight the intruders. There’s no buildup to the invasion whatsoever, and so you don’t really empathize for the girls as they seem to be nothing more than fancily-drawn figureheads for use in battle. A smattering of personality, perhaps, but easily forgettable.

Don’t get me wrong, the story has a bit of promise. Unfortunately the demo betrays little of this promise, and so players are left not only wondering what the heck is going on, but possibly why they should care in the first place.

The story isn’t Science Girls’ big problem, however. Many great games have started off slow and then jumped up significantly in quality by the end. It’s the visuals that really kill this game, the blasted, slapdash visuals.

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The girls themselves look fine. They get nice, anime-quality portraits which, quite frankly, don’t look like they belong in this game, as everything built around them (aside from the occasional shots of classrooms) looks terrible. The battlefields are flat gray, the text bubbles usually look a bit off-center and the sprites are boring. Most of the aliens look like unidentifiable blobs. And given that there’s virtually no animation to speak of amongst the sprites, what with their sliding around to get from room to room, you’ll likely be bored out of your mind in minutes.

The mechanics behind the game are similarly dull. It’s a turn-based RPG wherein characters on one side of the fight take potshots at enemies on the other side with normal attacks or a few special moves. No innovation whatsoever. The only thing that sets Science Girls apart from other RPGs – aside from the other RPGs being enjoyable – is that Science Girls includes a smattering of scientific trivia, which seems oddly out of place given the alien invasion.

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Science Girls is, in short, not really worth playing. Anime fans will get a kick out of the art, sure, but that’s easily viewed on the game’s website anyway. And yes, $10 is pretty cheap for a game, but why not just spend it on a title that’s actually fun? 1.5/5

You should buy this game if:

- You enjoy anime
- You enjoy science
- You’re an absolute beginner to RPGs

You shouldn’t buy this game if:

- You dislike static sprites
- You desire high production values
- You’ve played any other RPG

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Eschalon: Book 1 is a single-player, role-playing adventure game reminiscent of those from years ago. Character creation is similar to the old D&D way you roll for your base attributes and then you have additional points to allocate. Picking from a list of skills, you are able to customize your character further in terms of what weapon, armor, and skills he will specialize in. Additionally, you also make the choices of origin, axiom and class for your character. These choices have bonuses and negative effects so that no single one is necessarily more powerful than another. This is a huge positive in my book since in this game, character development actually means something again, and you have to put some thought into what you want to be able to do before you even begin to play.

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The game play of Eschalon: Book 1 is more geared towards strategy and puzzle-solving than combat. However, the turn-based combat system is still done quite well. Being turn-based, you have the additional time to think about what you want to do in order to win the confrontation. Unlike some other turn-based combat systems, though, the battle moves fast enough so that you’re not just sitting there wondering, “Is this ever going to end?”

The first thing that I noted when watching the opening sequences was that the graphics were much better than I was expecting. The background music is very soft which helps to encourage the theme of mystery and intrigue, but it does make you jump a bit when encountering a monster or object from the sharp sounds that accompany them.

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The game play itself is very intuitive once you’ve become accustomed to it. It took me about five minutes to feel comfortable with the commands and to learn how to access different details about my character. After that, I had no trouble at all.

The open world exploration allows you to have influence in how the game plays out. In contrast to most of today’s linear games, you get to choose what you want to tackle next. Progression in some of the skills classes is almost like a mini-quest of its own. One example of this is the alchemy skill in which you mix reactants and reagents in order to create a new potion. In your explorations, you will come across these various items and, sometimes a recipe will show up as well. You can either wait to find a recipe or experiment on your own to see what you might be able to cook up.

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While Eschalon: Book 1 may not be appealing to those who are accustomed to the action-packed, graphics-laden role-playing games of today’s world, it will be a breath of fresh air to older gamers like myself who miss the old-style games and simply would like to have one with modern technology. I rate this game a 4 out of 5, but the only reason that I don’t give it a 5 is because of the lack of auto-save feature. Until playing Eschalon, I didn’t realized how much I depend on that feature now in a game, and I forgot to manually save at a couple of key points. This caused a lot of frustration on my part when I had to start the game over from the beginning.

Basilisk Games created Eschalon Book 1.

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Summary: Tired of run of the mill video games that offer nothing new to the players? Try this one for innovation… if you like it, you will definitely love it.

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Game Play: The basic gameplay involves guiding a gold car along the tracks by constantly switching rails (with the help of the mouse button or spacebar). However the game offers different game scenarios, all of which are timed.

- Collect Coins: you have to collect as many coins as possible.
- Goldrush: you have to collect all the coins on the screen.
- Dynamite: you have to pass the dynamite stick before it blows up.
- Collect Diamonds: and deposit them into the tunnel.

You have to complete the individual sessions between one and two minutes. And the counter starts ticking with ten seconds left – which adds to the tension. As usual, as you progress in the game, you unlock further items and the gameplay becomes more and more difficult.

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Graphics: Remember those (bygone) days of adolescence when you had laid out a railway track in some inaccessible part of the house? And frantically switched tracks to keep the engine running? This is a 3-D version; and though the topography is sometimes confusing, the important thing to remember is that the dark (brown) tracks lead downhill. What the computer makes possible is that you can keep going downhill and still come back to your starting point!

Creativity & Innovation: Full marks for innovation. The best part of the game is its simplicity in concept and design. This is a game for all ages – you can play it, your kid can play it, and (perhaps) your mom can be induced to play it as well! Good news if you are new to the world of computer games: you do not have to be a genius or an addict to enjoy this game.

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Conclusion: This is an interesting (game) concept, and it has been well developed. If it catches on, it could even become something of a trend-setter. If there is a criticism, it is only that one’s skill level keeps varying between “Apprentice” and “Master”. Normally, as one gains in experience, one would expect that to be reflected in the rating. Fun to play? Yes, and the game sessions last no longer than two minutes. So, if you tire of playing, you can switch off the monitor, and resume when you are in the mood. In sum, it’s a decent game to add to one’s collection.

Koonsolo created Mystic Mine.

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The game Bionic Heart by Winter Wolves is altogether an interesting and worthwhile game to buy. The game is about life on Earth in a futuristic time, where global warming has caused an unusual consequence. Due to the Earth’s “polarization,” it has mysteriously caused rainfall on almost every part of the Earth to occur frequently.

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You start off the game as Luke Black, a talented nano-tech engineer that is struggling with his girlfriend, who he does not wish to marry. He doesn’t wish to marry her, and says that “1 out of 10 couples get married. Doesn’t that tell you [his girlfriend] something?”

You are left with a choice in the conversation after she responds, and you can either choose to ask for more time in your relationship with her or try living together.

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This is one example of the game’s interactive features, which is probably the strongest aspect of the game. In a way you get to form your own character, and choose what he does.

Given it is a PC game, the graphics are of fairly high quality and allow you to step into your character’s shoes. When Helen comes inside your house for example, you get a few moments to fully absorb the detailed graphics of her face and body. She is a prototype on the run, and stays at Luke’s house for a period of time.

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Apart from its interactive features and detailed graphics, the plot itself is what really enraptures the player. As soon as Helen decides to stay, you quickly become involved in trying to find out more about her and where she’s from.

There are, however, downsides to the game. As interactive as it is, you cannot independently move as you can in other games such as Halo PC or Need for Speed Most Wanted. You must click what you wish to do, such as walking into your bathroom requires menu clicks, not independent movement.

Also, dialogue between characters (and even when you’re talking to yourself) appears on a menu without actual lip movement. This can be slightly distracting and definitely takes away from the game’s overall appeal.

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Finally, the options for what to do become limited after a while. If you happen to get stumped or click on the same option more than once, there is hardly a time that the dialogue is modified. Occasionally when you walk around and ask someone the same thing multiple times, they might say something different, but the characters frequently repeat the same line. In conclusion, I’d rate it a 3/5.

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Winter Wolves created Bionic Heart.