Astro Driller sounds like should be a great downloadable game by default. That name is gold, as it sounds exactly like the kind of classic you’d find on the Atari or the NES. In practice, though…?
Astro Driller is a fast-paced downloadable puzzle game. There’s no story behind this sucker: you’re just an astro miner, and your little guy at the top of each screen is busy carving chunks of asteroid off a giant gray one that fall into a series of vacuum tubes at the bottom. You need to use a series of laser lines to grind the asteroid bits to pieces, revealing the colored gems beneath before they’re collected in the vacuum tubes.
Sounds simple enough, and it is – though it gets frantic. There’s often more than one carver up top, peeling new asteroid chunks, and occasionally other obstacles along the way may or may not impede your progress. You’ll also start getting different colored vacuum tubes that match the colors of the rocks, and using your laser lines you must grind the rocks down to their crystalline forms and guide them to the right tubes.
It is, in essence, a straight downloadable action puzzler. Guide rocks, get points, move on. And in this sense it’s relatively fun… if a little sparse. Granted, the game gets more complex as you go along, but in the end you’re always doing the same thing, over and over. This wouldn’t be so bad if it were a bit more cerebral, but Astro Driller is more about quick reflexes than complex thinking: if you’ve got a swift wrist, you’ve probably got this game in the bag.
If there’s one thing Astro Driller has going for it it’s the controls. All you need is your mouse hand (and, presumably, a mouse – it would be way too difficult to play this with a laptop pad) and you can take care of everything with a few quick clicks. The tutorial is confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it controlling your lines is a breeze.
That said, Astro Driller’s big flaw is its presentation. Normally lackluster graphics aren’t a problem, and for the most part they aren’t in Astro Driller. It looks decent enough. Problem is, the programmers decided to pick a truly awful font for their menus and directions, and it’s really difficult to read. Trying to learn what to do will probably strain a few eyes, and may be enough to dissuade a few would-be players. The game also doesn’t seem to have any music, despite volume controls, though that may not be a problem for everyone.
Overall Astro Driller is ho-hum. It’s fun but not overwhelmingly so. Still, it’s a good way to kill an hour, and may prove enjoyable enough for some to buy – but not this reviewer.
“Alien Domination” is much like the old arcade game “Tail Gunner”. In “Alien Domination” the player is a turret gunner aboard a deep space exploration ship. While looking for minerals the ship runs into an alien invasion fleet planning to attack the earth. The player’s job is to wipe out the attacking enemy ships so they can make it back to Earth.
The action is fast and furious as the player must destroy hundreds of enemy fighters, attack drones and even a couple of vast enemy space carriers launching attack craft like a shaken beehive spitting a swarm. Using two laser turrets, the player defends his ship in a 3d and 360 degree battle. Each level takes about ten minutes to complete. Between each level the player collects resources used to upgrade his weapons, targeting, shields, repair robots, etc. The player must survive six worlds of nihilistic action to complete the mission.
The graphics are just great; sharp and vivid with very pretty explosions. The enemy ships look menacing and move smoothly and quickly. The lasers beams are bright, clean and “accurate”.
The rock-pop-heavy metal soundtrack is of mixed quality at best and is terribly annoying at worst. But at least the player can mute that if they choose. The story, such as it is, is advanced through the conversation between the pilot and the ships AI. It is here the game really breaks down, as the voice acting is just terrible, sounding like a low grade 1980’s voice synthesizer from a techno-band poetry reading.
The creativity and innovation in “Alien Domination” is very low. “Tail Gunner” did this same thing in 1979 in an old styled video arcade game, as did “Space Harrier” in 1985 and “Sin and Punishment” did again in 2000. The developer has clearly spent most of its time and energy on the excellent graphics. So even within the narrow range of a 3d space “rail” shooter, “Alien Domination” doesn’t show the player anything new in either storyline or game play.
If you want a simple, mindless yet pretty space shooter that lets you dispatch alien hordes for hours and for a reasonable price of around 10 to 12 dollars American, then “Alien Domination” is certainly for you. If you want something more from your gaming experience, then look elsewhere.
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, If you love good action packed video games, Elemental Shooter is definitely one to check out. After looking at the preview and after actually checking this game out I will give it a rating of 4/5.
Puzzle Bots Game Review by Phyllis G.
Game Rating = 4.5/5
This is an adventurous goofy but charming video game of clever puzzles. An outstanding presentation in an adorable cartoon style setting. Fantastic voice acting with of course adorable mechanical companions. Human and robotic alike. More pro’s to purchasing then cons.
There is Dr. Hugo’s Factory for making cute little mechanical companions of all sorts. Plus it is packed with plenty of humor. You will get to control five robots as they search the factory for clues as to how to open a mysterious metal box found. There are flamethrowers with deviously clever puzzles.Creativity with innovation exudes from this game. The sounds are so pleasing to your ears and nothing about them is annoying. Once or twice while I was playing the sound skipped. It is not very obvious and can be dismissed. (more…)
WadjetEye Games released Puzzlebots, the story of a group of robots who outwit mischievous children, curious animals and dysfunctional inventors on their quest to find the truth. Sounds like Scully and Mulder if you ask us.
This downloadable game sells for $14.99 or $24.99 if you buy it on CD. They offer a demo as well as the option to but it directly. We will publish a review soon.
Positech, publishers of Democracy and Kudos, released a new expansion pack called Swarm for their downloadable game Gratuitous Space Battles. According to Positech, the Swarm are Space-dwelling nomads who destroy all they encounter, using cunning new gratuitous weapons such as disruptor beams, fusion guns, and deadly smart-bombs. Here’s the Swarm Video:
Check out Positech’s site for more information and to buy the expansion pack which costs $5.99.
BalckFire Games released Alien Dominion: The Acronian Encounter. It looks like it may pack a punch or two. We will publish a full review in a few weeks.
Ludosity Interactive released the downloadable platform game called Bob Came In Pieces this week which costs $9.89. Here are some screenshots and links to the game. It doesn’t look like they are offering a trial or demo download.
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: 2.4 Ghz or equivalent processor
Memory: 1GB System RAM (2GB recommended with Vista/7)
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Graphics: 128mb video RAM and Shader Model 2.0
Hard Drive: 500mb or more free space
Sound: Windows compatible sound card
Input: Keyboard and mouse
Note: The GPU need to be at-least as powerful as Geforce 6600
Bob Came in Pieces
Bob Came in Pieces is a physics based puzzle adventure game where you fly through different levels and solve puzzles with your flying ship. You can rebuild your ship and thus get the most elegant solution for the puzzle you stumble upon.
* Endless rebuilding possibilities.
* Use your smartness to get new ship parts and tools.
* Unlockable levels with challenging puzzles.
* Tailor-made music.
Jets and Guns Gold Game Review by Kenneth Andrews
Game Rating = 4/5 Balls
Once upon a time, all action games were like Jets n Guns Gold. Piloting a heavily armed yet highly manoeuvrable starfighter around unlikely structures in outer space and blasting seven shades of starlight out of all manner of alien beasties. Sideways scrolling shooters are back with a vengance.
BrainPipe: Simple, Psychedelic, and Sub-Cerebral
The independent developer Digital Eel has a history of creating games that go beyond the conventional familiarity of gamers’ expectations. After all, this is the company responsible for Weird Worlds, which was known for its “weirdness” (yes, an appropriate title indeed) yet won an Independent Games Festival Award in 2006. Their latest venture, BrainPipe, is another example of visual brilliance and non-traditional subject matter.
Playing BrainPipe is like traveling through the Matrix on acid. In a first-person view, you travel down a psychedelic wormhole, a twisting tunnel into the deepest parts of the mind, rendered in colorful 3-D graphics. You navigate through the levels collecting glyphs and avoiding obstacles. You also have the ability to temporarily slow down time, which is helpful especially as the movement through the wormhole becomes faster. A combination of atmospheric ambient music and classic arcade-style sound effects compliment the trippy visuals perfectly. The gameplay is simple, involving only movement of the mouse and left click to employ the time warp. So, instead of frantically looking down at your keyboard to find the right key to hit, you can focus on the intense theme of self transcendence that the game is strangling your subconscious with. That is perhaps the strange duality of the entire BrainPipe experience. On one side of the coin, it is seemingly a simple game of hand-eye coordination. But if you take the red pill…
As you go through the levels, BrainPipe becomes challenging, both visually and in gameplay. Gaming vets will enjoy the increasing speed; for casual gamers, the possibility of sensory overload may be very real. There is an addiction potential here too, as you restart again and again to beat your last score. Do you need another sensation of reward from the dopamine being released in your brain? Are you truly trapped within the freeway of consciousness in your mind? Who knows? Maybe the fact that you keep restarting is just a result of the game’s replay value (obstacles do not always appear in the same spots) and lasting fun factor. Even the menu was entertaining; the icons are all eyeballs that follow your cursor as you move it around the screen.
BrainPipe is a great experiment and well worth the $14.95 that Shrapnel Games is asking for it. You reach “Confusion” as an achievement in this game – that’s a testament to Digital Eel’s sense of pushing the envelope in game design and content.
