What I liked:

� The core concept makes for a good puzzle with varied scenarios.

� The musical transition between the two modes is a lovely bit of polish

What I disliked:

� The way the tiles were in bordered, rounded rectangles. Pleasant visually in itself, but the result is that the played character can't transition smoothly from tile to tile, instead there is an obvious jump from tile to tile. This seems like something that should be more important to the game than the visual choices made.

� The actual platforming is very boring, and doesn't contribute to puzzle solving at all. I spent all the time in that mode just willing the character to go faster so I could get on with the good bit.

What would I suggest adding to it:

� Some kind of additional factor to challenge the player.

A time limit in the platforming parts might make that seem more exciting, and possibly the clock could even continue running in the puzzle mode. The problem with extending time pressure to both modes is that mistakes in the puzzle mode are easier and more costly in time spent, so perhaps not.

Another factor which could make levels more difficult would be to limit the number of visits you could make to the "puzzle" mode. So in maps with many tiles, you would need to join as many as possible before returning to platforming. Might demand more forethought in the puzzle solving, but also makes it possible to get stuck, which I don't think can happen at the moment...

ps: still stuck on the last level, wrote this stuff on level 15, my opinions did not change much 

These sorts of puzzles cry out for the ability to "optimize" your solution. If the game kept track of your # of screens visited (each repeat visit counts), then you could try to find the ideal solution.

I think that this scoring system would be more beneficial to a time-based system, since the ideal time requires first finding the ideal route (from above), and then once that interesting problem is solved, all that remains is flawlessly pressing keys on the keyboard. The physics and choices when manevering in this world are not interesting enough to make optimizing your character movements sound like fun to me.

Actually, what would be really cool is seeing a faint line trace the entire route you took, so you can watch the spaghetti areas where you got lost or caught in a loop. 

to the game than just puzzle block shifting. I liked the first couple of levels because you get the whole shifting pieces around but after that, just the same old thing over and over. It feels like a good start but 30 levels without any new direction is too much.

One game mechanic I did like was you can fall through tiles, stop fall, shift blocks and carry on falling. Also the art style looked temporary to me, especially as it was not obvious which tiles linked together, should of used a pattern or symbol on the edges to show which tiles matched together. 

If I was making it, I would have made the tiles meet edge to edge, with a transparent green border between them if they match, and a solid red if they didn't (or you were at the edge of the map). It would make some of the manoeuvres around edges of tiles easier to manage at least, and as a bonus makes it explicit that the tiles match. 

Nice to see new stuff like this. 

I didn't mind that it was difficult to tell which borders matched, but i really only needed two or three levels where that was the main challenge, rather than 50% of the levels. The open levels where it was more about figuring out what jumps were possible were more my taste.

The problem, which you see especially in the 3x3 grid levels, is that sliding block puzzles are kind of tedious, and with a grid that large you do a lot of sliding (especially with trial and error.) 4x4 would have been intolerable. 

Particularly irritating in the last level where in many cases you couldn't work out by eye which blocks did connect, so you had to shuffle them all around the 3x3 square, and then if they didn't, try out another. On earlier levels, it was quite satisfying to work backwards through a chain of tiles. "The key is there, and you can only get to it from the right...that tile is the only one that connects it from the left...I need to drop down on it....so I want to move to this tile!".

But I agree that the best puzzles were the ones where you had to make big leaps of faith, switching tiles in mid jump etc. Can you do that thing like in portal where you reach terminal velocity by lining up the portals vertically - constantly falling between two tiles? Imagine if you could rotate the tiles and do portal-style flinging! 

I played through the first eight (ten? dunno...) levels and sort of enjoyed it, but it got old kind of quickly and I wasn't really having enough fun to continue. Seemed pretty easy, but granted, it was early-on.

I've been playing Protector III for the last few nights, and finally finished it last night. It's similar to many tower-defense type games, but with quite a bit more depth and continuity than some (and some of the levels are quite difficult). Very addictive!! (At least it was for me.)

http://www.kongregate.com/games/undefined/protector-iii

It *will* remember your progress, so no need to do it all in one go (assuming you were that crazy anyway--it took me quite a few hours to finish it...) 

Games are like crack.

Thanks for posting :D 

Although difficulty seems odd and inconsistent. Some of the "medium" difficulty maps took me a lot of work to figure out, and some "hard" maps I got on the first try. And I beat the final uber-map on the first try too. Go figure... 

Anyone tried Battlefield Heros yet? 

I heard they were switching payment models to really suck customers dry with those microtransactions but other than that it was fun. 

After so many positive reviews I was really looking for to Butcher Bay. Typically the big-sceen to computer-screen, film to game adaption doesn't work very well. So it's easy to assume it would have been a flop. But in fact it was a very favourably received underdog.

Nevertheless, it was with it's flaws; but perhaps my expectations were too high. Comparing the graphics to other 2004 releases like Doom 3, it wasn't quite as flash. The level design the majority of the time was good, but nothing really stood out. There were few fantastic set pieces. However, there weren't supposed to be. The game takes place entirely in a prison, mostly underground. You fight from the typical bland prison on the surface, to underground caverns, more high secure prisons, guards quarters and more. However, it is slightly disappointing that the entire game takes place in one prison. We never really get a huge variety in gaming environments. Overall, however, the design and graphics definitely live up to 2004 standards.

The gameplay was mostly good, depending on your gameplay preferences. Personally, I'm not one for the Thief style of gameplay. That is, sneaking around in shadows avoiding enemies. I'm also not one for having to complete tedious little tasks to proceed further into the game. EFBB features far too much of this. What I come for is pure action, and probably only 50% of the game features this. The tasks are boring, especially since the parts of the game that require tasks are some of the more bland looking areas.

What action we do get in EFBB, you get limited with just a few different weapons, and probably less than ten enemies to use them on, all with rather poor AI. Not a lot of variety, but it still throws up a decent challenge and fun on the most part.

The other problem wih EFBB is it's short campaign. Although I'm starting to get used to this after Call Of Duty and it's mission pack were both equally as short. Are games becoming shorter because of the extended detail gamers require in every facet of the game? I finished EFBB within one day. In three sittings to be exact, but I could have done it in one sitting.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd want another five hours trapsing around Butcher Bay anyway. It would have to at least introduce a new environment.

So overall, despite this sound like a negative review, the game actually was very good. Exceptional design and graphics, although not quite up to Doom 3, not far off it! And decent gameplay when you actually get to fight. Very much recommended. I only regret I didn't play the enhanced version released with Dark Athena.

PS. the game was a nightmare to setup and featured two game stopping crashes. It required an Open GL fix and latest EU patch, along with someone elses save games for me to continue. 

http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php 

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is up next on my list. I hope it looks better than the first Call of Duty. Screenies look better anyway.

BTW anyone played Overlord 2 yet? The graphics look so cute!!! 

I think it looked about the same, but its still fun.

I was a big fan of riddick, probably because it was different to your regular FPS at the time and parts of it just looked damn cool. 

You should read your reviews before posting them - you often start a paragraph by stating something, then spend the remainder of the paragraph contradicting that statement. Example:

"The gameplay was mostly good" ... " The tasks are boring" ... "What action we do get in EFBB, you get limited with just a few different weapons, and probably less than ten enemies to use them on, all with rather poor AI"

Or above that "Comparing the graphics to other 2004 releases like Doom 3, it wasn't quite as flash" vs "Overall, however, the design and graphics definitely live up to 2004 standards".

What is it? Was it not as flash as other 2004 games, or did it indeed live up to those standards? Maybe my English isn't good enough, but I can't make out what you are trying to say with that review. 

haha i know dude i was contradicting myself a bit. what i meant was it wasn't as good as doom3, and maybe halflife2 and thief3. but it was better than everything other than those 3 i think (not that i played everything).

the reason why i do these reviews is actually so that in 10 years when i decide to play these games again, i'll know what to expect, so they tend to talk about all the negative stuff even when something is 'mostly good'.

oh and i can't be bothered proofreading it anyway 

Alright. Now we can discuss why you think that Doom 3 and Half Life 2 are in the same league - I'd say that HL2 > D3! 

please. 

Because graphics are the main criteria for judging games... 

 

yeah for me graphics are easily the most important thing. i find it weird how all these top reviewers like gamespot and ign never even mention "level design" and architecture and stuff like that. and all their screenshots never feature the actual level design - it's always some stupid action shot.

but anyway, i can't argue hl2 vs doom3 because i'm yet to play hl2. doom3 had great potential, the engine is a winner (i'm guessing better than hl2's engine), but ruined by the corridor style levels. in terms of detailing, doom3 had WAY more detail in it's design than Riddick did. and the lighting was better. i'm assuming in terms of level design that hl2 > d3, won't know for sure till i play it. 

Go and play HL2.