Review: Gold Nuggets

Gold Nuggets is a claw game. If you love those arcade games where you try to pick up prizes with a slow, inaccurate claw, then you'll find a lot to like about it.

Graphics:
Very well done. The gold glistens, the coal is black, but not too black, and the miner is appropriately dwarf-like. Clearly, a good amount of talent went into creating the art for this game.

Sound:
None.

Nugget placement seems random, and can result in unbeatable levels.

Gameplay:
Below your mine cart, a claw swings in an arc. Tap the screen and it flies out to try to grab something. If you get some gold, you'll earn points and a few extra seconds on the clock. If you get coal, you lose time. Clear out all the gold and you'll move on. When the timer runs out, it's game over.

The claw's really slow, and the hit detection is kinda fuzzy, so you'll miss a few things you should get and get a few things you should've missed. And it will take forever. This game would reward a slow and methodical player if the timer weren't so short. As it is, there's entirely too much luck involved, to the point that some levels are literally impossible.

What I liked:
-The graphics are very nice.

What I hated:
-The gameplay is way too simplistic.
-No sound.
-In some levels, the coal and gold are stacked on top of each other, so it can be literally impossible to win.
-It has the same jarring cut to black when you finish a level that's in other games from DS Effects.
-The claw moves way too slowly.

Final Verdict:
It's all the excitement of waiting for a claw game to slowly deliver your prize, but with none of the payoff.

The artist is doing a great job on these, but they're barely games.

Gold Nuggets is available for free from DS Effects on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 3.0

Review: Cake Shop

Cake Shop is a game where you can experience all the fun and excitement of being a cashier at a cake shop. It's fun and exciting.

Graphics:
Cute and cartoony. Everything's appropriately bright and happy for a sweet shop. The characters could use a few more frames for their animations, though.

Sound:
None.

That's a lot of sugar for one person. No wonder diabetes is so rampant these days.

Gameplay:
Ridiculously simple. A patron will walk in and request some items. Tap the items in the proper order and they'll leave happy. Take too long, or screw up too much and it's game over.

Unless the time limit shortens considerably later in the game, there's absolutely no challenge. You can't really see the buttons and the prompts at the same time, but it makes things more annoying than difficult.

What I liked:
-I'm a fan of the graphical style.
-You can upload your score to an online leaderboard if that's your thing.

What I hated:
-Only difficulty comes from the fact that my hands are large and opaque.
-There's no warning when you complete a level. The screen just goes black for a few seconds.
-No sound.

Final Verdict:
It looks good and it succeeds at what it's trying to do, but what Cake Shop's trying to do is barely a game, and isn't much fun at all.

Cake Shop is available for free from DS Effects on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 5.0

Review: BubbleTrouble

BubbleTrouble is yet another dodge the circles game. It's free, and that's the best thing I can say about it.

Graphics:
Coloured circles of various sizes. You play as the blue circle while trying to dodge the red circles. When you move, your circle leaves a little trail, so at least that's something.

Sound:
None.

This is about as exciting as it gets.

Gameplay:
Dodge the falling red circles by tapping or dragging. Every now and then a tiny green circle will fall. If you collect it, you'll gain a shield that lets you destroy the red circles. They appear far too infrequently and are generally way too far away for you to get to them in time.

What I liked:
-The title/instruction screen looks okay.
-You can tap or drag to move.

What I hated:
-Dodging things is hard when you can't see your circle underneath your finger.
-Shield power-ups are way too hard to get.

Final Verdict:
It's basically a port of a bad Flash game from the mid-1990s. Don't bother.

BubbleTrouble is available for free from WilliamSnell on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: Imperial Hockey

Imperial Hockey is more of a tech demo than a game.

Created with a cross-platform development tool called CatHide, Imperial Hockey is less a game and more a demo of just exactly what CatHide can do. Which is a shame, because apparently what it can do, it doesn't do well.

This is what you'll see the first time you start a game.

Graphics:
Not good. Two paddles, a puck, and a background, all of which look like they took a grand total of 20 minutes to whip up.

There's something weird about the text. I'm not sure if it's the font selection, but a lot of letters appear to have been cropped by a pixel so part of the outline is missing. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say it was intentional, but I still don't like it.

Sound:
Four or five hockey buzzer and paddle click type sounds. They're appropriate to the game, and the fidelity is pretty good, which makes the sound the best part of Imperial Hockey.

Gameplay:
It's pong, only with worse controls and fewer options. You control your paddle by tapping it and dragging, but its hitbox is too small, so you're bound to miss it every now and then when you let it go.

There's only one version of the game, which appears to be the standard tennis version, even though it's played on a hockey rink. You can set your opponent to multiple difficulty levels, but controlling your paddle is so imprecise that the real opponent is the sloppy game design. And there's no way to win against that.

Technically, I won, but in Imperial Hockey, there are no winners.

What I liked:
-Sounds are okay.
-Multiple difficulty levels give at least some variation to the game.

What I hated:
-Bugs.
-Poor paddle control.
-Hit detection is sloppy.
-To "serve" the puck, you have to tap the screen, which means you lose track of your paddle and have to grab it again before the puck gets to you.

Final Verdict:
If this was supposed to encourage people to buy the CatHide development software, then it's going to fail.

Imperial Hockey is available for free from Imperial Penguin on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0.1

Review: Wild'n Poker Free

The wildest title screen ever.

Wild'n Poker Free is a take on the classic video poker system. It tries to give you all the fun of a casino without the associated broken thumbs and busted kneecaps. It fails.

Everything about this game is slow. It's just dealing cards (and there's not even an animation for that), so there's absolutely no excuse for how badly it runs.

It also comes with a built-in chat program courtesy of Villo, but I can't imagine why you'd want to use it, and I refuse to sign up for their service to test it out.

Graphics:
Somewhat limited. The faces of the cards are reasonably well done, and the fonts work well. That's not exactly high praise, but you've got to play the cards you're dealt, so to speak.

You're given a choice between dozens of deck styles, but as far as I can tell you never see the backs of the cards, so it doesn't really matter. You also get a large number of backgrounds to choose from. Some of the graphical styles (including the compulsory sexy lady deck) are only available in the upgraded version, but there are enough available in the free version that you'll probably find something you like.

Sound:
No music, and just three or four effects (that you can thankfully disable in the options menu). They sound okay, but they lag, so I can't say they're particularly effective. I wound up just turning them off.

I won!

Gameplay:
Relatively simple. Video poker isn't exactly rocket science, but these days it's a lot snazzier than just the basic game. In Wild'n Poker Free, you're dealt five cards, you choose which to hold and which to discard, then you deal again. Anything better than a pair of jacks wins, with varying payouts depending on how high your hand is. It'd be okay if it weren't so dang slow. Everything lags. Button presses, the score counter, dealing the cards... everything. It's astonishing, since there's so little going on.

The full version supposedly gives you access to a more advanced game, but the upgrade button is broken, so even if you want to, there's no way to check it out.

What I liked:
-Lots of deck styles and background images to choose from.

What I hated:
-Laggy.
-Too many load screens.
-Can't change bet amount without backing out to a menu screen.

Final Verdict:
It's buggy, laggy, and ultimately, Wild'n Poker Free isn't wild in any sense of the word. Stay away.

Wild'n Poker is available for Free from Bryan Leasot on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: CreaVures

CreaVures is a puzzle platformer in the vein of Lost Vikings where you guide your creavures through the forest collecting things. The beginning's relatively simple, but the game quickly becomes more complex as your various creavures' powers are revealed, and you learn to use them in interesting ways.

Rhino beetles would be terrifying if they were really big enough to ride.

Graphics:
Excellently rendered, if a bit weird. The creavures blend in well with the background... perhaps a little too well, as it can be a tad hard to see exactly what's going on sometimes.

The creavures themselves are cute, and the enemies are decent enough, if somewhat benign-looking.

Multiple planes of 3D graphics scroll by as your creavures run through the forest. It's an impressive display of what the PlayBook hardware can do. The planes aren't differentiated enough, though, and I frequently found myself confused as to which parts of the level I could actually interact with.

Overall, I'm not a big fan of the game's style. It's way too dark, and things just sort of blend together.

Sound:
Subdued, but appropriate. The music doesn't get in the way or get annoying, and the sound effects work well.

I knew a guy in high school who could do that.

Gameplay:
It's a puzzle platformer, so there are puzzles and there are platforms.

The puzzles work relatively well. Each creavure comes with a set of powers that can help you move around obstacles in different ways. Pokey can climb certain walls, Bitey has a tail the other creavures can swing on, Zappy can jump well in water, and so on. While they were never particularly difficult, I found that the puzzles became more interesting as my team gained more creavures and I progressed through the game. Shocking a bird with Zappy while swinging on Bitey's tail is very satisfying.

The platforming is just bad. You control the characters with a virtual analog stick and a jump button. Movement is far too imprecise, jumping is way too floaty, and sometimes button presses just plain aren't recognized. I understand it's a limitation of the hardware, but I'm sure the controls could've been fine tuned at least a little bit more. It's rare, but when you have to restart a puzzle for the third time because you missed a jump that you should've made easily, the game can be really frustrating. Fortunately, checkpoints are plentiful, so it never gets too egregious.

Swapping between characters is handled with a simple tap of a virtual button, and once you get more than two, you can swap one out at any checkpoint. It all works well, and I never had a problem with it.

Three creavures are better than one.

What I liked:
-Cute characters.
-Interesting puzzles.
-Epic boss battles. Well, not epic, but suitably grand.

What I hated:
-Floaty controls.
-Bad platforming segments.
-Difficulty discerning foreground and background from playable part of the level.
-Levels are way too dark.
-Occasional crashes.

Final Verdict:
CreaVures is good, but the poor controls and floaty movement keep it from being great.

CreaVures is available for free (courtesy of RIM) from Union on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: QMplayer for BlackBerry PlayBook

QMplayer is a version of Mplayer for the PlayBook. As the name suggests, it plays things. In this case, video files. It can play most formats you have on your tablet, or it can stream stuff from the internet. Unfortunately, it's a time-limited trial, and the upgrade is $6.

It features a host of control options that allow you to skip forward or adjust the way your video plays, and you can access the controls through gestures, or via the keyboard. Unfortunately, neither of those methods is well implemented or well thought out.

UI
Hideous. Ugly design, ugly colours. Most of the functions can be accessed through gestures, but if you want to actually do things, you're going to need to use the keyboard.

Usefulness:
Plays a few files and file types that the built-in video player can't handle. That's somewhat, useful, but it's not $6 useful.

Reusability:
As long as you have videos to watch, you can use it over and over again. For two weeks. Then you've gotta pay.

What I Liked
-Plays lots of file types.
-Interesting functions like the ability to play things on fast forward or delay the audio track.

What I Hated
-Gesture controls are hard to use properly.
-Keyboard controls seem to have been designed for a full keyboard, rather than the mobile version on the PlayBook.
-If you hit "Stop" you have to reload the video.
-Ain't got no alibi.

Final Verdict:
QMplayer is a decent video player, but its hideous UI and lacklustre control scheme mean I'll be sticking with the basic built-in player for now.

QMplayer is available as a free two-week trial from EXECUSE on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0.8