Category: Games

Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth (Review)

February 11, 2011

During my last visit to Australia, I picked up this game for the DS:

I’ve played it, and finished it, and now I’m going to review it.

First things first – this is a game for children. Any review written without this in mind should probably be ignored, because it is clear the developers had a particular target audience in mind and designed the game exclusively for them.

The game tells a story of the Doctor and Amy helping some Earth evacuees leaving our doomed planet. Along the way the Silurians Homo-Reptilicus become involved, as do some Daleks. The story isn’t particularly original, but benefits greatly from voice acting by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. The Dalek voices are also well done, although the credit suggest they are not the work of Nick Briggs (who does all the voices on the TV show). Overall, I thought the writing was well done and the characterization of the Doctor and Amy in particular were better than I may have hoped.

The game itself is a puzzle/adventure game. You move through various locations helping people and finding objects to assist you in your quest. This is (mostly) done by solving puzzles. The game has about 10 different types of puzzle, including ‘spot the difference’, ‘jigsaw puzzles’, logic puzzles, mazes and a few sliding puzzles (which I have and always will hate!) as well.

Unless you are a baby, the puzzles are easy. I’ll go one step further, and say you’d have to be absolutely demented to not get a few of them correct in a single second. Even the ‘hard’ ones took me maybe 10 seconds tops. Kid’s stuff, in other words. Even so they are well done and quite creative, and I imagine children will find a lot of challenge and have a lot of fun solving them.

There are a great many as well. Although many are optional, I’d estimate in the vicinity of 100 puzzles requiring a solution to beat the game.

Doesn’t sound too bad so far does it? Especially if you count yourself amongst the sizeable demographic of pre-school Doctor Who fans. But some of you may have had looked at the screens and read the descriptions and had a twinge or two while reading this review. Let me refresh your memories:

The Professor Layton series is one of the most beloved on the DS. With three games to date and many millions of copies sold, it is the worldwide juggernaut of puzzle/adventure and one of the most successful franchises on any system these days.

Evacuation Earth is a shameless rip-off. Many aspects of the game are identical to the Layton games, and unfortunately in most cases they are not as well done. I didn’t realize this until half way through because – shockingly – I haven’t personally played the Layton games (KLS has them all). But when I started showing her DW:EE she was able to confirm how similar certain elements were.

So in short, EE is a shameless, not-as-good ripoff of a fantastic game. Furthermore it’s far too easy for adults, and therefore shouldn’t even be considered by the serious non-infantile Doctor Who fan. For me therefore, I perhaps could have spent my A$58 a bit more wisely 🙂

Final Score: “One for the collection”

The King Of Kong

February 8, 2011

In 1982 our dad bought us a Colecovision TV game system. What immediately followed was joy and exultation. What followed over the next few years was an evolution of my gaming fandom into a more robust and complete part of my being.

We owned – and I enjoyed – many different games on the system. But one of them seemed to stand above all others, and it was this one I put a great deal of my time into during the year or so that followed.

I became so familiar with the game I could almost play it in my sleep. Only three screens… endless repetition… no purpose other than to get a high score.

And score I did! In fact I obtained a high score that made me proud enough to boast about it. A picture was taken of the screen, time passed, the developed picture was obtained from the store, it was placed in an envelope and sent overseas to a magazine in England.

All these years later I can’t say I remember even which magazine it was. But I think it may have been this one:

Not that exact issue of course, but one from 1983 or maybe 1984 (although I did own the above…). I was proud of my score, and the magazine I chose had a ‘high score’ section. I hoped my score was good enough to be included.

Eventually, many months later (due to the combination of the print delay and the sea-mail delay) I bought an issue and saw my name in it! I was absolutely stoked. My score had been good enough to make the magazine! All it said was my name and my score, in tiny print on one line. But it was enough for me 🙂

Although I never guessed at the time this ‘high score section’ was of course just for kids. There was no authority in the scores, and I assume is they printed any scores received just so the twelve year old that wrote to them would be as excited as I was. It is perhaps likely they didn’t even care about any real proof.

One regret of mine is that I never kept the magazine. I don’t even remember when I disposed of it, or how. It was probably destroyed decades ago, all evidence of my Kingship of Coleco Kong long lost to time.

But at least it lives on in my heart!

The Year I Buckled Down And Grew Up

January 26, 2011

2010 was a shocking year in one respect: my game collection. The pie charts don’t lie, so here they are…

The above shows total game purchases during the year, broken by percentage. I only got 75 games in total during 2010 – a drop of about 25% from the previous year. Of that total the largest amount was 40 games for the DS. Many of the games for PS3 (28 total) were games downloaded from PSN (and not retail games).

There is the breakdown by cost. You can see PS3 edged out DS by a little, mostly because the retail games are about twice as much. The total dollars spent was almost a 50% reduction on 2009, and in fact was one of the lowest for any year since I started keeping records (1993). I spent a little less than $1300 on my gaming hobby during 2010.

In short: 2010 was a relatively inexpensive year for me as far as game buying was concerned.

The factors? I can think of a few:
– Cheap downloaded games (I rarely buy PSN games costing more than $5)
– Less time to play games, due to me being busier teaching than in previous years
– I spent an inordinate amount of time playing just three games. In fact, gameplay on these titles equals about 7% of my life during 2010, which means it would have been a much larger percentage of the time spent actually playing games (I estimate 50%)

I suppose I should start tracking iOS games as well, and had I done that this year there would have been maybe $20 spent in total.

And so we get to my ‘game of the year’ award. It’s not as obvious as it perhaps could be, but after some deliberation I would have to say this guy wins:

Monster Hunter Tri is a beast of a game, made by men for men. Playing this game is like spending time in the world as it should be.

And in 2010 I spent hundreds of hours in that world 🙂

Robot Claw