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Category Archives: Game reviews

REVIEW: NFL 2012 (Android)

The game NFL 2012 for Android phones is the first NFL football game I’ve played on a smart phone that actually comes close to approximating a decent football game; it actually plays a little bit like Madden, the football king of console gaming.

The game is free… kinda. It’s free in that you don’t cough up a Morgan silver dollar at the checkout of the Android market to acquire it.

However, one could be tempted to purchase an awful lot in the game. Certain plays remain locked until you win enough “game gold,” which you acquire by beating your opponents. And it takes a lot of winning to open up some plays.

I suppose they have to make their money somewhere; you can purchase game gold to unlock these items more quickly, or earn ‘em out the old fashioned way.

Beyond the costs of the game, such as they are, the controls feel natural for the touchscreen. The graphics are close to PlayStation2-era Madden games, and that’s pretty good considering that before this game appeared on the scene, some Android football games were little more than Mattel electronic handhelds of the 1970s.

And best of all, the game remains challenging and can beat you, even after a lot of games logged on the system. That, in some ways, makes it a step above Madden.

Complaints? Sure. I’m playing the game on a T-Mobile G2 with Google. And on my phone, if you play more than one game in a row, the screen starts to lose touch-sensitivity during the passing game. It’s not fun to get sacked because the screen wouldn’t read your touches of Receiver 4, or miss a field goal due to the play clock expiring because the screen couldn’t read your kick-stroke. Usually it goes away if you put the phone to sleep and then come back to it right away.

Other than that, there are the usual minor complaints such as questionable foot placement on certain catches called good or as touchdowns. And the play clock stops at a certain point on every play; meaning in the middle or out of bounds, it doesn’t matter which way the play ends, there’s no running out the clock, at least not the Madden way where you drain game clock by waiting for the play clock to almost expire.

Review: Ghost Radar Classic (Android)

The Android game Ghost Radar Classic is free most places these days. It pretends to be a ghost-hunting app that will record paranormal activity everywhere, as well as pick up on EVPs.

Unfortunately, this entertainment software doesn’t even try hard to be convincing; it shows activity everywhere and spits out computer-generated-voice words every few seconds.

Rather predictable and disappointing, don’t celebrate Halloween with this stinker of a game. An Arizona pool fence is far more interesting and convincing as a ghost detector.

Even at the price of free, Ghost Radar Classic is too expensive for what it’s worth… which is nothing.

Review: Virtual Horse Racing 3D for Android

I recently downloaded Virtual Horse Racing 3D, an Android-platform videogame, and while at first glance it appears to be the product of a lot of Help Desk Specialist Jobs veterans, the game actually is better than it seems at first.

The look of the game will call to mind the PSone and PS2 classic series, Gallop Racer, and the racing is roughly on par with that series. However, whereas Gallop Racer was interactive for the gamer, in this game all you can do is bet on outcomes and watch.

It’s actually not too hard to keep from losing your shirt on this game, because it enforces a strict limit on betting of $10 per horse, per line. So at most, you lose $30 per race.

The racing is fun, but with such a shocking lack of interactivity, gets told fast and doesn’t age well. Too bad.

REVIEW: Out of the Park Baseball 12

I took a long time testing Out of the Park Baseball 12. And there’s a good reason why.

I really wanted to kick the tires on this edition of the game. I explored every feature I could think of, tried the game not only based on the 2011 season, but starting from several historical periods as well.

I wanted to be sure the game was tight, solid, and bullet-proof. As I write this, the brilliant, baseball-savvy folks at Out of the Park Developments have released Update #4 to the game, and so the bulk of this review is based on that release.

Let’s put it this way: I applied more scrutiny to this edition of Out of the Park Baseball than any other edition I’ve ever reviewed. The team at OOTP Developments, I’m sure, wondered if I’d ever get around to actually reviewing the game. But that was never in question; the truth is… OOTP Baseball 12 is just so impressive, so engaging, and so deep you just can’t tear yourself away from it for long.

That’s a good thing, if you’re wondering.

You see, lots of companies do baseball games. Not many eat, sleep, drink, and live baseball the way the good folks at OOTP Developments do. And it shows through in the game.

While it’s still a game and playing it will offer some varied results based on your own interaction with it, each and every historical season I opened was… historically accurate. Not just generally, either. To a tee. If there are inaccuracies here, they lie far beyond my own baseball IQ and, therefore, my ability to detect.

I mean, look at it this way. Several years ago, when I wrote a lot more videogame reviews per year than I do now, I could pick up a copy of, say, EA Sports’ major league baseball game, play it for a couple hours, and write, “Ehh, they got most of the major league roster right, but the minor leagues are woefully inaccurate, and you can only play through ten seasons in franchise mode.”

And while I’d flesh it out, by the time I discovered flaws like that, the game was ruined for me and I had an easy time setting it aside, thinking “maybe next year,” and moving on to the next videogame in my review pile.

I can’t do that with Out of the Park Baseball. Not ever, really. And especially not with this year’s version. It’s the kind of game that tosses you back to your high school years, when you loved baseball just because, and your biggest worry was promise ring etiquette. It’s that pure a baseball experience.

I’m sure PS3 and Xbox 360 owners are reading this and thinking, “What the heck is he talking about? It’s a freaking PC text-management sim! There’s virtually no graphics, no high-def, it’s just text and some retro background graphics and such. Nothing to write home about.”

But if your idea of baseball is 256-bit graphics and 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound and Dual Shock 3/EyeStation integration and such, well… that’s not the heartbeat of baseball.

The heartbeat of baseball is in the stats and the details and the history of the game and getting it all right. Right, not just because you did your research with a Baseball Encyclopedia, but right because you’ve loved the game since you were old enough to understand it, and you remember more than just the magic moments of your favorite team’s first pennant win, but because you remember who they drafted in the 20th round in 1956 by heart, even though that was 10 years before you were born, because you just… love… the game.

That’s the kind of passion that can’t be defined by a business plan, a release strategy, or whatnot. (And, oh yeah, in addition to the PC version, there’s now an iPod Touch/iPad version of the game this year!)

That kind of passion, it’s just either there, or it isn’t. Out of the Park Baseball 12 bleeds that kind of passion from its pores. The love shows.

So, after taking longer than I’ve ever taken to evaluate a videogame, I find myself both exhausted and a little bit in love. Because this is a game I can’t find noticeable faults in. Everything it sets out to be, it is.

So, I could regale you with a long list of features and improvements lifted straight off the press release, if you wanted those kinds of details. But that’s not what a review should be.

A review should tell you if a game is fun. (It is.) If it’s addictive. (Yup… look how long I took to review it.) If it’s satisfying. (Very much so.) If it’s hard to put down, or easy to set aside. (Try impossible to put down.) Most of all, it should tell you if the game is worth your hard-earned sheckles in a rough, difficult economy like we current have.

My verdict? If you love baseball at all, Out of the Park Baseball 12 just simply is the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be (until next year’s version). It’s the Bret Hart of baseball sims.

And that’s what’s important for you to know. The rest, you can get off a press release.

Android Review: Angry Birds Rio

Well, I was one of the impatient many who jumped on Angry Birds Rio as soon as Amazon made it available with their Android App Store launch. Sure, within a week or two, it appeared on the regular Android Market, but I’ve come to love Angry Birds as a franchise, so I couldn’t wait.

I’ll admit that the new app, spun off the movie Rio, is a nice improvement on the hit original, and over Seasons. The only real complaint I have, aside from the lack of a nice set of matouk being sent to me complimentary, is that right now there are only two major levels available in Angry Birds Rio.

Sure, they’re loads of fun; but to look ahead and see the next six levels are going to be spread out to every-other-month releases is a bit discouraging today. Sure, Seasons does something similar, but you don’t see what’s ahead so you can’t really sit there anticipating much. You just hope every holiday that rolls around will trigger a new OTA update.

With Rio, you see the schedule and that makes the wait that much harder to bear. Because Angry Birds Rio rocks. It’s just that, for now, it’s simply too short.

Office Rush for Android

While it may or may not be as good a bargain as finding a decent massage therapy program online, one Android app I’ve appreciated finding of late is Office Rush. While not as crazy-deep as Angry Birds, Office Rush offers a unique visual style to another sort of cross-bred puzzle/platformer game.

The game places you in a career path where you can advance from a janitor’s position, all the way up to a penthouse-owning, jet-flying CEO. But basically it’s a maze of screens and you’re trying to navigate them to complete a task within an certain time limit. The tasks change as you progress, and the complexity grows with each promotion.

Fun little app, and definitely worth the relatively tiny price.

New To Me Review: Angry Birds for Android

I know it’s already taken the world by storm long ago, but I recently gave into pressure and decided to take a flyer on the popular mobile game, Angry Birds. Boy, am I glad I did. It’s a better value than even the cheapest life insurance, because it was free on the Android Market when I bought it. Free!

Now, typically I am no fan of platform style games, but this one’s pretty good and has even me hooked. I love that each of the birds have their own unique abilities, and the game’s puzzles get increasingly harder and harder to solve with the structures you need to destroy and the number and type of birds you are given to accomplish the task.

But really, most people already know what Angry Birds is all about, and for a lot longer than I have. What I’m doing this review for is to simply acknowledge the greatness of the game, and to stand in awe of its value.

My copy of Angry Birds has five or six different groupings of puzzles, and each grouping has something like between 85 to 135 puzzles in it. That’s just crazy depth for a game that I got for free. (My wife has an iPod Touch and got the app for $0.99 in iTunes’ App Store.) It’s a bargain either way, and a new favorite addiction.

I-Play Bowling for Android

It doesn’t take a horse tack to lead gamers to one of the more inventive bowling games released for Android (though it might help). I’m speaking of I-play Bowling, which uses the sensors on your smartphone to turn your Droid into a Wii-mote of sorts.

To bowl, you place your Droid firmly in hand and go through a realistic bowling-toss motion to send the ball down the lane. This can also be accomplished with a less ambitious tip-down, tip-up motion, but isn’t nearly as fun that way.

That’s where the reality factor falls off a bit, though, because how you tilt the phone after the ball starts down the lane can affect the ball’s trajectory after release. The upshot of that is, expect a lot of gutter balls until you get the quirky hang of it.

The challenge level is high because of this design approach. Even after a couple hours, I still had not cracked a score of 100, meaning I’m far worse on I-play than in real life, where I average about 120 on a good night.

Still, it’s a solid, inventive game and deserves kudos for trying something new.

REVIEW: Game Dev Story for Android

I was going to talk a bit about Ipod accessories tonight but I recently finished my first full run-through of Game Dev Story for Android on my T-Mobile G2 with Google phone by HTC, and that seemed a bit more urgent.

Game Dev Story is an industry sim game that focuses on… the videogame industry. For a first entry, it’s not a bad little app, and only sets you back about $2.50 in the Android Marketplace. Or at least that’s what I got it for; they may have been running a half-off special at the time.

That said, you get a lot of value for the money; the game runs through about 20 years of videogame history and gives you a chance to develop for fictional equivalents of every from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Wii. Strangely, the game skips the Xbox era and goes directly to the Xbox 360, and ignores the PlayStation 3 entirely. It also ignores the mobile era of gaming.

So, there will be plenty of room for expansion in a sequel, if the developers decide to make one.

The game starts you out with a low budget, a thin talent pool, and few options for game types and genres to develop. Everything expands over time in the game, which is great. But it’ll take you about five years to start really turning enough profit to expand operations and build up a sizable bank balance with which to hire better developers and such.

One thing that’s very difficult in the game is to nab a hardware engineer. You need one in order to develop your own game console, but in my first run-through, I never found one. It’s also not an option as a career change. So I imagine it’s a huge Easter egg if you actually pull this off during a replay.

The game rewards repeat play by allowing you to keep the levels you developed in previous run-throughs during replay. That makes it a bit easier to turn a profit.

You start out in a small office with desk space for a staff of four. You get a chance to expand to six, and ultimately to a staff of eight.

That being said, for all the good features and fun play the game offers, I’d be happier with Game Dev Story if it lasted a bit longer and included more platforms to develop for… and even offered an office expansion to a staff of 10, if some variety could be added to job descriptions available.

One of the weaknesses of the game is that specialists like writers, coders, artists and game engineers are eventually outshone by the talent levels of producers and directors, who aren’t such specialists but are given higher scores in certain areas than those specialists.

Ahh, well. It’s a load of fun to play. I just hope there’s a Game Dev Story 2 in the offing, and that it expands and improves upon every element of the game; with added length and depth, this could become an even more addictive app than it already is.

Fishing 2 Go for Android

I’ve found another game I love on the Android Market.

Like most of the games I love, it doesn’t eat a ton of bandwidth; in fact, there’s no multiplayer in it. All it does use the internet for is to check global leaderboards, and then only at your request. So it’s a safe game in that way for users like me on a limited Web plan. Keeps me grounded to the good ol’ laminate floor that way.

Fishing2Go has immediately become my favorite fishing game in eons. Why? One simple reason. All you see is the fisherman’s perspective in the game. Too many fishing games give you a side-scrolling view of your lure in the water, allowing you to entice fish to bite in a very videogame-ish style.

But that is an advantage no real fisherman ever enjoys. All they can do is choose their lures and equipment carefully, and work the area they’re in as best they can. About the only visual aid you get is fishing sonar so you have at least an idea of where groupings are.

This makes for a more realistic experience that lends the game a very nice “fishing simulation” type of feel. And that’s what I like.

I also enjoy the wide variety of lures and equipment, the generous population of fish breeds, and a healthy selection of fishing locales to choose from. About the only thing missing were variable weather effects.

A tournament or career mode might also have been a fun add-on, so long as it’s “off-line” and doesn’t involve multiplayer

The only other gripe is that the fish you catch are all portrayed by the same species picture… it doesn’t matter if you catch a 2-pound largemouth bass, or a 20-pound one; the picture that represents that bass will always be the same. Of course, additional graphics would weigh down this nicely-slim app, so I can live with that.

Available on the Android Market. Only $2.25.

Experimenting with Shaiya

I’ve been staying away from free online MMOs lately since a lot of them are boring and incredible time-sucks. Searching for good car insurance quotes is often a far better use of my time, in fact.

But lately my wife’s been hooked on Shaiya and I decided to check it out because it was more of an RPG than an RTS. I will say that for a game that’s free, it’s not bad. I’d compare it favorably to Dungeons and Dragons Online. The graphics are not spectacular, but they are good enough, and it is like playing a PS3 or 360 RPG in some respects.

The biggest difference is that console RPGs just have better stories and graphics, in my opinion. As an occasional visitor, Shaiya is sometimes a good distraction or stress-break. But I can see how it could become an obsession, so I’ll be careful how often I fire it up.

REVIEW: Out of the Park Baseball 11

Well, here we are, almost a year since I reviewed Out of the Park Baseball 10, and I am honored once again by the fine folks at Out of the Park Developments to be given a chance to review their newest edition, Out of the Park Baseball 11. Fortunately, as a videogame blogger in no need of pronexin, I have the maturity to offer an honest review even though I’ve been offered a review copy of the game.

I’ve been able to watch Out of the Park Baseball 11 develop from its late beta stages to its current and more recent release, and I will say that I’ve been impressed once again, as I have been for the last few versions I’ve reviewed, with how in-touch Out of the Park Developments stays with the feedback of their beta-testing team as well as the users of the game. Issues that have been brought up have been addressed and patched with reassuring frequency, and issues that created problems early on have been addressed. This sort of ongoing support is likely why OOTP Developments has endured through ten editions of its game and is now beginning its second decade.

As usual, I prefer to judge a baseball game by looking at how accurately they capture the Minnesota Twins. This isn’t purely capricious on my part; first, the Twins are my home-state team and the only team I feel I actually know well enough to compare them to their videogame representation. And as a smaller-market team, if a developer gets the details on the Twins right, you can usually be assured they got the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and A’s right as well.

First of all, I must point out that OOTP 11 has been surprisingly accurate on the Twins this time out. Their entire minor-league system is correct down to contract details, including the staffing of those minor-league teams; for example, Joe Mauer’s brother Jake is listed as manager of one of the Twins’ minor-league teams; I checked it out and they got it exactly right. That’s something that can’t be said for 2K Sports’ MLB titles, or even for Sony’s, over in the console world.

So what about simulation accuracy? Well, I simulated the Twins 2010 season up to the current date without making any changes to the team other than those generated by the game, such as injuries. To eliminate bias, I even had the CPU manager shuffle things around when such injuries arose.

As I write this review, the real-life Twins are 33-24. At 57 games into the 2010 season, the Twins in OOTP Baseball 11 stand at 32-25. While the scores were obviously mildly different from the real-life results, to get within one game of reality, albeit with a fictional injury list generated by the game, is proof to me that the folks behind OOTP Baseball 11 are NOT just making wild guesses and designing the game around biases toward favorite or popular teams.

Of course, I’ve come to expect this sort of accuracy from OOTP Baseball over the years; their game isn’t always a perfect prognosticator, but it does a better job than most baseball fans on any given day of the week. I’ve also gone on to play the off-season, and it’s a valid engine for simulating the sort of trades other clubs will agree to and which ones they won’t; it isn’t often that one robs another team blind in a trade in OOTP 11. To get someone of value, you must surrender players of like value.

The closest I’ve come to any sort of “steal” in OOTP 11 is a trade for center-fielder Andrew McCutcheon; I offered up one legit starter of 4.0-star value and two young prospects, but that wasn’t enough to get the deal done; the team I was bargaining with countered, asking for any one of five other prospects to be added to the deal.

I tossed in one of those players and they hemmed and hawed, but finally agreed to the deal at the Winter Meetings.

I gave up a starter and three very good young players to get a 4.5-star quality center-fielder. The four-for-one deal reflects the sort of deal-making that must be done to obtain someone of value. While it looks one-sided now, my McCutcheon deal reminded me a bit of the Twins-Giants trade that sent A.J. Pierzinski to San Fran in exchange for Francisco Liriano, Boof Bonser and Joe Nathan.

At the time, none of those three had proven themselves in the majors and Pierzinski was well-thought-of. That Pierzinski bombed after that, while Nathan became one of the best closers in the majors, Liriano had an amazing first year for the Twins before injuries set in, and Boof Bonser was a journeyman is the hindsight of the deal.

The talent I gave up to secure McCutcheon might blossom as well; McCutcheon seemed a great fit with the Twins when I made the trade, but his career was marred by injuries in successive seasons that held him back from fulfilling all my expectations, though he warmed the seat nicely for a draft pick center-fielder I’d picked up the summer before the trade. Also, the deal freed up salary space for me to keep much of my Twins intact for a few more seasons.

Of course, this reflects the organic nature of the game; even a deal that seems one-sided at the time doesn’t always turn out that way. After all, for every A.J. Pierzinski trade the Twins have made and come away from looking wise, they’ve had moments when they’ve looked foolish, such as being forced to cut David Ortiz for no compensation, before Big Papi blossomed with the Red Sox. Or trading away Johann Santana to the Mets for, well… no one who’s worked out all that great. Might as well say, “nothing.”

In that sense, Out of the Park Baseball 11 is sometimes a bit smarter than the real-life sport it is simulating, since it allows fewer block-headed deals.

What has impressed me this season more than in previous years is the historical simulation aspect of OOTP 11, which goes back as far as professional baseball has been played, and brings you up to the modern era. While Baseball Mogul does this, it does so without an historically-accurate financial model. While not quite perfect, OOTP 11 is much better on even that front.

Specifically, the game allows you to select starting a league in pretty much any year since the inception of professional baseball. It then takes you through a six-step wizard which allows you to customize your historical simulation to a preferred level of historical detail.

One of the details you can select is an accurate financial model. As the game explains it, “If you select to begin in 1940, ticket prices, attendance, salaries and the like will seem low, but will increase as time progresses.”

While I haven’t had the time to test out all 100+ years of professional baseball history to be certain that this accuracy is maintained year-to-year in career mode, I can vouch for the fact that, whatever year you choose to start in, the financial model is accurate to that year.

In this respect, Out of the Park Baseball 11 is far and away a superior historical simulator compared to the only other PC baseball management sim I’ve played that has attempted this, Baseball Mogul. BM has an inflexible financial model, meaning that while BM allows you to start at the inception of baseball and play to modern day, it all happens using the modern financial model. That means that in the Depression Era, you have Babe Ruth in the 1930s getting paid $20 million a season, while 60,000 fans per day flock in at ticket prices ranging from $20-$250 per ticket, and buying concessions like $5 hot dogs and $7 beer. In the Depression Era? Some Depression!

That doesn’t occur in Out Of the Park Baseball 11; the 1930s financial model reflects a 1930s economy. The amount of historical research alone required to achieve this is nothing short of dizzying! And yet, here it is. A truly impressive accomplishment that has made its impact on me as a reviewer more strongly this year than in any previous release of the game. In fairness, OOTP has been at it for a while, fine-tuning this aspect of the game before OOTP Baseball 11… but the realization of it in this year’s release has really impressed me with its attention to minute detail.

Not perfect? True. But very close.

In fairness to Baseball Mogul, by the way, that game is made for a younger, less demanding audience; Out of the Park Baseball 11′s audience is the true stats-obsessed baseball geek, and their historical simulation, therefore, is far more accurate.

Does the game stick strictly to history? I don’t know. I remember, for example, when the Minnesota Twins’ Kirby Puckett became the first pro baseball player to be granted a contract extension that paid him in excess of $1.0 million a season. That happened in the 1980s. Does OOTP Baseball 11 allow you to start in 1921, for example, and not hand out a $1.0 million/season contract until Puckett breaks down that financial wall in the mid-1980s? I don’t know.

But just the fact that each year is accurate-to-history when you start it is, for me, more than enough to set Out of the Park Baseball 11′s historical simulation mode far and away above the competition.

About the only complaint I have that really sticks in my craw is that, although toned down a bit from OOTP Baseball 10, OOTP Baseball 11 still features an injury rate to big-name players that seems far and away more frequent than is encountered in real-life. While the code hasn’t taken out my top three batters and four of my five starting pitchers, as OOTPB 10 did, there have been stretches where I’ve had as many as four or five starters injured at the same time for stretches lasting from two weeks to five months.

While the shorter-term injury people cycle back in quicker, those who the game decides are injury-prone never seem to stay on-the-field for very long. So, although the injury rate, especially to major stars, has been improved in OOTPB 11 over last year’s version, I’m still not convinced it’s an accurate injury-rate model just yet.

I should also add that the interface has been updated mildly, and while it improves the readability of the text on-screen, the layout is still a bit complex and requires a somewhat steep learning curve. Once you get accustomed to the layout of the game, the interface becomes less of an issue, but it’s not a game the newbie is going to pick up and understand completely, intuitively, within the first 30 minutes. The learning curve is probably pretty steep for the first couple hours, then tapers off for another few hours before becoming comfortable and normal.

As I said last year, I don’t employ a star-system, a 10-point score or a letter-grade in my reviews. That makes reviewing a game of this caliber a dumbed-down experience that allows readers to skip over the body of the review to see the final “score” of a game. I’d rather readers of my blog read the full review, then decide for themselves if a game is worth their hard-earned sheckles or not.

I can’t imagine, however, any baseball fan not enjoying Out of the Park Baseball 11 much more often than the time they spend finding minor faults and complaints about it. Right now, there’s just no other PC baseball management sim on the marker that even comes close, and even the baseball games in the console world cannot match OOTP’s accuracy. Well done, Out of the Park Developments!