It's a decent puzzle game, but it's not particularly challenging. Only the last 8 levels really felt interesting to me, and even then I wouldn't have rated them 'hard'.
Very old school. Feels like the old star wars arcade, but I very much feel like - since I'm also old school - that I'd need a joystick to be any good at this. Doesn't really do enough to hold my interest.
Great atmosphere and use of the material. Game play is good, but lacks sufficient depth to really be compelling. The campaign game is about 80% skill, 20% luck, but the skill depth isn't that great. The difference between someone whose good and someone whose really good wouldn't be that great. The challenges seem like they'd be highly luck based because certain combinations have to come up (or not come up) early before you even have a chance.
I don't think getting all 44 aces will prove very frustrating if you enjoy the game, but getting them in under 160 seconds will just suck because it will mean repeating the same level over and over again. You'll have to rush to put the arrow into position so fast that you won't have time for precision. I've got 33 aces, and only 1 or 2 are in the 2-3 second range that you'd need to get the difficult badge. Keep in mind that 3.5 seconds each won't cut it, because certain levels are unavoidably slow because you either need two shots or the ace takes a slow path to get there.
Can't we get something a little less impossible on the impossible badge, like maybe 44 aces in 220 seconds. The 160 second limit is just insanely difficult.
Pretty good puzzle game, but I'm dropping a star because the exact position of the torch frequently doesn't seem to correspond to the bounds of the area that lights it.
I have two big complaints. First, there aren't enough decisions that matter. Tactically, its suitable for about six year olds, which is fine if you are aiming at that market but I think even six year olds will eventually welcome more depth. Secondly, autosave!!! I've lost too much progress by thoughtlessly hitting 'return to menu' to keep playing this.
As for why you would rig a game like this, the answer is simple - it could be perceived as improving gameplay. For example, suppose I tested the game on some friends and they gave me the feedback 'too much luck'. In that case I'd rig the game so that the longer you played the less the cpu cheated, which would give the impression that the game was skill based because you were always getting better! Or, I might rig the game to give the impression of a smarter cpu player than I could actually code for. If the feeback on the game was, 'the computer is too stupid', then cheating gives the impression that the 'hard' opponent is really smart.
Maybe I just had bad luck, but if I was going to rig a game like this I'd do it with a table of results. I'd use fair generation in most cases, but I'd have an if statement along the lines of 'if the cpu's is throwing 6 dice and the score is more than 1000 below the player's score then let there be a 10% chance of not going to a random result and instead looking up the result in a table of results'. The table of results would be things like 'nothing', '2 random triples', 'a random quad', '3 random pairs', etc. This would boost the cpu's chances of winning considerably but would defy all but the most rigorous attempts to detect it.
I'm not saying that it is rigged, but I am saying that I've seen runs of luck that are really unusual (multiple 6 sixes by the computer). That suggests to me that either its rigged or it suffers from bad random number generation. It certainly isn't impossible to rig a game like this in such a way that it doesn't seem rigged and passes most statistical analysis.
I love all the nice touches in this game. For example, I absolutely love how when you kill the jump infantry, the rocket pack keeps moving thier dead body around the map. That's like 5 star gaming if anything is. I can't believe the amateur crap that gets rated ahead of something like this.
Wow!! Why isn't this the highest rated game on kongregate!?!? Sheesh, this is amazing! Real physics... even for the cables. Bosses, interesting level design. What more do you want? Sure, it's a side scroller, but circa the early 90's I would have paid big money for this game and considered it well worth it. Some did a heck of a fine job putting this together.
@cheherasade: Yeah, I beat it with the loss of just 4 units. The game is waayyyyyy to easy, and you don't really have alot of decision making points that matter in the slightest.
Just a few balance thoughts.
RANGE, NOT DAMAGE, IS THE MOST VALUABLE UPGRADE. LIFE IS THE SECOND MOST VALUABLE. SHEESH.
There absolutely has to be a wider battlefield with defensive strong points that you can take and hold. Otherwise, static is always the way to go. There absolutely has to be a counter to a turtle strategy (putting 12 long range units on defensive and just mowing down the enemy before they can get in range). I suggest adding accuracy and evasion to unit attributes. You need a rock/paper/scissors thing going. So far I see 'rock' and lots of scissors.
You need more tradeoffs in the more advanced units, not simple straight improvements. Too much gets obselete in a hurry.
4 stars for execution, 0 stars for game design. One of the most poorly designed games I've ever played. Shows some promise but needs some serious redesign to make up for the deficiencies. Currently, successful strategies appear to be highly boring. You know that there is something wrong with the game when you are actually harmed by having more troops on the board.
Ok, 8) Try to buy as few extra units as possible - no more than one or two. Most of the time, you'll just be making swordsman anyway. In most cases, the races special unit is worth it. 'King's Guard' rock, and are the only extra unit the Human Alliance needs.
Alot of the game's balance seems to have been lost compared to the original version. It seems like when you used to play a race with a bonus, it acted like a bonus so that say upgrading a undead halbradier to +4 cost the same as upgrading most races halbradier to +1. Oh well.
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