Achieved the hard badge. Got to agree with Urdronar. The replay value isn't quite there. It gets tiresome sorting through armour, beating the same monsters. Once I got the hard badge (although.. I was very tempted to just stop), I couldn't save, so I don't fancy continuing. That shouldn't take away from the fact this is a very fun game, and very playable. With a few tweaks it could be absolutely brilliant. Anyway I'm just going to close my window and never return!
Good game, but got to agree with others. Lags way too much, and outright freezes too. Makes it unplayable. I wish Kong would double-check whether games still work well before making the BOTD.
Oh, and I disagree with glopso. A lot. This isn't a political statement, its about fun. The way this game works ensures a good challenge for the better player. The satisfaction of a 5-0 win is greater because of it, but usually the battles become closer with a greater sense of tactics.
Actually a very good concept. Multiplayer/AI obviously expands the audience massively, but als a few options would help a lot, such as setting the win total would help too. But as an idea its limitless. Upgrades could be obstacles, backgrounds, helper ships.. limitless.
Crosscrosscross is hard, took me about ten goes. For the last speedup arrow jump back (on your third jump) to the platform you jumped from to get it, then go over to the narrow ledge, then go for the target. Tough though.
This was very disappointing. Far far too easy, and 40xESCAPE is a huge misnomer as there are in reality only about 5 different kinds of puzzles. There is also no difficulty curve of any kind. The only reason people are getting stuck by moderately confusing levels is because only about 2 levels require any lateral thinking so you are brain-dead when you reach a level which requires such mighty thought processes as clicking on the letter signifying the initial of a number.
Lvl 29 should have the answer 435. This would make much more sense and was be less infantile.
Part 2)
But there are other idiocies too. No upgrade for the mouse magnet/coins is frustrating. As is the fact that the money earned actually decreases sometimes as you go to a higher level. The upgrade system is a little flawed. If you jump an upgrade, you can still buy the poorer upgrade which is entirely useless, it should be locked at this stage, or you should have to buy upgrades in order. It is also annoying that the pause button obscures your view of "eggs".
This was a good idea for a game made very very bad by not actually paying attention to the gaming experience. 3.85 is a joke - 1/5 from me.
Part 1) So I gave this game a chance - I really wish I hadn't. The penguin AI is a joke, and it is not excusable as part of the game dynamic. The targeting never switches turtle, so instead of going for a nearer turtle, you will be left chasing shadows with the turtles flit on and off screen and actually walking over other nearby turtles. This is on top of the other major AI problem which leaves the penguin unable to walk around walls. Frequently you are left watching a number of your penguins not doing anything, plenty of monsters around them, but they are forlornly walking against walls as a slow turtle does circles on the other side. Pathetic programming.
Yep. In line with what everyone else has said, this game simply isn't fun when you are simply watching your penguins aimlessly walking at a hedge. Shame the developers didn't listen when this issue was first raised. A very disappointing badge of the day.
Its a neat little game. It doesn't really require any brain power of any sort, but the speed of animation means this isn't too frustrating. But effectively its a puzzle game without any puzzlement, so as a game it requires no skill, no thinking, no dexterity.. Its difficult to see where the human element comes in.
Also worth pointing out that it can be an advantage to simply sacrifice a few turns being defenceless. If you have evolved monsters the value of crystals becomes much higher, as three reinforced high-value cards can beat a litany of monsters, instead of losing each one-by-one by trying to play them as soon as possible.
Be wary of evolving your monsters. It changes the make-up of your deck completely, sometimes to its detriment. I'm a little surprised that the cost of crystals per code goes up so steeply.
@KingBane - hmm, I was responsible for some of those +'s and -'s - should I be asking for wages?
@Drederick_Tatum - your name brings nostalgic joy to my world. In a long distant past the Simpson's was a wonderful show.
I must admit though.. I can see why people get a bit confused by which card will attack what next. For example "Kurtey" says that it will "Target the back row farthest creature first". Given that the screen implies that there is a heirachy on your backrow (i.e. the card space on the right of your back row is physically placed further back than the left, and vice versa for the computer). Thus it is somewhat counter intuitive that Kurtey actually will attack diagonally when there are 3 opponents regardless of which side it is on. Its a question of whether "farthest" refers to a horizontal axis or a vertical axis.
And yes, a) I didn't read the tutorial so I don't know if that is cleared up there, b) it takes about 2 battles to work out what's actually going on if you care enough c) I am a very very dull man.
I played this out of curiosity for the badge, so I'm not commenting on the price of the game at all. What I can say is that for a couple of hours I've got a lot of entertainment without paying a penny. The duels/swarm/storymode offer variety, there's the ability to level a card which adds nice incentive to the slightly repetitious battles. I probably won't play this game enough to look into paying money for it, but I can't criticise it for being anything other than a great diverting game to try out. I also don't seem to have the same computer issues others do with the game, which is odd as my hard drive is failing rather fantastically at the moment.
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