Review: Games for Windows Phone

Review – Windows Phone games

 

 

[Archive - old article first published on the now defunct mydigitallife.co.za]

 

I recently got one of the new Nokia Lumia phones. One of the things I liked most about the phone was the Xbox Live application.

 

This week I am diving into the games on Windows marketplace.

 

The Lumia can get games from two places, the Nokia Ovi Store and the Windows Phone market place.

 

Under the Windows Phone marketplace you get two types of games – normal games and Xbox branded games that form part of Xbox Live. Playing these Xbox games you can unlock Achievements that will earn you Gamer Score that is attached to your Xbox Gamer Tag.

 

My interest lies with the Xbox Games since I chase those Achievements really hard.

But first let’s take a quick look at the no name brands in the Windows marketplace (I can’t be bother going to the Ovi store).

 

While most of the games in the store look solid, there are some real dodgy looking games in there.

 

Epic indeed.

 





That's one way of getting around copyright protection.



An unlicensed Marvel game? Marvel might be good at comics, they are better at suing.

 



Bowling - you are doing it wrong.

 



No words.

Like all marketplaces, the Windows marketplace is rife with Tetris, Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombie clones. And of course, obligatory Sexy Girl puzzle games. Before you download any of these games, take a look at what they require to access on your phone:

• data services
• movement and directional sensor
• music and video library
• push notification service
• owner identity
• phone identity

Why would they need access to all that personal data? These shitty free games must be selling your data to third parties. These applications that masquerade as free games are after your personal data just like Google and Apple.

 

Even if these games are free, the price is too steep for me.

The games on Xbox Live are MUCH better and next time I will take a look at them

[Archive] Review: Cafe Solitaire

Game Review: Cafe Solitaire

 

[Archive - old article reviewing a Nokia N-Gage game]

 

Who here have not secretly play Solitaire on the computer while at school or work? I know I have. Vegas mode; Cumulative Score. If I lose as much money in real life as I lost in Solitaire, I would be living in a box under a bridge right now. I played Solitaire so many times, that I am sick of solitaire and never want to see it again.

I did not think anybody wanted to play solitaire ever again but Digital Chocolate did. In Digital Chocolate’s Café Solitaire the idea is not to play Solitaire in solitary confinement. You join your friends in an online café. In the café you can display your trophies you have won, change the clothes of your character and answer questions about your friends.

Most import of all – accumulate points with your friends. Every time you play solitaire you score a certain amount of points. This all adds up and when your points reach a certain threshold, your café is upgraded to the next level. So there is the nice team work element.

There is about eight, nine or ten different solitaire games you can play. Can’t remember how many right now and can’t be bothered to go find out.

Some of them are easier than others. Some like Beleaguered Castle are so hard you will be bashing your head against the wall in frustration. But if you keep trying you will eventually be able to finish them all.

Speaking of finishing them all. There is a bug in the game. You can’t get the full 1000 N-Gage Points (NGP). Taking a look at online forums all over reveals a bunch of frustrated players stuck on 980 NGP. This really, really sucks because in N-Gage the entire point of playing the games is unlocking the full 1000 NGP.

Is it really so much to ask that you test your fucking game before you release into the wild Digital Chocolate? Next time you want to release something and your not sure its working, send it to me. I will test it, free of charge. Ok, for a small (big) fee.

Anyways, if you don’t mind only joining the 980 NGP club than this game is definitely worth checking out. It’s a great way to kill time and very challenging.

 

Review: Civilization Revolution for Windows Phone 7

Review: Civilization Revolution for Windows Phone 7

 

I started playing Civilization back in the day when the game could fit on a stiffy or two. In other words, the game was not bigger then 5 meg!  

 

As time went on. sequels to the game expanded in size and scope until you would need a thousand or more stiffies to accommodate the game.

 

Recently though, the game was shrunk back to 5 meg so that it would comfortably fit on you mobile phone. Civilization Revolution for Windows Phone 7 has been released on Xbox  recently and I decided to take a look since I am a long time fan. 

Game play

Image from: phonearena

 

The goal of Civilization is to take you tribe of savages in year 4000 BC, build big cities, raise armies and learn new technologies up to the point where you start exploring space and colonizing new planets.

 

You start of with a small town of your own, and then much like chess, each player on the board gets an opportunity to move. Instead of moving pawns and bishops, you move infantry, tanks, battleships and bomber aeroplanes. You must also build buildings in your cities, develop new technologies and explore new territories to colonize.

 

You move your military and select what buildings should be built in which cities. After you made your selection the other nations get to move their military units and build their buildings.

 

Another crucial point where Civilization (CIV) differs from chess is the different ways in which you can win the game. Chess you have limited ways. In Civ you can either go for a brutal victory  by wiping out all nations on the planet using your military or you can go for more sophisticated victories like the economic victory, cultural victory or technological victory. 

Achievements

The achievements for the game has not been thought through at all. To unlock the achievements, all you have to do is play the game with each nation on the easiest setting and soon you will unlock them all.

 

They could have made the achievements more diverse by handing out achievements for completing the game at different difficulty levels or by achieveing victory by the different victory methods. 

 

Verdict

Although the achievements are not challenging at all, Civilization will keep you busy for a while as you try to become the ultimate leader the world has ever seen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Real-life Transformer Robot

Real-life Transformer Robot



 

 

 

This 1/12 scale real-life Transformer robot by Japanese designers Brave Robotics is for sale and you can pick it up for only $24,000! It really works but it still looks a bit wonky.

 

Even though it still looks like a toddler first finding it's feet, it is not hard to imagine them getting better and better at it and that one day we will have life-size models that will follow us around. Hopefully can program them to pick up dog poop so I don't have too anymore.

 

 

Friday Time Waster

Friday Time Waster

It is Friday and as soon as your d@mn boss leaves you can stop predending to work and mess around on the Internet.

Here is a little something to help you waste time - Terry Tate Office Linebacker.

Originally, Reebok produced just one of these adverts for the Super bowl but after the runaway success of the first one, they (thankfully) made some more.

See Terry ‘bring the pain’. It is a thing of beauty.

 

 

In the second episode things heat up as Terry get some competition.

 

 

After all that hard work, Terry deserves a holiday. 

 

In need of more Terry Tate? Open YouTube and do a quick search, you will find many more videos there.

 

 I will now leave you with this quote from Terry Tate: 

"I don't have time for pain. The only pain I have time for is the pain I put on fools who don't know what time it is."

2011 Tech Highlight (sort of anyway)

iPhone 3G

When the iPhone was first released I read this review:

“The iPhone is a piece of shit and so is your face.” The review influenced me so much that I never gave the iPhone a second thought.

However, through the years I have heard so many good things about the iPhone that when my Blackberry got “nationalized” earlier this year I thought that maybe it was time to get an iPhone and see for myself what the big hoo-haa is.

I bought a second hand iPhone 3G and was (un)pleasantly surprised by it. The phone is beautiful to look at and it works like a charm but the battery life was horrible. I had to charge the phone twice a day, but that was not the bad part…

I used the internet on the iPhone like I would use it on my Blackberry and in the first month I racked up a R900 data bill! Did I really consume so much data with my Blackberry? So I had to kill the 3G, turning the iPhone 3G into just an iPhone.

I also have a lot of documents on my phone and find it hard to navigate inside a lot of text without the help of some arrow keys. I really miss the slide out keyboard from my old phone.

So here is my suggestion for the ultimate iPhone: unlimited internet bandwidth like a Blackberry and an elegant slide out keyboard like the Sony Experia.

Now that would be a brilliant phone.

 

Bonus disappointment: my iPhone have not slipped any random sexual innuendo into my conversions yet.

 

 

Source: runt-of-the-web

 

I am the proud owner of: Xbox 360 and an iPhone.

Spot the geek - Friday Time Waster

Of these three celebrities below, can you spot the biggest geek? Hint: he runs his own gaming company.

 

Did you guess tough guy Vin Diesel? If you did, congrats, you got it. Of the three people up there, he is by far the geekiest. He likes to beat the shit out of people in movies and he likes to beat the shit out of people in games.

Vin started playing video games when he was young but he soon got bored with the one dimensional stories and switched to something with a richer and fuller storyline - Dungeons and Dragons. The nerdiest of nerd games.

He has been playing D&D for 20+ years now!

He always kept quiet about his dark secret until he heard that Steven Spielberg is working on the Medal of Honor games. That was his cue to come out of the geek closet and announce that he is going to start his own gaming studio – Tigon Studios.

Tigon Studio is dedicated to making games with great story lines. One of their first games was based on the Pitch black / Chronicles of Riddick movies, Chronicles of Riddick, Escape from Butcher’s bay.

I have noted before that games based on movies suck badly, but Escape from Butcher’s Bay is something else, it scored a whopping 90% on Metacritc. The critics and players loved the game.

Other games by Vin Diesel’s studio have also done well scoring (Wheelman) 65% and (Assault on Dark Athena) 80%.

Bonus geek fact: In the movie XXX, Vin Diesel sported a fake tattoo that read Melkor. Melkor is the name of one of his D&D characters.

Honorable Mention – Ice T

When Ice T is not rapping about shooting people, he is shooting people on Xbox. On his Twitter account he talks a lot about games and the games he is playing. Some of his favorite games include Call of Duty and Dead Space.