Past reviews can be found here.
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[size="5"]Time Machine: Medieval Cooking
By: gamesgames.com
Played 2011-01-18 on agame.com
[size="2"]<span style="font-weight:bold;">K. Helfenstein - 2011-01-21</span>
I'm not sure how a monkey got ahold of a time machine equipped with a kitchenette but I guess sometimes the elements that pull a game together don't have to make sense. This is a time management sort of game that has customers coming up to the window and their requests for food are given through pictures in a thought bubble. Certain foods require a couple steps to prepare or are perishible while others are always immediatly availble. It took awhile for me to notice but each level has a time limit in which to serve the required number of customers.
Will I play it again?
I plan on trying to finish it once. At first I was thinking that it wasn't a particularily special game but then when I noticed that it was time to stop playing and that I wanted to finish just one more level, I realised that the game had hooked me. I haven't played this type of game in awhile so that may have helpped it get its hooks into me. The short of it is though, it is a pretty basic game centered on a tried concept that I found enjoyable. One minor thing that bugs me a bit is that the achievements are completly pointless.
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[size="5"]Chicken Jump
By: Alvin Team
Played 2011-01-21 on agame.com
[size="2"]<span style="font-weight:bold;">K. Helfenstein - 2011-01-21</span>
Curiosity from the name and a cute image of a chicken is what got me to play this game. It's a simplistic game. Clicking the mouse causes a chicken to jump. The goal is to ascend vertically as high as possible by coming into contact with descending platforms and objects. Clicking the mouse again while in the air performs a double-jump sort of action which is useful when a platform is just barely missed but not useful at all when no platforms remain on the screen.
Will I play it again?
Probably not. It was cute. It entertained me for about 10 minutes. I stepped away feeling as though I was happy with my score. I'm not sure that if I continued to play that I'd get much more out of it. I might give it another go when I have only a few short minutes to kill and I want something light. But otherwise I'll probably be moving on.
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[size="5"]Mole Revenge
By: Luiz Fernando Modotti
Played 2011-01-21 on agame.com
[size="2"]<span style="font-weight:bold;">K. Helfenstein - 2011-01-21</span>
Sometimes when playing a game it's like I can feel the presence of the developer right there. This is a basic platformer where the main character is a mole trying to rescue his family. There's a few bad-guy moles walking around, at least one deadly obstical that I came accross, all sorts of fruit laying around for points, and the occasional power-up. Probably the most prevelant hazzard would be any pits or falling off the screen. At the end of each level is a key waiting to be picked up which... well, completes the level. I guess it had to be something.
Will I play it again?
No. Probably the single most annoying thing was having to hold a button down to make the mole run. There's really no point that I could see for that feature and maybe I'd feel more positive about the game without having to use it. Other than that, I just felt as though I was playing a student game programmer's platformer assignment. The polish was certainly there and it was bug free and all and it is most definatly more than anything that I've ever written. But it just felt as though it collected the minimum of basic platformer ingredients that a game would have and didn't really make the game into anything that is its own.
