Epic Word Search Collection (3DS) Review

Back in April, I reviewed Word Search by POWGI for Shigeru Reviews. I enjoyed the game quite a bit! I've always loved words and writing, so a game like Word Search really spoke to me. Now, the same developer as that game has created a new game called the Epic Word Search Collection. It comes out on July 23 and this game is strictly for the 3DS. It should be another winner right?



Epic Word Search Collection is a huge game; its much bigger than Word Search by POWGI. There are multiple categories in the game and within each category are subcategories. There are basically puzzles for everyone here. The topics range from TV, Movies, Sports, Food, and Rock Music. I love TV, Movies, and Music, so those were my favorite categories. But I imagine there will be plenty of fans of food and sports too. You could definitely play this game for a long time. Thankfully, unlike its predecessor, the game saves where you are at in the game and you come back and find more words later. This is very handy. Epic Word Search is a hard game and you'll want to take breaks from it. POWGI was an easier game that I'd recommend to novices or casual fans, while Epic Word is more for hardcore word search fans. I wish, though, that I could say that the experience was perfect; its not.

My least favorite part of Epic Word Search is the way scrolling is handled in the game. The word search areas are gigantic and you'll have to scroll left, right, up, and down to find words. This makes it more challenging, but the challenge isn't the problem here. No, the problem with scrolling is that the analog stick and D-Pad have inverted controls. So up is down, down is up, left is right, and right is left. This makes scrolling a bit confusing and its easy to get lost while trying to solve a puzzle. There is no way to change the inverted controls and there is no option to scroll using the stylus. The scrolling doesn't destroy the Epic Word Search experience, but its definitely something I wish was better. The best solution to going to a another category or going back to the one you were at is to push A for the overview mode. Overview mode is pretty easy to use. In fact, the menus overall in the game are really good. I also thought that the touch screen word searching worked just as well as POWGI. Aside from the scrolling, Epic Word Search Collection is a well designed game.



This game has more musical variety than POWGI, but I don't like the songs as much. All of the songs in this game are piano based and on an infinite loop. Thats ok at first but can become annoying. Thankfully, there is an option to turn the music off and leave the sound effects on. The sounds are fine. They sound a lot like POWGI's.



Epic Word Search Collection is a good game. Yes, the scrolling and music in the game could have been better, but everything else is pretty good. As I said earlier, I only recommend this game to people that are hardcore word search fans. If you're a more casual word search fan, you should check out Word Search by POWGI. In any case, both games are good and I look forward to what the developer does next!

My Score: 7.8/10
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Thank you to the developer, Lightwood Games, for providing me with a review copy of the game! You can check the game out for yourself tomorrow (July 23) on the 3DS eshop!

All of the above pictures were taken from google here.

What I'm Playing and A Glimpse At the the Blog's (Immediate) Future

Hey everybody! Sorry this blog entry is so late! I did promise you a blog entry this weekend though, so I decided I'd just update you on what I'm playing and what you should expect out of this blog soon.

Currently I'm playing:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf: As always, I check my TWO New Leaf towns everyday. I'm still obsessed with Animal Crossing!

Tomodachi Life: I just got this game back and I've started to populate my island with Mii's. My two favorite Mii's so far: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully! I'm ready for the X-Files to be back!

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Wii U Virtual Console): Just downloaded this recently. Haven't got into it a lot yet but definitely want to do another playthrough of this game. Maybe I'll beat it this time! lol

So I'm not playing a lot right now but that'll change soon.

I'm planning to play & review an upcoming Wii U game for this blog! Just waiting on the review code for it. Also hoping that I'll be able to review an upcoming 3DS eshop game for this blog too. We'll see.

And as always, you can expect more previews for Indie games from this blog. Oh and I wouldn't doubt that I'll write about Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer next month too. The game is coming out in Japan soon and I'll be watching video footage of it. So I'm sure I'll have more thoughts to share about that game. I plan to get the game in September, so I may do some special blog entries about it once I get my hands on it!

In any case, if any of you have any Wii U or 3DS Indie games you'd like me to preview on this blog, please share those suggestions with me in the comments!

Btw, if you are an indie developer who wants me to review your Wii U or 3DS game or preview it, please e-mail me about df2506@yahoo.com or Direct message me on twitter. I'm @df2506 there!

I'll be back tomorrow with an indie game preview most likely!

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I'd also like to mention that I'm still writing lots of news and reviews over at Shigeru Reviews too! Check it out here: https://shigerureviews.wordpress.com/

Time to Blast and Hack Some Robots!

The final nindies@home demo I want to talk about is RIVE. Two Tribes, the developer, previously did the Toki Tori games. Those were pretty good games but vastly different from Rive. Can Two Tribes pull off a frantic shoot 'em up/hack 'em space shooter/platformer.....

If the demo is any indication then YES. Yes, they can.



The Rive demo starts you off in space and you'll think the game is just another outer space shooter at first. And then you go into a spaceship and the ship lands on the ground. You have to push the right Wii U gamepad trigger to jump and the left trigger to shoot. It works really well once you get use to it. You're still shooting stuff, so it just seems like a shooting/platformer at this point right? Nothing different there....wait...what?! You hack stuff?! Yes, you get the ability in the demo to hack control panels to open doors at first and then you get the ability to hack robots later on. Its really fun to hack stuff and there's a healing robot later on that is super helpful! This game is so much fun.

The Rive demo isn't huge but its not short either. It gives you a good look at the various things you'll be doing in the game, including a couple of boss fights!



As you can see from the screenshots, Rive is a beautiful game. The outer space stuff at the beginning is amazing look and the spaceship is incredible. There are many different types of environments in the ship and they all look great. I especially dug the underwater stuff and how bullets and missiles realistically slowed down as they hit the water. Two Tribes put a lot of attention to detail in this game.



It looks like Rive will be Two Tribes best game yet. The gameplay is solid and the graphics are very impressive. I had a lot of fun with this demo.

That said, the experience wasn't completely perfect. There were some framerate issues in the demo, especially when things got a bit frantic and that slowed things down a little. I hope that the developer fixes this for the full game.

Otherwise, I have nothing else to complain about. The Rive demo is fantastic. This game was barely on my radar before the demo and now I'm looking forward to seeing what the finished product looks like! You should keep your eye on Rive too!

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 All of the above pictures were taken from the official Two Tribes website.

I'll be taking Friday off. I'm going to see Antman! I'll try to have a game blog entry up on the weekend.

Run For it!

Do Or Do Not...

No, today's blog entry isn't about Star Wars. As you can see above, its about RUNBOW. I put that Star Wars quote there because it is one of many, many, many things you will see when you die in this game. And you'll probably die. Runbow is a fast paced and very tricky game. Or at least I should say its demo is fast paced and tricky cause thats all I've played of the game so far. As I said last week, Runbow was one of many games that saw a demo release for Nindies@Home. I got to the play the demo and....

I loved it!



Runbow is full of sarcasm whether you win or lose. There's always a snarky comment waiting for you. The game is full of humor, action, adventure, and lots of running. I also really dig the art style.



Runbow looks like the opening of a movie like Pink Panther, Catch Me If You Can or Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It has a very 50s/60s retro vibe. The characters are all cool looking, the backgrounds are simplistic and very fun to look at it. Though you won't have much time to stare at the background. You'll be running whether you play Run Mode or Adventure or any of the modes that weren't in the demo. The game seems to have a lot of modes. And as you can see in the picture above, you can play the game with multiple people! I did not get a chance to play the demo with somebody else. That said, the game is really fun by yourself.

 

Runbow has a really good soundtrack too. Even though it was the same song through the demo, I just couldn't help singing along with it and tapping my feet. The music, the gameplay, and the sarcasm all come together to create an excellent demo!

Although, it should be noted that the demo does have some framerate issues. Hopefully these will be ironed out in the full game.

You can tell that the Runbow demo isn't the complete game. This is just a small taste of whats in store for us! I mean, come on, Shovel Knight AND Rusty from Steamworld Dig are in the full game!! You gotta play it. I gotta play it too. Is it Runbow time yet?!

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All of the above pictures were taken from google here.

I'll be back on Monday. I'll talk about Two Tribes RIVE demo then!

Sory Abuot Al The Typo

The day before their Digital Event, Nintendo had a surprise for Wii U eshop fans: Nindies@Home. This special event allowed players (for a limited time) to download several demos of upcoming Indie games. I downloaded each and every one of these demos. And was definitely excited about a few of them. Of course, with E3 and all my various reviews I write, I haven't had a chance to write about any of them....till now. On Friday, I'll talk about Runbow. Today, I'd like to talk about Typoman.



The first time I played Typoman, I had no idea what to do. The game didn't have a tutorial or even an explanation about what it was about. You were just thrown into the game. Not the best introduction. So, I quickly stopped playing the game. And then the game was demoed during Treehouse Live at E3. Typoman was clearly explained there and shown off. I knew right away that I HAD to play the demo again.



The main objective is in this game is to move letters and create new words. The words will help you get past obstacles. For instance, look at the picture above. In it, you see the word SLOW. The character created that word with some letters. Now see that word CRUSH? If the main character goes under it at the wrong time, he'll be crushed for sure. With the slow there, though, the crush obstacle will go slow and Typoman should be able to get past it. When I played this level, I created the word STOP. But I had to create it at the right moment. If you create it at the wrong moment, you can't get past the obstacle (its too close to the ground). These word creation puzzles are very unique. Typoman is unlike any other games I've seen on the Wii U eshop.



Hey wait. This picture looks familiar. Yes, its almost the same picture that I started this article with. As you can see, its raining. There's also that big hole full of water down there. Typoman can't get past that because if he touches t he water, he'll die. So here we go with word creation again. The word up there says rain but you can change it into something else. There is a rope with the letter D up above. You can get on the rope and swing the letter over to RAIN creating....DRAIN. The hole will completely drain and Typoman can get past the obstacle. There are many other cool puzzles like this too. Typoman is such an inventive game. I enjoyed my time with the game. In fact, I need to play the demo again soon.



This demo is a TRAP for sure. Once you play it and you understand whats going on, you'll want to play the full game. I know I want to. And you get a discount if you downloaded the demo! Awesome!

Well, thats it for now. See you on Friday for Runbow.

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The above pictures were taken from Google here.

Ping 1.5+ (Wii U) Review

Everybody has their favorite retro games. In fact, everyone has a different opinion on what games are retro to them. Some people, I’m sure, consider Playstation 1 games retro. For me, retro games will always be NES titles. For other people, it would be the Atari. No matter what your retro taste, there are always games trying to feed on that retro nostalgia.

Ping 1.5+ is a retro inspired puzzle game for the Wii U eshop. From its graphics to its gameplay, Ping is looking for those fans of games like Pong, Breakout, and other other classic Atari and NES games. But is it any good? Does its graphics and gameplay transcend pure nostalgia? Read on to find out my thoughts!





The touch screen is your friend in Ping 1.5+ The game can be controlled via the analog sticks but that doesn’t work very well. The touch control is accurate and makes the game very interactive. Ping is a great game to play via Off-TV mode because of this. The game makes great use of the gamepad. Ping is connected to Miiverse and has special stamps too. Very cool. And its also a fun and challenging game.




Ping is full of surprises and tributes to older games. The basic gameplay does stay the same throughout but mixes in new and unexpected challenges. The boss fights, especially, are cool. Be warned though: Ping is a very hard game. It starts out easy, but quickly increases in difficulty. You may not finish this game, but you’ll have fun playing it and taking on these levels.





While Ping can be really hard at times, you don’t have to worry about unlocking each and every level. When you unlock a world, all of the levels are there for you to play. And you don’t have to beat the final boss level on each world to unlock a new world. I really like that the game is open like this. Ping is a very good game!

I love Ping’s retro inspired graphics. At first, you may just think this game is a Pong ripoff, but its not. The graphics are inspired by those old Atari and NES games, but the background and foreground special effects make it look even better than those games. Ping is a visual treat; you just never know what to expect next from it.




The game has a very techno inspired soundtrack. Its pretty good and doesn’t get annoying at all. The sound effects are very good too. There is one slight announce as far as sound though. Occasionally, the sound will glitch and make a loud buzzing sound. Other than that, the sound is really good.



Ping 1.5+ is a must play if you love retro inspired puzzlers. The game is fun and full of surprises. Ping also makes great use of the gamepad and the Wii U. The game does have some glitches, but overall, Ping is a very good puzzle game. You'll especially love this game if you love Atari/NES games, but I don't think you have to have that nostalgia to enjoy this game. Its fun and challenging. Oh and I absolutely love the graphics and the soundtrack. I recommend this game! Buy it!

My Score: 8.5/10
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Thanks to the developer Christopher F. Arnold for giving me a copy of the game for this review.

All of the above pictures were taken from Google here.