MacGame Store Holiday Bundle: Definitely Decent (and cheap!)

We're giving a score of "decent" for the recent Holiday Bundle offered to MacGameStore.com members (yeah, see, we DO TOO cover games for the Mac!). The price is cheap, and the games are a mixed bag.

For the low, low price of just 24.95 (seriously, that's like, what? less than half of a PS3 or Xbox 360 game? Ever tried playing half a game?), they offered up a total of 12 digital downloads, including the bonus, Jewel Quest III, because they went over some kind of minimum order requirement that we can't quite remember right now (too much eggnog over the holidays, you ask? Well, it may just be so).

Okay, so, what you get, broken down:

Some decent puzzle games, which come in two basic groups: narrative "storyline" scenarios and the "match three or more of the same colored things" games we've all seen before.

hey, you, get off of my cloud

The best of the bunch of the first kind is about an amnesiac who won the lottery and then was attacked. Though the resolution isn't really surprising (spoiler: the husband's a rotter), Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare is full of challenging gameplay.

First of all, you've got lots of "get the tools and then figure out how to use them" puzzles to solve, made more difficult because:

• The animation is occasionally lacking ("what the hell IS that? A coin or a button?!").
  

• They require a leap of logic akin to those old King's Quest days. Remember those games? If you did even one thing out of precise order you couldn't possibly finish the quest. Same deal here: you have to do everything in the order that the game designers thought made the most sense (even when it clearly doesn't).
  

Redeeming feature: this game includes a truly diabolical puzzle section with matchsticks that just boggles the mind. Really. At some points, the only thing stopping you from hurling your laptop out the window as you try to create less squares with more matchsticks is that elite Mac price tag, IFKWIM. AITYD. Oh, and it's timed.

Definitely worth the price tag for that game alone, if you ask us. But there's also Escape from the Museum, with a very similar concept (and yes, the same occasional blurry animation problems) but different puzzles to solve.

For example, there's loads of "find ten of these" screens, and some old-school puzzles reminiscent of that newspaper deal where you get two pictures and you have to figure out what's different between them. Solving puzzles in some rooms unlocks more rooms in the museum, which is frickin' huge by the time you're done. Another good value.

Then, there's the match 'em up puzzles, like Jewel Quest III, which is of course a fine game, and Deep Blue Sea, which is okay, mostly because it has mermaids in it.

Next, you got your "Rip Off The Game Show" type games, Wheel of Fortune Deluxe and Trivia Machine (Wow. Did we even play that second one? Don't think so. We'll have to give it a look).

Then, there's the "OMG, the customers are going to riot!" games that make you scurry around like a madman to satisfy your clientele, expertly preparing you for your future life in customer service. You know, like the classic Diner Dash series.

We have to admit, we're a sucker for those, which no one else around here seems to get at all. But judging from the popularity, we can't be on our own, can we?

The MacGameStore.com bundle offers up Fitness Frenzy and Burger Shop, and Burger Shop is by far the better of the two. Fitness Frenzy, which as it sounds takes place in a gym, gets boring and repetitive, which is always a risk with these types of games.

cowboys eat a lot of burgers

Refreshingly, Burger Shop introduces both psycho clowns and bacon-cheeseburger-eating aliens (yes, really) to keep the action lively. We had hours of fun with Burger Shop, trying to perfect the levels. If you're a Diner Dash fan, you will too. 'Nuther good value.

You've also got an eye-straining pixelated deal called Neon Tango, which even MacGameStore.com found hard to describe. Here's what they came up with:

Pixelated Warrior, Defender of the Bytes! Launch your cybership into battle against the forces of chaos across 50 stages of bitmapped treachery overflowing with glowing enemies and pulsating bosses. Conceived with a gorgeous minimalism, Neon Tango licks the shoot-em-up genre down to its chewy abstract center.

Gorgeous minimalism, that's a nice turn of phrase. We've got to give props on that description, but the game gave us all headaches.

Lessee, what else? Oh, there's Feeding Frenzy, which is just dismal. Not really worth the time.

What?

You want more of a description than that?

Fine.

A waste of good sushi

Here it is: fish eat little fish to get bigger, while avoiding fish that are bigger still.

That's it.

See? We warned you.

Lastly, there's Escape from Paradise. The name had us thinking (hoping) it was another of the puzzle games at first, but nope.

In EfromP, You're a survivor of a cruise ship that wrecked ('cause, oh yeah, that happens all the time), and you have to find a way off the island along with your other castaways, who for some reason are perfectly willing to do all the hard work you assign them, while you play fun minigames. Pretty standard fare all around, if a little repetitive.

So, summing up: Stick with the puzzle games, and the bundle is well worth the (meager) $24.95 price tag.

Oh, and definitely ditch Feeding Frenzy first chance you get.

Seriously.

Soul Calibur IV: This One's for Your Permanent Collection

What's within your soul?

If you're a fan of the first three Soul Calibur versions (and who isn't?) and you're ready for another action-packed fighting game with glorious visuals, new attacks and customizable characters, you'll want to add this infinitely re-playable game to your collection. (You can, by the way, chose an easy or tough road through the bosses in single-mode play, so there is a campaign challenge for those who want it.)

For those familiar with the earlier versions of Soul Calibur, you won't be disappointed. New in this latest edition to the winning franchise: in addition to the standard I-fight-because-I-have-something-to-prove characters with their built-in storylines, you can also play, in the Xbox 360 version, as Yoda of Star Wars fame. Get the game for PS3, and instead of Yoda you'll fight as the Dark Lord himself, Darth Vader. Playing under arcade mode as either of the two lets you earn the right to unlock "The Apprentice," a sith-in-training who uses Force Lightning to shock his opponents in battle.

As fun as the fighting in the game in, let's face it, the best part of fighting games is facing off against online opponents and kicking some serious butt. Once you've worked your way through the bosses in Soul Calibur IV, you can start making your own guys (and girls), customizing their looks and choosing their style of attacks until at last you have created the perfect fighting machine, thus effectively smashing your enemies into a bloody pulp.

In theory.

In practice, it's not so easy to create one winning fighter. In online battle, it's not uncommon for a player who loses pathetically in one match to then find supreme victory in his very next fight. And more than one match is won by a judicious use of a grapple for a surprising Ring Out just when the battle seems lost.

In fact, that's where the real fun comes in. It's not all about brawn. Winning takes some brains, or at least some strategy. Designing your own army of characters with vastly different fighting tactics and then matching them appropriately to your opponent's fighter is the key to emerging triumphant in fight after fight.

Or you can be cheap, choose Cervantes or Algol and just teleport all over the place.

Your call.

Bioshock Review

Update on Bioshock's awesomeness! Our affiliate site, GameZone, has a new review up, and they're saying it's easily the game of the year! They've even given the game an Outstanding Award.

Evan Almighty Review

Evan Almighty has some stiff competition to live up to. Way back in the day, John Denver's Oh, God series of movies were incredibly popular with the right-wing, family values crowd (and the rest of us, though we were too cool to mention it at the time). More recently, Jim Carrey took the stage with Bruce Almighty, with the kind of success that makes movie producers drool, and croon "sequel" under their breath. Which is probably how Evan Almighty came about to begin with, sans its star.

Enter Steve Carrell, the newest hot comic on the movie block. Carrell, though, despite his meteoric rise to fame over the last few years, has only one mega-movie lead credit to his name with The 40-Year-Old Virgin--is that really enough Hollywood clout to bring in viewers to see Evan Almighty?

The answer is yes. Plenty of fans opted to see the film on its opening day last Friday. Unfortunately for the viewers, though, once they got through the door, they weren't quite getting what they were hoping for.

It's not that Evan Almighty is a *bad* movie. Media rumor suggests it cost a whole shitload of cash to make, and we all know that heaps of money thrown at a film help prop it up to at least "okay" status. There's even cute animals to add to its appeal to the younger viewers. And as family film fodder goes, you can't do better than a Biblical parable-cum-slapstick-comedy storyline.



Unfortunately, the film doesn't do enough to attract the demographic it should be courting: urban young professionals, to whom Steve Carrell, veteran of both the Daily Show and The Office, has always held the greatest appeal.

Instead, the movie flounders somewhere between family film and so-so comedy, never really achieving the cult classic level that 40-Year-Old Virgin did. Steve Carrell, to his credit, delivers the comic lines (such as they are) with perfect timing, performs the prat falls and physical humor admirably, and comes across the screen as an engaging, likeable leading man. And the animals in the film are cute as a button, as are the film's child stars.

But where Carrell has always shone is in that edgy, slightly off-color humor, the kind of comedy that makes us cringe a little inside even while we are laughing, and this movie is just not the appropriate vehicle for that kind of humor.

As a family film, it is up there with the original Oh, God series, complete with a morally-satisfying ecologically sound storyline.

But for Carrell fans, Evan Almighty is just...Evan All Right.

"DEAD RISING" SHOPPING MALL RULES ('CEPT FOR THE ZOMBIES)

I've been playing a lot of Dead Rising lately, and I have to say the mall in this game is just incredible. Now, I know this isn't a "new" game, but it's eminently replayable, and I have some tips for you if you can just keep patiently reading along, but first I just want to say: why aren't more malls like this?

Sans undead, naturally.

This mall has a "leisure park," complete with lakes and bridges, right smack-dab in the middle. It's got a gym with LOTS of weights and barbells (okay, in a real gym I would like some more actual workout equipment, but you can't have everything). It has restaurants of all kinds in a Western-style food court (where you can mix interesting things up in a blender, btw. Like what, you ask? I'm getting to that).

There's even a kid's play area with a cool rocket shuttle monorail ride and neat blocks (and a crazy clown with two chainsaws, which I would leave out of the blueprints).

Little rivers of water with cascading waterfalls run along the sides of corridors (and make excellent short-cuts through the crowds of undead). Potted plants, heck, even trees inside the mall add to the scenery.

There's not one, but several bookstores, toy stores, clothes stores and sporting goods stores with everything from skateboards to bowling balls.

In short, it's an awesome mall.

The only problem is: how are they going to top this in Dead Rising, II? The game's popularity has guaranteed there will be a sequel. How can they possibly create another setting that can compare with this inter-active Utopia? That's really had me worried for a while.

Now, an airport has much of the same amenities, but people would just load onto the planes and take off to get the heck out of there when the zombies came around, so that wouldn't really be very realistic (obviously, I have no problem altering my reality to accept that scores of zombies are infesting the airport. But that people would stick around when there are planes available? Now THAT'S stretching it!).

Finally, though, I came up with the perfect setting. Yes, thank you, I am a genius. Ahem.

So here's what I thought of, and Capcom, you can thank me later: an amusement park! Told you it was genius. I'm just basking right now. Not convinced? Can't see the big picture? Let me cast some light on the black hole of your feeble brain.

In an amusement park, you can have rides, shops, carnival games (good place to insert a mini-game, Capcom!). You can even have animals if you make the amusement park a zoo. Add in show performers with flamboyant costumes (push B to change clothes! Yea!) and you have another winner. Plus, for those of us who haven't joined the legion of undead, there are ice cream stands, cotton candy machines (probably have to find sugar for those), and popcorn to eat. Junk food goodness galore.

Whew. That's a relief. I was really worried there for a while. Now I can sleep nights, knowing they have options for the sequel.

So, you stuck it out, huh? All right, here are my personal Dead Rising tips:

Mix orange juice with just about anything in a blender. Does the word "untouchable" sound good to you?

Hey, you know those people you have to save? You can give them weapons. Also food. And they get head-shot kills. Who knew?

Milk and something else in a blender is not a good combination, unless you LIKE being Zombait.

Try heating up a frying pan on the stove and THEN wielding it as a weapon.

When Frank dies, DON'T save status and quit, unless you like starting the game over every frickin' time. LOAD instead. This is an especially useful tip for those of us who saved money by buying the game used and freaked out at the ridiculous saving system before we (doh!) figured it out.

See you later (at UndeadWorld)!

---Viv


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Review of Super Paper Mario for Wii

There's a great review over at the Games section of Geek.com of the latest side-scrolling Mario game for the Wii:

Super Paper Mario

For any of you classic Nintendo lovers, this game heralds back to the good old Mario days. Check it out!


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