I recalled picking up Viva Pinata Party Animals (the multiplayer game) from Rogers for $5 last year, and tossed it in on Saturday when I wanted something simple and easy to play...and surprisingly, it's really fun. Even Laura sat there and played a game with me (and handed my *** to me) and said she'd play again. It's actually a really good group/party game despite how simple it is.
The 360's off outside of that...Puzzle Quest Galactrix for DS is taking up the rest of my time. It's a good thing this hobby has accustomed me to companies taking a dump on their efforts, because this really isn't a good game when you compare it up against the first one. It's still playable, and I still find it a lot of fun, but it's a pretty inexcusable effort when you consider (and these are all criticisms for the DS version. I've played the 360 demo too which is obviously graphically superior) that:
-The graphics look no better than a cell phone game
-The sound is tinny and full of reverb
-There's LOADING SCREENS. Loading Time in a cartridge based game? Professor Layton has ANIMATED CUTSCENES and they load faster than this game loads its puzzles.
-They removed the difficulties, meaning instead of the easy, medium, hard you got to choose from in Challenge of the Warlords, you have one amalgamated difficulty, which is problematic because there's no learning curve. If you didn't play the first Puzzle Quest and jump right into this one, you get two test fights. That's it. You got to sit and play a training dummy as much as you wanted in the first Puzzle Quest to learn the schematics. This information should come in handy when you discover...
-The adaptive AI is broken. I don't mind fighting ships that are my own skill level, but the storyline missions so far have made me attempt to fight ships that were 12, and then 22 levels ahead of me. This was one of the nice things about the first Puzzle Quest. You weren't held to having to grind and level up constantly in order to progress in the storyline. It changes here. I guess this gives it more of a "traditional RPG" feel, but this one was one of the positives of the first game that appealed to puzzle gamers that has become a quick negative. It doesn't help that the CPU puts up Mario Kart-levels of cheating. Somehow, every single time they combo, those 3 engine points are replaced by mines that things that combo over and over again, and then when you least expect it, here come 5 mines doing 10 damage that 3x combo, making you, well...die. This isn't a new criticism though...it was like this to a lesser extent in the first Puzzle Quest, and something you just had to get used to
-You can't capture anything and learn their spells. This was a cool feature of the first Puzzle Quest. You could build a dungeon and capture monsters, and from that learn their spells. Here, it's all luck of the draw because the ships you fight will drop construction plans...only, it's not ever known if/when you'll get those plans. As a result, some people receive the Pirate Bola Mine recipe right off the bat, and some (like me) have been fighting Pirates over and over again only to receive nothing.
Still...it's hard for me to put down...I guess I have more patience than most, but I just love the whole Jewel Quest/Puzzle Quest concept too much.
