Caltrops - Gamerasutra - shitty games roundup

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Ray of Light 09/15/2006, 8:37am PDT

I have upgraded to DUAL OVERSIZE FLATSCREENS and can no longer play Q3 thanks to LCD lag. I went looking for something a little slower, that I could play, here's how that's gone:

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy: mouse controls don't work. You can't move too far away from your good buddy ~~superfly~~ Capt. Whatever, which is a problem since he doesn't move on his own. There's nothing for sale in the store except for hints. I punched and shot LEGOs in the immediate vicinity of Capt. Whatever for 5 minutes, and uninstalled.

Shisen-Sho: based on a KDE game, kshisen. Kind of fun, until you realize it's very, very easy.
Ray: I am addicted
Ray: to shisensho
Sassy: www.xxxporntalk.com/ubbthreads/uploads/181982-hahafuckoffwanker.jpg
Ray: "I fashioned this hamster ball from a glass jar and my cunt"
Ray: "optional: giant, sprawling asshole"
Sassy: hahhaha it's so sprawling
Sassy: why is it so big and brown??
Sassy: i love shisen sho
Sassy: there aren't unlimited options, right, you have to be strategic or something, right
Ray: there're 2 pairs of each tile, sometimes they'll be like
```
 X X
          X
                              X 
```
Ray: and if you just remove the XX close together then you won't be able to open a path between the other two X's later
Ray: so it's best to remove all 4 of each tile at the same time
Ray: but you can still win 90% without even doing that
Sassy: sudUKO IS HARD
Sassy: :(
Ray: I don't play it
Ray: too hard
Ray: I think shisensho is what they play in remedial asian classes, the people who can't juggle or play an instrument or anything
Sassy: it's how they test to see if the kids are too americanized. if they like it, they're forced to commit suicide
Ray: it teaches them how to operate a cash register
Ray: since that's all about knowing if two things look alike

Next, I tried Small Great Games Pack #1-RELOADED from Demonoid. It contains:

Cubology: In this game, you move crates around in a 3D space, arranging them in sets of 3, whereupon they explode. It's the poster's favorite game, "imo its most addictive game from the times of first Zuma." I'm not familiar with times of first Zuma, but I gather that their civilzation became extinct when all of its citizens became addicted to shoving crates around. There's a timelimit and a way-too-long "out of time" animation; these would be fatal flaws for a puzzle game if it weren't already stillborn due to being a game about crate-moving.
Blupimania 2: it's Russian. The graphics are fucked up.
Crazy Machines: it's the Incredible Machine from 1992, now in 3D but with no gameplay changes to make the 3D relevant. It suffers the same problems as TIM, and you soon realize there's nothing crazy about it at all: with exactly one way to finish every level, the promise of tinkering proves false. Tinkering is forbidden! To win, you must get inside the heads of the control freak designers, and stay there. How long can you last? I lasted for two levels. Also, Crazy Machines has a shitty and baffling interface.
The Odyssey: Winds of Athena: poster comment, "Interesting and inovative". The website promises "unrestricted gameplay." The truth is, you click and drag the ocean to make currents that move ships from one side of the screen to the other. That's it. There's no penalty for letting them hit land. You can also make wind, but don't bother since you can't control its direction. Just move the ships with water currents. This may be the worst game I've played since VIC20 BASIC days.
Armadillo Run: this was the closest thing to fun out of the whole bunch. You build a structure to guide a yellow ball into a blue circle. The structural members (metal, cloth, rubber, rope, elastic) behave realistically, and there's a "forces" view to show you what parts are overstressed. Materials have costs, and you have a budget to complete each level. The game fails for being way too tedious, just like real-life civil engineering. It would be a lot more fun if the money you saved on one level could be spent on future levels (instead of the game disbursing it to shareholders), and if the interface wasn't cribbed from AutoCAD circa 1985.
Soup Toys: What the fuck is this? It's like Virtual Vixens or whatever software it was that made naked ladies dance on your desktop, but without the naked ladies. I don't think this even qualifies as a game.
The Blob: poster says it's like Katamari Damacy, but I find that hard to believe because it sucks. You guide a blob around, as he absorbs people he takes on their color and can paint buildings. Controls are awkward and if you play it too well you get too big to move around, so you have to keep resetting yourself by jumping in the water. You can't absorb anything expect tiny people, no matter how big you get.
Tornado Jockey: gave me IE scripting errors(?) on its menu screen. Uninstall.
Maxjongg: "Very fun mahjongg clone." In truth, it's 3D mahjongg, not a clone at all, and all strategy elements have been removed in favor of endless "looking." The small levels can be completed in about 30 seconds, the larger levels either take hours of jigging the camera around to find matches, or are unsolvable (which the game helpfully indicates). Bonus negative: F5 ("refresh", which my thumb button is bound to) restarts the current level. Uninstall.
Blastorama: blow up Y number of cubes with X number of bombs. WOW. Uninstall.
Eets: place food in front of an autonomous rabbit to control his behaviour, sort of like Lemmings but with only one lemming. Some food will make him afraid of ledges, some will make him jumpy, whatever. Too cute, too animated, too stupid and boring. Uninstall.