Bubble Town Game Review

By Ruff Bismonte

Remember the bubbles you made from soap when you were a kid? It's so much fun popping them out, and now, you get to feel the same nostalgia in the Bubble Town game from I-play. But will popping bubbles be fun to play in terms of casual gaming too? Well, that's what we're here to find out in this review.

The setting of Bubble Town starts in the idyllic little town of Borb Bay, where hundreds of little bubble heads called borbs live. One day, however, aliens called Lumps arrived on this quiet little town and invaded the whole of Borb Bay, leaving tons of mess around the place. You have to help the borbs get back their freedom once again, because well, they are just too lazy to do this task for themselves. And besides, what can they possibly do since they are just small heads of bubble, right?

Anyway, the game plays like the famous marble popper game known as Puzzle Bubble where you are tasked to clear all the bubbles in the game field by matching 3 or more same colored bubbles. There are no time limits in this game but for a different challenge, you'll only have a limited number of ammunition in your arsenal to make all the borbs pop. Refill your ammo by freeing little borbs from their confinement. This means not popping them, mind, but freeing them by popping their attachments instead.

If your ammo is full, spilling borbs trying to fill it up will mean bonus points. Additional borbs will eventually replenish your ammo tube if you expend them all out while making matches; however, this also means that your playing area will shrink during every replenishment routine. And coupled with other obstacles hindering your objective, Bubble Town is really one challenging game to play.

Bubble Town is one of the many games featured and reviewed at Casualicious. Please visit our site to read more about Bubble Town and get to play hundreds of other games worth your time and enjoyment.

Alice Greenfingers 2 Game Review

By Ruff Bismonte

We all agree that taking care of plants entails much dedication and hard work, but it seems that it takes a green thumb too for them to grow without much care. A perfect example would be the protagonist in the Alice Greenfingers 2 game, because in here, Alice earns money without ever worrying if produce will eventually grow in her farm.

Alice plant crops and takes care of farm animals, that's what she does best. Her lazy Uncle Berry knows this and thus keeps her in the farm to earn him some easy money. Alice doesn't mind at all, it seems, so she goes around each level doing all of her uncle's bidding. I know the story is kind of disturbing because it looks like Alice is just some sort of slave girl, but that's how the story goes, and in another sense, also sets up the mechanics of each level.

Alice Greenfingers 2 is categorized as a time management game, but actually, it's a free-flowing farm simulation without any time to consider whatsoever. In each level, you are given tasks by your Uncle Berry to complete, and you must do all that you can to budget your money and farm land to cater to his wishes. General examples of this include earning one hundred dollars or selling a set amount of crops, but sometimes, he asks you to do errands too like weeding out dandelions, giving the dog some exercise, or even digging some hidden treasure in the farm.

Buying seeds, animals and buildings, and selling produce and crops in the marketplace all take place simultaneously during the actual game screen. The marketplace and Paul's shop can be triggered by a single click from the game menu, and you can set and forget all your selling activities by just setting the number of crops you need to sell. Furthermore, you can also queue up Alice's activities in the farm while visiting the other windows, making you save time wisely in buying and selling stuff.

Alice Greenfingers 2 is one of the many games featured and reviewed at Casualicious. Please visit our site to read more about Alice Greenfingers 2 and get to play hundreds of other games worth your time and enjoyment.

Age of War Flash Game - Tips and Strategy

By Pavel Anokhin

Age of War - is a great free online flash game, which combines elements of tower defense and anti-tower defense games. If you're tired of all the tower defense games which all look alike, then this game is for you! In Age of War, you can build your defenses by buying different turrets, and when you have no place to set the turret to, buying additional turret spots. At the same time, you can train your troops to attack your enemy. You have a choice of just 3 troops - direct combat unit, long-range unit, and heavy unit. There are multiple ages in the game - starting from cavemen and dinosaurs, and all the way to lasers, tanks and air machines.

Even though your options are limited (just 3 turret types and 3 unit types during each age), don't let this fool you - there is plenty of strategy in choosing the right battle plan - both long-term strategy and short-term tactics. Here are a few possible strategies:

1. Total defense. Forget about attacking your opponent - concentrate on defense. Spend most of your money on turrets and only train troops when the turrets are not fast enough to kill all the coming enemies. Since each side gets the most money for killing opponents troops, your opponent will get less money as he won't kill many of your troops. When you have a good defense, you can accumulate some big amount, and overwhelm your opponent with a quick and devastating raid.

2. Total offense. Forget about defenses - spend all your money on troops and overwhelm your opponent with your attacking force. This is somewhat hard to do on harder levels, so choose your troops wisely and plan ahead carefully.

3. Balanced defense and offense. Build some turrets, but don't forget about your troops - destroy coming wave of enemies with your troops and the help of the turrets, then let your troops attack your opponent to give you some time to accumulate the money for the next wave.

Choose your strategy based on your preferred style and on difficulty level. Besides strategy, plan the order of your troops: watch out for coming enemies and build your troops in the order which will most effectively destroy them. For example, the most powerful combination is the heavy unit followed by long range unit - they will both deal the damage to the 1st enemy unit. Also, do not forget about special abilities - using them is the key at the start and middle of the game. Choosing the right moment to use your special ability can be the difference between winning and losing.

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Gundam Vs Gundam - PSP Review

By Gabriel Chau

Past Gundam related games like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable, Gundam Battle Royale and Gundam Battle Tactics were all great games, specially the Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable with the latest mobile suits from the Gundam Seed series. Gundam vs Gundam, the newest Gundam game released for the PlayStation Portable in Japan (no date for North American release yet). Is this one worth buying at all? Read on.....

For those that haven't played the games or even heard of Gundams before, they are basically transformers but only look 100x better. The games mentioned above basically put you in one of the mobile suits, not necessary Gundams because there are different robots in the series. You will be controlling and fighting against one of the other sides, usually two sides each with different mobile suits and mobile armor (these are not necessary robots but can be fighter planes etc). Its really a third person shooter, just replace human/monsters with robots.

If I remember correctly, this game was originally from the arcade and it was ported over to the PlayStation 2, then to the PSP. Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable was a great game that offered hours of play time and great replay value because you can upgrade many of your mobile suits' stats such as how fast the weapon can fire, more ammo, more fire power as well as more health, jump higher and more booster power etc. This is pretty much level grinding though, which I think was necessary in order to pass some of the harder levels.

Game play

Gundam vs Gundam is really just the arcade version ported over to the PSP. At first I thought there was a story mode just like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable. I should have figured that out from the name of the game, stupid me. The controls are basically the same or really similar to the other games though - jump, boost, shoot, melee, shoot 2, special shot, special melee and special. The three specials are hard to execute because you have to hold triangle, plus either the shoot or melee. The special move is slightly easier and its executed by pressing triangle, square and cross (might as well press your right thumb onto all four buttons)

I have yet to even execute any of them. How did I even figure out how to execute these hard to do moves? They are actually mentioned in one of the game options. I will update once I figure out how to execute them. I have never had such frustration over special moves from previous Gundam games.

[Update: I have mentioned to execute the special attacks (only when your special gauge is full) by pressing.....most of the buttons]

Aside from the standards, now you can assign orders to your computer teammate, commands like attack, dodge and surprise attack. You can also call in support where an additional mobile suit for a second and throw in a few more shots at your current target, as usual, the calls for support can be recharged with time just like recharging your gun's ammo. I find the support useful because, if I remember correctly it was able to take the hits for me as well as acting as a decoy for a short time.

Enough with the controls, the game has three game modes - "normal" mode (I call it the normal mode, was going to say story mode but its not a story) where you fight through 8 stages with the last stage as boss stage, quick play and multiplayer that supports 2 on 2 battles. I think the 2 on 2 is the selling point here, just like the arcade version, the fun is from shooting and slashing other human piloted mobile suits. Once you have selected a mobile suit from the list with 20+ of them and more can be unlocked by completing the "normal" mode. They range from the oldest 0079 series all the way to the newest ones from the Gundam 00 series. The objective of any of these game mode is the same, you and your enemies both have a life bar, you will lose if your side's life bar reaches 0. When you and/or your teammate dies (same goes for enemies), the amount of life your team loses is based on the mobile suit you picked. The stronger the mobile suit, the higher points its worth, which means when it blows up, your team loses a bigger amount of life. So that means its not always better to pick the strongest from the list. I picked my favorite Freedom Gundam and its worth 3000GP, I lost one of the games once by dying only twice!

In "normal" mode, you will fight in random locations and you will have a random computer mobile suit to fight along side with you. There are a total of 8 stages with the last one being the boss stage. The boss is huge, relative to your mobile suit and it took me 2 tries to beat it, I was one hit away from losing the game for the second time! I guess I just need to practice more with the controls, a training mode would be a perfect game mode for this game.

Quick play is no brainer, you pick your mobile suit and pick up to 3 other computer to fight with or against you. You can modify options like how long the match lasts for, how fast your special gauge fills up or different stages/music.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to try out the multiplayer.

So as you can see, there isn't any level grinding here. Although you can still unlock more mobile suits, intro movies, endings and images for the multimedia galleries.

Graphics and audio

Graphics are again, PSP quality, the mobile suits are nicely detailed, environments are plain but the game is so fast paced you won't have time to appreciate or pay attention to, not that there is anything to appreciate here. Music is actually real sound tracks from the Gundam series, so based on which Gundam series' stage you are fighting in, you will be listening to that series' soundtrack. The soundtracks bring back a lot of memories by the way.

Final verdict

Overall I think this game is OK. I still prefer Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable because it has a story mode and level grinding although you can still unlock more mobile suits, maybe its just me. For those that are looking for fast paced arcade style game play, Gundam vs Gundam should suit your needs. Skills really matter in this game since there's no level grinding where you can easily overpower your enemies by powering up your mobile suits and weapons. If you have lots of Gundam loving friends with PSP, I suggest convincing them to get a copy so up to 4 of you and your friends can fight each other anytime without going to the arcade.

7.0/10

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Call of Duty - World at War Review

By Aaron Bryenton

Probably no other game in the entire Call of Duty franchise has come up as much as a surprise as World at War has. There has been a reason. The game is developed by Treyarch, who also developed the abysmal Call of Duty 3, after which most fans of the franchise were totally put off the series. But then the original developers Infinity Ward stepped in and bailed the series out of imminent extinction with its splendid Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. However, when it was announced that Treyarch was developing World at War, the fifth installment in the series, there was a great deal of skepticism once again. However, to Treyarch's credit, World at War wins hands down in all respects! The game has already been highly acclaimed both by the players and the critics and it really deserves the praise.

First and foremost, it is the concept that is riveting. The game is based in the World War II premise. Activision has visited this premise before in Call of Duty, so this is a revisit. However, this time, the visit is awesomely shocking! If you play the game well, you will see that nothing else - game, book or film - has ever brought out the dastardliness of the War as well as Call of Duty: World at War has. You really get angry at the villainy of the Nazis when you see them perpetrating evil on innocent persons. And then, mowing them down with the glorious arsenal you have in hand becomes such as divine pleasure. The game has a knack of making you see red and then give you the gun. You know what you will do then!

Graphics are better than anything else seen in recent times. The engine used is of Modern Warfare, which was every bit as high-performing as it is now. You are taken to forests in Europe and in the South Pacific during the game. There is also a seemingly silly but a fantastically playable level with zombies (Nazi zombies!) which has been surprisingly well received by players. This is one of the tougher levels in the game but has taken the game several notches ahead.

No review of Call of Duty: World at War can be complete without a mention of its truly outstanding multiplayer feature which takes you to play the game again and again. You can pit yourself with anyone in the universe and have hours of grinding fun with them. There is also a co-player mode in which two persons can play on a simultaneous screen. Instead of being a bumpy ride, it is great fun.

There are almost no shortcomings in Call of Duty: World at War; it qualifies as a perfect game. But if you are one to pick at things, you will probably say that the AI of the enemies is not as good. However, it is their unexpected behavior that makes the game the great fun that it is.

This one will not have you reach the history textbooks to brush up on your World War II knowledge, but it will definitely give you great insight on the War. At the end of the day, you get the message that humans can be really evil when it comes to that, but then heroism and courage comes from humans too.

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