Are You Out of Your Mind

Wow! I mean it. Wow! You have to try this game. What a unique concept and a refreshing offering considering the redundancy of so many games being released.

Maybe I long for the old games that kept me playing hour after hour and never seemed to get stale. They were not glitzy and the graphics were sub par, but the playability was off the chart on many of them. Well my friends, take a trip through a time warp and take a look at Out of Your Mind.

I don't want to give away much in this blog, you need to see this one for your self. The game is absolutely retro in the look and gameplay and it is completely addictive. The music does not detract and actually adds to the experience. You start out easy enough but as you progress, the game becomes difficult and very challenging. The action can get pretty frantic with the clock winding down so if you like a more leisurely gaming experience, you better look elsewhere. But if your into self flogging for failure to see the obvious play, download this one at once!

And one last thing. Watch out, sometimes things are not as they appear, there is a sinister little twist to this one!

Plant Tycoon... It's Alice Greenfingers on Steroids

It may appear that crow may be on my plate much more often than anticipated. Just when I write off all time management games as mundane and overdone, offerings like Magic Shop and Plant Tycoon emerge from the many daily launchings in the casual game marketplace. As I just ate crow in the review below, I might as well just grab a second helping.

This is not your daddy’s Alice Greenfingers. This is not your plant a seed, water it, harvest it and take it to market time management game. Nay, this is beyond Thunderdome! Think of this game as Alice Greenfingers on steroids.

In this game you need a plan. Without a plan, your toast. Without a plan you will never cross pollinate and produce the exotic hybrids that are possible. And as in all time management games, this one is true to its roots and time is indeed a factor. Fortunately, there are three time settings and a stop time setting. Without this feature, your plants will wither and die before you know what hit you. Initially you will set the time at fast so you have some immediate gratification while watching your plants grow. But you will soon learn that you have overextended yourself as your plots start to resemble Death Valley.

You will just not believe the detail in this game. There are so many varied tasks that aid you in your quest for the perfect plants. From enriching the soil to catching bugs, there is just never enough time in the day. While I enjoyed Alice Greenfingers for the first two hours, that is just a primer for this game. This one will take you days to experience the full potential hidden within.

Magic Shop... It is David Copperfields version of Diner Dash

Ok, I admit it, I am not much of a fan of time management games and that is obviously evident from prior game reviews. In fact, I just hammered Cake Mania 2 in my last review. And then along comes Magic Shop and the only thing I am being served at the diner is crow.

It never ceases to amaze me regarding the cleverness the creators of causal games can display. In another of those "why didn't I think of that" moments, the guys and gals that put this one together took too winning game formulas and put them together to possibly create a whole new game genre. A match game and time management game in one! Duh! Why didn't anyone come up with this one before? Now the time management games can be made tolerable to my tastes. There is new meaning in keeping the customer satisfied. Now you are not forced to serve burgers and build cakes and wash dogs in an endless stream of redundancy. With this offering you match colors in order to satisfy the customers. Yep, the hybrid just may be the start of an entire new category.

If for no other reason then to see the combination of two types of games made into one, this one demands a download.

Cake Mania 2 ..... The Return of Jill

I am sure there were many who anxiously awaited the arrival of the sequel to Cake Mania. I was not one of them. I am just so weary of all the “keep the customer satisfied time management games” that I didn’t hold high hopes for this offering from Sandlot games. But who am I to argue with success?

I didn’t like the first game. That being said, I played the sequel, Cake Mania 2, and had to look at the title to make sure I was not playing the first game! What has changed? For my tastes, not enough to make this game significantly different or improved when compared to its predecessor. Sure you can change the storyline and the locations, but is that enough to create the buzz that surrounded the first offering? But who am I to argue with success?

In the causal game market there is a huge demand for this genre of games. The shear number of games of this type introduced on a weekly basis proves this statement. So you build cakes, wash dogs, curl hair, serve lunch and pick vegetables and it all seems to run together. How many more themes must we be subjected to before we implode? But who am I to argue with success.

The fact of the matter is that these games are successful. There are a lot of you out there that just eat these games up. So reacquaint yourself with Jill and start building your cakes. You’re a better man than I Gunga Din.

Paradise Pet Salon – This game has gone to the dogs!

Another offering in the already overcrowded time management genre of games, Paradise Pet Salon is the equivalent of diner dash for dogs. There are subtle changes though that actually differentiate this game from the games that define the category such as diner dash, burger rush, etc… etc…. For one, the stress level is not as high and strategy actually plays a bigger role then in the aforementioned games. In addition, there is no money goal so in essence, unless you totally screw up keeping the “customers” satisfied, you will get to go on to the next level. The other difference of note is that you must select every detail of the upgrades down to the color of paint on the walls! And last, and most unique and one of those “why didn’t I think of that” features, you can sell your old outdated equipment after you upgrade and raise additional cash in the process.

The game play is smooth and it does hold your attention, but for my tastes, it just follows the format of many that came before it and does not change enough to get it out of the category of another “me to” in the genre.

That being said, I am willing to wager it does pretty well. There are a ton of pet lovers out there and they alone could put this one over the top. Let me put it this way, how many of you have actually ever been in a diner!

Nuclear Ball - Time to Get Frisky with Fission

This game is out of control! This takes brick busting into the nuclear age. The game is a 3D buster with totally insane power ups and great polished graphics. With over 100 levels it stays very fresh from level to level.

Try to keep the ball in the field of play until all the bricks are sent the way of the mushroom cloud. The effects in this one are simply amazing given the fact that this little game only consumes about 15.5 MB of precious hard drive space. The coders of this offering are very very clever and the finished product is on par with games that eat drive space three times that of Nuclear Ball.

This one is really a sleeper that has flown below the game communities radar prior to its launch. Well, its a secret no longer and is catching rave reviews and game sites all over the web are lighting up like pinball machines with talk of this game.

Find out what all the "hub bub" is about and take a look see at this one. Its worth it just to look at it and say "how did they do that"?

Venice Mystery

First off, I must admit I just loved the movie National Treasure starring Nicholas Cage. So it is no wonder that I was intrigued by this game that features a diagram similar to the diagram followed by Cage in the movie.

This is a mahjong game first and foremost. Match the tiles, you know the drill. The storyline and the unique “DaVinciesque” ancient diagram puzzle is what set this one aside from the already overcrowded and worn out mahjong genre of games.

There are roman numerals on the diagram and you must turn a dial to each of the numerals in the correct order to unlock the secret to an ancient machine that keeps the famous Italian city afloat. This is no easy task and I guarantee that you will tax your sleuthing skills trying to correctly solve this dilemma.

The graphics are crisp and with over 60 levels of tile matching, Venice Mystery will keep your interest for the long haul unlike many of the others that just bore you after the fifth or sixth level. Try the free download just to get an inkling of the storyline, its worth the hour invested.

Wedding Dash - It's Finally Here!

The official sequel to Diner Dash has finally arrived. There has been so much hype for this game prior to its release that I thought it may doom the game due to the lofty goals set by its predecessor. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Wedding Dash not only lives up to its heritage, It might even surpass its famous namesake. Yes, this game is that good! Of course the premise is the same as Diner Dash. In fact, they didn't mess with success much at all and stayed very true to the roots of the first game. But what they did change made the game just so much better.

Quinn is the bridesmaid who takes up the challenge to put together a wedding reception. She pretty much gets drafted into the the position. Where Flo had to wait tables and use a mop, Quinn has much more adventuresome tasks in front of her. Yes she serves the food and seats the guests, but she also breaks up a cat fight between the bridesmaids. If thats not enough, she has to deal with a fire in the kitchen and deal with guests that have had a little too much to drink! It's really funny.

This is definitely one to download. And two things not to miss: Aunt Ethel carrying on with her incessant bawling and the cameo appearance of Flo in several scenes. What a hoot!