DSiWare Reviews - Page 20

More bloody Flips

A 14-year-old boy and his mysterious octogenarian neighbour he can't seem to get out of his head. A murder gone horribly, horribly, horribly, laughably, horribly wrong. The whiniest family of reluctant tourists ever to visit New York City. All of these tales, a "horror" soundboard and more await in EA's latest Flips entry on DSiWare. Dare you enter?!?!?! This here..

There will be panic when you buy this game!

A simple, fast-paced, arcady DSiWare game that costs only 200 DSi Points. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a few things, actually. There couldn't possibly be any less to Fire Panic's objective. Fires are breaking out all over the city, so the mayor has given you the task of sending out two fire trucks...

Cerebral bore

A version of Brain Drain has already released on WiiWare in North America, and now it's Europe's turn to sample its item-moving action on DSiWare. They both share the same basic principle: rearrange objects into a specific pattern displayed on the top screen as quickly as possible. The best reference is a sliding block puzzle, only you can move any piece you like, making it far easier..

Chuck, mate

Chess is over two thousand years old and still hasn't gone out of style. It's arguably the perfect game of strategy, enjoyed the world over by countless bright adults, reflective retirees and nerdy youths. Just about every city has a hub, a certain coffee shop or public park, at which one can go to watch two competitors going at it, the...

Bullet hell with training wheels

Most gamers are familiar with "bullet hell" shooters: shoot-'em-ups with so many enemy projectiles that over half the screen is covered in them at most times. Despite this, however, many Western gamers haven't actually played any (as a lot of them are Japan-exclusive) and only know them from YouTube videos...

Music to your ears

It's tough to know how to approach Rytmik: it has no game elements whatsoever, only existing to allow you to create beautiful (and sometimes not-so beautiful) music. Although its complexity is initially off-putting, spend some time with it and you'll realise it's a very competent and enjoyable music studio. One of the most...

You get the picture

The range of Flips books available on DSiWare keeps on growing, with Silent but Deadly the latest in the Too Ghoul for School range released. With the same interface and style as previous entries in the series, you won’t be surprised to hear it “plays” as well as the other entries, with a smooth page-turning system making it easy to navigate, and the font nice and clear,..

Miniature golf, billiards and marbles all rolled into one

We've already seen a few attempts at golf on DSiWare, some obviously better than others, but we haven't seen one quite like Crazy Golf yet. Instead of merely sticking with a simple miniature golf gameplay theme, the developers have instead tossed in some marble and billiard influences to liven things up a bit. At its core, Crazy Golf is very..

Slowpoke

When you think "zen," odds are your mind goes to little bonsai trees and smooth rocks littered about. There might even be a small frog hanging out on a water lily as cherry blossom petals sprinkle the pond. When applied to a game you'd expect a slower pace and possibly some cherry blossom petals, but Enjoy's Bounce & Break proves that when applied to a type of game commonly..

Chump's challenge

Every so often a developer realizes a concept so simple and fun that for as long as games are made, other developers will replicate and modify its formula again and again. Sokoban is one such game, and 1001 Crystal Mazes Collection is one such replication. Not that copying a classic design is inherently bad; Windows users of old will recall the delightful Chip's Challenge, which..

Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont

Bloons has already made an appearance on WiiWare, where it didn't exactly bowl us over. Now it reaches DSiWare with a few much-needed improvements, and in places it's quite the fun little puzzle game: it's challenging enough to captivate fans of the genre and other serious gamers, but might be a bit too difficult to...

Here we go again

It seems that barely a week goes by without a card game being released for DSiWare, and chances are if you were after a virtual solitaire you would have bought one of the previous releases by now. However, Engine Software is hoping to tempt the undecideds with this deck of solitaire games, following the same style as its recent Simply Sudoku release. Taking a slightly different..

Drivers may want to exercise caution

Ferrari GT Evolution is a decent arcade-esque racing game. It looks quite good, handles well and has enough gameplay variety to keep things interesting, but you'll have to return to certain tracks far too many times before progressing to warrant a stronger recommendation. The meat of the game is Career mode, in...

More of a slap, really

Scrabble Slam! is a different take on word puzzles for DSiWare. Instead of searching out pre-determined ones or collecting letters to spell elaborate words for maximum pointage, Slam! gives you a hand of cards with letters, puts four starter cards on the table and yells "go!" The goal is to play one of your cards on top of the table cards as a replacement to spell a..

Let's not

It's kind of a bummer when games come out with controls that just don't fit the platform. This wasn't much of a problem a mere generation ago, but with the plethora of options today ranging from button to motion and touch it's become more prevalent an issue. Other Ocean, behind the excellent Dark Void Zero, has fallen into this very trap with its latest DSiWare release Puffins: Let's Roll..

Does it crack under the pressure?

For anyone that's even played Lemmings or Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from DodoGo!. Your goal in each level is to guide at least one of the eggs back to the nest safely. If you want to earn medals, however, you're going to have to get all the eggs back to the nest safely, which is sometimes easier..

A slippery customer

Like previous platforming conversion Rayman, Earthworm Jim is something of a missed opportunity. Fondly remembered by many gamers from its original outing on Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, Earthworm Jim was a welcome antidote to the huge numbers of cutesy animal platformers with its bizarre attitude and plenty of character...

Un-bear-able

In Don't Feed the Animals, you play a child who, with his or her friends, has stored a bunch of candy at a fort. On your way to eat said candy, wave after wave of covetous animals bombard the clubhouse. You must protect the candy – all twenty pieces of it – with robots. There are three robots that you can use in your defence: tubebots, waterbots and scarebots. Waterbots spray,..

A game you might want to flag down

Flagman might not be one of the top tier Game & Watch titles, but it's still quite entertaining if you've got a few minutes to kill. The game borrows heavily from many of the memory-type games of the era: one that immediately comes to mind is the classic Milton Bradley electronic game Simon. As with most of the Game & Watches, you'll have your choice of..