Recent reviews by sitebender

Batman: The Enemy Within is a continuation of the previous Telltale gale that veers the Batman mythos in an entirely new direction with fresh stories and a choose your own adventure style of story telling. You play as Bruce Wayne who also plays Batman and you’ll balance that delicate life of billionaire businessman masquerading as a vigilante at night taking on a colorful cast of villains.

If you go into this wanting the characters to be in sync with what you know from the Batman stories, you’ll be sorely disappointed. This allows the game to feel fresh rather than a retelling of a popular comic or animated movie. Without spoiling too much, major villains are sidekicks and you’ll spend 75% of the game playing as Bruce Wayne mixed in with super villains and a mere 25% as Batman.

At it’s core, the game play is making a few dialog choices to see who you want to align yourself with and who will hate you for picking someone else’s side. You’ll have to pick a justice faction through your choices, along with characters from those factions to get in good with. You’ll also buddy up to criminals while making other criminals and justice factions hate you.

Beyond that there are a few scenes with quick time events during fights where you’ll be swiping four directions, pressing one of four buttons or swiping while pressing one of four buttons. Sometimes choices to take out person A or take out person B appears or hit a villain with a slam or hit them with a grappling hook with appear. Choices are nice, but these minor choices feel frivolous and you get the same results. I managed to miss quite a few quick time events, but the game enacted them. It was rare when I reached a fail state. maybe four times in a nine hour game. The beauty of the modern Telltale games is that fail states are rare in general, you just keep going. If someone dies, they’re gone, if you make a bad dialog choice, they hate you.

To stay with Telltale’s point-and-click adventure roots, there are light elements of actual crime scene solving and puzzle solving about one per episode. You’ll get to walk around a confined area, look over clues, and figure out the order in which to solve the puzzle. There’s always someone with you to mull over the scene to help the dialog flow whether its Commissioner Gordon or a few select criminals.

I think this fresh take on characters is what lead me to not remember much from the previous game in the series, but that’s okay, because I don’t think the game cared about my previous choices either. It’s a fresh slate and a stand alone game even if there’s a previous one. Since you choose your own alliances, it will muddy things into greys rather than black and white friend or foes. The Telltale series of Batman games are an island unto themselves.

It might spoil something to tell you anything about the storyline, but there are a lot of threads that intertwine and about six well known super villains that have been featured in Batman movies. The first episode lead me to believe you’ll face each of the game’s villains per chapter, but no, five of the villains are just clumped together as one super faction.

Telltale’s version of Batman feels a different from other portrayals of the character. He uses drones and a cellphone along with batarangs and grappling hooks. He uses a voice modulator while in his bat suit rather than a gravely voice. The villains can still be cartoon caricatures of realistic people and they each have a gimmick. You’ll be doing mundane things with them like hanging out in a car with two of them like awkward teenagers. The game excels with ratcheting up the tension by getting you into bad situations like to initiate Bruce Wayne into their gang, you need to pull off a heist on your own business. Knowing there’s a mole in their gang and searching for the traitor when it should be obvious that it’s the new guy.

While you’re walking a fine line between Bruce Wayne becoming a villain and Batman having to stop villains, your butler and guide Alfred is judging you. He seems like the toughest person to please, because he’ll guide you and guilt trip you into something, then throw it back in your face later on. Actually, a lot of characters will do that, but Alfred seems like the one to make more of a conversation about it rather than a few glancing statements of being upset.

The game is broken into five episodes with six chapters each. The first episode goes by quick with one set and scene being the entire chapter. The rest of the game beefs up the chapters, but that first one is to get you acclimated to both the basic gameplay and the fact that everything is different from every other Gotham City.

To critique the game, it could have used more environments. It was a lot of the same sets for different scenes across the game. You’d expect to see a lot of the Bat Cave, Bruce Wayne’s office, and the Gotham City Police Department rooftop a lot, but do you expect to see different criminals using the same hideout, the same street repurposed, and the same bar in a major metropolitan area? New chapters still brought in new sets, while revisiting the old ones extensively. The fun house set was a stand out, but other than that you’ll visit a cargo ship, an underground bunker, and a few other one and done sets.

The best question to ask when playing any game is would you play a sequel. For the Batman games from Telltale, yes I would, even if its a bit alien compared to the rest of the Batman franchise. The tough thing is would there ever be another Batman game of this style when the Telltale company went out of business? On the plus side, there's replay value in Telltale games, but having to sit through a 9 hour cut scene to possibly get a tweak in a story doesn't feel like an entertaining prospect.

All Stars Racing Cup is an isometric homage to RC Pro Am, but manages to so much more lackluster than the 80s classic. The driving is dull, there’s no grand prix, it’s an uninspiring exhibition with a few closed circuit courses. It’s so basic, generic and devoid of content that it’s probably an asset flip.

As mentioned before the driving is dull, but the highlight is being able to run into cones that line each course and they’ll bounce out of your way. The racetracks needs walls, since you can drive off the pavement and over the grass. Without walls, you can drive wherever, but the game still recognizes that you should be driving on the pavement. You however, will not know where you left the pavement, and you need to go back to that point.

Each exhibition forces you to select a car and three opponents to race against on four tracks. There’s a variety of vehicles, but without stats, I’ll assume they’re all the same and that’s rather disappointing. Thankfully the game remembers the vehicles between exhibitions or it would be a pain setting that up each time.

The computer controlled drivers do an adequate job, but on a game without much content or fun, their driving skills don’t matter. Seeing a semi truck spin out made it useless as a competitor. I’m unsure if it was unable to turn around or had a tire stuck in the ground, but it happened twice on my brief play time. When the first vehicle finishes its three laps, the race is done. No placement is given and you can’t finish.

There are only a four tracks, each has the same flat terrain and the same grassy theme. Some of these tracks are long, which result in boredom sinking in quickly. Long tracks don’t need a forced three laps. Even changing the color of the objects would go a long way to making each course feel different. If the selection of vehicles can at least have different colors, why not the environments?

When I click the settings, the game freezes, but that might be a first time issue. The game allows for online play, but well if the racing isn’t fun and there’s not much content, I didn’t even bother trying, I’ll assume that there’s no one waiting to play.

Even as a dirt cheap game that’s constantly on sale, I can’t recommend this game. It’s shallow, dull and uninspiring. Even with a solid engine, there are no frills that motivate me to see the light that this could be a great game rather than a quick cash in and possible asset flip.

Gunman Clive is perhaps the most enjoyable side scrolling shooter that took me around sixty minutes to complete on normal. It’s fun, it’s challenging and it’s full of and its nostalgia laden level themes from Donkey Kong Country mine carts to bits of level from the original Mega Man. In a lot of ways, Gunman Clive is a parody of Mega Man. The mechanics are the same and it’s set in the 18XX era.

The only real downside is the sketchy art. On the PC, it’s a bit faint, especially when running. The look of the game is up to your personal preference, but it sure makes the game stand out from a pack of other retro themed games. Everything looks dusty with only a few colors like cacti, blue enemies and purple horses to make things stand out. Other than that it’s a glorious 2.5D.

Gunplay is simple, you can only shoot left or right. There are no ups or downs. You can duck to shoot standing enemies in the crotch or fire upon innocent ducks that pace back and forth. Beyond that you can jump, climb up and down ladders as you navigate horizontal and vertical scrolling levels.

Each level is broken into several sections with a map connecting a string of levels that lead up to a boss fight. Bosses keep things interesting and they’re the right amount of challenge to let you keep progressing in the game without too much trouble.

From the start you’ll have two characters to choose from: Clive and Ms. Johnson. Playing as Clive will show Ms. Johnson being kidnapped. Playing as Ms. Johnson will show Clive being kidnapped. The game is all about equality so both players feel the same.

Ms. Johnson falls slow to the ground with her hoop skirt and seems to garner more cake for defeating enemies, so chances are, she’s an easier character to manage. The real disadvantage is that she stops to shoot, while Clive is free to run and gun while keeping momentum.

Once you complete the game, you’ll unlock Duck Mode which is a third character that lets you play as a duck. This duck cannot shoot, but at least it can fly and it has plenty of health.

Dispatching foes will often drop different weapons. Collecting these lets you keep them until you take damage. You’ll get a spread shot, a laser and a gun with seeking bullets. Nothing other weapons come to mind. These weapons each feel far more powerful than the six shooter you’ll start out with.

There are sixteen levels, each with multiple segments. The game balances its shooting with its platforming. You’ll leap on rolling rocks that will push you off as they roll, rotating platforms you’ll need to climb or slide off, mine carts to ride in, anti gravity wells to fly through and so much more. There’s even a moon level with physics that match accordingly, complete with meteor showers. There’s a lot of diversity in such a brief game.

Enemies manage to stand out as intelligent. You’ll see snipers move around on platforms to follow your movements. Horseback riders will charge at you. Other gunmen will pop out of trap doors with their guns blazing. The game makes fantastic use of each foe.

There is plenty of health and a lot of cake everywhere to restore health. That makes the game forgiving, but in the later levels, there are plenty of hazards around to make your life miserable. You’re at least allowed to have a lot of fun, before the game gets too difficult.

To cap off the maps, you’ll face off against giant bosses, clones of yourself and trains that transform. It all feels so familiar, the most interesting bosses from other games have all been taken for Gunman Clive and they add to the fun.

The train level has a boss fight against the engine itself that transforms into a flame throwing mech. The gunfight against your shadow has you playing cat and mouse against yourself. A brawl against a giant boss has its arms slamming onto the ground where you need to climb up its giant fists and shoot it in the face. Every boss feels good and the game drops plenty of guns to help make it easier.

Gunman Clive was short and worth every penny to experience. I’d much rather play a brief game that does everything right than something longer. It made me long for a sequel, which happened after its release.

The Red Hood Story Pack comes with a brief mission pack and the Red Hood character to play in the combat challenges for the sake of diversity. As a character, Red Hood plays enough like Batman to just be Batman, but with guns. He has a grappling hook and instead of batterangs he has guns. Why use a batterang when you can just shoot your enemies? By shooting them, it's as simple as pulling the left trigger on the controller. There's no aim, it's all automatic. The balance to guns is that you unload a hail of bullets, leaving you vulnerable to attacks. So shoot one thug and the others will hit you.

As for the story part of the pack, it's a simple, three segments against Black Mask's goons. The first segment is a brawler, then it takes you to a stealth segment where everyone has guns, and the last segment is a more extensive brawler with Black Mask commanding his goons. Every once in a while, Black Mask will shoot and you need to dodge a bullet. You'd be better off dodging this DLC, especially when it comes in the season pass.

There's no connection between the three segments. When one segment ends, there's a loading screen and off to the next segment rather than progressing through a single building from point A to B to C to D. The action is still great stuff from the Arkham series, there's just not enough of it. There is better DLC for Arkham Knight, but don't expect much.

Welcome to German Fortress 3D, an archaic first person shooter set in a few flat rooms full of snipers so far away, you'll never see them before you're dead. Its downfalls are common with this first-person shooter engine. Horizontal rooms, no cover, bland gameplay and enemies that are cardboard cutouts always facing you.

The snipers are typical soldiers dressed in black, but have deadly precision. They begin peeling off health in an instant. To be hilarious, the game starts you with a knife which works fine, but they give you a shotgun... an empty shotgun. Oh but it gets better, once you murder your first Nazi soldier, he drops ammunition... that does nothing. In fact a lot of the ammunition dropped does nothing to replenish your supply. Once you have ammunition, your weapon fires a slow projectile rather than a hit scan weapon indicative of the genre. The slow projectile gives enemies a chance to side step your fireball that bellows from the barrel of your ineffective weapon.

After playing ten minutes, I never made it past a few cement grey rooms before getting mowed down. There is no cover. I came across a single health box that looked like it was taken from Doom. The entire game has free assets that hearken back to that early 90s first-person shooter. The catch is the game it's paying homage to has depth, fun and color. All you'll find in German Fortress 3D are grey walls and black Nazi soldiers... What is this game in grey scale? Well, I guess the swastikas are red, so there must be color.

There was no fun here in the game. It's a hostile game and every small bit of movement without death is an achievement. Sure there is a save and load, but the problem is the enemies will still shoot you long before your projectiles will ever reach them.

The mouse sensitivity is another issue, it lacks the speed necessary to turn corners easily. If you want to get serious about playing the game, it's best to face the wall of a corner and strafe out. That will give you a chance to access your foes without getting killed. These complaints can be copy / pasted to all the other games that use this simple engine. This feels like it's the worst out of the games that use it. The others have their own art, better enemy design and levels that are fun.

For those that care, you'll find no achievements, cards, quality or effort put into German Fortress 3D. It's obvious from the gameplay that the game doesn't want you to play. Please avoid it. There are better first-person shooters on a horizontal plane.

Dubstep Abasralsa is an astonishing level of achievement that this quality of an infinite runner could get brought here to Steam for the world to buy. If the developer can use a nearly identical game to Hardcore ZBoy, I can copy and paste my review and call it done. Its interesting this is put out by a different developer, but included in the same bundle and Hardcore ZBoy's developer logo is in this game.

As mentioned before, Dubstep Abasralsa is indeed an infinite runner where you can sway left, right and jump. The game comes to corners where I assume you're supposed to turn, but alas, no button on the controller turns so I end up scraping my runner's face against the wall unable to see, because the camera never turns either.

From the moment you start the game, you're dumped onto an object that causes a game over. Oh, but you're in luck, because this game shuffles its pieces so what might be an instant death within the first second of the game five times in a row, can be a safe, vacant street the sixth time.

Your runner character will fall through the floor from time to time. Its interesting, because once he fell through and I was allowed to keep running and jumping as he dissipated into a white light below. Other times, the prefabricated terrain will disappear. Its quite disastrous, but disastrous so fast, there's no waiting to see it.

If you're here to take the game serious, the objective is to eat as many win bottles as possible. Well eat or collect. You touch a giant floating bottle, it disappears, I assume they are kept in a pocket inside the runner's body in one way or another. The game shows your record and by record I mean your distance. An actual record would be keeping track of a previous distance so you can compare this distance to your record of longest distance. Leaderbaords would have been nice, but I hear I should review the game for what it is, rather than what it should be.

The differences between this game and Hardcore ZBoy are negligible. Its the same environment, but now policemen are shuffling side to side in order to grab your runner. When you start the game, you have a mandatory three second fly over, that will increase your "record."

For anyone wondering how could this developer make such a similar game to other developers, there is an official video tutorial somewhere explaining how to make this exact infinite runner. Then I assume the assets get dumped in. The problem here is there's no twist to make it the developer's own. Plus the actual tutorial works better than this.

The trailer lets you know what you're in store for, but if you're blind or reading this review without bothering to look at the game, I hope you can tell the level of quality. SteamDirect made its money and chances are Dubstep Abasralsa could become legendarily bad, but the problem is, it's bad in the first second. It's bad before you get into the game, because the trailer is bad and the menu options are bad and patched together using text boxes. Sure you can make an entire game and a company logo, but you can't muster the user interface to be better? There's no bad that keeps coming, you've seen its flaws in the trailer and from the instant you start playing. Its one of those games that's so bad, people will be angry at Steam for swindling this developer's money via SteamDirect.

The bottom line here is no achievements, no cards, no leaderboards, no turning at turns and in general no fun. Every minor thing that would bolster a game's check boxes fails to be here. Dubstep Abasralsa avoids mediocrity of the middle ground that is so-so and hits the mark of a terrible game with gusto. It's one of those games so bad that it made me jealous to read my friend's review and I thought oh now this I need to play!

Hardcore ZBoy is an astonishing level of achievement that this quality of an infinite runner could get brought here to Steam for the world to buy. As mentioned before, it's indeed an infinite runner where you can sway left, right and jump. The game comes to corners where I assume you're supposed to turn, but alas, no button on the controller turns so I end up scraping my zombie's face against the wall unable to see, because the camera never turns either.

From the moment you start the game, you're dumped onto an object that causes a game over. Oh, but you're in luck, because this game shuffles its pieces so what might be an instant death within the first second of the game five times in a row, can be a safe, vacant street the sixth time.

Your zombie character will fall through the floor from time to time. Its interesting, because once he fell through and I was allowed to keep running and jumping as he dissipated into a white light below. Other times, the prefabricated terrain will disappear. Its quite disastrous, but disastrous so fast, there's no waiting to see it.

If you're here to take the game serious, the objective is to eat as many brains as possible. Well eat or collect. You touch a giant floating brain, it disappears, I assume they are kept in a pocket inside the zombie's body in one way or another. The game shows your record and by record I mean your distance. An actual record would be keeping track of a previous distance so you can compare this distance to your record of longest distance. Leaderbaords would have been nice, but I hear I should review the game for what it is, rather than what it should be.

For anyone wondering how could this developer make such a similar game to other developers, there is an official video tutorial somewhere explaining how to make this exact infinite runner. Then I assume the assets get dumped in. The problem here is there's no twist to make it the developer's own. Plus the actual tutorial works better than this.

The trailer lets you know what you're in store for, but if you're blind or reading this review without bothering to look at the game, I hope you can tell the level of quality. SteamDirect made its money and chances are Hardcore ZBoy could become legendarily bad, but the problem is, it's bad in the first second. It's bad before you get into the game, because the trailer is bad and the menu options are bad and patched together using text boxes. Sure you can make an entire game and a company logo, but you can't muster the user interface to be better? There's no bad that keeps coming, you've seen its flaws in the trailer and from the instant you start playing. Its one of those games that's so bad, people will be angry at Steam for swindling this developer's money via SteamDirect.

The bottom line here is no achievements, no cards, no leaderboards, no turning at turns and in general no fun. Every minor thing that would bolster a game's check boxes fails to be here. Hardcore ZBoy avoids mediocrity of the middle ground that is so-so and hits the mark of a terrible game with gusto. It's one of those games so bad that it made me jealous to read my friend's review and I thought oh now this I need to play!

It's been a while since I've played a horizontal shmup like the Thing: Space X. If you only want to buy a game for A-Z lettered and numbered achievements for your profile, this might be the game for you. If you're into an enjoyable, little space shooter, then keep on going. Some of the design decisions resulted in good laughs.

Let's start with the good. The presentation is fair, it looks nice and then it goes downhill from there. There's some big electronic beats that are so intense it's hilarious for a game like this. Other than that, a lot of the music fits.

Now it's time for the unique hook this game has concerning gameplay. Each projectile you fire takes a second to drift out below you and then fire forward. The trajectory of the projectile depends where your vessel is from where it's launched. If it's above, the projectile will skew itself upward. Even after your projectiles have gone off, you can steer them with your ship. If you haven't moved it will fire forward.

Here's the thing, enemies come toward you rather than the projectile which drifts below you before it launches forward. So having your projectiles fire forward is futile. This forces you to move up, down and all over the screen. In fact, you can move off the screen if you'd like. Enemies fire at you from off screen behind you as well. That's quite a big sin. I suppose the trick is, never let them get behind you.

For each projectile you fire, you need to mash that space bar once. So it turns into a game of endurance, because your projectiles are so inaccurate. Another issue is your projectiles destroy enemy projectiles. Sure that's good, but that also protects the enemy as well. When your aim is so inaccurate, keeping any enemy alive is a danger.

Enemies always move toward you, so if an enemy rams you, you're dead, but the enemy stays alive. There's a bigger issue, because you spawn where you die and there's no invulnerability, so you can waste all your lives because you died once.

If you destroy the enemies before the next wave? You'll have to sit and wait before there are more foes to fry. It gave me time to write down notes for this review. At least there is a bar at the bottom to show when the next wave is coming.

There's a bigger sin here. If you beat the boss at the end, you meet up with a space ring. Using this space ring you launch off... and nothing happens. The game just sits there. You're off screen. There is no second level, there is no loop back to the start of the only level. You'll find no congratulations or victory. That's it. The game refuses to do anything after that.

There are a few ships to chose from, but they all perform the same in game. It's laughable that the selection cursor fails to keep up with your selection. Sure you can pick your vessel, but it takes a few seconds for the cursor to catch up to you.

For an arcade style score chaser like this, I'd also like a high score or a leader board, but both are no where to be found. It's a game to get people A - Z achievements for pushing a keyboard.

It's tough to recommend. I did have a few laughs for a minute at the design choices, but the game is shallow and there's no need to stick around. Its tough to recommend The Thing: Space X under any circumstance. Then again, I did buy it in a cheap Steam bundle, $2 for 15 games. This developer is dealing in bulk at a cheap price.

Death's Hangover is an enjoyable brick breaker clone with a lot of diversity and things that kill the doldrums of the genre. Rather than breaking all the blocks or barrels in this case, you either need to break through a wide exit gate at the other side of the screen and then exit. This makes a "break-through" rather than a brick breaker. There are bosses, blocks, tricks and traps that get in the way. It's a simple game, as most block breakers are, but it's a fun game enhanced with arcade quality sound effects that add some punch to everything.

Two girls wake up in a dungeon after what I assume is a night of drinking and must now escape a castle or kill Dracula. There's a story, but a lot of it, I button mashed my way through. So one girl hops in a metal ball while the other girl controls the paddle at the bottom of the screen. I assume when one dies, they both perish.

You can only move left and right while dodging projectiles and enemies. Killing enemies results in bloody green or red goo that's a visual treat. Maneuvering around projectiles while keeping your ball out of the pit becomes the big issue. Most enemies move forward, but later on they get more challenging. Some enemies shoot, others head toward you at a slow pace, while others hide behind shields and bounce the ball back at you. This diversity keeps the game fun and engaging.

The game has several themed areas as you crawl up a castle. Each area has several rooms that go by quick since you only need to bash the exit and move your ball through. Some rooms feel as if their only purpose is to collect power-ups and souls for later. Bosses are frequent as are enemy rooms where you need to slaughter X amount of enemies before you can break through the gate. Still other rooms feel more typical with a twist. Typical barrels block the path while other times there are moving or shifting blocks to get in the way.

As for themes, you start in the dungeon, get to the sewer where water lanes act conveyor belts for your ball, get to an arena where the fans riot and pile into the screen and even reach a point where the side walls that secure you into a lane can break away. Each area has its own enemies and dreary look. There is a limited, dark castle dungeon-esque color scheme that may turn away some, but the game's charm and fun makes up for it.

Breaking barrels has a chance to release an item such as multi-ball that breaks your single ball into three, a double dart gun, a fireball and a bomb that will destroy anything in its radius. Once you have a power-up or weapon you can fire at will. Since the object is to get your ball out the door, multi-balls will only go with you, if you get them to the exit.

Along the way, you'll also find souls. These are optional collectables, that have a big impact on game overs. With a soul, you can use them to gamble on a big wheel for prizes like extra lives. It's a nice frill to keep you in game. When you think you've lost, here are more lives.

While you're on your journey, you'll have a reaper guiding you with brief lines of dialog as a hint for each new level. Between areas of the castle, you'll see silly dialog between the blonde working the paddle and the drunk dullard forced to be in the ball. While the dialog seems unnecessary in a genre like this, it does add to the fun and charm.

With the robust sounds, dreary colors, quirky comedy, quick levels, it makes this game feel like an addictive arcade game from a different era. For the cheap price, it's worth the hand full of quarters.

Wizorb is a fantastic looking and sounding block breaker game, but its downfall comes with the genre. It's a good game with a great theme, but it's just dull in a hurry as less blocks on screen mean more wasted time bouncing your ball. The magic abilities only help so much as they drain quick and you need to pickup potions that can drop from broken blocks. So without power-ups dropping to diversify the game, it gets to be a monotonous slog through each level. The game also suffers from having multiple sized blocks including tiny. That is coupled with a small orb, that makes for a lot of time consuming near misses.

The game does go the extra mile in its production. It looks, sounds and feels like a NES system despite the 16:9 widescreen format. It sounds good and looks good. The music sounds like a homage to a legendary dungeon song in a famous game. To talk about the great look and sound is gushing about the obvious.

You start as a wizard and transform into a magic wand that is a traditional block breaker paddle. You can aim with an arrow that moves back and forth before you launch your orball. It plays standard with left and right movement, the ball will bounce to the direction it hits your paddle. Want the ball to go right? Hit it with the right side and so on.

As for spells, you start with a single fire shot, and a lackluster wind breeze to blow your ball. This seemed ineffective at best. If you're on the left, it will blow the ball right and vise-versa. Other than that, there's a spell that when used after your ball hits the paddle, it will make the ball cut through blocks rather than bounce into them. There is a spell you can use to control the ball briefly after it hits your paddle. Teleport lets you start the ball where you'd like on the level, but the only way to use it is to lose an orb first. It's worth taking an intentional loss to hurry the level.

Since magic is so difficult to come by after the first level I often went without magic so long, I'd forget that it exists. It's best to wait for the last few pesky blocks before you shoot them with fire to finish a level quicker. Then again, it's good to start with a magic magnum ball to plow through blocks. Then again you could miss any blocks and waste the magic.

The medieval aesthetic goes a long way to help the game feel unique from others in the genre. You have blocks on screen, but there are bushes, foes, crates and treasure chests as well. These all need to get taken care of before you go to the next level. There are no easy exits. There are unbreakable blocks in the way of both iron blocks and planted bushes.

Each brick destroyed it has a chance of dropping a coin, a jewel, magic vials, an extra life or a hand that will grab coins away from you. I would avoid that last one as soon as I figured out what it was. These pickups may seen trivial, but missing one is painful, but you need to keep juggling that orb.

There are shops and secret bonus areas in various levels. These doorways open with a key or a trigger somewhere on the screen. The bonus areas give you a heap of pickups once you pop the bubbles containing them. The shops sell extra lives, a potion to refill your entire magic meter and a magnet that lets you catch the ball rather than having it bounce. This seems to negate the two spells that need you to bounce the ball and then use them. When you launch a caught ball, you have no control over where it shoots like when you have a fresh ball from a lost life or the start of a level.

Like most block breakers, if you lose a ball, you lose a life. Once you lose all your lives, you still have 3 continues. Using a continue resets the level from where you entered with your expended magic. After the blocks and enemies get dispatched, so does your orb, but you only exit the level after the pickups have disappeared.

Each place on a map gets broken into twelve levels and gets capped off with a boss fight. If you return to the world map, you have to restart that series of levels again. The game warns you of this of course. Below it is the save an exit. This will save the level you're on and send you to the title screen. If you confuse the two as I did, even with a confirmation screen, you can woops away 30 minutes of play time with a single folly. Brick breaker games still need time and effort to get through each level rather than other games where once you know the way it's a breeze to get through.

The boss fights felt good and they break up the slog that is Wizorb. Bosses have minions and health. Once their health is gone, you win regardless of the minions on the side. The bosses will spit projectiles at you that will hinder you such as making you go slower or making your paddle smaller.

After the first series of twelve levels, the game felt a lot better and would have made for a better set of starter levels. There is a safety wall behind your paddle that can take a few hits before it's destroyed. The shop has a slow ball and a larger paddle to buy rather than a magnet to catch. The catch is fine, but the fact it removes the use of two spells feels like an issue. The levels feel quicker. I had less frustration from tiny blocks and blocks hiding behind unbreakable objects. If this set of levels was the first set, it would be easier to recommend.

Other differences in the second set of twelve levels, there are fairies that pop out of treasure chests, doors that take your orb from one side of the screen to the other. It made the game feel better. This comes at a cost, because you'll find far more hazards such as slime to slow you down, griffins that do something to your paddle. If it's purple and drops out of something you hit, assume it's something bad.

When you start the game, you're dumped into a town in ruins and everyone is asking for money. Even the dog was asking to donate 100 gold for you to rebuild its dog house. Donating high fees to citizens will yield rewards. When you exit and return to the town, you'll see your donation has caused something to get rebuilt whether it's a dog house or a mill. It's something to spend your extra money on to keep you playing, but it feels unnecessary.

As eluded to before, this is a time consuming game, it can take upwards of forty-five minutes to make it through twelve levels and a boss fight. Does that make for more value for the price? Sure... if I didn't find it so frustrating. The tiny ball would near miss a tiny block when I had no magic to simply shoot the block. The tiny block would be lodged behind or between two unbreakable objects. Using magic still allows for imprecision of luck or skill that would utterly waste the magic.

For the cheap price, it's well worth the risk to buy and try. Your enjoyment of Wizorb falls into how much do you love the 80s look and sound versus how many other brick breaker games have you played. The magic gimmick falls flat for me and doesn't do enough to diversify the monotony, nor does paying gold to help rebuild a town. I'd like to give a shout out to my friend for giving me this game. Thanks. I would have stopped playing this game a long time ago if you didn't ask me to review it.