Wednesday 29 May 2013

DsiWare Review; Ball Fighter

Good Fast-Paced Puzzler Goodness

In Ball Fighter, you must call coloured "balls" into your mystical-wizardous hand to match them with other balls of the same colour. You must match up a certain number of these balls before moving on to the next level. All the time, the balls are moving closer. If you let them touch the bottom of the screen then you die.

You can mess around with the settings a bit and either hold it normally or like a book. It is nice having it over two screens but can take a bit of getting used to. There is a steep learning curve for about the first 5 times you play, due to there being no tutorial, but this is quickly fixed.

This concept is simple, but is implemented with such finesse that it is impossible not to get addicted. This is just in arcade mode! Arcade mode is, of course, the meat of the game, with four handy pick ups that can be fired using the trigger buttons.

There is also the aptly named "Brain Breaker" mode, in which you control two screens with the same set-up. This is incredibly hard to do without dying and once you finally get your head around it, and you move back to Arcade, or the self-explanatory Survival, your brain will be in a complete mess, while trying to revert back to the original control scheme.

The third mode, is a Two player Vs mode on a single Dsi. This is the kind of mode which many developers are simply too lazy to implement, so this addition is very welcome. This helps extend the length and replay value of this title.

The final mode gets the least attention from me but is still a nice touch, seeing if you can beat the computer in Player vs Computer.



The low-down


This is an addictive and frantic puzzler which is a great port. I got very distracted while writing the review by this game! I have spent many hours on this game and intend to spend many more. The only fallback is that it can get repetitive

7.5/10- A lovely puzzler

Monday 20 May 2013

Dsiware Review; Clash of Elementalists

Elementally Simple





Clash of Elementalists is a 3rd person arena brawler featuring four anime girls with massive weapons and magic, intent on smashing each other to bits. Think Soul Calibur, with a bit less weapons and a bit more magic. Despite not being able to find a prologue anywhere, I managed to dig out an introduction from inside the "Help" bar on the menu;
"'Elementalists are battling all around the world..."
"Every Elementalist has a look-alike out there..."
With rumours such as these ringing in their ears, many young adepts of Elementalism
--some to protect the peace, others to satiate curiosity, but each for their own reasons--
flew to the battlefield.'

This is as far as the storyline goes, but do not fret, for this is not needed or even necessary within the actual game. When booting up the game, you are faced with a simple menu and looping unnecessarily loud music that gets annoying after not too long. The four game modes on offer are; Arcade Mode, Free Battle Mode, Versus Mode and Training Mode.
There are four characters on offer each with their own element; Celcius, Farenheit, Biot and Mole. These follow their respective elements of fire, water, earth and air and have cosmetically suited environments in which you battle them.
Arcade mode is the real meat of the game and this only lasts about 15 minutes, as you defeat the four characters. You can choose what round to start on, how long each bout lasts and AI difficulty.
The controls use L and R to shoot the Wide attack and the Normal attack respectively, while pressing both launches a power attack.
Free battle and Training have obvious enough motives with a few differing customization options setting them apart, while Versus gives you the option to play locally against a friend  who also owns the game.
The action takes place on the bottom screen and the game itself has beautiful player graphics but a questionably empty arena. However, when actually playing, you welcome this choice. The frame rate is also great and overall, visuals are completely on-par.
 The inherent problem is the camera, which seems to not be able to focus on the enemy character for long and which can only be rectified by incessant jumping, but even this is not perfect, for the simple reason that this also launches you into the air. There is also a method involving turning using A, but this is flawed to the core and even worse than jumping.

The control scheme is the same for Melee attacks, as when you are (a rare case) in proximity to your opponent these significantly more powerful attacks kick in. This control scheme can be slowly learnt, but it can never be quite mastered to a satisfactory level unfortunately










The low-down

This is a lovely looking and playing game with a slight lack of content and unlockables and an awful camera. This is a lovely way to kill some time on the bus. Not as much as I would've like for nearly £5.

Activity Log at time of review: 2 1/2 hours total played. 15 total plays with an average playtime of 10 minutes.

6.5/10- A good game, but with a bad camera

Sunday 19 May 2013

News and Reviews of Dsiware and 3ds Eshop Games from Teyon

First of all, I would like to tell everyone that I am not affiliated in any way with Teyon and that all Rights to their publications, logos and software are not owned by me. I shall distribute images and media for information purposes exclusively.


Now I am sure you are asking yourself a few questions right now, I will attempt to answer them in as much detail as possible.

Who are Teyon?
Teyon is a Polish video games developer, producer and online publisher for most of the leading platforms in the industry. I will be focusing on their games on the Nintendo 3ds and the Nintendo DS.

What is the purpose of this blog?
To keep everyone up to date with all Nintendo 3ds and DSi news and also to provide fair and concise reviews.

Why are you reviewing them exclusively?
For the simple reason that time is money, and I do not have much of either! Also, Teyon seem to get unnecessary negativity and flak for flaws which many other games also carry. I have realized that their games all hold huge potential!

Who are you?
I am an independent Nintendo Games Enthusiast who has too much spare time on his hands!

Are you related to Teyon in any way, shape or form?
This one is easy. No.

Where can I contact you?
Please direct all queries to gregory.hartleygh@gmail.com