EricaB3

Dragonvale is a wonderful, ever-expanding world of connected islands, where you hatch and raise dragons, breed them to create new, amazing hybrids, and collect money and gems to fuel your funds. This was my first IOS game, and I loved it. It offered you gameplay every day down to every couple minutes, when you could collect money from your habitats or try and hatch new dragons. Whenever I felt the game getting boring, I was given a new update. The addition of gemstone dragons, new levels and islands, and tons of new dragons continually drew me back in. I don't play much anymore, unfortunately. The game requires so much of my iPhone 4 that it is agonizingly slow to even load the game, let alone try and collect everything and cruise around the screen. It looks amazing on an iPad, while I don't have one myself, I've watched someone play and it looks even more magnificent and vibrant on a larger screen that can handle the gameplay. I would hands down recommend this game.

I play this with family, and while it's fun, the game itself has shown for me to be glitchy and buggy. I had the free version, so that was a mess of ads every single time I put in a word. Trying to play by yourself for practice became a frustrating tangle of getting rid of ads and continuously opening the app after it crashed. It's better now, and perhaps the purchased version would prove less prone to shutting down with the removal of ads; but I'm too frustrated to even bother spending the couple bucks. If you want people to purchase the full version, improve the free one and tempt me with your quality, not try to break me down with awful ads and prolonged bugs.

This relatively inexpensive game (purchased for PC via Steam) is a rather addictive and fun way to entertain yourself and company for a day. The gameplay is simple and fun, the levels are interesting and offer different maps (from castles, forests, river-fights to an alien spaceship) to give the eyes something new to look at. Multiplayer is quite fun, and the little pets who can accompany you each have their own abilities to aid you in your quest. That said, it is a very long and arduous game at times, and levels can take quite a few times to defeat if the player can't get the hang of a particular boss or mob. If you don't have a controller...good luck to you. I couldn't figure it out, and with the limited tutorial and, at that time, my limited knowledge of PC controls, it was frustrating until my boyfriend lent me his Xbox controller. People will love this game initially; but good luck making it to the finish. I want to love this game, I really do, but with no end in sight, I've set it aside and forgotten it while I've moved on to other games that have shorter tasks.

Pros: -If you love a good sandbox game, this is one of the better one's I've played. Open-ended play with the option to change difficulty if you get bored or run into a tight spot with mobs (though I am to understand those players steeped in the world of little pixels find switching to "peaceful" mode an abomination ) -It's great for kids and adults alike, offering endless gameplay and nearly endless adventure. -Updates are usually always improving the game, or fixing bugs and providing new tidbits or items to find -Controls are simple on the PC and once you learn it's pretty hard to forget it. -You can alter how the game looks, the rendering distance, and most of the usual basic controls ****. -Lots of help can be found on the Minecraftwiki site, among other places, if you find yourself confused about how to craft something or what you should be aiming for next. -You can leave this game for a month or for a day, and when you start up again, it's right where you left off and you can usually pick up where you left off. Cons: -There are so many things to do and see, people who are more action-oriented will be disappointed until you can get to the Nether, or face one of the two end bosses' that I'm aware of. -Diamond seems, at times, very very hard to find, as it should be; but players might get discouraged after days of spelunking only to come back with a chests' worth of cobblestone. -Unless you have a speedy computer, the game can get a little glitchy and slow. The good thing is that there are different rendering options. -This can be a time-sink, and at the end of a day's worth of play, you realize you have done nothing in the sometimes less interactive real world. Set a timer or a goal if you're a person who easily falls into hours of gameplay and you have other things to do! Overall: I love this game, and games like this that are open world. That said, a couple more milestones or achievements to point lost players in the right direction might be helpful to some of the younger players who want to "beat" the game.