kirbman101

Not much ****. You have 10.5 minutes to click on one image in each of about 80 sets of three images each. Once you've done that, it tells you what types of images you clicked on. That's it, nothing more.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Urban Trial Freestyle follows a very simple concept that has been used before in flash games, but includes more detailed levels and better graphics. I started playing it without any expectations, and really enjoyed it. It can be completed in four or five hours, but collecting all the money, getting 5 stars on all missions, and beating your friends' scores can keep you playing for longer. The graphics are good, and the 2.5D design works well with the dynamically changing levels. Each level responds as you drive through it, usually with police getting in your way or structures collapsing to form ramps. The one level design element that I found annoying is the jumping platforms, which are introduced later in the game, and seem to be designed to kill the rider repeatedly rather than propel him to new areas. There are four tracks in each of the five worlds, and also two brief tutorials and five challenges (each of which has its own rules and its own track). Each track also has two modes, race and stunt, which are unlocked separately. In race mode, you'll race against the fastest ghost of whichever leaderboard you have selected: global, friends, or self. I felt that global was out of my league, but I had a lot of fun trying to beat my friends' fastest records. The stunts consist of long jumps, high jumps, precision jumps, and speed checks at certain parts of each track. The rider will do tricks during many of the stunts, but these are purely cosmetic and happen automatically. You can instantly return to the previous checkpoint with no direct penalty, which is great for trying to beat your friends' high scores in stunt mode. Each track has $5000 in bags of $500, $1000, or $2000 hidden along it. This money can be used to buy functional upgrades for your bike or cosmetic upgrades for your rider. There aren't many customization options, so I found the bike upgrades and rider appearance system lacking. The bike's engine noise gets repetitive quickly, but you can turn the sound down in the options menu. The soundtrack is decent, but nothing outstanding.

I'm not a big fan of the tower defense genre, but PixelJunk Monsters has a unique appeal that kept me coming back for more. The system of unlocking, building, and upgrading towers is simple, but not so much that it becomes boring. All necessary information is clearly conveyed to the player, which is very helpful. In addition to currencies and remaining villagers, you can see upgrade statuses of all towers, and their ranges. You can even see which type of enemy is attacking next, and how long you have until they do. Unlike many tower defense games, enemies never attack your towers, they only go after your villagers. This makes the game less stressful than other tower defense games. Towers get experience from kills and from you dancing under them. This experience will upgrade them over time, or you can pay gems to skip to the next upgrade level. Each tower starts at green, and upgrades to yellow, red, purple, and finally black. The campaign is fairly long; it took me around 20 hours to complete all levels on the three main islands. Replayability is decent, with challenges, Steam achievements, higher difficulties, co-op mode, and a fourth island that includes randomly generated maps. The downsides are the occasional difficulty spikes and the clunky tower selection spinner. The game also doesn't do a good job of explaining how towers are upgraded, which is why I explained it here. Don't let the cute characters and pleasant music deceive you, this game can be tough.

Light is a short and simple 2D stealth game. It's fairly easy, and gives you the option of completing most stages how you like. You can avoid killing completely or kill everyone. You can go sneak around undetected or make a run for it. In each of the 12 levels, you are tasked with completing 1-4 objectives before exiting the level. The only fail condition is that you get killed by one of the guards. The whole game, and all Steam achievements, can be completed in about an hour. The graphics are sleek and simple, and if you don't like the effects, you can turn them off in the options menu. The music is good too, which is great, because the developers include the soundtrack for free.

I honestly don't understand why other players seem to like this game. Playing Samorost 2 can be simplified as time sent doing three things: * Watching the player character walk, crawl, or climb slowly from one place to another. * Randomly clicking around the screen until something happens. * Raging about having to go back and collect more manatee farts (yes, seriously) The graphic style is nice, and the music is good. Compared to the first Samorost game, this one's puzzles are noticeably less logical, so any thinking that might have been required has devolved into mindlessly clicking everything. Samorost 2 also feels more drawn out, the last puzzle making it painfully so.

Don't buy this game for the game, buy it because 100% of the proceeds go to charity. The purpose of this game is to honor those who lost their lives in the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, not to provide an exciting or entertaining gameplay experience. So why did I give this such a low score? As a game, it just doesn't stack up. This game can be summarized as 8 minutes of holding the W key to walk forward, 1 minute of spinning items, and 3 minutes of watching butterflies fly away.

I loved the first two Super Monkey Ball games for the Gamecube. I was excited to play this game, but ended up returning it within a week. This was one of the launch titles for the Wii, and the controls show it. Some of the minigames are nearly impossible to control, and across the game there's a gimmicky over-use of the Wii Remote's motion sensors. All of the fun minigames from 1 & 2 are gone, replaced by more, smaller minigames. The most fun minigame for me was Rock-Paper-Scissors, which should give you an idea of the complexity and enjoyment value of the others. The graphics weren't bad for their time, but they look very childish. The story mode is the only redeeming factor, as it is similar to that of SMB2, but the ability to jump makes most stages too easy. You are forced to use the poorly implemented motion controls for everything, which ruined the experience for me.

This game is more of an interactive glimpse into the author's head than a game. There are no rewards, no real ending, and it poses a lot of questions but never answers them. This might sound like a bad thing, but it fits the "interactive experience" style perfectly. The graphics, music, and voice acting are all very fitting, although the animations sometimes seem jarring in a world made of photographs. The cinemas felt a bit lacking, and the game lacked content. It is composed entirely of four small dreams, each with a primary goal and three alternate goals. It only takes about half an hour to explore each dream and complete the main objectives, and under two hours to get 100%. If you get this game as part of a bundle, it's worth your time to play through it, but I wouldn't pay full price ($7) for it.

This is essentially a Metroid movie with a few hours of fun gameplay along the way. It has the best cinemas of any Metroid game. Beyond that, I found it lacking compared to the rest of the series, which is admittedly a very high benchmark. Gameplay is fun, and the story explains a lot of unknowns in the series. This is definitely the easiest Metroid game so far. My biggest problem with this game is that it had no replay value. I got 100% completion on my first time through the game (without any guides) in 8 hours, most of which was spent watching cinemas. After that, there was nothing left to do.

I haven't been this impressed by a game since Super Smash Bros Melee. Part of each level plays like Star Fox, while the bulk of it plays like a 3rd person arcade shooter hack-em-up depending on your play style. The menus are just like the ones in Super Smash Bros Brawl, and the multiplayer is like a 3D version of what we all wished the SSBB online multiplayer had been. The controls seemed clunky at first, but not hard to get used to. There are tons of things to unlock, and in depth customization for both single and multiplayer. The story is very entertaining. No spoilers, just play it. There is almost constant chatting between characters during gameplay. It's very helpful and interesting the first time through, but can get old fast (especially Pit's occasional jokes). Turn the "Voices" volume to 0 in the options menu if you don't like it. The difficulty and deaths system is the most balanced one I've ever seen. Ever. The graphics are beautiful. I showed it to some relatives and the reaction was "If they can do that on this little screen, why can't they make 3D TVs look this good?" The music is great. I don't pay that much attention to it in most games but there's certainly nothing to complain about here. The online multiplayer is the best Nintendo has achieved to date. It's pretty addictive.

Overall, this is a great game. Full voice acting and impressive graphics for 1999 combine with an exciting story and interesting character development to make a memorable experience. Fans of the early Final Fantasy games should truly enjoy this game. Its biggest flaw is that the combat system can become boring or even tedious after a while. I also found it frustrating that enemy health bars are hidden by default. If either of those bother you too much, there are cheat codes (true to any 90s game) to fix both of those problems.

I played this game for years and enjoyed every moment of it. It plays a bit differently than other MMOs, because it is designed to prevent grinding, trolling, imbalance, and various other negative factors that typically plague online games.