Tag Archives: Free to Play

Knack’s Quest Review

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I’m still working on completing the PS4 Knack game, but in the meantime I decided to go ahead and try out the mobile version. This little app game allows you to gather pieces for the gadgets in the PS4 game so you can send them along and save yourself some time…in theory. This is helpful since the gem system in the PS4 game is rather tedious. You only get one part per treasure chest and you can only find them in story mode. Even Level Select doesn’t have them. It’s impossible to get all of the pieces in one playthrough and you could end up playing the game over several times without getting everything. That’s essentially why this game was made. If you play it long enough, you can eliminate around 80% of the grind. It’s a great concept and unlike other free to play games, there is no waiting period to tempt you into buying stuff. It actually plays out like a real game and has a ton of replay value. I could play it for hours easily since it’s like Pokemon Shuffle, but without the “Play 10 times and then wait an hour” rule. Unfortunately, no free game can be perfect at this rate as this one runs into some rather large issues.

Before I get into that, I’ll explain the gameplay. It’s your average mix and match title. You have to connect 3 or more gems of a certain color to get points. You rinse and repeat until you clear the level. You have to work fast or you’ll lose and you won’t keep any of the gems. Also, once you’ve charged enough energy to fill up 3 Sun Stones, you can use a super attack that destroys all of the gems of a certain color. (You choose the color) The game doesn’t tell you this so it’s a good heads up although you’d eventually find out about it while playing the game. The Stones charge very rapidly so you’ll be tempted to give them a whirl at some point. Each level has 3 phases and once you’ve beaten them all you move on to the next round. I believe that there are around 6 chapters so it is a fairly short game. I beat it in 2-3 hours I’d say.

After you beat the game, you unlock Unlimited Mode where you keep on earning points until you lose. It’s great for racking them up as I actually got over 999999 during one run, but I teamed up with my Mom to get that. It’d be incredibly hard to do that on your own. To earn a piece for the PS4 game, you only need 20000 at first, but eventually it’ll get to be 300000 or more. To get around that, you can delete the app and then reinstall it. You’ll keep your parts, but the requirement for a piece will go back down to the 20000. The only downside is that you’ll lose unlimited mode until you re unlock it, but I’d say that it’s definitely worth it. After all, Unlimited Mode’s one drawback is that it has a lot of load times every minute, which can get very annoying after a while.

This sounds like a positive review right? The gameplay is a blast and it’s why I look up to Free to Play games a little. The gameplay is always simple, but addictive. The problem is that this is all nullified by the game’s main problem, which literally breaks the game and destroys the score. It is simply a broken game. The app will constantly crash after almost every level and forget about looking at your pieces. Just clicking on any one of them will crash the game and a lot of times this means that the app won’t send them to the PS4 game…defeating the entire purpose. It will also crash during a game at times so you’ll lose whatever gems you may have just acquired. This would be fine if it was once in a while, but it’s constant. The game crashed on me dozens of times. I’m happy to say that I still got my time’s worth as I got around 2 dozen pieces, which has helped me quite a bit, but after a while it is simply not worth it. I don’t understand how this game can be so broken. Maybe it’s just a mobile problem. I read somewhere that IOS games that were ported to mobile are typically not very good. It explains why Madden Mobile had the same problem, albeit it was to a far lesser extent.

That’s really the only negative that I’ve got, but it’s a doozy. The most annoying part is naturally the fact that the crashing will prevent you from transporting your pieces half of the time. It’s also a waste of time to have to constantly open the app once again after it crashes. There is really no excuse for having such a broken product on the market and I’m certainly glad that it is free. It may look very useful on the outside, but it will ultimately start to get on your nerves by the end. At least the graphics are fairly good. The game is nice and bright. There is a lot of recycled footage of course, but it seems like some effort was put into this section. The soundtrack is basically nonexistent though.

Overall, I’d recommend taking a pass on this game. It’s simply not worth the time and patience that the game crashing will cost you. The gameplay is excellent and would have guaranteed the title a 7, but I can’t give it anything above a 5 since it is completely broken and glitched. I highly doubt that any patch will be coming to fix this issue so the game will likely stay in this state forever. If you want to play a free to play title, you’re better off with Pokemon Shuffle or Madden Mobile. Whatever you do, just don’t buy Knack’s Quest unless you really need the parts. If you are in that situation, then just play it for a little to get the quick parts and then get out of there!

Overall 4/10

Madden Mobile Review

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I don’t play mobile games all that often, but when I do you can bet that I take the experience as far as it can go. Pokemon Shuffle was a FTP game that was a lot of fun for a while and I probably did around 50 levels before deciding to go away from it. It’s hard to say how long I played Madden Mobile, but it was for quite a while. It’s very fun and well done for the most part, but eventually its limitations wil start to show. That is the fate of all mobile games at some point I’d say unless they start to actually have endings or are some kind of multiplayer experience like Super Smash Flash. I’m not positive, but I believe that I read somewhere about the data being deleted at some point so you’d start the next season fresh. Hopefully that’s not the case and the data is still here at the moment so I won’t deduct any points there. Just keep in mind that if this is true, it really does hurt the overall score.

I found out about Madden Mobile through a commercial and quickly figured that it would be a fun game. The gameplay as you would expect is a replica of the normal Madden games, but drastically simplified. You can choose from a variety of kicks and passes as well as go for the occasional field goal. You can also play defense, which really makes this feel like a complete game. There are 2 different control types to be found here. I choose the control stick type to further the realism of the simulation compared to the real Madden. It was fairly smooth and as this is apparently a new feature, it was handled very well. Once in a while your stride would go past the stick, which would lead to an unfortunate play, but that was rare once you got the hang of it.

There are several modes to be found here. The main one is Season mode, which pits you against 16 opponents and then the Playoffs start. It’s very easy, but a good way to learn the controls, earn money/exp and knock out some achievements. I had fun clearing a season. There is also the daily challenges, which will give you all of the rewards as Season mode, but in smaller chunks. They also cost more energy points to use so they are less efficient. Of course, The card rewards may be worth it at times since a lot of the daily challenges are special events towards the end of the series. You will want to grab as many level ups as possible before that happens to have more energy at your disposal.

Each energy replenishes itself in half an hour. Each activity will likely cost 3-4 points with super special ones costing 10. I got over level 20 so energy wasn’t a huge factor by the end, but this is where the FTP part comes in. If you want to just keep on playing the game instead of constantly stopping to let the energy come back, you will have to cave in and just pay out some money. Obviously, I’d personally recommend just waiting it out. As it stands, I did form a very impressive team by the end and made it quite far.

I also did well in the Head to Head mode where you battle other users. I moved up a few ranks and gradually just stopped when I stopped playing the game. The ranks are easy to climb through so you can easily get to the final rank if you want that achievent. Especially considering that I didn’t start the game until around half of the season was already over. It’s too bad that you can’t actually fight someone in real time though. Instead you alternate drives and whoever scored the most by the end wins.

The graphics are fairly good. It’s a mobile game, not a AAA title so don’t expect Madden console graphics here, but the animations are clear. The soundtrack can be a little sad though. There are barely any tunes to be found and more effort certainly could have been placed here. Sport games aren’t known for their great soundtracks, but Mario Strikers pulled it off.

Unfortunately, the servers are not all that great. You will find yourself being disconnectes from the game many times and the servers will refuse to operate at other points as well. It happened a lot more than I would have expected so that was a disappointment. Part of the point about having a game like Madden Mobile is that you can play it on the go or when you have a few minutes of empty time. If the servers aren’t working once again, then it makes the situation a little less ideal.

Overall, Madden Mobile was a fun mobile game. Apparently it continues to improve year after year so I look forward to seeing where it goes from here. I still hope that the data isn’t deleted for the next season though. The exp and level ups should just be a sign of dedication from the hardcore Madden fans who have been sticking around with the series for quite a while. The hours will go by very quickly as you play the title, although eventually the nature of this FTP game will start to be a little taxing. You’ll be less willing to wait until your energy replenishes and you will want to just play a console Madden. I got burned out towards the end although it’s been long enough that I could easily get back into it. It’s easy to see how these mobile games can get to addicting. You’re technically doing the same tasks over and over, yet the game never stops making it feel fresh. It’s hard to describe exactly what makes it so appealing, but either way my Madden Mobile experience has come to an end, but yours may just be starting!

Overall 7/10

Luxor 3 Stats and Records

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Stats time!

Play Time 7h 17m
Global Score 12,754,166
Completed Adventures on Easy 0
Completed Adventures on Medium 1
Completed Adventures on Hard 0
Total Shots 12,540
Global Accuracy 94%
Global Catch Accuracy 43%
Most matches in a row 21
Biggest Chain Reaction 4
Total Ankh Coins Collected 828
Rank- Observer of the Firmament

Luxor 3 Review

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I got Luxor 3 from Gamestop for about 2-3 dollars. It was a bargain considering that this game prided itself on the fact that it has over 100 levels to complete. It looked like my kind of game and I spent hours going to many different Gamestops as I tried to buy as many Wii games as possible. This was one of my winners as the game was pretty fun and had the kind of gameplay style that I could easily get behind. If the gameplay was no good then 100+ levels would have been very dicey.

There are a few modes to play here, but Adventure Mode covers them all so let’s start there. There is a brief plot and it involves the Egyptian gods being taken down be Set(h?) so the hero must save them all. Set is firing energy balls at each of the gods so we have to shoot them down before they can invade the pyramids. Rinse and repeat for the 100+ levels. The plot isn’t a major factor here to be honest. It’s like playing a game of Pac Man or Galaga and getting a little bonus plot. It’s not necessary, but it’s still fun to have.

There are 11 worlds and each one has 8-10+ levels. The bulk of the levels are comprised of the mission that I already mentioned. There are balls that roll towards the goal and you have to match 3 or more of the same color. Whenever you do this, the balls will explode. Rinse and repeat until they are all gone and you must not let them get past you. You can grab various special attacks after getting enough matches like a lightning bolt or a bomb. They are extremely handy so grab them whenever possible.

In each level there will be a statue until you’ve collected the 4 needed in each world. You don’t need to get them and I’m not sure what they really do yet, but at the very least they open up bonus levels where you can grab some extra coins, which are good for buying new power ups or changing the look of the balls. At the end of the game it’ll be nice to see all of my statues lined up. I made a great effort to grab as many statues as I could throughout the game since it’s pretty easy to do so. Why not right?

Some levels will be called Onslaught Mode. Typically there will be one per world. It’s the same as the standard level except for the fact that statues will rise up to block your shots so you have to be very strategic about how you tackle the level. It’s not bad, although I definitely prefer the standard stages. You’ll find that the standard levels are almost always the best ones in the game.

There will also be one or two puzzles in each world. These are the least enjoyable to be honest and the more that I see puzzles in my video games…the ore that I realize how out of place they are. Puzzles just aren’t fun if you ask me. Luckily, you don’t have to actually beat them in order to clear the world so you can just skip them. That’s good since the puzzle levels could have gotten old very quickly. There were actually one or two that most people thought were literally unbeatable due to a glitch until someone proved them wrong.

Finally, there’s the boss level at the end of each world. Basically, you have to survive for 3-4 minutes as an infinite number of balls are shot at you. Survive until the end to win! These levels are cool and they can definitely hold their own against the standard versions. There’s only one per world, but at least they do give you a sense that the level has more weight than the others. That’s what a good boss level should always do. Surprisingly the final world has no end boss so the game just ends rather abruptly…it was odd, but not a negative I suppose.

The soundtrack is amazingly good. There is a steady flow of intense opera music that will attack you from all sides as soon as you start the game. It is dramatic and it is epic. This helps you to realize just how high the stakes are for this particular adventure and I was not expecting anything like it in this puzzle game…or any puzzle game for that matter. Even fighting games like Super Smash Brothers would have a tough time trying to match the grand scale of these themes. (Although Smash Bros can pull it off)

I also enjoyed the graphics in this game. They’re fairly clear and that’s good since everything happens so quickly once the level begins. You can change the color styles of the balls that you are shooting by spending your hard earned $$$ in the game so that’s always an option if it’ll help you focus. Of course, if you can deal with the default color, then I’d recommend it so that you can spend your money on better endeavors like powering up your super attacks. Trust me, those will end up helping you out quite a bit more than a color change.

You can really tell that a lot of effort was put into this game and I can admire that. Each world took me anywhere from 30-60 minutes so that’s a 10+ hour game right there. The replay factor is also alive and well in the sense that you can keep on using your money to buy equipment. It’s not a game that I see myself going back too and it’s not quite as addicting as other classics like Pokemon Shuffle or Pac Man, but Luxor gets the job done.

Overall, I definitely recommend this game to all gamers. It’s the kind of game that you can easily play for hours and hours. The 100+ levels is a great bargain considering that the game sells for 1-2 dollars. It’s true that this is the kind of game that you could picture playing online for free, but 1-2 dollars isn’t going to hurt you and now you can play it on the big screen. The Wii remote controls are actually pretty smooth and they don’t tend to go chaotically out of control on you either since your movements are fairly stable the entire time. It’s definitely still one of my least favorite control schemes and I’ll never get into motion based controls until we’re in the virtual world, but it works well enough and isn’t too detrimental to the game. I’d be hyped for a Luxor 4 if they ever went ahead with it.

Overall 7/10