Nancy Drew #4 - Treasure in the Royal Tower

Its been a bit since I did a post on one of the Nancy Drew titles... I should do another. This time focusing on game #4 in the series, Treasure in the Royal Tower. As usual I'll be using the method I used last time (Last Time) so lets get going!

Proteus - Games are Art but Art isnt a Game

Im going to be honest right from the get-go of this overview, I dislike Proteus completely. I dislike it because of what it is and what its trying to be. I am all for the whole 'Games are Art' idea and I can agree wholeheartedly with it. The problem is though that in order to go along with this statement, you cant just push art repeatedly and forget to actually make a game behind it.

Proteus pretty much forgets to do that completely, there's a touch of interactivity in there, by moving around you can make sounds happen when you get closer to things. Its just boring though, some things make some, some things don't really make much of a difference, mostly its just wandering, often with large stretches of nothing exciting. I just cannot recommend this as a game in any way as there happens to be no gameplay behind it at all.

Hexcells - Zen Minesweeper

Hexcells manages to be an incredibly calm and soothing title, a mix of simple and clean graphics along with some soothing music, a UI that reacts easily to everything you do and a distinct lack of urgency throughout. Hexcells is basically Minesweeper, with the stress taken out and replaced with calm, content gameplay.

Lightfish - Qix? Never heard of it.

Lightfish is another Xbox Indie refugee that's headed over for the PC market and its essentially a clone of the arcade game 'Qix', in both games you play as a small icon who has to claim the majority of a large playfield without getting hit by any enemies. Its a pretty simple game and one that has had a large amount of sequels, remakes and clones. It can even be played online, for example you can play it HERE (via JayIsGames). With that, here comes Lightfish.

DS Shovelware Presents: Goldenballs

The DS was an incredibly popular handheld with masses of sales for it with Mario, Layton, Pokemon, Cooking Mama and many other franchises thriving under the system. Unfortunately it also died a little at the end and thats carried on to the 3DS and one of the major reasons has to be the amount of Shovelware that was pushed onto the system with little thought or imagination. The sheer amount of cheaply made, buggy and nasty titles that appeared onto both the DS and the Wii for me happens to be one of the big main reasons the Wii-U and the 3DS have not exactly set the world on fire.

Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4: Im.. I'm.. I'm a What? Your a Lego Minifig Harry!

The LEGO game series by Travellers Tales has covered a massive amount of ground over the years with a huge selection of movies represented. Starting with Star Wars, they have covered D.C Comics, Marvel Comics, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings and the Lego Movie (of course). They also covered all of Harry Potter as well, splitting up the releases for years 1 to 4 in the first release and years 5 to 7 in the next. Well, here's the first half of the Harry Potter saga, how goes it?

Race the Sun - Run to the Hills! Run for your Liiiiife!

Race the Sun isn't your usual 'Infinite Runner' in many ways... though it still is an infinite runner style game, only you cant really run on infinitely and there's always a end to it, only if you have the skill you can thanks to a series of power-ups and such... uh... Should I start this review again?

Lego Harry Potters: Years 1-4 - Dark Tower Glitch

Another Glitch-post from me and one that may come in useful to players of this title, usually I would be trying to avoid spoilers on this blog but the books have been out for many years, the films too and this game pretty much acts as if you already know the various plots so... *shrugs*. Anyway onto the glitch.

Where Angels Cry - Dull in Every Way

While 'Where Angels Cry' isn't exactly a 'Hidden Object' game in the sense that there's no traditional Hidden Object scenes, it pretty much is one thanks to the large amount of random item collecting. The problem is that the items are just dull, the backgrounds dull, the music dull, the story dull and the puzzles are overly basic... and dull. Everything about the game seems designed to lull you into a deep slumber and there's zero reason to ever touch this title unless you have serious problems sleeping.

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Silly Silly Grimness

Let's start with a quick rundown, here we have Daedelic Entertainment, a games-developer and publisher from Germany who specialise mostly in point and click adventure titles. They have even been called the 'Lucasarts of Germany' which, lets face it, is an incredibly big call for any studio given Lucasarts point and click legacy. With that in mind, we are up against one of their first proper point and click titles, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout, a story about a young girl, trapped in an asylum with only a stuffed rabbit for company... Oh and a murder mystery. Let's jump in shall we?

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Lunchtime Glitch

Now I have finished this game, but before I even BEGIN with a review, I need to post this up for anyone who is stuck with the dreaded 'Lunchtime Glitch'. I'll try and be non-spoliery in this post too for those who want to play the game or those who are already mid-way.

At one part of the game, you will come across a Lunch menu which you have to edit to solve a puzzle. Here it is

Here we have a frustrating and near game-breaking bug where once you pick up a menu-option, it becomes impossible to place a menu option down on the spot where you originally picked one up from. It also becomes impossible to exit this screen other than shutting the game down. Thankfully auto-saving stops any real loss of progress here.

The solution is on the launcher menu, before you have even begun the game. Simply change to 'German' and the puzzle should work as intended. Just remember that 'Roast Chicken is 'Hühnerbraten' and Potatoes turns to 'Kartoffeln'. If you want to save, make sure you save correctly... or just walk out of the kitchen and back in, letting the auto-save kick in. Then quit, go back to English and everything should work smoothly from that point onwards.

Kairo - Colours, Shapes and Sounds - Oh My!

Kairo definitely is a game that likes to place its loyalty firmly and that loyalty firmly belongs to the 'Games are Art' crowd of thinking, levels awash with colour, weird geometry abound and bizarre architecture littering the place along with a heavy dose of symbolism.

Zombie Shooter 2 and Zombie Driver HD

I thought I better put both of these into one post, both are quite similar in concept and both of them have quite similar positives and negatives. As far as what you do in each game, the name pretty much says it all. In Zombie Shooter 2 you shoot zombies and in Zombie Driver HD, you run over zombies. Pretty simple right?