It's the small things that matter in TM games like this.
First gripe: The "hand" cursor is pretty inaccurate and large, and you have to finely click on some small items (comparatively) to complete the orders customers place.
Second gripe: Is it so incredibly difficult to provide a checkmark for queued tasks? It's nearly impossible to tell, if you're queing up actions, to be certain that you have accurately clicked on a particular item. A checkmark would solve that problem.
Third gripe: The high level overview of the diner itself is like watching a movie on a small screen in low definition from across the room. In other words, the lack of detail really causes the game to suffer.
Fourth gripe: The better TM games recognize that when you're on your last customer you don't want to sit there endlessly waiting for them to finish what they're doing, and they speed that last customer process up. This game doesn't do that.
General: It's pretty boring, terribly repetitive, and not very interesting. It's a shame - because in the sea of hidden object games, I wait for the TM games to be released. To have one be so very unsatisfying compounds the disappointment.
I got through 20 minutes of the trial before removing the game from my system.
Jill & Mike’s gardening company has taken off in Sunnyvale, and they need your help to make their business soar! Help them win a contest and earn lucrative contracts from all over the world!
Seriously. The high rating on this game must be due to the fact that the writers reviewed it prior to levels 30+.
First - the whole "vandals" thing is annoying and pointless. I understand that they are trying to add some variety into the game itself; but when ALL YOU CAN DO is spend time clicking on vandal after vandal over and over again, it's too much. You literally don't get to do anything else for long stretches of time other than click on vandals, and it's annoying.
Second - I have a new PC with a decent amount of memory and RAM that should EASILY be able to run this game. Yet the game - again, in the upper levels and more than halfway through a level itself when there are vandals and TNT and tons of items to pick up - winds up getting sluggish. So much so that it's difficult to even click on ANYTHING, let alone the relentless and pointless stream of vandals. I honeatly just stopped playing.
I think the Monument Builders series has been slipping since the first two games were released. They get increasingly cartoonish, and some levels are ridiculously impossible to finish within the three-star time limit. If the game was more fun, going back and trying to get three stars would be fun also, but because it's just kind of boring, I didn't even bother. I finished the game a day after buying it, and I slept and worked in between (i.e., I didn't play continuously).
I don't recommend this game.
+5points
6of7voted this as helpful.
Farm to Fork
Help the farmers keep their lands and make the valley prosperous once again!
Overall rating
4/ 5
6 of 7 found this review helpful
I like it, but I don't love it.
PostedFebruary 24, 2014
RenaRF
fromReston, VA
Favorite Genre(s):Time Management, Marble Popper
Fun Factor
3/ 5
Visual/Sound Quality
5/ 5
Level of Challenge
4/ 5
Storyline
3/ 5
This is obviously a pretty obvious knockoff of the Farm Frenzy series. Instead of bears or what have you, this time it's parrots and you sell their feathers. You can upgrade the parrot cage, vehicle, refrigerator (storage), and you have to make different items with stuff you plant and harvest, buying machines and upgrades with stars earned for gold, silver and bronze level finishes. Sound familiar? Yeah. The graphics are beautiful; but it's harder on some levels than I think it needs to be, which takes the fun factor down for me. Overall, it's a pretty good game.
If you liked some of the other Luxor games, this one's good also!
PostedFebruary 24, 2014
RenaRF
fromReston, VA
Skill Level:Expert
Favorite Genre(s):Time Management, Marble Popper
Fun Factor
5/ 5
Visual/Sound Quality
5/ 5
Level of Challenge
5/ 5
I like this game. I was a fan of Luxor 5th Passage (though I found the cutscreens that couldn't be skipped highly annoying) for its beautiful graphics and levels, and this game has the same feel only it's been updated.
Dreadful, awful game. Graphics are lousy. Sound is lousy. Gameplay is lousy, consisting of clicking on things a lot and then clicking on more things.
In theory, I guess the story line is that you are a contestant on a home decorating show and you have to make decorations (unspecified - just generic decorations in a workshop. So you make these, and occasionally clean up piles of junk to get more materials to improve your generic decoration-making "workshops", and you use decorations to purchase new employees and... Zzzzz. Sorry. Fell asleep again - just *thinking* about this game is boring. At any rate, when you finish with expert time, you get to reveal a new room in some mansion that you're redecorating. The mansion is dreadfully boring, just like the game - so the reward for getting expert on a level truly stinks.
You have to work on specific rooms, I guess. For example, the first room you work on has 7 "episodes" of the decorating competition and you're finishing a wine cellar in those 7 levels. You just trudge through the clicking process, and the last level in the room you're working on has a "super deco", where you're building an item. In the case of the wine cellar, you're making a wine cabinet.
I made it that far and was so bored, I deleted the game with 25 minutes of trial time remaining. Horrible game.
Favorite Genre(s):Arcade & Action, Time Management
Fun Factor
1/ 5
Visual/Sound Quality
4/ 5
Level of Challenge
1/ 5
Storyline
1/ 5
You would think that the developers would at least make a modest, tiny attempt to change the levels in this version of Chicken Invaders. They didn't. The levels are *EXACTLY* the same as in the Easter and Christmas versions. EXACTLY. The only thing that is different is that it's turkey and not chickens, and they drop pumpkins (as well as burgers and chicken legs) when you kill them. That's it. It's all just pretty basic Thanksgiving-izing the game without a single, substantive change to the levels or the gameplay. I went through ALL levels in the 60 minute trial period, because it's the SAME GAME I've played before.
Unbelievable. Should be free if it's the same game as the one I've already purchased.
Visually, I really like the game. The objectives are clear, and you have to manage a ton of tasks for however many employees you have on a given a level. Having said that, the pace is incredibly slow, and you just repeat the same tasks over and over to kill time until you can do something else. Overall, I suppose I don't regret purchasing it, but it could have been a much better game had the gameplay been planned for faster than "snail's pace" mode.
I don't recommend this game.
+1point
1of1voted this as helpful.
Numba Deluxe
One of the more impressive puzzlers available!
Overall rating
1/ 5
1 of 5 found this review helpful
Wasn't worth the 10 seconds to download and install.
PostedOctober 18, 2013
RenaRF
fromReston, VA
Fun Factor
1/ 5
Visual/Sound Quality
1/ 5
Level of Challenge
1/ 5
Storyline
1/ 5
Horrible game. Boring, frustrating, flat and one-dimensional. Really - I want the five minutes I spent getting to this conclusion back!!
I'm grateful I didn't actually purchase this game or I would have felt like I wasted my money. The game's graphics are very pretty, but the gameplay is boring. It's the same thing pretty much over and over, only faster. And when I say "faster", I mean to the level where it's not possible to play it well. Couple boredom with frustration, and this one's a loser for me.