bfeinstein's Profile
Stat Summary
- Average Rating:2.3
- Helpful Votes:391
- Reviews Submitted:28
- First Review:May 8, 2012
- Most Recent Review:June 23, 2016
- Featured reviews0
Status:
Who broke the agreement between good and evil?
Overall rating
3
/
5
16 of 25 found this review helpful
A lot of eye candy but not a lot of game play
PostedJune 23, 2016
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
What matters more to you? An interesting story and good graphics? Good puzzles and fast-moving game play? Or both? Eipix decided it needed to choose and it landed heavily on the side on story and graphics. I just wished they had given as much time and attention to the puzzles and gameplay.
Welcome to a story that is a mash-up/reimagining of 19th Century European fantasy literature. You will meet characters from Verne, Wells, Conan Doyle and Carroll among others as you try to stop Irene Adler from the Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia" who is plotting to bring back the dead Dr. Jekyll's formula to turn people in savage beasts.
The story has a pedestrian start with your uncle being murdered by a Mr. Hyde type leading you to find out he belonged to a secret society and you just got dragged into their work as his successor. It's pretty worn out stuff in the world of Big Fish, but if you get past the hackneyed and cliched opening, the story moves in some interesting ways.
The developers did a good job reimagining some of these stories. For example, the sections of the game in Wonderland present as a much darker place here, turned into an opium den and asian spa with Alice as your hostess. It sounds a lot more "adult/mature" than it actually plays in the game, but the references are more than clear. I personally liked the approach a lot, but it is not going to be for everyone.
The artwork is excellent. I would have given it higher marks than I did but for handful of weak animations. There is a lot of detail in the artwork. The scenery is full of original sights and ideas. Many of the cut scenes and animations are well done although it isn't universal. The voice acting is very good.
Everything I have described so far would make for a good movie, but this is a game. And that means gameplay matters. Eipix didn't keep their on the ball here.
This not to say the gameplay is bad. It's OK. A lot of this is going to be puzzle types and HO scenes that you've seen in other settings. It's generally well executed, but the challenge level is uneven. Some of the puzzles are painfully simple. Others--generally the puzzles that requiring moving objects around to get them in the the right places--are frustrating and chore-like. But there just isn't a lot here. Most scenes don't have a ton of gameplay content and the gameplay that is there just isn't memorable. You've done too much of this before and much of it seems to exist to get you to the next piece of plotline and eye candy. It's as if EIPIX wanted to make a really cool-looking movie but since they are a game company felt compelled to sprinkle in some puzzles so they could sell it through their normal channels.
I'm going to recommend this with a caveat. Go into it for the sights and the sounds. Go into it for the plot. They are worth getting this game on sale or using a couple of club credits. Just know that the gameplay is not going to wow you.
Finally, a quick nitpick. There is a reference to Irene Adler in the game as being from Belgravia not Bohemia. Belgravia was used in the Sherlock television show that ran a few years ago. It is not from the story. Consistency and attention to detail please.
I recommend this game!
Can you defeat the mysterious Blade Master?
Overall rating
2
/
5
22 of 24 found this review helpful
A VERY short game that could have been so much more
PostedJune 19, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
Let me say upfront, I bought the full game (because the first hour was better than most). My total game time was 2.5 hours on the main game and another 30 minutes of the bonus content. In other words, this is not going to be one of the better values for your gaming dollars in terms of hours of gameplay.
That aside, we are presented with a real mixed bag in Dark Dimensions: Blade Master CE. A mix of good, bad and ugly.
To the good:
The story line is decent. A couple stops for a dinner show (this was the first mistake--dinner shows are so generally bad they should have kept on driving) and are drawn into a cursed town that may have had its problems worsened by the local college's archaeology department and the rivalry of two students in the department. It's not terrible original by any means, but it is coherent, the characters are engaging, the graphics are generally well-done and the voice actors are solid. At the end of the day it's another cursed town tale with a mysterious figure, but the presentation is at least better than most have been as of late.
There is also a device of a "blade casket" (which sounds gruesome when it isn't) that you carry around most of the game that holds different blades you need that I thought was a good idea.
The bad. The game is VERY short. A CE should take longer than 3 hours to complete all content. A moderately experienced player will roll through this quickly and wonder where all the content went.
There is also not a ton of variety in the gameplay and puzzles. If you like puzzles based on rotating objects in all their permutations, you will like this game a lot. It seems like a majority of the puzzles feature rotation-style play. The rest lean heavily to sorting puzzles. Not much original. The additional content leans heavily toward collection and combination puzzles--for example, you need to find different parts of the lantern along the way and combine them to build it later sort of thing, giving you an unwieldy inventory.
Finally, the morphing object collectibles are weak. Most of them are VERY easy to spot in the scene. In almost every case, look for the one clear object in the scene that is otherwise not part of the gameplay and you have it.
The ugly: The puzzles are tedious and yet also without challenge. Most require the player to twist and turn things ad nauseum. Nothing hard about them--they just take awhile to maneuver and so they are more like a chore than they are fun. Worse, when you realize how much time of this short game is spent on these drawn out yet unchallenging sorting and rotational puzzles, you see that the storyline and other content are very thin and limited.
Also problematic--the controls are very wonky. You will often click the guide unintentionally when you mean to go the previous scene. The inventory is not as responsive as it should be. The clicking is not very precise (at least in the Mac version). It makes an already short, and often tedious game that much more frustrating. It also insists on the player doing things in a specific order when there is really know need. In a scene it won't let you solve a puzzle without first picking up an object that is also in the scene and that is unrelated to the puzzle--this is a pet peeve for me. Let me play in the order I want to play as long as it is not relevant to the gameplay.
All in all this is not a great game and I wish the I had not made the purchase. The first hour was good, so it fooled me, but then it grinds to a halt before ending quickly. I'd pass on it if I were you.
I don't recommend this game.
Not all fairy tales are just stories…
Overall rating
2
/
5
29 of 30 found this review helpful
Some good puzzles and presentation undermined by an incerdibly incoherent plotline
PostedJune 16, 2016
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
Elephant Games is back with another edition of its Surface series. This is a series that was very strong back in the day, with compelling storylines and innovative gameplay, but this edition appears to have lost its way.
Welcome to Fairyland, a place where a bunch of familiar fairy tale characters are mashed together in a story line that will serve only to make you pine for the originals. You're Cinderella, although in the 60 minutes of the game I played (I saw nothing that would cause me to drop the money on the full version), I don't know that it was all that meaningful who you were because this isn't a retelling of the Cinderella story. You will stumble across gnomes, the Cheshire Cat, a huntsman who looks like someone out of Sons of Anarchy rather than Snow White, and a sprinkling of other characters seen originally in Disney movies with much better plotlines. This is a very different world than most Surface games. It more fits Grim Tales or a similar series and is a mis-step by the developers.
Cinderella is part of some council of princesses running Fairyland while the princes who normally run the place are out in battle. Except Cinderella is confused as to exactly who she is and so is trying to restore her memories. This includes a visit to a therapist. None of this makes any real sense nor do you experience anything compelling enough to cause you to want to make the effort to piece any of it together so that it might make sense. I found no compelling reason to pay attention to the cut scenes or the storyline after a bit.
Once you get past the story issues--and that's not easy to get past--you will experience a game filled with content in every scene. Lots of good eye candy here--the artwork is generally sharp and well-executed. Some of the cut scenes look visually strong (in spite of the story they are recounting). The music and voiceovers are generally good.
Gameplay itself has some unusual puzzles. I enjoyed a driving game that seemed inspired by 80's arcade game Spy Hunter that seems original for the genre. A magnet game to maneuver a key through pipes in an aquarium is well-executed. An interesting game that required pulling strings to size and align page pieces was done nicely. The gameplay overall has a lot of polish and some new sights, although nothing is especially challenging.
Unfortunately, that polish is mostly invested not in the highlights above, but the usual litany of object collection and finding things that fit in locks. Lots of locks. Elephant Games revels in locks that are opened by tokens and pieces littered across the world. As always no one can hold onto a key or a token making the game world a thief's paradise. This aspect of these games is getting ridiculous. Can we have a world where the people who inhabit it don't lose the items need to access every secure door and container?
At the end of the day, what you have here is a polished game with a few interesting puzzles that is weighed down by a disastrously incoherent plot and far too many of the usual tropes of this genre. If the effort and attention paid to the artwork had been paid to the plot and the overall gameplay, this could have been a winner.
I don't recommend this game.
Can you save your uncle before it's too late?
Overall rating
3
/
5
27 of 27 found this review helpful
Recommended for the main game. CE extras NOT RECOMMENDED
PostedJune 12, 2016
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
The Keeper of the Antiques has a lot going for it at a time when most casual adventure games are copy cats of one another. While there is not a ton that is groundbreaking here, I have to applaud the execution in the main game. It's all done crisply and nicely, presented with solid graphics, an engaging, if familiar, story and good voice acting overall. The storyline, while not original is well done. The soundtrack is excellent.
The characters are more than one-dimensional and the plot moves smoothly and clearly. Some real effort was made to limit the plot holes with a lot of ground covered in well-done cut scenes.
As in so many of these games, you are trying to save a loved one from the torments of the supernatural. You've been here before, but probably not in a story that was as clearly and crisply told as far as these games go. Many of the individual settings are reasonably original, each room is packed with content and puzzles and there are more hours of sheer gameplay here than average.
The puzzles are, for the most part not especially challenging nor original. You will have seen most, if not all of them in other games, but again, they are done with a high level of polish. The HO scenes are fair, yet reasonably challenging, and the puzzles are well-executed.
All in all a decent, if not groundbreaking package and I recommend the main game since it is better than most of the recent offerings on BFG.
The bigger problem is in the CE extras. The bonus content is dreadful and undermines the score I would have liked to have given this package. The additional story line is absurd and silly--badly written with horrible voice acting from a new key character. The polish is nowhere near that of the main game. Once you finish the extra plotline it gets worse. You cannot go and simply finish your collections. You cannot replay any puzzles or replay the HOs or anything without replaying the whole game. There is not a ton of replayable content in the extras--or any really. The soundtrack is downloadable, but only one track at a time. What's the point of that? Let me choose to download the whole thing at once if I want to.
Bottom line: wait for the regular edition. The main game is worth playing. The CE extras are not worth the additional money,
I recommend this game!
Can you save your sister before it's too late?
Overall rating
2
/
5
23 of 28 found this review helpful
It's like every other game Elephant Games puts out
PostedJune 11, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
Let's see if you have played a game like this before:
--You are in a medieval time where an evil witch has placed some sort of curse on a family member.
--You will go on some sort of quest to heal this family member.
--As part of this quest you will encounter numerous locks secured by indentations in various common shapes like animals and Lucky Charms marshmallows.
--You will find the trinkets that go in those indentations randomly sewn into mattresses, secured behind bricks, hidden in statues and otherwise put in places no one in the real world would keep them. In the world of Elephant Games, pieces that open locks can only be located in places that would never have pieces of locks in the real world.
--You will never find these trinkets in the actual possession of the individual who may have been using these odd locks to secure something. In the world of Elephant Games, anyone who locks something up loses the token which opens the lock causing it to be located in an obscure place that makes no sense at all in terms of either storyline or logic.
--You will go on some sort of quest to heal this family member.
--As part of this quest you will encounter numerous locks secured by indentations in various common shapes like animals and Lucky Charms marshmallows.
--You will find the trinkets that go in those indentations randomly sewn into mattresses, secured behind bricks, hidden in statues and otherwise put in places no one in the real world would keep them. In the world of Elephant Games, pieces that open locks can only be located in places that would never have pieces of locks in the real world.
--You will never find these trinkets in the actual possession of the individual who may have been using these odd locks to secure something. In the world of Elephant Games, anyone who locks something up loses the token which opens the lock causing it to be located in an obscure place that makes no sense at all in terms of either storyline or logic.
If this seems novel to you, then you might find this game interesting. If you think you this sounds familiar, you have played other games by Elephant Games.
Now this game is receiving decent reviews by others. Maybe others like going on trinket hunts to find things in places that make absolutely no sense. Maybe others like playing the same kind of game with the same exact gameplay over and over again. But I am not like that.
Instead, what I saw was the millionth iteration of the same HO/adventure game Elephant Games churns out each month. Nothing new in terms of story or game play. Just a reshuffling of the same plot points and puzzles that you find in all of their other games.
Same graphics and animation style they have gone with for the past few years? Check. Same slow and wooden voice overs? Check. Same pointless collectibles and morphing objects which add nothing to the story line but just add to the completion tasklist? Check.
This would have been fun the first time through. But for most BFG players, this won't be the first time through. Or the fifth time. Or the tenth time.
Don't reward the developers for giving you the same old thing. Don't buy this game.
I don't recommend this game.
Guide Pengoo from hatching in the Antarctic, all the way to his first flight!
Overall rating
1
/
5
5 of 6 found this review helpful
Mac users AVOID THIS ONE
PostedJune 8, 2016
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
1
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
Tried playing this on a late model Mac. It is as if the developers never beta tested this for OSX. The game simply doesn't work. You cannot enter your name on the sign in screen. It calls for Mac Game Center but will not allow the cursor to interact with the pop-up. The game sticks on the player name screen and you cannot close out of the game or shift to another program without shutting down your computer from the keyboard. This one needs to be pulled from the Mac Big Fish Store.
I don't recommend this game.
Puzzle your way through Fill-A-Pix or Pic-A-Pix on your quest to restore the Great Tapestries and save Mysteria from darkness!
Overall rating
2
/
5
A nonogram set lacking in challenge or originality
PostedJune 7, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
This is an uninspiring set of nonograms. Especially disappointing is the fact the nonograms are presented as multi-color puzzles, but don't require the player to work through the colors and plays the puzzles as if they were monochrome.
If you want easy nonograms have at it, but there is not a lot to excite here. Evidently there are Fill-a-cross puzzles too but I didn't run across them in playing the demo.
I don't recommend this game.
Dreampath: Curse of the Swamps Collector's Edition
A mystical rain is turning everyone into frogs! It's up to you to find the cause of this wicked weather and save your loved ones.
Overall rating
2
/
5
38 of 43 found this review helpful
Maybe the game I downloaded was different from the one everyone else played
PostedJune 5, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
As I write this, the review average for this game is a 4.8. Maybe the game they played was a 4.8, but the game I played wasn't.
First a warning specifically (I think) for Mac owners: The developers did not do a good job optimizing the game for Mac users. The game often runs slowly and with some graphic stuttering, and I am playing on a fast late-model MacBook Pro.You will likely to find this glitches annoying. I did. I assume these problems are specific to the Mac version and that the Windows version runs cleanly. Hopefully they will put out a patch, but it may not be worth waiting for it as you will see.
Now on the good stuff.
I have said this in reviews before, but I will say it again. While every game requires the player to suspend rational belief at some level, it cannot require it to the point of absurdity. It shows a lack of interest in the detail of the story and the gameplay.
There are numerous examples of this in the game, but I will simply point out one here that was so egregious as to cause me to burst out laughing. I had a bridge in my inventory. Not a bridge-shaped token. Not a collapsable floatation device. I had a river-spanning arching bridge in my inventory.
Think about this. My character is a young girl. The storyline gives no indication she has superhuman strength (never mind the height required to carry a bridge that I am guess is 15-30 feet long). Yes, this is a fantasy. But c'mon. You have to try to have some respect for obvious laws of physics. If the game is going to let me carry a bridge in my pocket, then why can't I tote around the story's cursed family and the entire castle they live in so I don't have to keep running back and forth? And this game LOVES to make you run back and forth with little tokens and keys. Yes, this is less an adventure game and more a collect a million keys and tokens game.
Like so many of these games there is nothing original here. A royal family is cursed and one of the kids must free them and restore all that is good and just. The animations are jerky as if the game were from the mid-90s. The characters themselves are all cliches from a King who looks like Burger King to an enemy who looks like a reincarnation of Chuck Connors dressed in swamp moss. The voice acting is as uninspired as the lines the actors are reading.
The puzzles are all things you have seen before. Lots of swapping and sliding puzzles. The HO scenes move very slowly with lots of stuff totally hidden behind scenery, which is incredibly annoying. Lots of fetching and running around. Too bad not lots of fun.
In the end, I wonder if I am the one who doesn't get it. So many of these games--this one included--are repeats and copycats to me. But maybe they aren't to you. Maybe you have never had to uncurse a castle by finding lost keys and tokens that open boxes and purses. But I have. A lot. It's time for the developers to try a lot harder than this paint-by-numbers effort that seems bolted together from a thousand games that have come before.
I don't recommend this game.
Set out across the globe to stop the end of the world!
Overall rating
2
/
5
27 of 30 found this review helpful
A story that makes no sense. A game that is pedestrian. Skip it.
PostedJune 2, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
I had high hopes for Midgard's End when I played through the first HO puzzle. Every item I located needed to be found for a reason. I was genuinely excited. It looked like the designer gave real thought to the game to create meaningful context for the puzzles.
But that HO puzzle is the high water mark, because it is all downhill from here. Nothing new to see here. The same old puzzles. Uninspired graphics.
That would be OK, but the story line makes no sense. From the opening scene featuring the gassing of an entire auditorium from a small horse statuette to a lingering dispute between the agency head and her missing father that would be best hashed out in therapy, to obscure references to Norse mythology, the whole thing is a disjointed mess further deadened by wooden voice acting and poorly animated cutscenes.
And then there are the silly things. You need a heavy object to hit against a screwdriver to open a lock. Great news! You have a heavy pipe! Problem solved, right? No, of course not. The game says the pipe isn't good enough. But what the pipe IS good enough to do is leverage off a piece of concrete that you then use as the heavy object against the screwdriver. Not only is this absurd, things like this kill the immersive quality of the game. Every game is fantasy, but you have to keep the absurdity down to keep people engaged in the world being created.
Of course you have the usual tropes--keys left here and there since no one in these games owns a key ring or can otherwise take a commonsense approach to holding onto their basic belongings. Indentations that need to be filled with objects. The usual is there.
One day, one of the developers of these games will decide to rethink the genre and offer something new. Today, like so many others, was not that day. Not worth the time nor the effort to play this one.
I don't recommend this game.
Solve the secret of the pharaoh and find the pyramids' treasures in Pharaoh's Riddles! New Egyptian riddles await you!
Overall rating
3
/
5
5 of 5 found this review helpful
A run of the mill set of nonogram/picrosses
PostedJune 2, 2016
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
This is a very straightforward, unadulterated set of nonogram/picross puzzles. All puzzles are one color. There is no attempt at a story. The graphics are bland. The music is limited but non-irritating.
If you are looking for a new set of nonograms to play because you love these puzzles and want to do more, than this is probably for you and I recommend it. If nonograms are not your thing...or if you want the challenge of multi-color puzzles...or if you just were hoping for some sort of twist on the basics, then you should give this one a pass. Accordingly, I recommend it since it does what it sets out to do competently if in a completely uninspired manner, but I do recommend it only to the specific audience just mentioned.
I recommend this game!