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:
Find lost gems and use special board tools to solve challenging Match-3 puzzles in totally new ways.
Overall rating
2
/
5
1 of 4 found this review helpful
This is a played out genre
PostedMay 10, 2016
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
It's hard to make a case for this game. I played the demo and saw absolutely no reason to purchase it.
If you like Match-3 games, this is exactly like the million other Match-3 games you've played. The mechanics are the same. The objectives are the same. I just don't think there is much more than can be done with this genre. At the end of the day, you're matching 3 objects. Just like all the other match-3 games.
In its favor, the game has some nice artwork. But that alone isn't worth it. The story line is thin to be charitable. But at the end of the day, there's nothing original going on here.
I don't recommend this game.
It's up to you to stop the evil lurking in Mud Creek!
Overall rating
3
/
5
19 of 24 found this review helpful
It has its moments but it just isn't that great
PostedApril 15, 2016
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
The Mud Water Creek edition of Mystery of the Ancients is a true mixed bag. This review is based on the 60 minute demo. It was not compelling enough to shell out for the game.
Here's the good parts. The developers have created some relatively thoughtful HOG events. Usually there is a reason you have to find each of the items on the list during the HOG screens. Some of the other puzzles are things that are new or otherwise adding some variety to a genre that has become quite repetitive. The battle mechanic with the emblem, while not an original puzzle concept unto itself, shows an interesting integration of match-3 type puzzle action with a fight like a Puzzle Quest. Some of the graphics look solid. The animations show care. There is some real technical prowess here.
Here's the bad part. The story is a HOG cliche. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Evil spirit comes back and captures people. You have to rescue hem. This storyline is so rote and unoriginal, a variation of it shows up nearly weekly on BFG. Plenty of HOG genre cliches too--pulling nails, using paint remover, fishing stuff out of the water, using oil to remove rust--they are all there. Hiding things in random places--why is the item I need stuck behind the panel of a lamp that has no relation to the item--it's there. And how would it occur to me to look there except for the magical sparkles to tell me?
Picking up things you would never reasonably think to take well before you know you will need them? It's there. A character who is working with you but cannot do anything for themselves (YOU'RE in the guy's house but he's telling you to find things in the house when he doesn't know where there are AND HE LIVES THERE). The same old tropes are there. It's as if the developers have to meet the deadline and no one had time to come up with a new and compelling approach. Then there's the unintentionally hilarious voice talent with an evil spirit that sounds straight out of Army of Darkness. It takes the often good visuals and ruins them with bad acting.
So you're left with a mixed bag. Some new puzzle ideas and interesting approaches to HOG with some good graphics on the one hand. A cookie-cutter HOG story with the usual tropes and silliness that have kept the genre stuck in neutral for almost 5 years voiced by terrible acting on the other.
Bottom line: life is too short and money is too tight to pay for unevenness and mediocrity. Pass on this one.
I don't recommend this game.
Phantasmat: Town of Lost Hope Collector's Edition
Carrying the lives of many on your shoulders, you are forced to balance on the tightrope placed between life and death.
Overall rating
3
/
5
7 of 11 found this review helpful
A run of the mill HOG
PostedApril 10, 2016
bfeinstein
fromRichmond, VA
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Puzzle, Hidden Object, Time Management, Adventure, Match 3, Large File, Strategy, Arcade & Action, Word
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
This review was based off the demo. I didn't find the game compelling enough after 60 minutes to buy it.
The first Phantasmat was strong. This entry in the series is strictly meh. It's not bad, but there is nothing outstanding about it. It may be the perfect example of a HOG that pulled every stock aspect of the genre off the shelf and put it into one game as if to make an example of why this genre is stuck right now.
You've seen this game 100 times before. You're in a car and you get stuck somewhere creepy. Must 75% of these games open with some mode of transportation crashing, getting lost or running out of gas? I see this opening and I'm already negative on the game, because this is such a cliche already.
And once again you are trapped by dangerous people in a place looking to escape, which also seems to be a rote storyline for these games. It's not a bad story, it's just the same story over again.
You'll see a lot of the same cliches here: picking up things you would never think you would need later if the game didn't cause you to pick them up, doors locked by puzzles that wouldn't challenge a three-year old, a crank stuck by rust, the trusty horseshoe magnet, etc. Hidden object puzzles that seem inorganic to the game and that require you to find things for no real reason until you find enough of them that the game lets you find the object you need. Of course, nothing in the story line has indicated you need that object, but your spidey sense knows you should stick that vinegar in your pocket, I guess, for future use since that's what I do whenever I see a bottle of vinegar.
A lot of the old stand-by puzzles are there too--shifting numbers into the right order, moving tokens, closing circuits. All are done well, it's just you've done these a million times.
Nothing wrong with the graphics or the voice acting. They are par for the course or slightly better than the average in this genre. The game looks fine although nothing is breaking any new ground in terms of technical achievement.
And that's really the bottom line. Nothing here is new or different. The story line is typical. The game play is typical. It's not bad, just derivative and repetitive. The only reason to buy this is to fully immerse yourself in an experience that essentially duplicates experiences you have been having in this genre for years.
Well, I did see one thing new. Using vinegar to remove rust. Normally in these games, you have to use oil or solvent. I need to see if vinegar read removes rust. If so, then the game has given me more than most of these do.
I don't recommend this game.
Maze: Subject 360 Collector's Edition
From the makers of the Rite of Passage series comes a ground-breaking new series that's as creepy as it gets.
Overall rating
3
/
5
2 of 3 found this review helpful
A brilliant opening squandered
PostedMarch 25, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
For a moment, I thought this one was going to be a home run.
You open as a character trapped--where? And who has trapped you? Who is mocking you from a distance over the loudspeaker, taunting you to escape from their sadistic maze? It's creepy and effective and darker than lot of these games are willing to go. The feeling of fear and paranoia are there. The mature warning feels like it may be valid.
And then Mad Head can't stay the course and roll the dice on embracing the darkness they are setting up. Instead of a twisted escape from a dark, claustrophobic and paranoid labyrinth of traps and darkness while under the taunting eye of an unseen fiend, we soon realize we are--once again--in the same HOG game story line we always are. City has befallen a supernatural fate. Heroine must break the curse. Blah blah blah. What starts out as a dark take of escape from a madman, becomes another ho-hum journey into the supernatural that is neither scary nor original.
All the HOG tropes and illogical constructions show up. You will crash you anachronistic car. You will open locks that are always missing pieces that end up in implausible places. Said locks couldn't keep out a three-year old if the pieces weren't in some obscure place. You will have your requisite horseshoe magnet. The only thing missing is oil removing rust. You've seen most of this before and it's getting tiresome.
The graphics and cut scenes are fine. The acting is solid. The sound work is good. The production values are solid--and they should be since games like this are pumped out almost daily on BFG.
This is a genre that is desperately in need of reinvention either in terms of plotlines, gameplay mechanics or both. I thought we were going to see that based on the first 15-20 minutes. Instead, the developer couldn't go through with the something interesting and fell back on the HOG game cliches. It's too bad really. It coulda been a contender.
I don't recommend this game.
Cadenza: The Kiss of Death Collector's Edition
Is your husband-to-be guilty of betrayal – or even worse?
Overall rating
2
/
5
3 of 4 found this review helpful
Sometimes you just can't go back again
PostedFebruary 9, 2016
bfeinstein
fromRichmond, VA
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Hidden Object, Adventure, Word
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I really enjoyed the first Cadenza game. I was excited to find there was a second and I could return to the (weirdly-named) Jazz Pepper Club. But like so many things in life, you can just never go back.
Where the first game really worked in terms of the visuals, the puzzle quality and the overall cohesiveness, the game designers must have thought that what was the real selling point of that game was the decent jazz music, because that is the most rewarding part of this otherwise awful effort.
Your character is a nothing short of a nitwit. During an early scene, while she is decorating for her wedding, a man comes stumbling into the tent clearly ill and in need of help. I would assume the character would leave the tent to go find the man. No. You narcissistically have to complete the wedding decorations while some ill stranger is stumbling around the property. If I was the fiancé and saw this, I would be cancelling the wedding. Later when the man assaults your fiancé, you do nothing and let the guy wander away. When a strange man on your property slugs your fiancé in the face and wanders off, most people call the police. In this game you shrug your shoulders as if this happens everyday.
(As an aside, the fiancé is no winner either. The opening scene has him making you solve a dumb puzzle to unlock a box in order to find your engagement ring. That's not a romantic proposal, dude. That's a final intelligence test to make sure she's worthy. She should have walked out right then and we could have avoided all this drama.)
It's absurd, but worse it takes you out of the moment while playing and makes you want to laugh at the silliness of this contrived tale. That's incredibly damaging to the game quality and kills the fun factor.
The game itself is a weird combination of ridiculously easy puzzles and things so random that you would never think to do it in real life. You are frequently picking up things you will need later without any rationale for getting them at the time beyond the fact that the game needs you to be carrying it in your inventory. If I'm in the hospital worried about my fiancé, then the last thing it is going to occur to me to do is grab microscope slides, but the game lets me take them before there is an inkling I would even need them.
For a game to work, you can ask the player to suspend belief because it is a fantasy. But you cannot ask them to wholesale suspend logic. All that serves to do is make the player burst out laughing at something that you did not intend to be funny.
Beyond the fact that absolutely no effort was made to make the gameplay or storyline cohesive, the graphics are dated, the animations were cutting age in the Bill Clinton administration, and there is lots of busywork to move the game along without adding to gameplay, but certainly padding the final number of hours one would spend with this game if one were willing to play to the end. But why would anyone want to? I certainly was unwilling to play beyond the one hour trial.
Also look out for the HOG cliches. Horseshoe shaped red and blue magnet? It's in there! Mechanical locks that wouldn't deter a three year old? It's in there
The only plusses are voice acting that seems to take the absurdity seriously and another decent jazz score. They are the only reason I did not give it one star.
I so wanted this game to be better than the first excellent installment. Instead, Mad Head phones it in. Time for the Jazz Pepper Club to go out of business. Or at least change that dumb name.
I don't recommend this game.
The ultimate 5-star, around the world cruise from New York to San Francisco on the super luxurious flagship, Liberty of The Waves.
Overall rating
1
/
5
7 of 9 found this review helpful
A cruise only marginally better than sailing on the Titanic
PostedFebruary 6, 2016
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
1
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
The passengers on the Lusitania had more fun after the U-Boat torpedoed them then I had playing this. This is one of the worst games in the Big Fish library.
You are on board what has to be the worst cruise ship on the planet. If this is what the designers think represents "super luxurious," then the only boat they have been on has oars.
You expect to go on a cruise ship to be pampered, yet you are going to spend this entire cruise picking up trash for recycling, finding other people's missing items, and finding random junk. Some vacation adventure.
This game came out in 2015. Game design has advanced beyond static scenes with low-res artwork where you look for things for no reason. Why am I looking for 4 cats and two umbrellas when it is the sunniest day of the year? Good games give the HO scenes a reason for being. This game just gives you the chore--and this is a chore since it's not fun--of finding random stuff.
The game is dated, slow, and like a lot of games you were already tiring of 10 years ago. The expectation of good graphics, more engaging game play and some actual fun was like kryptonite to the game designers. There is not an original thought in the creation of this game. There is no sign of actual effort.
The best thing to do is to bury this game. At sea. Don't play it.
I don't recommend this game.
Enigma Agency: The Case of Shadows Collector's Edition
Track down a missing detective and fight an evil curse!
Overall rating
1
/
5
24 of 26 found this review helpful
Did I play a different game than the rest of the reviewers?
PostedJuly 7, 2013
bfeinstein
fromRichmond, VA
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Word, Adventure, Hidden Object, Large File, Card & Board, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
A lot of the other reviewers will tell you they like this game because it is challenging. And I suppose it is, if you want to equate challenge to a complete suspension of a common-sense, bad plotting, gameplay padding and a willingness to run back and forth endlessly.
I'll get to the gameplay issues in a minute. Let me first get to the production values and plot. This story, about confronting an evil Shaman who is involved with an evil map that is torturing a detective, is about as bad as these stories go. Obviously with any fantasy scenario you have to suspend disbelief, but not to the point that you giggle at the absurdity of the plot.
When the detective tells you that a mysterious man comes to him, drops a stack of cash on his desk so that the detective can buy an old map from a library, how does anyone go with the flow on this? If the map is for sale, why wouldn’t the mystery man buy it? And what librarian is selling maps from behind the counter of a library? I mean make it an antique store or something since LIBRARIES ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF SELLING ANTIQUITIES. Once in possession of the map, horrible things start happening…of course there’s no indication that these horrible things happened at the library/antique store. Then to get these horrible things to stop, he rips up the map and throws it out. Never mind he has used his client’s money for it, would be giving the map to the client shortly and therefore be done with it. And never mind that if he really did need to destroy it, one might think burning it more effective. No thought went into the script or story at all.
The graphics are standard fare. They are the strongest part of the production package here. The voice acting, on the other hand, is unintentionally campy and bad. When the Shaman made his first appearance, my wife, who was sitting nearby, burst out laughing when she heard the voice over announce himself. Not good. The female voice talent who is the voice of the player’s character is wooden and lifeless—which is unintentionally ironic if you think about the death angles of the game.
The gameplay is as bad as the storyline, if not worse. This is one of those games that put making you run around ahead of you using logic. For example, in one scene, you encounter some missing tiles on a verandah, exposing some dirt. Your character intuits that there must be something buried there. This is not a large area based on the image shown. At this moment you have a shovel in your inventory. Common-sense is that you….you know…grab that shovel and dig. But no. The game does not allow this. You must wait until you find a metal detector. When you finally do and bring it to bear, of course it tells you to dig. You find the object right below the surface. What was the point of that? I could have been done with that issue 20 minutes before if I could have simply applied common sense. Another example: you can see a magnet behind some venetian blinds. The blinds are open, but not raised, and the cord is missing. I own venetian blinds. If I need something behind them, I can put my hand between the slats or just pull the blinds slightly away from the window to reach behind them. The cord being missing does not stop me from doing these common-sense things and getting on with my life. This game does not acknowledge these commonsense solutions and instead, forces me to find the cord. To what end? Third example: When you enter the house, you find the detective slumped at the bottom of the stairs. He asks for water. Given the rigmarole the game puts you through to get this glass of water, by the time you do get it, the guy would likely be dead or have gotten up to get his own water.
The thing is, none of this is a challenge so much as it is padding the game. The only reason to make you get the cord for the venetian blinds or to find the metal detector before you dig in this small spot is to extend the game play time, stretch the thin and silly plot needlessly and to block progress until the game design is ready to let you proceed. That’s inept game design masquerading as challenge. While this kind of padding is endemic to the genre (think of so many similar games which feature slow animations of screws being removed because somehow that’s entertaining and moving the story along) it feels like it is taken to new (and unbearable) levels here.
Add to all of this the usual genre clichés—locks missing pieces, keys hidden in absurd and random places, etc. The only cliché I didn’t see was the inevitable magical removal of rust with oil that happens in almost every one of these games…but maybe it reared its head later at a point I never reached.
It’s too bad too, because buried in this mess are a handful of truly well-designed, innovative and challenging puzzles. But they are packaged in a game so awful and absurd that when you do occasionally stumble across one, your enthusiasm to wrestle with it is diminished.
I know I am in the small minority of players who did not like the game. I played 60 minutes of the demo. I wish I hadn't, but I had nothing else to do. I would have been better served simply staring at the wall. This is a terrible game. You don’t play it so much as you endure its inanity. Don’t reward the developer with your money.
I don't recommend this game.
Criminal Investigation Agents: Petrodollars
Step into the shoes of investigator Frances Keegan and track down a tax evader suspected of murder.
Overall rating
1
/
5
72 of 76 found this review helpful
This game is a punishment for something
PostedApril 10, 2013
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
1
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
Big Fish players must have done something terrible to have this game foisted upon them. It is almost like a punishment. The game isn't fun. It's tedious, boring and dated.
The dialog is written by people who lack both creativity and decent writing skills. The controls were outdated 5 years ago. The graphics are fairly lo-res. And the HO scenes? The worst. Stuff hidden in shadow. Things that don't look like the item you expect to be looking for. And then there is the silly stuff like having your character turn on 24 computer screens even though she is going to check email on one of them--and no one else is there to look any of the others you just wasted time turning on. Or having to find the 15 bright red folders marked "Confidential" that are stunningly just lying around an office that is messier than a frat house after a toga party.
I lasted 15 minutes on the trial before I had to delete it. I didn't hate myself enough to play beyond that. Let my lost 15 minutes of life keep you from losing any of yours playing this game.
SO...SO...SO NOT RECOMMENDED. It's awful. Maybe the worst I have played yet on BFG.
I don't recommend this game.
Brink of Consciousness: The Lonely Hearts Murders Collector's Edition
Olivia has been kidnapped by the mysterious Lonely Hearts Killer who murders those suffering from a shattered love. Save her!
Overall rating
3
/
5
8 of 11 found this review helpful
Want every bad HOG cliche in one game? Look no further....
PostedMarch 31, 2013
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
Let me start by saying upfront that I get that these games are escapism and fantasy. But there comes a point where games just become silly.
So it is with this game. The story line was fine as far as it goes (although these are some VERY long cut scenes for what is an otherwise boilerplate HO game mystery story--the quality of the plot does not justify the length of these cut scenes). Trust me you won't really care who the killer is or feel any connection to the other characters. They are cardboard cutouts from British minor nobility set in manors and such. You've been here more often than the Duke of Marlborough if you play these games regularly.
The problem with the game is that it brings every single cliche in the genre to a new level of absurdity.
--You do all the work for the detective even though you are together most of the time. He stands there asking you to figure out how to open every locked door while he stands there. All HOG cops are lazy so you can solve the puzzles. This one takes it to a new level.
--Where you find some of the inventory objects you are hilarious. Who locks doorknobs in mailboxes? Why has someone built a statue that when you put in its missing eye, it cracks a stone revealing a handle within. And if it weren't for the sparkling in front of the statue, why would it ever occur to a sane human being to put the eye into a statue in the hopes that it would crush a stone and reveal a handle?
--Can no one in these games hold onto a key? You go looking for tons of keys in this game--even more than normal. Not one of them is in the possession of the person who owns the locked door or item. Instead they are hidden in random walls, in sewers and hidden in other places that have no connection to the lock to be opened. No locked door lacks for a lost key that is waiting to be found (except for the one to two locks a game that can be broken off or picked). Nevermind that some these doors have no apparent reason for opening other than the game needs you to open another door. If this real world is anything like this, I am wasting money having deadbolts installed in my house.
--Random puzzle-type locks that are just a hoot. First, the puzzles are not very hard. And maybe the people who use puzzle locks to secure their doors and chests in these games do so because they keep losing their keys, but a puzzle lock that I can solve in 30 seconds is not much of a lock--a regular door lock has to be less costly than some custom-made elaborate puzzle lock and, given that I am going to find the key you are inevitably going to lose (see above), just as ineffective.
--The random puzzle locks in these games all have quality control problems. They are all missing pieces. Now fortunately the missing piece is in some sewer waiting for me to come up with a magnet or something--but the lack of quality that allows for the parts to fall off and travel far from the puzzle lock really needs to be addressed.
--And an HOG would not be complete if there were not at least one instance of removing rust by pouring oil on it. Where does this happen in real life? This is something that only happens in the Big Fish world--this is in EVERY one of these games
The whole game is like this--you run around looking for things and inevitably the thing is in an utterly implausible location. And while this is common in this genre, this game takes this to a new height of absurdity. No one who worked on this game put any thought into making these puzzles and object placements make any sense within the context of plausibility. They just create a random location for the key or the puzzle piece and eventually you will pick up the random gear (because we all pick up gears when we see them) or whatever that will later suddenly reveal the key in a place it makes no sense for a key to be--lost or not.
If you put ALL of this aside, the game is standard HOG fare. But for all the time, money and effort that the developer invested in this game's generally--polished production values--long cut scenes, lots of dialogue, professional voice talent--it would have been far more satisfying if they invested ther sizable budget it in a script with an original angle, puzzles that are satisfying rather than placed for the sake of making a puzzle, and integrated the puzzles a little more logically into the game.
Bottom line--the game is OK. It is just every HOG cliche rolled into one.
I don't recommend this game.
Undead Tidings
Stop the undead from ruining the holidays with this snowball mash-up of a game!
Overall rating
1
/
5
6 of 9 found this review helpful
Waste of time
PostedDecember 25, 2012
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
This game might have been charming 20 years ago. The whole premise is basically a rehash of Space Invaders. Has all of the gameplay quality of a low-end free-to-play on-line flash game. Cannot see how this got greenlighted to go on BigFish. The gameplay is totally unsuited to the customer base, and the game quality, production values and polish are well below what one expects from BigFish. Total dud. Don't waste your time on this low rent shooter.
I don't recommend this game.