Posts Tagged ‘Arcade’

Pirate Poppers Review

Action, Arcade, Match, Puzzle | Posted by Zeke
Sep 01 2010

pirate-poppers

How can you go wrong with a name like Pirate Poppers? Aaargh! With its pirate theme and music what else is left but a treasure map and riches? You need to piece together a map for the location of the legendary treasure of Isla Calabera.

There are 3 modes to play in this pirate game: Adventure, Puzzle, and Arcade. The Adventure mode has 77 levels of Pirate Poppers3play. In the Puzzle mode you must clear the row of balls with only a limited number of cannons, so you must figure out exactly how and where you will place these balls on the rail. In the Arcade mode you get a number of lives before losing a level.

The play is to simply shoot cannon balls at groups of colorful balls rolling on a track towards a barrel. You must aim for like color balls and shoot while the chain of cannons continues to move forward. When the balls are blasted and disappear, the cannons on either side will come together and if they are the same color and are 3 or more, they may also explode and clear the game board.

There are a lot of power-ups in this game. Some of the extras will change the color of the balls to blasting a whole slew of cannons with an explosive one. With some of the other features, the balls will move backwards giving you extra time to figure out your strategy. There is a spyglass when you are able to shoot faster and more accurately. On top of all that there are many extras you can catch with your cannon. The many jewels and treasures will give you extra points and the skull medallions will increase the number of lives.

Pirate Poppers is very similar to ZumaSweetopia and Luxor where you shoot at orbs coming down a tube-like conveyor belt.Pirate Poppers2 This is an action packed arcade Mac game with pirate cannons, treasures (gold, silver and jewels) and much more. You’ll have fun just sitting back and shooting cannonballs out into the chains of multicolored spheres. This game takes some strategy and thinking, but on the most part it is just an enjoyable game to kick back and shoot.

Features of Pirate Poppers:
-Pirate Theme
-6 Power-ups
-Treasure
-77 Levels

Rating: ★★★★☆

Pixie Review

Action, Adventure, Arcade, Puzzle | Posted by Meg
Aug 01 2010

pixie-31
download Pixiebuy Pixie

Pixie is a new, exciting Mac game produced by independent game developers, Phelios, Inc. and EMV Software. It was created with the PTK Game Engine. Phelios is a popular maker of PC and Mac games such as Doulber Gold, Kaijin, Abracadabra and many more. A couple of EMV Software’s best selling games include Warblade and Deluxe PocMon. The two developers collaborated and created Pixie, an exceptional and varied game play with sophisticated graphics and animation by Paul Conway, music and sound effects by William Lamy at audiobank.fm.

The game begins with Pixie, the main character, spending her day playing,  flying in the magical forest and meadows not realizing that nightfall has quickly befallen her. Not only is it dark and scary, there are a lot of ominous looking creatures following her. In order for Pixie to escape this dark and dreary environment and return to her lovely home and friends, she must use her magical beam to surround the creepy crawlers and buzzing flying insects in the maze and create a beautiful garden filled with flowers, butterflies, leaves, mushrooms and colorful patterns, and in turn, destroy the night bugs. After filling 85% or more of the maze with Pixie’s magical powers using her rays (the direction of the beams can be changed by right clicking the mouse or by pressing the space bar) she moves on to the next level/maze.

In the process of killing off the creepy crawlers and frantic insects, she can collect gold coins and different magical powers. If enough gold coins are pixie-1collected, they can be used in the magic shop to purchase different levels of power. The shop is available at every 5th level if she has 3 or more gold coins. Hitting the return key will reveal the contents of the purchases from the shop. There are some great items in the store such as Extra Life, Smart Bomb, Shot Speed, Freeze, Ghost, Shield and Health potion. It’s really advantageous if you have a lot of coins to spend on these worthwhile helps. They can extend and add to your play.

In addition to the shop powers, there are bonuses flying all around, both good and bad, to enhance or hinder Pixie’s power. These bonuses can be extremely powerful, such as the smart bombs which will destroy many bugs in it’s path and turn them into gold coins, pixie-2but she must be wary of the red bombs which will destroy all the good patterns that Pixie has already covered. Another great bonus is the reverse filler. When Pixie aims her beam to cover a small area, this bonus will cover the larger area or the opposite, bigger space. A good bonus is the fast shot, but Pixie must watch out for the bad pixie-4bonus the slow shot or speed. When Pixie is moving in slow motion, it is extremely frustrating to avoid the insects or maneuver her shots so don’t get caught in that bonus, because it is not a good thing.

Another way to cover the dark game board is to aim Pixie’s beam to divide exactly 50% of the space and by doing so, the entire board will fill with the beautiful flowers and good things in life. This is a fast and rewarding way to finish one level. Only if all the levels were like that, but if they were, then the game would not be as challenging and exciting as it is with the different shaped (rectangles, circles, irregulars, houses, faces, etc.) game boards and the many and varied evil villains both crawling and flying. The developers have balanced the frenetic speed of the play in each level. Some will be fast paced and the speed of other levels will be almost relaxing, but you always need to be wary of the insects.

Each level becomes more and more difficult to beat the ever increasing and faster bugs. Yuck. When Pixie begins to get a rhythm and is avoiding the deadly flying insects, an insignificant caterpillar will come along and destroy her, or she will get entangled in the deadly spider webs making it almost impossible to collect the gold coins, or a nasty bug will undo all of Pixie’s beautiful work. Eventually she pixie-boss-21reaches 2 boss levels. This is when the fun is exponentially increased to a whole new level. All the gamers out there will be pleasantly surprised or dismayed, but will quickly get into the swing of things by trying to figure out your strategy. You will have to use all your past gaming knowledge in order to destroy the bad guys. I won’t go into it any further so as not to ruin your fun, but you’ll know when you get there what I’m talking about.

Pixie will become a classic game like Mario with all the expertise needed to conquer all the evil arthropods created by the manic game developers who have put together one awesome game. Don’t let the cute and petite Pixie fool you. She can be very powerful and deadly with her magical aim. Casual gamers and children will be able to go far in this game, and by doing so, will develop more skills in order to reach Pixie’s home, and hardcore gamers will find the challenge and difficulty levels as well as a fun, reminiscent and exciting play.

*As of 4/09 there are new upgrades: new bosses, new bonuses (incl. a 100% fill bonus!), new effects, more gold coins.

Pixie Features:
100 levels
2 Boss levels
Gold coins
Potion Shop
Good and bad bonuses
Online high scorers
Great graphics, sounds effects and music
Upgrades are free

Rating: ★★★★☆

Zak and Jack: Showdown at Monster Town Review

Action, Adventure, Arcade, Shooter | Posted by Zeke
Jul 15 2010

Zak and Jack 1

Monster Town is under attack by evil monsters in Mac game Zak and Jack: Showdown at Monster Town. It is a colorful, fun shooter game full of action and speed. There are good monsters and bad monster in this comical play, and you must help Zak Zak and Jack 2and Jack, two good monsters, defend their beloved Monster Town. The 2 of them are creative inventor types who can rig up shooting machines in order to beat down the massive invasion of the enemy.

The play is simple and straightforward with the crazy contraptions used to defend the town. Just click to shoot while you move Zak and Jack up and down on their invention. It’s not as easy as it sounds because the evil villains constantly at different positions keep coming at you until you shoot all the monsters. After each level the swarm of bad guys increases exponentially rising high and low.

In addition to this mega invasion there are the bosses who can cause much harm and havoc to the invention causing you to lose the level and restart. Don’t fret, keep at it and you’ll eventually beat the levels getting a high percentage of accuracy. This percentage is important to complete each level so don’t shoot willy-nilly at anything. You can always get good power-ups to assist your fight, but beware of the red ones. They are not helpful.

Zak and Jack 3Zak and Jack: Showdown at Monster Town is an arcade, shooter Mac game with so much action you’ll need to take breaks after so many levels or you’ll get completely exhausted with finger cramps. You need to be able to think fast and act even faster in order to outsmart the countless invasion of evil monsters. Take the challenge and help Zak and Jack defend their Monster Town.

Features of Zak and Jack: Showdown at Monster Town
-5 Episodes
-Lots of Monsters and Bosses
-Power-ups

Rating: ★★★★☆

Air Assault Review

Action, Arcade, Shooter | Posted by musicaltrack
Jun 18 2010

airassault

Air Assault is a game that is really retro and really cool. This action-arcade helicopter shooter reminds me of the classic arcade shooters where you basically shoot at will to destroy everything in your path. Air Assault is very simple and easy to play, the only directions that are needed are given at the beginning of every game. You use the mouse to control the airplane, left click shoots bullets, and right click shoots missiles. I would recommend turning down the sensitivity of your mouse (if it is up too high) because the helicopter does fly around wherever you drag the mouse.

What makes the game interesting is the ten different types of power-ups that are provided. These include blue wrenches that fix your helicopter, blue shields that add strength to your hull, a yellow lightning that makes your guns more powerful, a yellow double gun that adds a second gun, orange rockets that add more rockets, purple squares that auto aim the guns, purple stealth bomber that gives you invisibility and a secret purple marker that you will have to play the game to find out what it does.

Gameplay is simple. Try to make it through the level as you destroy as many enemies and scenery (barracks, bridges, antennas, etc.) to gain as many points as possible. Like all arcade games, you have a certain amount of lives to make it through the level. You can see the damage to your helicopter in the lower left corner, as green means your ok and red means you are in bad shape. I thought this was a cool feature as most games like this would generally only have a gauge that calculates the amount of life. Air Assault tells you where and how bad certain parts of your aircraft are damaged. Just a neat little feature that enhances the game. Although I only played the demo, I thought it seemed a little easy, but I think it gets progressively harder as the game continues. Other than that, I had no other problems and give Air Assault four and a half stars out of five.

Features of Air Assault:
- Classic Arcade style Helicopter shooter
- 32 different enemy types
- 10 different upgrades

Rating: ★★★★½

Smashing Tennis Review

Action, Arcade, Sports | Posted by trackbum
May 22 2010

smash-tennis
download Smashing Tennisbuy Smashing Tennis

Hit the grass courts and fire off an ace in a high speed match of Smashing Tennis. The game is clear: win sets to win matches. Now all you have to do put your own skills to the test and see if tennis is indeed your sport of choice. The key to this sports game in particular is skill.

Smashing Tennis requires skills with the use of two hands on different keys of the computer. If a gamer fails to play well on their first try and decides to just give up and complain about it on other people’s blogs, then they missed the whole concept of Smashing Tennis in the first place. Smashing Tennis is not supposed to be mastered when someone presses start, it evokes a determination to evolve in skill level as players and tournaments are conquered one by one. To rise to the top of the International Tennis Association, it takes a lot more than scrolling and clicking a mouse.

Tennis is personally not my favorite sport. However arcade games of tennis  are always amusing and tons of fun. Smashing Tennis in particular is pretty entertaining as it reminds me of a 2D version of Mario Tennis. Overall I would give Smashing Tennis a 4 out of 5 stars.

Rating: ★★★★☆