Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!

Love is in the air, literally, in Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! as Cupid himself shows up to lend a helping hand to wedding planner extraordinaire Quinn in the third installment of the Wedding Dash series, which is currently in sneak peek mode as it gears up to launch later this spring.

In addition to meeting the needs of different couples to pull off the wedding reception of their dreams, Quinn is tasked with planning the most important wedding of her career so far: her own.

You'll start by helping the bride and groom select the items for their ideal reception based on their wishes and budget. When the reception begins you'll seat the guests, place their gifts at the gift station, and begin to serve them their dinner.

Over the course of dinner, Quinn will have to deal with little mishaps that pop up along the way, such as the infamous Bridezilla. When guests have finished their cake, they'll head over to the dance floor to make way for new guests to be seated.

New features include a Cupid mini-game where you shoot arrows of love to match the next bride and groom, an expanded wedding planning stage that lets you personally cutsomize each wedding, a new cocktail table to keep guests happy as they wait to be seated, and new wedding disasters to overcome, including wedding crashers and Rosie's runaway puppy!

There are 55 levels, and some quirky new guests as well as the return of some familiar DinerTown faces.

Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! is launched!

Drugstore Mania

GFI brings us yet another Cake Mania reincarnation with Drugstore Mania, a time management game that has you running around a pharmacy filling prescriptions for moon-eyed, cartoonish customers who honestly look like they don’t need any more drugs. With tons of flowers and strange giggling, Drugstore Mania will have you wondering if you took something before you started playing the game.

Following in the footsteps of previous "mania"-style games, Drugstore Mania has you playing the role of Lisa, a recently graduate with her pharmacist’s degree who’s looking for her first job. Lisa hopes to one day work in a big city pharmacy, but until then she must work her way up through several small city pharmacies starting in Lakeside City.

Once you get into your first day with Lisa, the game introduces you to a tutorial that explains how to serve the customers. As each customer comes in, they have a meter above their head with a row of hearts to show their morale, and also a line of symbols that match the medicines in your store to indicate what they want to order. All you have to do is click on the matching medicines behind your counter and then click on your customer to bring the medicines to them. The game allows you to carry two medicines at a time and in any order you like, so you don’t have to follow the sequence above the customer’s head. If you bring the medicines before the customer’s morale drops, you gain a big tip which will go towards your level’s goal.

Each level has both a finishing goal and an expert goal, which you can complete by earning money from filling your customer’s orders in a timely manner. You only have so much time to complete the goal on each level, which you can see by a clock at the bottom of the screen. You’ll know when you complete the first goal though by the change to happier music in the level. Levels will increase in difficulty with larger goals, bigger customer orders and more customers as you move through different cities but this increase is slow.

The game will add on new elements in the game as you move through the different cities. You have to start making special prescriptions for customers by mixing two medicines together at a mixing station as well as bring a special prescription book to customers that will take a while to regenerate. Between levels, you’ll have a chance to buy add-ons for your store like a candy machine or chairs that will make your customers happy while they wait, or flowers to spruce up the look of the store.

There’s even a mini-game to play before you move onto each new city that has Lisa volunteering to help with experimental research. You must use an eye drop to click on one of three coloured medicines and then drop it on the matching microbe to remove it from the Petri dish. You have to remove as many as you can within the set time limit to earn money for your store.

Drugstore Mania is somewhat fun and easy to play, but after the first hour the game failed to add anything new and exciting into the mix. I found that most levels weren’t very challenging and that I was not only meeting expert goals but exceeding them more often than not.

The grammar in this game was terrible, with misspelled words like “owest” instead of “lowest,” and the tutorial in the game failed to show you half of the information that the help menu explains to you. During gameplay, the customers would make this strange giggling noise that was so out of place and creepy that I had to finally turn the sound off. The anime-style graphics were probably the strangest part of the game though, with its big eyed, big head doll characters coming into your store. Something about characters with giant glazed eyes buying drugs in such a rainbow coloured game in it that just seems wrong.

I also found that for some reason that when you retrieved your money from the customers, clicking on the cash register didn’t always work. You would sometimes have to click again to put the money away. The game did have a neat little trophy system that awarded you when you reached certain goals like 100 visitors served or 10 expert goals completed.

While generally I am a huge fan of games like Cake Mania or Nanny Mania, Drugstore Mania just happened to be another one of those failed wanna-be games that someone threw together and slapped a “mania” title on in hopes of cashing in on the name. While the basic game play is the same as previous mania games, the overall presentation fails on so many levels that I can’t even recommend that any one try even the free 60 minute trial.

Review by Gamezebo

Virtual Families

If you were a professional game reviewer, naturally you'd want to bestow high marks on a deep and ambitious game. But what would you do if that game wasn't finished? If it were laden with many technical and graphical issues that marred the experience? And what if it were an unoriginal concept?

Such is the case with Virtual Families, the latest from developer Last Day of Work (of Virtual Villagers fame), and while we had fun with this The Sims-esque game, we also grew frustrated with its lack of polish and innovation.

Ah yes, we know LDW has a faithful fan base, and we expect to see user review scores that challenge our "average" rating, but we like a healthy debate here at Gamezebo.

Virtual Families is a human life simulation that looks and plays similar to The Sims. Gamers "adopt" a character who moves into your home. Hit the computer to a dating website and "order" a bride who is compatible with your personality. Perhaps you both want kids or have occupations that compliment each other?

When the spouse arrives the couple should enjoy a short embrace (though it doesn't always happen) and then you start life in your home. As with The Sims you'll keep an eye on their needs and desires and help them stay happy, whether it's dragging them to the kitchen if they're hungry or let them take a shower if feeling unclean. In some cases they can do things together, such as watch TV or surf the web on two computers in the same den, but our experiences show they lead separate lives for the most part, which is a bit disappointing.

The game is played from an angled top-down ("isometric") view just like The Sims, and as with EA's game you can also buy items, upgrade parts of your home, have kids, adopt pets, and so on.

But the A.I. (artificial intelligence) doesn't seem to be, well, very intelligent. For example, my guy Andy was hungry but wouldn't eat when dragged to the kitchen -- despite having a fully stocked fridge with a variety of foods (including pricier organic goodies -- and so he'd just get weaker. His wife, Dahlia, doesn't like cooking but the game said she was happy when thinking about it. Huh? A day later, the game said Dahlia enjoys nature sounds so I dragged her outside but instead she went back inside to start dusting. OK, so I'm willing to acknowledge there should be some amount of unpredictability, but there were too many instances like this.

Another thing players might love or loathe, and one that will be familiar to those who've played LDW games, is that Virtual Families plays out in real time. Therefore even if you close the game and turn off your computer, the events will continue to unfold in your home. But I'd argue time passes by too quickly: I stopped playing on a Friday afternoon at 4pm and didn't pause the game (to stop time) because I knew I'd play more on the weekend. But when I booted up the game on Sunday at 5pm it said..."Sadly, Dahlia has passed away..." Sigh.

Along with A.I. issues there are some graphical ones, too, such as characters who stand on a table or bed or walk through a wall or fridge. It doesn't ruin the experience, but leads one to believe the game isn't finished.

The game does offer a few things not found in The Sims, such as healing sick characters (with meds or calling a physician), giving players moral dilemmas to tackle and watching the events unfold, praising or scolding behavior with Black and White-like hands you click over the character (to reinforce good or bad actions) and collect objects around the home, such as bugs, coins, leaves and so on.

One of the features we liked the most was the more than 100 Trophies you can collect once you accomplish certain goals, be it making $100,000, curing a serious illness, picking 50 socks up from around the home or buying items such as a pinball machine or fish tank.

I don't think I've ever been more torn while reviewing a game than I am with Virtual Families. On one hand it takes an existing and proven concept -- "borrowing" the virtual life elements of The Sims, the best-selling computer game in history -- and adding a real-time element, trophies and other goodies. But at the same time the game just feels unfinished, primarily due to the aforementioned A.I. issues.

Fans of this genre, though, or of LDW's Virtual Villagers or Fish Tycoon games, should at the very least download the game to try it for free before deciding if this is a (virtual) life worth living.

Review by Marc Saltzman

DinerTown Tycoon

PlayFirst has launched a brand new spin on Diner Dash with DinerTown Tycoon, a strategy game starring Flo and her DinerTown friends. You'll help oust the evil fast food chain Grub Burger using your restaurant savvy and business smarts to stock your restaurant, set menu prices and purchase new decor. Featuring five neighborhoods including Squid Row and Champagne Falls, more than 25 characters from the Diner Dash series, and more than 90 recipes to add to menus, DinerTown Tycoon will be all about bringing back wholesome food and local eateries to give Grub Burger the boot once and for all.

Paradise Quest

Popular as casual games have become, you can’t turn anywhere without running into a puzzler based on making horizontal or vertical rows of three or more identical objects. Likewise, there’s no shortage of head-scratchers featuring green, or eco-friendly, themes. But tempted as you may be to lump Paradise Quest into either category as just another nondescript offering given a passing glance, don’t. One of the finest examples we’ve seen of both, it’s sure to be a hit with kids, adults and carbon-conscious players of all interests and backgrounds alike.

Mind you, the storyline – told through occasional comic book-style panels, and featuring token hero Dr. Evan Finch’s hunt for mysterious artifacts and exotic animals on tropical isle Isabela – seems like something of an afterthought. Perhaps that’s why, rather than a lengthy narrative, the first sight players are greeted with is instead a stunning opening screen graced by fluttering butterflies, grazing tortoises and a drum- and tribal-chant-heavy musical score that’s tailor-made for adventure.

Like the lovingly rendered, but hauntingly desolate island that serves as a main hub for your journeys, it speaks to the game’s core strengths: Personality and atmosphere. As you’ll quickly discover, the whole package exudes a palpable sense of charisma from every pore.

Lush environments – frothing waterfalls, sunny tidal pools, glistening shorelines whose waves undulate in the breeze – serve as the backdrop for each challenge. Per usual, self-contained stages take the form of a grid of squares inhabited by icons representing various objects, i.e. golden turtles, autumn leaves, ripe avocados, etc.

Swapping two items at a time, you’ll need to create lines of three or more similar objects to make them disappear from the board, with higher-situated tiles falling down to close the gaps, and, possibly, sparking off huge combos in the process. Your main goal: Break enough stone tiles by making matches atop them to free a set number of special habitant fragments, remotely located throughout every level.

Of course, there’s always a catch – playing fields range in scope from sizable to gigantic, so much so that they don’t fit on a single screen. And while a handy mini-map provides a decent overview of general stage layout and where these fragments might lie, navigation’s solely up to you. Capable of scrolling in multiple directions, the closer to any given edge of the screen you make a specific match, the more the view shifts afterwards to travel along the same path. It’s a novel touch that adds considerable depth and strategy, in that each level’s effectively a new adventure.

Moreover, given confined pathways, limited viewing angles (a problem periodically compounded by nighttime scenarios requiring you to light torches to view nearby terrain) and limited playing pieces in range to cope with, forward progress also takes surprising skill and though.

Thankfully, there’s a brisk, yet casual feel to the experience that strikes just the right pitch and pace. What’s more, new surprises are regularly introduced, from patches of sand that hide pickaxes and rafts (necessary for bypassing walls, rivers and other obstacles) to vine bonuses (create matches to fill the meter) that let you instantly shift locations on the map.

There’s even a thrilling spate of power-ups – earthquakes that shake all of one type of tile from the screen, tornadoes that blossom and swirl, sucking nearby objects into them – and collectible resources to contend with. In the latter case, simply match appropriate icons – lumber, water drops, juicy berries, etc. – to collect these goods, which can be used to purchase environmental upgrades. The more you buy, the more lush your island becomes, and the additional animals that return to the island.

As for those collectible habitat fragments, once retrieved, simply access your journal to solve simple photo-based jigsaws and unlock new destinations for those animals to inhabit. These dazzling landmarks, capable of being visited at your leisure, play host to all sorts of animated critters that swim, flutter or fly by. Using your mouse, it’s possible during stopovers to snap collectible photos of these fascinating specimens (white-cheeked pintails, marine iguanas, Galapagos clingfish, etc.). All of which adds up, of course, to a surprisingly rich and varied epic that’s bolstered by a first-rate presentation, from its brilliantly colorful aesthetic to a slick library of sound effects.

Infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, we’ll nonetheless be honest: Paradise Quest can get repetitious, and won’t truly wow so much as surprise and delight. But it’s obvious that creator I-Play rolled out the red carpet for this production, and it shows, with desktop veterans, wide-eyed newcomers and Mother Nature lovers of all ages the clear beneficiaries. All due respect given...

Review by Scott Steinberg