PC Games

Review – Faerie Solitaire (PC)

Subsoap | 03.15.2009

Solitaire is a game that has like 500 zillion variations. In fact, Solitaire is more of a genre of card game played alone than a type of game itself. Faerie Solitaire, as far as I know, isn’t based on a previous “classic” style of Solitaire, but then, the reference material surrounding this game isn’t real plentiful. It certainly isn’t the standard 7 piles, flip 3, collect Ace through King solitaire.

The basic card game works as follows, cards are laid out on the playing field in various patterns and the player gets a small stack to flip through. You flip through the cards and play cards off the field in consecutive ascending or descending order, depending on what’s on your stack. So if you flip a 5, you can pull a 4 or a 6 off the field and put it on the 5, then proceed to pull say, a 5 or 3. You can only pull cards off the field that do not have other cards on top of them.

There are also some fantasy elements to help make the game more interesting beyond a simple card game. Completing stages helps you free captive Faeries. You also collect eggs and gain little pets, though the pets don’t really seem to DO anything. Each round also earns some cash which can be spent to buy power ups such as Undos or pre flipped cards.

The gameplay itself is actually a lot of fun. It’s just as mindless as Solitaire but it also has quite a bit of complexity involved. You can proceed on without clearing the field for a Perfect but you won’t earn as much money. Planning out combos and patterns becomes more essential as you get into higher levels.

There are also strategic elements added via other game mechanics. Occasionally there will be cards trapped behind Ice, Fire, or Plants. In order to play these cards you have to unlock them first, often by clearing out a stack somewhere on the board.

Overall, Faerie Solitaire is a solid card game. Granted, if you’re not into computer cards you’re not going to enjoy it. The whole Faerie theme may also turn some people off thinking the game is “too girly”, but the reality is, it’s much more “Generic Fantasy” than “Girly Faerie”. Also, for the most part, the Faerie aspects can be completely ignored if so desired.

Faerie Solitaire can be found on Steam here.

NOTE: This game is also available on other platforms such as iOS.

Review – Deus Ex (PC)

Aug 1st, 2002

by Ramen Junkie.

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There was a short period in gaming time not too long ago where many hyped up games we released all around the same period of time. These include games like Oni, Deus Ex, and Shenmue, to name a few. These games all have one thing in common. All had mediocre everything with one amazing shinny new gimmick. In the end you get a game that more or less sucks except you still feel the need to play it because of this one gimmick. Oni had it’s whole weapons and hand to hand combat thing, Shenmue had it’s whole free range suckage going on, and Deus Ex is sort of a FPS RPG hybrid.

I’ll admit, I didn’t really play this game the “correct way”. I cheated right out at the start and beefed up my player to the max after failing the Liberty Island mission 20 or 30 times in a row. By “Liberty Island mission” I mean killing more than 5 guys and making it past the first 2 or 3 enclosed areas. That said, it also means I got to play a game that was nothing but pure game play, a game that consisted of everything else besides Deus Ex’s one gimmick, the experience level up system. Frankly after playing through without it I sure as hell don’t want to play through with it.

Even as an invincible combat god the game started to DRAG immensely by about halfway through. The plot in this bitch just goes on and on and on and on and on. By the end you won’t know what the hell is going on because the plot also changes completely every five minutes or so. It’s unfortunate that Tracer Tong’s ending was the worst one since he was the only person I could remember out of the supporting cast. After New York you think you’re done but no! On to Hong Kong. Then it’s back to New York, then to some gas station in the middle of nowhere. Then some undersea lab. Eventually you end up god knows where fighting some guy in a bubble. Whoop de shit. That is what I get after all that playing?

Really the plot isn’t the only thing that I didn’t like. Honestly the character models left something to be desired as well. Every person has the same weird bulgy stretchy look to them. Also the enemy AI was pretty weak to. Not really weak in that is was easy to beat, just weak in that it seemed like it was a computer AI and not a person trying to kill me. It was not good like say, Half Life. Though it was also not as shitty as say, Shogo. Shogo being the only game I can think of where a boss killed HIMSELF through no act of my own. I just stood there just after encountering him as he blew himself away.

Anyway, Deus Ex 2 is in the works, let’s hope they can put an understandable plot in this time. The graphics I’ve seen seem pretty improved, so that is one flaw down at least. Anyway, I literally had to force myself to finish this beast just so I could uninstall without ever feeling the guilty need to install it again.

Review – The SIMS (PC)

Mar 29th, 2002

by Ramen Junkie.

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Maxis

Some games you just love to hate. Or maybe it’s the other way around, you hate to love them. Then there are those you love and those you hate completely. I’m thinking The SIMS is just one I hate really, but I REALLY want to love it. This game is really easy to compare to Diablo 2. Both have similar play perspectives. Both have similar gameplay mechanics really. Both are games I really enjoy when I first start playing them but hate absolutely after about a week. Finally both are games I keep coming back to.

To keep in the comparison of Diablo 2, the gameplay consists pretty much of clicking on a thousand things for hours on end. Unlike Diablo 2, the things you click on aren’t little imp things of one color or another. Instead you get to control a person as this person lives their daily life. That’s pretty much it, I honestly don’t know how or why this game ever became so popular really. I mean an in game day typically consist of waking your Sim up, having the Sim cook himself breakfast, take a shit, take a shower, watch for an hour go to work, come home from work, cook supper, watch more TV, shit again, then sleep. Its like having some sort of clingy pet really. The Sims can’t function in anyway on their own. As an experiment I once let “Bob Newbie” run on his own for about an hour. I came back and found he had been fired from work and had been doing nothing but stand around in his kitchen crying because he was depressed and lonely. It should be noted the kitchen was soaked in urine and covered in dirty dishes. It seems that instead of keeping up his hygiene and going to work, poor Bob Newbie had decided to instead sit around all day burning all his money on potato chips. A similar result occurred with the Goth family, their child ended up getting shipped off to military school.

Now what is entertaining about this game? I’ll have to guess it’s the social system really. When your Sim isn’t bitching about being hungry again because he just spent an hour on the toilet you can interact with other Sims in the neighborhood. If you’re lucky you could even make your Sim become married to one of them. Then you get the fun task or trying to juggle two people’s lives at once. Just some advice, unless you plan on cheating, don’t even think of trying to juggle 8 people (the maximum for one family) at once. If you’re lucky you’ll get two satisfied ones, another who has been cleaning everything for all eternity and the rest will just party 24/7.

Anyway, about the time you’ve been playing for about two week’s you’ve got maybe 2 regular normal families going, and another couple party families that you’ve cheated on and given them all the riches they will ever need. There is a good chance you’ll need a new way to entertain yourself. Then you’ll come to the “Mass Murderer Simulator” part of the game. First select a kind of creepy looking guy and build him a nice little place to live, then befriend everyone you can. Then one by one court and marry all the other Sims in the neighbor hood. At the same time, as you grow tired of the earlier partners, build them into doorless rooms and wait about an in game week or two. Or maybe you’d like to let them take a swim, then remove the exit ladder for the pool. A person permanently swimming in the pool would make a nice art-deco life sculpture for the front yard. Then there is always death by fire. Make sure you don’t have any cooking skill or a fire alarm then start grillin’ burgers till the flames start roarin’.

Now that your fantastic and beautiful homes are all vacant, take a moment and reflect back on all the time you’ve spent doing the same things YOU do every day only for some computer simulated version of yourself. Now realize how much of a waste this game really is, especially since Maxis didn’t take into account the full potential of killing off the Sims. I mean come on, where is my torture rack? Or maybe a guillotine. Maybe the fight sequences could break into a Capcom fighter where you battle to the death with supernatural fireballs and such.

On one final note, I’ll say that I really like the customizability in this game. You can find new models and skins for all sorts of objects and characters. You can put shortcuts to MP3s in the music directory and get custom radio stations. You can build the characters and homes anyway you want. That’s probably the best part of the game really. Seeing what sort of crazy combinations you can come up with.