Jezzball was a wonderful time waster which came bundled with Windows 3.1. As a kid, I spent a lot of time playing this one late into the night. Your goal was to section off as much of the screen as you could by avoiding the balls on the screen. You drew a line that went out in opposite directions from the place you clicked on. If one of the balls hit your line, you lost a life. It sounds simple, and it was, but it required precise timing.
Jezzball was actually inspired by the game Qix for the arcades and later NES and Gameboy color. It was the same premise. There weren’t a lot of frills about either game, but they were both very entertaining to my math-inclined mind. I don’t really have a lot else to say about these, but if you never had the pleasure, I’m sure you can find Jezzball for free online somewhere.
This was the game that started it all, folks. Video games had been fun, leisurely things to help pass the time up until this one. It’s Tetris, the first uber-addictive game, at least in my world. I was in sixth or seventh grade when we rented this one for the NES. I remember distinctively because my cousin Nikki was spending the night, which was normally a really big and fun deal. This game made me all but ignore her. My mom tried to pry me away without much luck. It was the first time I remember feeling addicted to something.
The game is really simple and I don’t have too much to say about it. You line up the pieces and complete lines to clear them. The more you clear at once, the higher your score. Your goal is to keep playing for as long as you can. It’s been done on every platform since its birth in 1984. It was developed by two Russians, and I would argue it’s the best thing to ever come from that country (including the space program!). The individual pieces are called Tetriminos. You can find all sorts of Tetris-inspired memorabilia. I have a board game called Tetris link and Matt made me Tetrimino shelves:
My favorite version will always be the NES version, simply because it was the first one to get me hooked. I have played many, many different versions of it, but this one is still one of the best. Not to brag, but I’m pretty good at it. If you have somehow never played it, just do a Google search for it and you’ll find a version free online.
I was really excited to get this game. I like Mahjong games. And this looked similar to Picross 3D so how could I lose? This game has one fatal flaw and I will never understand what the developers were thinking, other than taking the easy way out and destroying their game in the process.
In this game, you are given 3D shapes covered in Mahjong tiles. In typical Mahjong (which is actually the Chinese game Shanghai, not Mahjong) style, you match tiles to clear the play space. It’s a very simple matching game, with just a smidge of strategy thrown in. You need to know enough to clear outside tiles first. That’s about it. This game is the same in concept. It’s the game play that wrecks this game. Take a look at the picture below. Do you see the problem?
You probably need to understand the 3DS to see the problem. The top screen is a display screen. The bottom is a touch screen which allows you to use a stylus to interact with the game. However, this game uses the buttons to play. That is the stupidest idea for a game like this. It could have been as fun as I expected by using the touch screen. But no, they had to go and use the buttons and D-pad. Because of this critical flaw, this game is forever doomed to my stinkers list.
This game was close to making my top 25, but I felt I had enough puzzle games there. This entry on the Nintendo DS is a collection of many different types of puzzles including hangman, picture puzzles, crosswords, word searches, sudoku and many more! There were actually four games in this series, and they may not be done. Any one of them is great and they each add or remove something from a previous game. There was one released for the Nintendo DS, two for the 3DS and one downloadable for the 3DS.
It all started on the DS, however, so that’s where I’ll start, too. I have spent many, many hours on this game. It’s great for quick bursts of puzzling fun. The later levels will start to take longer to solve. Toward the end, it was taking me 20+ minutes for some of the more detailed puzzles. The stylus, as usual, is perfect for puzzle games like this. The crosswords are handled well as you can write the letters on the screen and it is able to detect them. It may take a bit of tweaking in the settings for it to recognize certain letters, but once it’s dialed in, it’s near-perfect.
The variety of games is nice and will keep your brain occupied. They are a great mix of logic puzzles and word games. You don’t have to play any that you don’t want to, which is nice. Many games only unlock games as you play, but this one lets you have full reign. There are also challenge modes in some versions, where the puzzles are a bit harder. My favorite are the word searches (I’m just a sucker for them) and the link-a-pix, which is the ambulance picture above.
You may not have heard of the series, but it’s a must if you like puzzle games as much as I do!
I have played through this game three times total and have played through it perfectly once. According to my DS, I have spent over 200 hours playing this game. I will probably play it another 200 in my lifetime. It was a new way of thinking for me and the only puzzle game of its kind that I’ve ever played. And it is challenging and so much fun.
I had never played a picross game before, so the switch to 3D was non-existent for me. I have played them religiously since, but this was my intro to the genre. This is a logic game through and through. You are presented with a cube or other shape with numbers on the outside of it. Your job is to whittle away at the cube until you reveal the hidden shape inside. The numbers are clues to help you do this. The stylus and touch screen make this a breeze and fun. They represent how many cubes are in each row or column. Getting started is pretty easy as long as you have either 0’s (none of the cubes belong in that row) or the maximum numbers of cubes for the row (all belong). From there, you can work your way through it and figure out which cubes belong there and which don’t.
The most challenging part of this game is the perfection, though. To get a perfect score, you need to complete a level perfectly and within their time limit. It forces you to think a bit more quickly than you might like, which means that you are apt to make mistakes. I had to replay some levels six or seven times to get it perfect. Some puzzles took upwards of 25 minutes to complete. And I loved every second of it.
If you like logic and puzzle games, definitely get this one. There’s is a sequel released in Japan, but 3DS games are region-locked, so I’d have to get a Japanese 3DS to play it, which I’m not going to do. There are rumors that it is going to be released in Europe, so I’m hoping they extend that to the US as well.
Once upon a time, I moved out of my parents’ house and into the world. I had a decent paying job, so one of the first things I bought was a shiny new Packard Bell computer (I didn’t know any better yet!). And the first game I bought for that computer was The Neverhood.
This game was made entirely from stop-motion using clay. It was beautiful, funny and HARD. Back then, we didn’t have much of an internet to look up help files or forums. We had to figure things out for ourselves. This is why a lot of us didn’t finish many games back then, and this was one of those for me. It was a puzzler through and through. There were always levers and buttons that did some unknown thing. Your next step usually wasn’t obvious and you would get all frustrated and AAAAHHH.
I’ve pushed this damn button 15 times and NOTHING HAPPENS!
I digress. This was actually a fun game. I haven’t played it since way back then (1997ish). I don’t think I would play it again as I want this one to remain a happy memory. Sometimes, when you play old games, they are just not as good as you remember.
Genre: Match-3, RPG
Platform: All, I think. I have it for Nintendo DS and XBox 360.
Having long been a fan of match-3 type of games, you can imagine my delight at finding a game that combined that simple game play with RPG elements. I believe this was one of the first games I downloaded from the XBox Live arcade, many years ago. I have played the poo out of this game. I have played it all the way through at least 10 times, which is no small feat because there’s a lot of grinding involved in it. I personally think the DS version of the game is best due to the use of the stylus.
This game has you create a character from a few different classes and start on your merry way. It has some “save the princess” story, but there are definitely twists on it. For example, you have the option to help the princess escape her situation of forced marriage and be a badass with you on the road. Of course I did this. Screw the man!
As you play, you level up and get to assign points for different attributes which increase the game play. As you encounter certain enemies, you can “capture” them by completing an often-challenging mini game. Once you do that, you learn the spells it knows, allowing you greater ability to customize your character. You can also lay siege to cities, build a citadel with various beneficial buildings, train mounts and research spells.
The “Quest” part of this game is no laughing matter. There are a TON of quests to do, and it may take you hours of grinding to become powerful enough to complete some of them. That was fine with me, however, because this is a super fun game. There have been a few other versions of it. I never gave Puzzle Quest 2 a fair shake and I’ll go back to it someday. I didn’t like Puzzle Quest Galactrix, which is hexagonal and set in space. There’s also a Marvel version which is quite good, too. But I would first check out the original and its expansion, which is always included with the original game. Have fun!
First, what are “silly bandz”? Seriously, I had no idea what they are. Do kids shoot them at one another like rubber bands? Because that’s what this game will make you think. The game even came with a package of them, but I still have no idea what they are. Ok, after a quick Google search, it appears that kids wear these things like bracelets. They don’t look too comfortable:
I guess they are shaped differently and have some sort of collectible appeal?
So how could you possibly make a game about this? Angry Birds ripoff! It tempted me with the promise of collecting the “silly bandz” (you know how much I like to collect things), but the collection screen only shows you a small amount that you’ve collected, not everything. The game itself is a short one, with about 2 hours to finish. If you strive for 3 stars on each level, though, good luck. After playing through a few levels as well as I could, I only got two (out of three) stars twice. The game doesn’t allow you to zoom out nearly far enough, so you’re really guessing on your shots, which can be frustrating. The music is repetitive and doesn’t add anything to the game. It does increase in difficulty as you progress, but I had no desire to keep playing after about 1.5 hours.
If this game had somehow made it onto your radar, get rid of it. It’s not fun at all.
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