Alien Swarm was released on Steam a couple days ago and what they gave us is quite a great game for fans of co-op gameplay.  While borrowing quite liberally from various sources, it makes up for its lack of originality with pure fun.  What you are getting is a 3rd person “twin stick” shooter, but with the usual PC mouse/keyboard controls instead (aka, more control).  Move with the typical WASD and aim with your mouse and kill aliens.  There is one campaign comprised of a handful of levels that has you complete various objectives like killing all the swarm eggs or bringing power back to make your escape.  To complete these objectives you need to work together well as a team with your 4 person squad each with their own class (officer, special weapons, medic, and tech). Each have their own roles and things they can and cannot do.  To mix things up a bit more there are two characters to pick for each class that may be better at one stat or have a different ability.  You have your main weapon, a secondary weapon, and an offhand weapon that can also be armor or boosts and some weapons are exclusive to certain classes.

So why did I mention Left 4 Dead?  Well, besides the objectives you’re still just running around a level and killing lots of enemies and also like our favorite co-op zombie game if you wait around too long or are moving too slowly the game will throw a nice big swarm at you (think a horde in L4D).  I mentioned Killing Floor too because it takes the L4D formula but added classes and abilities plus leveling up and Alien Swarm has this as well.  Unlike Killing Floor it is not per class/character but instead an overall level you have as a player.  The more you play (and the better you do) the more XP you get and each level brings you closer to more weapons, items, and armor.  While you may start with your basic machine guns and pistols you will quickly be getting tesla rifles, stronger armor, flamethrowers and lots more.  Your XP is carried over so it’s not just for that session and it is all saved to the Steam Cloud so if you want to play on multiple PCs you are all set and do not have to copy saves over.

I myself have put in over 5 hours into this game having finished the campaign already but there is high replay value.  If leveling up and earning all the weapons wasn’t enough, nor the massive amounts of achievements, there is also the fact that there are multiple difficulty levels to play and obviously you can always switch up what class you are playing.  This also came with the newly updated Source SDK and they are encouraging others to make mods, levels, and other add ons so I look forward to seeing what the community brings us.

This being a Source game you can pretty much know what to expect.  This is a game that will look and run great on most modern systems and has a bit of that grain filter as seen in Left 4 Dead.  On my laptop running a Radeon HD 2600 it ran around 30 fps at medium settings @ 1280×800 and on my desktop running a GeForce 9800 GT it ran at 45-50 fps at max settings @ 1920×1080.  Expect lots of bloom and some other nice lighting and weather effects.  I did not really experience any kind of slowdown except a couple of minor lag hits and the game’s slow motion segments.

So how much would you expect to pay for all this?  I mean, this is certainly a fully featured game that will keep you busy for hours and hours, you’d expect this to be a decent amount of money.  Maybe a bit less since it started off as a UT2004 mod like Killing Mod.  So is it a full price $50? A UT2004 mod turned Source price of $20?  Indie game price of $10?  How about FREE?  That’s right, all of this was released at no cost to us the gamers.  Sure, I could have started my review off by saying this was a free game but then as you read everything you would probably say “Well, he’s only saying that because it’s free” or “yeah, it’s good… for free” but I assure you this is not the case.  With all the various people that I played with they all agreed that they would have gladly paid for this game and are shocked that Valve would leave that kind of money sitting on the table.  The game being free ensures that this game has a very large community that will only grow as word gets out and as more is developed for it.  I had no problems finding people to play with and while the matchmaking could use a bit of work [UPDATED 7-23-2010: The game has been updated to now show if a game is "in progress" or if it is waiting in lobby which was a major issue with the matchmaking]if you want to play with randoms, playing with friends is extremely easy as it is with all Valve/Source games.  In my time playing I saw very few bugs and glitches and any shortcomings were definitely forgiven with it’s free price, but they were still very few and far between.  People keep mumbling that maybe they will charge for the add ons and were grumbling in the process but I say that I would gladly pay for any add ons to show my support for such a project.

In the end I still could go on about how it has unlockables for TF2, references to various other games and movies, but the bottom line is that you need to load Steam up right now and download this game!  I will gladly play with anyone who is ready and willing and expect me to update this review as the game is updated and added onto (if such a thing happens).  One last final word…  After decades of playing shooting games, FINALLY someone makes a game where you lose whatever ammo was left in the clip if you reload before spending all your ammo.  Kudos on this game Valve, keep up the good work.

4.5/5 – A solid game free or not, but the price makes it that much more appealing.  I may have finished the campaign already but I will be playing this for a long time to come and my friends are still talking about what we can do differently, what we’ll do next time, etc.  Click here to download the game and enjoy this 3rd person “Twin stick” shooter.

[UPDATE 7-20-2010 @ 12:16 AM] Game is SUPER fun with a lot of different possibilities.  Reminds me a lot of Killing Floor but with aliens and as a twin stick shooter (although with mouse/keyboard obviously).  Will post more impressions and a review soon.

Avatar Rockets is a simple game in many senses of the word.  The graphics are just basic outlined shapes with solid colors and a “sketch” look to it with some minor shading.  The sound is of a rocket engine and some music.  The controls are the right trigger and pressing left and right on the analog stick.  And the goal?  Well, it’s to get as high as you can before running out of fuel.  Despite all this simplicity, this game just “works.”

After you load the game up you can launch right into the game using 1 of 12 premade rockets or you can use the in game “Rocket Paint” mode to create your own rocket design.  After that it’s 3…2…1… BLAST OFF, pull the right trigger for some rocket throttle and start going upward.  It uses the right trigger so you can ease up off of it and not have to go full blast all the time and you’re going to want to do this because the trick to a high score is making sure you do not waste fuel.  As you get to a certain point you will find more fuel to collect in the sky but you have to maneuver around to get them.  It’s a rocket after all so don’t expect to just hit left and you go right do it, you’re going to to be steering with thrust in mind.  It will definitely take a few tries to get used to it, but once you do then you will be playing round after round trying to be more fuel efficient and grabbing all those power ups to get higher and higher.  As you get higher up you will also run into monkeys that will fly at you.  If they latch onto your rocket they will make the controls backwards and therefore harder to hit the fuel power up.  Also, if you miss a fuel power up you have to go back, the next one does not appear until you collect the previous so you can’t just keep going and hope to get the next.  It may not sound like much fun, but this is a leaderboard driven game.

That’s right, I said leaderboards.  Despite this game being an XBLI game, it has online leaderboards which I did not even think was possible.  The game should be commended for this fact alone, especially for a game that’s so score based (When is the last time you played I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES?), but they went multiple steps ahead to keep the game an even better experience.  You see, instead of just having you see your score afterwards and then seeing a leaderboard, you will actually see the name and rank of someone as you are flying by their height in game much like in Trials HD.  You will have an immediately knowledge of beating someone’s score or just how close you were to beating it making you want to play again to try and get passed that score (and the next, and the next…).  This is genius for any game, let alone one that is made in a category of games that never have leaderboards.  If you have friends with the game they have a separate leaderboard for that and you will even have your top friend score always on screen so you have a goal to shoot for.

Not satisfied with just leaderboards the makers of Avatar Rockets also added Xbox Live Party play.  You select whether you would like to do a Best of Five mode where players have 5 attempts to post their highest score, To the Moon where the player with the highest combined score after 5 attempts wins, or 54 Stars mode where the players have unlimited fuel and it’s a race to see who can be the first to collect 54 stars before anyone else.  Once picking a mode you can then choose to find a game or create a private game.  I have not had any success just finding a random game in this, but that is to be expected for something also niche as this, but I was able to coordinate with a friend.  While it supports up to 8 players, we just did the two of us in all 3 modes and had a lot of fun.  You do not see your friend(s) playing, you just do what your goal is while they are doing it and you can see their score on your screen while you play.  If you crash and burn before they are done you will be told to wait and still see their score go up.  Even in this instance you still do not see them playing, just their score.  While fun for a short time, I found that the game’s strong point was to just play single player and shoot for a higher score, and I’m sure others feel the same way and that is why you’ll never really find anyone to play online.

The music in the game is rather well done too.  It’s a piano driven rock song that is high quality and not repetitive enough to get annoying which is good since you’ll be hearing it a lot while playing over and over.  Sure it may get to you after a while, but you can always just throw another tune on from your hard drive or network.  Considering the small file size it’s more than other games give.  The graphics as I mentioned before are a sketch style and it works great for the game.  Your Avatar is in fact piloting the ship, but most of the time you’ll barely see him or her since they are so small and it’s really not much of a factor, but as I said, I’m sure it gained more curiosity downloads that way.

3.5/5 Stars – A simple and fun Indie game with some features not found in other indie games that will keep you playing round after round, if even only in short bursts.  Only 80 points ($1) so a great value and highly recommended.  Click here to go to the official Xbox.com page for it and add it to your download queue.

The TMNT arcade game holds many records in terms of money made by an arcade game and it’s easy to see why.  What you have is a 4 player co-op game (4x the money coming in at once) in the popular (at the time) beat-em-up/brawler genre based on a super popular license.  Add in the fact that the game is actually GOOD and FUN (licensed games makers of today take note) while still having very easy ways to die that make you want to keep pumping quarters in, and you have yourself a hit.

Konami made lots of games like this back in the day including the equally great Simpsons arcade game and one of my all-time favorites X-Men arcade game (the one based on Pryde of the X-Men, not the Capcom fighter).  The gameplay is simple: move from left to right (with the faux 3D ability of moving up and down as well) with two buttons – attack and jump.  You can do limited combos by repeatedly pressing the attack button plus you can do jumping attacks and if you hit both buttons at the same time you do your special (Although that will use up a bit of your health).  Arcade games needed to be simple enough to be able to pick up and play with minimal instruction, but not too basic that it wasn’t fun to play.  While this style is not as engaging as it was back in 1989 with some people looking for more depth, it’s a great way to go through a game with some friends that you can beat in 25 minutes.

The graphics are bright and detailed for a game from the late 80s and match the cartoon very well.  The sound is also great because it uses the voice actors from the animated series as well.  They did a great job mimicking the style of the cartoon series and even have a story that plays out like an episode where April is kidnapped and you’re trying to save her.  The XBLA version retains these graphics and sounds just as they were in 1989 and even keeps the game 4×3 with some borders on the sides for those of you allergic to black bars on your TV screen.  They also added some online co-op for up to 4 players with any combination of plays and consoles (ie, 2 on one console+1 on two other systems or whatever the case may be) and with this being such a well selling game you can still expect to find people playing this game online to this day.  Since co-op is the way to go with this game, this is a great addition and it’s great to hear that people still enjoy it.

While this may not be enough for everyone to warrant a purchase, for those that loved the original and still dig these kinds of games it is a great deal at only 400 MS points ($5) and I highly recommend it.  I was hoping that Turtles in Time would get the same treatment, but instead we got the strange remake, so old-school purists will especially appreciate this.  Click here to go to the official Xbox.com listing and add it to your download queue.

4/5 Stars – I still have a blast loading this game up every few week and doing a runthrough with friends trying to beat our high scores and get the rest of the achievements.  This is one of the best selling XBLA games of all time with good reason and you will still find plenty of people playing online if you don’t have friends interested.  Kudos to Konami and Ubisoft for coming up with an agreement to get this game out and at a great price.

This is Track and Field as it was in the arcades for better or worse.  You can play 1-4 player either locally or online.  If you plan to play online, plan to coordinate with friends because you will not find random people just playing this.  Once you pick the number of players you have to put in your initials, but unfortunately there is still the stupid arcade time limit which is rarely enough time for all 4 to get it done in time.  Once you start playing it’s as it was in the arcade with you doing a certain series of events, it is not like later games where you pick which event you are playing.  Each event will have a certain qualifying time/distance and if you qualify you move onto the next event.  While there is something to be said about being able to keep progressing, there is a reason that later games in the genre let you pick what event you play.  It is a bit annoying to get all to way to a certain event and then lose because you’ve never played before and the only way to get any practice is to make it to that event again.

So what exactly are the events?  Well, you start off with the very simple 100 meter dash.  Now you may be used to later genre titles that have you mash buttons to run but not Track and Field.  Remember how I said many joysticks were broken for my Commodore 64?  The reason is that to run you have to alternately press left and right so you’re essentially “wiggling the joystick” back and forth and the faster you do it the faster you run.  If you think mashing buttons can get loud, imagine you wiggling the analog stick (left only, doesn’t let you use the right) back and forth.  Back on the C64 the joysticks we had actually did make a clicking noise even with one motion so it was a noisy experience.   Add the yelling plus the breaking from too much force and there isn’t much like it.  On 360 you will still get people yelling, but hopefully less joysticks breaking.  It is not just the 100 meter dash that controls like that though.  The next event is the long jump: you wiggle to run again, but then have to time a button press to start the jump and you hold until it’s at the angle you want.  Get the right speed, timing of the jump, and timing of the angle and you will get a great score.  The javelin throw comes after that and it plays exactly the same way.  Now with the 110 meter hurdles you go back to the control of the 100 meter dash, but now have to press A to jump hurdles.  Each event keeps track of records locally but also has a “world record” to beat, and this even has a record of 0.02 seconds so I’m not quite sure how anyone can beat that.  All those events are easy to do and fun to shave time off or get a better distance, especially multiplayer, but after that this game starts to get very difficult and it starts to fall apart.

Once you hit the hammer throw you’re in for even more frustration that can lead to broken controllers from you throwing instead of breaking while playing.  Again you wiggle the joystick and then hold the button to get the right angle like you would the javelin, but now you have to worry about timing when you throw it so that it stays within the zone without fouling.  As your guy spins faster and faster it is really hard to time in and if the previous events had built up in any kind of difficulty to get you ready for that it wouldn’t be as jarring, but unfortunately this is where you will start to see many of your sessions ending.  As previously mentioned, you will fail many times and then have to play through the begging again and again to try and get to this event to get some practice.  To make matters worse it is the wiggling as I mentioned before, and every game since has had you do a circular motion on the controller so it takes some getting used to.  Finally you end with the high jump where after you set the height you wiggle to run, and then A to jump with you holding for the angle again… but then you have to hit again to lift your body…  or something.   Even after all these years I still cannot do this event, and since it’s at the end I can’t just practice it over and over, so this is where the game stops for me.  I believe that there is nothing after it, but I will never know.  Game over man, game over.

Something that makes this game a bit uneven is that something like the long jump you get 3 tries to qualify, but then the hurdles you only get one try.  Even if this is more like how it is done in the real Olympics it makes for an unfair game at times due to how it is setup to have you progress to the next event.  Also when doing running events it is only 2 people going at a time, even when 4 player.  The rest of the events are obviously just everyone taking their turn.

The game does not save the scores in game like the arcade after each session but it does have online leaderboards which are split up for each event and have the usual filters of “my score”, “overall”, “friends.”  Another nice addition is the enhanced graphics and sounds (which are purely optional so you purists out there can calm down).  It is nothing major of an enhancement, but an improvement over the blocky original graphics.  The sound I noticed very little, if any, difference though.  There are also the usual 12 achievements worth 200 points as with any XBLA game and they have you just meet certain goals on each event.

In the end I still have a great deal of fun with this game, as do my friends, but after a round or two if we’re still in the mood we end up moving towards a newer game in the genre since the setup is just so much nicer.  The ability to pick which events you play and get some practice in that way, plus the change to put at least a little variety in the controls has helped a bit.

3/5 Stars – The game is fun, but only in short bursts.  While classic, it is also dated and just makes me realize that while not many advancements have been made in the genre, they have where they count.  Unfortunately the game is still 400 MS points ($5) and there are other games for the same price that will give you more value on the service.  Click here to download for yourself.  Note to Nintendo: Bring out World Class Track Meet for use with the DDR Mat please!

After a horrendously long load time to just get to the main menu (yep, to get to the main menu you’re waiting over 30 seconds) I was shown that I could play this game single player or multiplayer.  There is a “controller” option as well that shows you the controls but cannot be changed, but I found this pointless since during that long load time it shows the controller layout.  If you can’t remember the controls after that load time then you need help.  You know what, scratch that, you won’t need to know the controls anyway because you won’t want to play this game at all.

Taken straight from the game “The Federated Space Agency has recruited you to help secure the station on At Xa-Tam.  Though the station has long been abandoned, the Beeligoods and Egwanantz also want to claim it.  As a Federated Armed Space Trooper, your mission is to take control of the station.  Eliminate any aliens that stand in your way.”  Yup, that’s the object of the game.  Granted FPS games aren’t known for their stories, especially the old school shooters like Doom and Wolfenstein, but they at least tried.  It also states that “On each of the 20 levels you must open the door to access the next level.”  Wow, they are blowing my mind with this concept.  While I may sound like I am being really harsh on it, I would let all this pass if it was a fun old school game like Doom, or even made to be like one like the Serious Sam series, but instead it’s just a mess of a game.

You start off and the game looks like an old DOS shooter with its basic geometry of the levels and enclosed spaces.  Anyone ever use 3Dfx Voodoo cards back in the day?  Yeah, it looks like that.  Oh, and don’t think that because there was a 30 second load to get to the menu that the whole game is loaded into memory, nope you have to wait for a load time to get into the game as well.  So now you’re in these bare rooms that barely have any space to move around and as you move you realize that the control for looking/aiming is all messed up.  Instead of the usual controls of an FPS where you are moving your central focal point, you have a bit of moving around of the cursor before the screen actually moves.  This leads to a very floaty control that does not work well.  If you pull the left trigger it goes into the zoomed in view like in Call of Duty and that does control more like you would expect, but you won’t want to hold the left trigger the whole time.  Now, if the left trigger does the gun sight view, why is the Y button then the sniper view no matter what weapon you have?  Then you run into your first enemies that do not even animate, they just stand there with their guns always pointing and then lasers start shooting.  When you kill them they instantly have their arms up in the air like they’re about to do the wave, but actually that is their death “animation.”  See those giant red barrels that look explosive? They don’t blow up.  See that computer monitor that may access something?  Nope, it doesn’t.  Also, if you run out of ammo, you better start looking for more because there are no weapons with unlimited ammo and no melee weapons.

Are you still reading this?  Ok, well, I’ll save you the time from going on anymore about this game.  It is just plain not fun, awful looking, controls horribly, and I don’t even know why you’d take the time to go through all 20 levels let alone play it online.  It may be 16 player, but I don’t think I’d find too many others willing to punish themselves enough to play it.  At 240 points ($3) it’s on the low end of game pricing on the system but it still isn’t worth it.  The game could be free and I wouldn’t play it.

0.5/5 Stars – My lowest score yet (yes, lower than Bit.Boy and Dead Meat). I am sorry if the makers of this game are reading this as I know they’re working with a small budget and hopefully doing it as a hobby and not a living, but I just had to be honest about the game.  This game is just not fun and doesn’t even have any good ideas to try and say “well hey, that’s cool.”  Keep trying guys, maybe next time.

I won’t go over the basic rules of Uno again, you can read my review of the Xbox version if you have never played the game before in real life (and by that I mean actual physical cards).  This review is going to focus on what makes it different from the XBLA version.  This version is released by GameLoft who is more known for their cell phone games but have done a few other downloadable games like Prince of Persia Classic and TV Quiz Host.  Unfortunately right away you can tell this game was working on a smaller budget and just does not seem as polished as the Xbox version.  Since PS3 does not have Avatars like Xbox, the game just has you create your own that’s just for this game, but has very few options (and appears to be the same exact setup from TV Quiz Host, which was just a Wii port).  The avatars look cheap, the cards tare smaller, there is less animation and various other things that aren’t major but still make for a game that doesn’t look as good as the competitor’s version.  It is still Uno, and it is still fun for that reason, but for a game that came out 2 years later and is 2x the cost you would expect a bit more.  Another minor aspect is that the controls are slightly different, which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that now to Challenge someone you have to hit the R1 button when on Xbox all controls were with your 4 main face buttons.  Uno is meant to be a simple pick up and play and now people are having to remember which buttons do what when there is the Square button that doesn’t do anything.

Luckily not all the differences are bad though.  The first thing I noticed was that instead of single player being just you vs. 4 AI players, there is a sort of single player tournament/challenge mode to go through.  I tried this out first to see what the game was like, and it was a great way to start because it eases you into the game and gradually shows you all the different modes and even allows you to unlock more backgrounds and card types (sadly, nothing that affects gameplay, it’s all just cosmetic).  It is labeled as Tournament so you may not realize that is the game’s single player mode, but once in you can choose a difficulty level and it starts you off with 2 players and works your way up to 4, and eventually 6 players.  Having 6 player games was really cool to me due to the fact that the Xbox game is only 4 player, so this made for a nice addition.  I did find it odd that there were no options for 5 player, and you cannot actually play 2 or 3 player outside of this mode either.  Besides finding out that there were more player number options (XBLA Uno didn’t even have 2 player either, it was always 4 player) you are introduced to the different variations on the rules that are included in the game.  One is Uno 7-0 – Every time a 0 is player, all players must give all their cards to the next player and every time a 7 is played, that player must exchange cards with any player they choose.  The other is Jump-In where if you have exactly the same card (number and color) that is on top of the discard pile, you can play it immediately without waiting for your turn.  These variations are fun to have, especially since they do not have those in the XBLA version.  The Tournament mode has you go through 15 matches with different combinations of players and rules and then you can start a new one on a higher difficulty level to continue unlocking items.

While it’s all good and well that they have a single player mode, Uno is definitely more fun to play with other people.  In a strange move, GameLoft has actually included a local multiplayer option despite the fact that seeing your opponents cards takes away a lot of the challenge.  It is only up to 4 player which I also find a strange choice since you can have 6 controllers on one system, but I do not find myself playing this mode much anyway for the whole reason of the cards being shown.  To their credit they do at least hide the cards when you aren’t playing.  It also seems that you cannot change any of the options when playing local, you have to play basic Uno with the default rules and settings.  At first I thought that this might have been to make it so that you could play multiplayer by passing the controller but I found this was not the case since each player requires their own controller to play.  Thankfully there is online player as well in both ranked and non-ranked games just like the XBLA version.  Again, only 4 and 6 players, but luckily you can have AI sit in if you can’t get enough people to join which is a good thing since this game is a ghost town online.  You would think something as popular as Uno would do well on here, especially since it is still so popular on XBLA, but I have a hard time ever finding anyone to play a game with.  If ever I do find people it is always in a non-ranked game, and never in a ranked game, and it is usually someone who was just playing online with AI opponents hoping for someone else to join.  While sad, this can be easily fixed if you just have other friends that you want to play online with and you know they will get it as well.  Online play does not support the PS3 Eye.

As of this writing there has been no DLC for this game and I have not heard of anything announced either.  While the XBLA version has the different decks to download, this game has the 2 variations built in and the only other decks are mostly color changes.  This could be due to the fact that the DLC decks on XBLA were to advertise for other games and this is GameLoft and not Microsoft, but I am sure GameLoft could find something to advertise for or just come up with a non-licensed extra design.

3.5/5 Stars – While it is nice to see some extra variations and options not in the XBLA version of Uno, overall it is just not as well made.  The addition of local multiplayer may seem appealing but it is too easy to cheat and the online multiplayer is dead unless you coordinate with friends.  Another reason that saying PSN is better than Xbox Live due to it being “free” is not true: the online community is just not there for social gaming.

Uno for XBLA is what XBLA is all about: quick downloadable game that’s easy to pick up and play, can be played with friends online, and at a low price.  This is one of the best selling games on the service and to the surprise of no one.  If you don’t know the rules already, Uno is a card game where you are given a hand of cards and you try to get rid of all your cards before your opponents.  To get rid of cards you have to match the card in the middle in the discard pile either by matching the number, color, or special card.  The special cards do things like skip players or reverse the order you are going in.  If you fail to call “Uno” (done by pressing the X button in the game) before having only 1 card left then someone can challenge that you didn’t call it and you have to draw 2 cards.  If you can’t play anything from your hand during a turn you also have to draw.  That’s it, it’s simple but addictive and fun and there are various options/variations you can play in this version to keep things fresh.

You can play single player against AI opponents or online with up to 4 players, but no local play since seeing your opponents cards makes it much easier.  You can do standard Uno which is play until someone gets 250 points (for each card left of your opponents you get points), Partner Uno is exactly what it sounds like, and then House Rules Uno where you have control over what scoring type it is, what the winning score is, type of penalties, if you need to call Uno, the ability to bluff, and even turn special command cards on and off.  All this is available in single player as well as online.  Everything runs extremely well online since it’s a turn based game and even adds a timer to prevent people from sitting there doing nothing making people wait.  This is also still a very active game online making it very easy to match up with other players.

When playing online you have the choice of either seeing the other players’ video feed from their Xbox Vision camera or you can just keep things private and see their Avatar.  Obviously there’s no way to filter out what people show on the camera so one has to be careful, but it can be cool when playing with a bunch of friends online.  I recommend any females out there wanting to play not to play with a camera unless they just want everyone else playing to constantly ask you to show them your boobs.  The Avatars will do the standard basic animations while playing and was adding in later on as a patch so it definitely feels tacked on, but at least it is in there for those that care.

On top of the standard deck of Uno cards that you can play with there are other decks available for download that add variations with other special cards to use.  There is a 35th Anniversary Deck (this game was released during the 35th Anniversary of the game) that has a “35th” card that requires a player to play a 3 or a 5 as the next card, a Project Gotham Racing 3 deck that has a Gotham TV card that let’s you choose an opponent’s hand to look at, a Kameo deck that has you turn into the different creatures from the game when you match a card (For no real affect on gameplay, it’s purely cosmetic) and a card to swap hands with an opponent, and finally a Street Fighter 2 deck that has a special card that has the opponent of your choosing keep drawing until they draw a “skip” card.  These decks include new sound effects, music, and backgrounds as well and are a great way to extend the replay value of this game to mix things up a bit.  The 35th Anniversary deck is a free download but the PGR3 and Kameo decks will run you 100 MS Points ($1.25) and the SF2 deck is 280 points ($3.50).  In my opinion the Kameo and PRG decks are worth the money, but I have a hard time being able to say that the SF2 deck is worth the money.  It is cool to have but there is no reason it should be that much more expensive especially since it really was released just to advertising for the release of Super Street Fighter 2 HD Remix.

As an XBLA game it has the standard 12 achievements totally 200 points.  All achievements are designed to just keep you playing with the exception of the bluffing achievement.  They are mostly things like win 40 games, play 40 Draw Two cards, play 40 Skip cards, etc.  For those that care this can keep you playing for quite sometime to get them all, and once you do there are still lots of stats that it keeps track of and leaderboards for various things to keep you trying to be the best.

4.5/5 Stars - All in all this is a great downloadable game for only 400 MS points ($5) with lots of features and replay value.  It is a game that came out in 2006 that I still play on a regular basis and I highly recommend anyone who does not have it to download it now.  You can click here to go to the official Xbox.com page for it and add it to your download queue.

Casual puzzle games have been popular on handhelds since long before people referred to games as being “casual.”  Who can forget playing the original Tetris on the original Game Boy for hours on end (for years).  There is just something great about a quick “pick up and play” game experience when on the go, especially since you never know how long you have to play before it’s your stop on the bus or your turn in line.  Mumbo Jumbo is a big name in the casual market and 7 Wonders of the Ancient World is an entry from them in the “match 3” sub-genre of puzzle games.

For this review in particular I played it on the PSP but it is also available on the DS which is the same game but with touch controls.  A PC version is also available but obviously lacks the “portable” factor unless you count a laptop.  I found it to be a good time to post this review now that the PSP Go is out and others may be looking for what is available to download.

So the premise of the game is that there are the 7 Wonders of the World and you will go from Wonder to Wonder building them.  To build them you will play the usual match 3 game that we’ve all played a million times before with games like Bejewelled.  What makes this one a bit different (besides setting) is that to do the building it’s not just matching.  You see, when you make a match of 3 runes the “building blocks” behind it fall down and the workers grab the rock fragments and carry them off to build.  The faster you work, the more workers will be added to the building site.  If you match 3 runes in an area that already had building blocks fall, you will not get anymore blocks, just some points and a shift in the spacing of the rest of the runes.  To complete a level you must get all the building blocks to fall down to the works as well as cornerstones and capstones that will appear.  The cornerstones and capstones cannot be matched and do not disappear, you must match all the runes below them to make them fall row by row.  Once all building blocks are collected as well as the cornerstones and capstones the level is complete.  This changes strategy a bit since you’ll go for runes that will make you get more building blocks over just get any match.  Of course, all of this has to be done before the timer runs out.  The levels are usually not your regular basic square either, they will be of a variety of shapes leading to more of a challenge to get all the building blocks.  It controls well enough too with you use the D-pad or analog nub to select the rune and then hold the X button while choosing which rune to swap with.  On DS it’s as simple as sliding on the touch screen and on PC you obviously just point,click, and drag.

On top of the usual match 3, you can match 4 runes and create a lightning ball.  Swap it with an adjacent rune to destroy all the building blocks horizontally from it.  You can also match 5 or more runes and create a fire ball which will clear all building blocks that are directly horizontal as well as vertical from where you used it.  Use enough lightning balls and fireballs and earn an Extra Bonus that when swapped with a rune, all the runes of that kind are wiped from the board.  A lot is very similar, while mixing in some new stuff without straying too far creating a fun puzzle experience. 

There are multiple game modes: Story, Free Play, and Rune Quest.  Story mode is just an excuse to go from Wonder to Wonder with a bit of history as to what was being built and why.  Have to complete certain sections until all is built.   Free Play lets you pick which level you play out of all those you have unlocked by playing them in the Story Mode.  And finally Rune Quest also lets you choose any level unlocked in Story Mode but does not have the building block aspect.  Instead you are giving particular runes that you need to make a certain number of matches of to complete the level all while being timed.  There is also a History option from the main menu that will just go over the “story” in story mode.  The final option in the main menu is to display your scores which are, unfortunately, only local scores.  This shows that they went with minimal effort on this port, but I don’t believe even the PC version does online leader boards.

The graphics and sound are of a typical puzzle game fashion: Make the runes flashy and colorful and have your basic tunes and sound effects.  Enough to get the job done without going overly elaborate.  This is great on a PC where you want it to run on a variety of hardware, on a portable that’s capable of more it’s a little annoying, but we aren’t playing these games for graphics and sound.

In the end this gives a lot to play and do all in a nice little inexpensive package but I did find one major flaw in this game.  As I mentioned, you will have to do multiple levels to complete building a Wonder.  The way that the PSP version is setup it only saves only after completing all the levels in a section which is a very poor way to do it on a portable.  Each level can take a bit of time depending on how difficult it is and your skill level, and you may not have time to beat 4 or 5 levels before it lets you save.  While there is a sleep mode on the PSP (and a Save State on the Go) the developers should not have relied on this and let you save after each level, especially if you just want to take a break from the game.  This lead me to a lot of starting over again and I have yet to finish the game because of it.  Not a total deal breaker, but definitely a major oversight when making a portable game.

At $9.99 and only 18 MB to download you will get a great “match 3” puzzle game that will keep you busy for hours and hours.  Great for a portable, especially with the new Go.  If you prefer it is also on UMD but tends to actually be more expensive than the download version from the Playstation Store.  With this much replay value it is definitely worth “owning forever” by getting the download.

4/5 stars – What portable gaming has almost always been all about, a great puzzle game with lots of replay value.  A bungled save system brings it down a bit, but overall a great value and a great game.

I know the link below shows the DS version, but it will bring you to where you can get the PSP version and PC version as well.