I just finished up another little arcade game called Student Driver. In the game, you drive your car with the mouse and avoid cones and other cars in order to get to the parking lot. In the parking lot, you want to try and park as close as possible to the designated spot to earn more time and points. Compete for the high score online now! and please send us feedback about bugs, fixes, or tweaks to make scoring better.
This weekend, I finished up on a nice FREE game for our new online arcade. The website aspect is still not quite finished and will probably see some more ad support (since it does take time to make these games), but the game is ready to play and enjoy. The top 100 scores will even be saved/displayed online. The game is the Magic Pencil and in it you are tasked with protecting your homework from these creatures who feast on it. You can draw with ink, paint, pencil, etc to protect your homework from these enemies. There is more explanation about all of the play mechanics etc. in-game...just click help. Hope people enjoy the game. I'm hoping to get a couple more games online in the next couple weeks...so keep checking out our arcade. Please send me an email (mike[at]gnadegames.com) or post comments about any bugs/etc. and I will address them. Cheers-
Mario Hoops is hard to review. Nintendo and Square-Enix put so much production and money into the game, that it is very distracting when trying to review the game on its own merits. This game screams big-budget! It's the equivalent of a summer blockbuster movie...only it's a video game on Nintendo DS. When I first picked up Mario Hoops, played through the tutorial, and started playing I was blown away by the graphics, presentation and even the unique gameplay. It is very impressive in the first couple hours, but as I went on to the second tournament and then the third, I realized that this was the most ridiculously easy game I had ever played. I just lost my first match yesterday and am now being challenged in the Hard Mode Star cup...so the 7th tournament. It has made the game a little more interesting and a little more annoying. The controls, which I had no problems with in the early easy part of the game when I was just dunking nonstop on my competitors, have become problematic. I have tried passing several times to a player on a fast break and have instead jumped up for a mid-court jump-shot...very frustrating. At the same time, I like the increased defense of the computer controlled players. It should be noted that this is not a basketball game...well not really. Though you shoot, slamdunk and dribble, the game is basically a scramble to ? blocks to rack up coins before you attempt to score and put these coins in your bank. It doesn't feel like a basketball game because the strategy is not about protecting the hoop, since letting a character dunk on you only nets 20 pts., but instead about chasing aroudn ? blocks for items and to prevent the offensive player from collecting coins to add to his potential basket (20 pt. dunk + 100 coins = 120 pts!). It's different, and while I was playing the super easy tournaments I was yearning for the ability to have my brother and friends join in for some multiplayer, which I am sure would be a ton of fun. No Nintendo wifi connection! It's a glaring issue and I can't believe that the developers didn't offer this feature. They poor salts in our wounds too, since you don't have any hoops download play only lame mini-games. They really should've delayed the game to include wifi online play like they did for Metroid Prime Hunters...it would have added a lot of value and fun to the game. That pretty much sums up the game...while fun and amazingly well produced, Mario Hoops lack the extra shine and features that would've made it really great and would've forgiven it for its control and other small gameplay issues. With only local multiplayer and a limited 1player experience, this game's flaws become less forgivable and more frustrating.
Gameplay: 7/10 Pros: Unique take on basketball, the control and placement of dribbling the ball is really cool, multiplayer would be a blast Cons: The control for passing/shooting can be frustrating, the first 5 tournaments are ludicrously easy
Graphics: 10/10 Pros: Best 3D graphics on DS hands down Cons: ?
Sound: 9/10 Pros: Clear quality voicework, amazing sounds, catchy theme song Cons: Each charater only says a couple things and it can get very repetitive
Lasting Appeal: 5/10 Pros: Mini-games included, multiple tournaments, multiplayer game is fun Cons: Limited multiplayer support, mini-games are lame, single player is too easy and the only incentive to keep playing is becuase you want to unlock new characters and can't play with a friend or online
Average: 77.5% Tilt (+/-): - 7.5% I t is just inexcusable that some of the features weren't included in this game, it only makes it worse that the game has such high production values. All the more reason to take the time and spend the money.
The website overhaul is finished...or should be relatively finished now. Please leave comments or email me if there are any links or dead-ends or any problems with the new website. I think the new website has a much more professional and better overall look. The other thing that I should mention is that Gnade Games is now officially Graduate Games. Though some references to Gnade Games will still exist (for instance this blog), our actual company name is going to change since now that my friend Zak is on board it is just more inclusive and less pretentious to not have my name in the name of the company. Just keep that in mind and be aware that Gnade Games is synonomous with Graduate Games and hopefully by the time the first Graduate Games title comes out all this naming nonsense will be behind us. September is coming to a close and Meteor Mayhem will be featured in GameTunnel's September Roundup. This upcoming review is actually what sparked the whole website overhaul since I was never really happy with the website and it was just sort of a temporary fix until I finished up Meteor Mayhem and had time to get it really looking the way I wanted it to. Of course, then I sort of got pre-occupied with the new game...so having the deadline of September was good. That's all for now. I will soon be reviewing Mario Hoops for DS since I went on sort of a DS spending spree and got these 3 new games. Cheers
I just finished up another little arcade game called Student Driver. In the game, you drive your car with the mouse and avoid cones and other cars in order to get to the parking lot. In the parking lot, you want to try and park as close as possible to the designated spot to earn more time and points. Compete for the high score online now! and please send us feedback about bugs, fixes, or tweaks to make scoring better.
