Bloons: Tower Defense [DS] [QUICK&SHORT]

Overview

Cute and enjoyable Tower Defence game, based around positioning your monkeys along a path to pop wave after wave of colourful balloons. Plenty of different tracks and types of monkey available to keep you playing through all 15 levels.

As you can see, it's a bright and colourful affair. With monkeys.

Major Points
Fun - It just cannot be denied how upbeat and playable this game is - putting down dart monkeys to pop lone balloons, placing a missile monkey to blast groups to pieces - all of the monkeys are unique and loveable.
Addictive - Then when you consider there is fifteen different levels with easy, medium and hard medals up for grabs - this becomes a title that can offer many hours of play. Learning which monkeys, upgrades and placements work best on each level is as rewarding as it is satisfying. Finally factor in the horrendously catchy music and we have a classic.
Tough Love - Perhaps one point that goes as much in Bloons' favour as against it, is that the game is pretty challenging. Hard levels require careful use of monkeys, upgrades and spending in order to survive - and some of them require a miracle. Getting all the way to the final wave, only to have a sneaky group of balloons knock off your last lives causes screams of anguish.... but I'll have another go just to get it completed....

One of the best monkey powers in the game - superhero monkeys wipe the screen clean!

Conclusion
Shiny and fun - the graphics are bright and functional and suit the DS screen perfectly. Touch screen controls work well to allow for quick monkey placement. Music is still going round and round in my head.
Feeding that old itch - maybe I'm just a sucker for Tower Defense games, but this kept me going for a while. That's not that there's masses of content here - but I think I've tried to beat the harder levels about 20 times each... and failed miserably.
A tad too difficult? - The high difficulty level does beg the question: are kids meant to be able to complete this? Because either I'm over the hill or this could be a bit off-putting for younger players.

Why not try it for yourself on-line? It's available at: 

http://ninjakiwi.com/Games/Tower-Defense/Play/Bloons-Tower-Defense.html

Images in this review are from http://uk.ign.com/images/games/bloons-tower-defense-dsi-122322/3558348 and are subject to relevant copyrights.

Skrillex - Bangarang EP [CD] [QUICK&SHORT]

Overview

Dubstep offering from Sonny John Moore (a.k.a. Skrillex), former lead singer of "From First to Last" - an American post-hardcore band. Following this musical turnaround, Skrillex has released several albums of material on his website, with the Bangarang E.P. being the most recent.

Major Points

Catchy - Although the chosen genre will alienate some straight away, the heavy bass and choppy melodies are quite enjoyable and can easily get stuck in your head. 

"Breaking A Sweat" is a particularly good example of this, co-produced with the surviving members of The Doors:

Slick Mix - This guy has clearly picked up the skills on the decks pretty quickly since he stopped screaming into a microphone: the album is well put-together and crisply edited. Treble synth pulls into a climax before the deep, wobbling bass throbs in to harmonise. 

Take a listen to "Right In" on a good sound system to appreciate this: 

Free Sample? - The only major gripe with the album is that it loses some of the fresh punch in the later tracks, and this may be due to the limited sample sets. The samples in each track are used repetitively and frequently, often feeling unnecessary ("Right on time, right on time...."). Using a wider selection of samples, or allowing the synth to take more of the tune would allow the tracks to hold my attention for longer.

Conclusion

Fresh - the EP feels new, vibrant and is great fun to listen to a few times.

Overused samples - the major downside is that this vibrancy is lost when the same sample is repeated endlessly. This may be to keep Skrillex's dubstep-cred up, but it doesn't work too well in this album.

Potential - Given that this is still early work for Skrillex, and as this album is well produced and conceived, there is a lot of potential for more excellent tuneage from Mr. Moore.

Videos on this website and should be copyright of the video uploader. Album art copyright of Skrillex and taken from: http://store.wearebigbeat.com/category/store/artists/sonny-moore-skrillex/

The Great Desktop PC Death Catastrophe! [PC]

Image "Out of Order" courtesy of Dan

Cut down in its prime, my PC has bitten the dust. It had been quite unwell for around a week, but has now lead to a nasty error message and constant crashing BEFORE Windows log-in. Oh poo. I know.

So here's how it was: I was razzing it up on Dawn of War II and having a majorly great time of it - so much so that I had about 50 screen shots ready to pack a review out with! - when things got very slow. The game reduced to a glitchy halting standstill and from then on: zip.

Obviously it goes without saying that the spate of PC game reviews I intended to write will have to be postponed until the crisis is resolved (that is: ANNO 1404, Dawn of War II & Chaos Rising, and some other Steam titles).

Now I have very little experience in the repairs/major maintenance-side of computers and so have had to read around on a few websites to find the general consensus to be "Oh bugger, you'd better save up some money". I am completely at a loss as to how to proceed.

So where do I go from here, friends and members of the public? How do I save/recover the stuff on my hard drive and what is the most cost-effective/best way to get me back up and gaming quickly?

Here are all the techy details on the PC:

• Seagate ST3250310AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 8MB Cache
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 2.6GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Cache
• OCZ 2GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 5-6-6-15 Value Series Memory
• ASUS M3A78-CM 780V Socket AM2+ onboard graphics 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard 
• Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

The machine will turn on - display advanced/BIOS settings pages - but will crash whenever you try to boot Windows. Safe mode etc. do not work, and nor does the memory error fix thingy that Windows tries - this just crashes in the middle of the process.

Any help you can offer would give a PC gamer back his gaming freedom, and give a reviewer access to his source materials. Please comment with any help / advice / suggestions. Thank you.

Image on this page is copyright of dan and can be found at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Computers_g62-Out_Of_Order_p30002.html

Burnout Crash [PS3] [QUICK&SHORT]

Overview
This titles keeps the giant car crashes and explosions from previous Burnout games, but this  is not a racer - instead it's a cunningly disguised puzzler that has enough depth to keep you playing for hours at a time - with 3 game modes across 18 maps and 270 medals to collect!


Major Points
Strategic - This game looks like a pile of explosive car wrecks and destroyed buildings, but is in fact more comparable to Tetris: lining up your pieces to make the biggest chains and destroying them at the right time so as to maximise your score. Each level has specific challenges, such as blowing up all buildings in the level, which earn you medals that allow you to progress through the game.

Gather cars on the road to cause crashes and time your explosions for the greatest destruction.

Exciting - There is of course the fun of smashing one car into another (although this doesn't quite have the impact of the previous titles in the series). This is made up for with a High Definition screen full of explosions, demolitions and "Super Features" providing spectacular finales - things like planes crashing, UFOs laser beaming down and giant mechas smashing everything.

The UFO Super Feature in action - destroying everything in sight.

Apparently Multi-player? - And this is another game that utilises the "Autolog" functionality, which displays your best scores and medals to your online friends. This feature only works, however, if you have any friends who play Burnout Crash (which I do not). It also looks for friends of friends playing Burnout Crash (again, none for me). So basically, all the online features are unavailable as this game is unpopular in my social circles - with no option to go looking for online challengers elsewhere.


Conclusion
Explosive thrills - crash, boom, screech, smash, bang, *sirens*, crash, boooooooom. If you like things crashing into each other and blowing up (a lot) then this will keep you happy.
Tactics, Challenges, Medals - there's a great deal of replay value to each of the levels in the game, requiring several tries to get the highest score and to beat the more awkward tasks. Much more depth here than you may initially think.
Autolog Failure - The highly addictive online features are only open to people who have friends who play Crash. Well, either I'm wildly unpopular or this game quite hasn't caught on yet - so I just get a message saying "Feature unavailable at the moment". A better matchmaking service, so that you could find other people to compete against would be of great benefit here.


Images in this review copyright of Criterion Games and taken from their website: http://www.criteriongames.com/CRASH/