Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 [Game Saturday]

And now for something completely different: Remember Guitar Hero and all of those music games that came out on various gaming systems? They were super popular thanks for a while. Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 is like those games, only without the instruments.

When you start the game you are asked to pick one of the available songs, and a difficulty level to get started. Many of the available songs are locked at the beginning, and you need to perform well to unlock them.

Once you have selected the song the game screen loads. You see the four guitar strings at the top, an animated stick figure at the bottom, and some stats that tell you how well – or bad – you perform the song.

The aim of the game is to hit the keys on the keyboard when they arrive in the black bar area on the left of the screen. The game uses the cursor keys (up, down, left, right), plus the 1-4 keys. Keys appear on the right side and you have about a second or two before they reach the area where you need to press them.

This works well on the amateur levels. The pro levels on the other hand add more keys to each song which increases the difficulty significantly.

Music tracks are great, especially if you like rock and related genres. Bands are all unknown – to me at least – but that does not make the songs less enjoyable. Most are in fact quite pleasing to the ear. Each song links to the artists website which allows you to check on the albums or songs they have released, tours and other news related to the band or artist.

The game has a few aces up its sleeve, including a boss mode where you need to defeat the boss by not only tapping on the right keys at the same time, but also on other keys to hit the boss in that time as well.

Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 is a nice game if you are into rock music and games like Guitar Hero. I suggest you check it out over at Armorgames.

Defender’s Quest [Game Saturday]

Today’s game of the week is called Defender’s Quest. It is more of a long demo game than a full game though, so keep that in mind. Defender’s Quest at its core is a tower defense game with role playing elements. You are still fighting waves of monsters with your towers in every map, but instead of playing with anonymous defenders, you are playing with characters that level up, have skill trees and equipment.

You start each map with all of your characters which you can place on the map. Your one and only goal is to keep them away from Azra, your lead character. Azra, while not fighting actively, has a repertoire of spells at her disposal to aid in battle.

You start the game with a single melee class which only gets you that far. New characters are recruited in town, and sometimes awarded during the story telling in between battles.

Each character has a skill set available to that class. The berserker for instance gets a double-cut early on in the game which hits two enemies passing by when executed.

Your sorceress gains PSI power during battles which can be used for spells, summoning more characters to the battlefield or powering up characters. When you power them up, they grow considerably stronger.

Characters have attack, armor and health values that you need to keep an eye on. Especially health – and armor items – become important later on when enemies start attacking your characters either in melee or range.

Your characters gain experience with every battle they fight, and the occasional level up awards one skill point that you can spend to improve an existing skill or learn a new one. Skills are divided into active skills, like the berserker’s double hit, and passive skills like swiftness which increase abilities passively.

You can equip each character with a weapon and armor, to increase their damage and resistance. These items become more important later on in the game.

Some maps allow you to select a challenge level with considerably stronger enemies and greater rewards. Rewards usually get you more experience and items that you can equip your characters with.

Defender’s Quest all in all is a solid game that does a lot of things right. If there are things to criticize, it is the low variance of enemies that you encounter on the map. The developers have released a full version of the game which boasts more maps, character classes and five additional acts to play through. The full version retails for $6.99 currently, and you get $2 off when you visit the purchase page from the Kongregate website.

City Siege 3 Jungle Siege [Game Saturday]

City Siege 3, Jungle Siege, is the third installment in the popular City Siege series. The game is a Flash based game that gives you command of up to five soldiers to complete missions. The game itself is a side scrolling action game, a mixture of Cannon Fodder (tiny men, guns, kill all enemies) with side-scrolling platform games like Green Berets for the C-64.

You start with a poorly equipped soldier with options to purchase additional soldiers once you have completed your first missions. Soldiers are moved around with WAD, the mouse is used to aim and fire.

Mission objectives are displayed on the screen before a map starts. You’ll encounter bad guys, civilians and stars in most maps. Bad guys need to be eliminated, civilians and VIPs rescued and stars collected. Rescuing civilians results in additional money for successfully completing the mission, and stars are used to upgrade your troops.

Each soldier has a distinct weapon, some of additional abilities. This ranges from commandos who shoot a lot faster than your average soldier over spies that can avoid detection to jeeps or rocket launchers. Some soldiers may be more effective than others in certain levels. The Jeep for instance can pack a pound, but cannot nearly jump as high as the commando.

Each unit has a health, power and speed rating associated with it.

Soldiers that die in combat cannot be revived. This is exactly the Cannon Fodder mechanic that leaves you with inexperienced troops once your elite units die. The experience point system is basic at best. You can award points to soldiers who get higher ranks and more hitpoints in return.

Only one soldier can be controlled at a time. You can switch between soldiers of your squad with the 1-5 keys or a click on the individual unit. There is no option to control multiple soldiers at once.

City Siege 3 Jungle Siege is a nice game. It is not overly complex though and may bore experienced players after a while. You basically need to move your units from left to right all the time, kill every enemy you see and collect civilians and stars when you encounter them.

The upgrade system itself is mediocre at best. It would have been more plausible if units would get experience for combat missions or actions.

Playing around with the different unit types may keep you entertained for a while though. Collecting enough money to do just that on the other hand is again pretty boring, especially in the beginning.

Gamers who are looking for a side-scrolling action game that is not overly complex can play a round over at Armor Games.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Corporation Inc [Game Saturday]

Your own company, how would it look like? That’s what you can find out in Corporation Inc, a free Flash based game that gives you the role of the company founder. It is your task to create office space, hire workers, do research and handle all the organizational tasks to keep your workers productive and happy, and the company profitable.

You begin the game with cash but nothing else. Your first task is to build Office space and hire some workers to start making money. But workers can only work if you got additional personal standing by, IT for instance to fix computer problems or janitors to clean up the mess when the workers go home.

The tutorial walks you through the first steps with the help of objectives that are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Completing objectives gives you cash and a new objective (e.g. build four office parts, then hire 20 workers).

You can hire supervisors to beat workers on the head to make them work faster, and researchers that research new game elements or improve existing ones.

New worker and building types become available later in the game. You will be able to hire accountants or HR to improve earnings and happiness, decor to improve happiness and transport to get your workers from a to b (to another floor).

You also need to make sure that you have enough restrooms and other types of room that your workers request. If you do not happiness may drop and workers may need to go outside to fill their needs (bathroom, eating, gym).

It is important to have the right ratio of all worker types available. This means that for every x workers you need a janitor, IT worker and supervisor. It is also possible to promote workers to make them more efficient.

The game plays in realtime. Your workers come in the morning and leave in the evening. You can speed up the flow of time using the slider at the bottom of the screen. Here you also find information about your organization’s happiness level, the time of the day and the total number of employees. Research is handled automatically by the game, but you can manually select the area that you want to concentrate research on.

Offices can be upgraded to speed things up, make workers happier and make them earn more money. Workers can be promoted or fired as well.

There is a lot to the game that you will discover while playing it. The game plays like a mix of popular games such as Little Computer People and Sim Tower. It is a lot of fun, especially in the beginning. The game plays like an open end game which means that you will eventually run out of things to do and fun. But that takes a while since you have got a lot to discover before you have seen it all in the game.

You can play Corporation Inc at Armorgames.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Waterfalls 3 [Game Saturday]

Looking for a relaxing fun puzzle game for the weekend? Than the Flash game Waterfalls 3 may be exactly what you are looking for. It is the player’s task to redirect color streams to fill all the white circles on the map with those colors. The game begins easy with one or two color streams and only a few elements to redirect them.

Available for selection are elements that redirect a color stream to a specific direction (e.g. right or down), that split color streams or teleport them to another exit. Most elements can be placed with the mouse at another location on the screen. Some elements on the other hand are fixed at their position which adds to the difficulty of the level.

The game comes with a level selector to select unlocked maps directly. In the beginning though you are stuck with level 1 and need to work your way towards level 25, the last level of the game.

The puzzle game is not overly difficulty, but that was not probably the intention of the game developer. It is a relaxing and entertaining puzzle game for players of all ages. I’d estimate that experienced players may need about 20 minutes to play through all the 25 levels of the game. Those that cannot get enough can load the predecessors of the game to continue playing. The first two parts of the game are linked from Waterfall 3 directly. Players who are stuck can lock at the walkthrough videos that demonstrate how elements need to be placed in each level to beat it.

Music and visuals are excellent. The game itself could use maps that are more difficulty to master. Interested gamers can play Waterfalls 3 directly at the Kongregate website. The game requires Adobe Flash Player to be installed as a plugin in the browser.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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