Half-Minute Hero Review

Half-Minute Hero Review

This unique role-playing game's spritely charm and frantic pace will delight you for far longer than its title suggests.

The Good

• Fast-paced, fun gameplay
• Novel time concept
• Entertaining plot
• Good variety of gameplay styles
• Great 8-bit presentation.

The Bad

• Repetitive objectives
• Bosses are too easy
• Some minor slowdown.

While traditional role-playing games have their perks, they're often loaded with hours of tedious grinding and dozens of melodramatic cutscenes that take as long to watch as they do to unlock. Half-Minute Hero eschews all that in favor of fast-paced action, breathing fresh life into a genre in which minigames and stat management are often as prevalent as enjoyable quests and combat. The resulting experience is invigorating and fun throughout a variety of different gameplay styles, if only slightly marred by some redundancy and minor quirks.

Destroy your enemies as the legendary hero, but keep a close eye on that clock.

An amusing storyline neatly split into segments provides a good backdrop for the cleverly designed gameplay, and though initially confusing, it soon forms a cohesive plot. The benevolent Time Goddess has defeated the Ultimate Evil Lord, providing just enough peace for humanity to flourish as sinister forces recuperate. A pantheon of oblivious, egotistical heroes gathers to save the world from these foes, and they frequently spout off witty remarks and cheap puns in an amusing manner. Each storyline segment is full of sarcasm and cracks at traditional RPG rules, which anyone who remembers those bygone 8-bit days should really enjoy.

Half-Minute Hero's most fun and rewarding element is its innovative time concept, which it cleverly implements by having you complete objectives in just 30 seconds. Such a strict time limit shifts the focus from standard RPG elements, like collecting items and exploring, to making every second count as you race against the clock, which is an invigorating change of pace. If whizzing through stages in 30 seconds sounds nigh impossible, that's because it usually is--but the intriguing Time Goddess mechanic allows you to extend the timer in exchange for cash collected from fallen enemies. The game's real thrill comes in managing your remaining time, which adds intensity by forcing you to balance every activity--from equipment raids to leveling--against the clock. This enables you to speed through the game as you wish, or you can go that extra mile and risk global annihilation for rare gear and better stage rankings to show off to friends.

Each of the four modes focuses on a different style of gameplay, and despite relying on bare-bones mechanics, they remain enjoyable and perfectly suited for portable play. Hero 30 is a high-speed RPG; Princess 30 is a classic shooter; Evil Lord 30 is a basic real-time strategy game; and Knight 30 is a simple action game. Hero mode is especially gripping, emphasizing speed more fervently than the other modes by encouraging you to plow through enemies and dash over continents in basic exploration. Optional side quests built around the time of day keep things fresh, visits to towns satiate your need for story, and loot drops will keep those of you with a penchant for character progression coming back for more. Princess mode is gratifying despite its linearity, featuring brutish monsters and plenty of power-ups to spruce up the action, though it quickly devolves into pounding the forward-shoot button. Evil Lord mode involves monster summoning and provides the most depth, using a rock-paper-scissors mechanic to determine your ally strength. For example, large monsters easily tackle small ones. It's fun to dodge attacks while overwhelming foes, but minor slowdown and slight AI slipups that prompt your monsters to stumble into walls are irritating. Knight mode is the most interesting because it implements an escort theme, challenging you to protect a companion by guiding him through mazes. You have a nice range of upgradable traps at your disposal, but it's much more entertaining to swing pointy sticks at monsters.

There are a few quirks, but they're relatively minor aggravations. Gameplay suffers from some redundancy, because the four main modes recycle their objective for each stage; this makes every mode slightly repetitive by the half-way mark, which is a little disheartening for a game that so strongly emphasizes variety in every other aspect. Easy bosses are another mild disappointment; they rarely require any form of strategy to defeat, but they do pose a time challenge and keep the pressure up.

While completing the first four modes is a fairly simple process, the game ramps up the difficulty for the final two, putting your time management skills and mastery of the core Hero mode to the test. In Hero 300, you have 300 seconds to save the world from a new threat. While you're given more time, you're stripped of the time-rewind feature and start the mode off penniless and naked in a barren wasteland, which makes properly equipping yourself much more difficult. You're also covering more ground and fighting multiple bosses in tighter time constraints that vary by the map, which produces a demanding yet immensely satisfying journey. The mode makes no excuses for its exacting nature or the numerous attempts it will take you to best it, with exhilarating gameplay that's challenging without feeling cheap. If you remain undaunted by Hero 300, you can unlock Hero 3 and experience the outrageous madness of saving the world in just three seconds--an incredible feat that will really test your mettle.

Grab your purple parasol and smite your foes with Evil Lord's powerful minions.

The game's retro aesthetic is enhanced by adorable 8-bit character sprites and a vibrant 2D world. Fancy spell and disaster effects, along with brief cutscene artwork, highlight the story's key elements without disrupting the nostalgic atmosphere. Attack sounds are crisp, while an impressive soundtrack sets the tone for each mode's gameplay style by incorporating energizing scores for Hero modes and sweet melodies in towns and in escort missions.

You'll spend roughly 15 hours completing the game, but Princess mode feels a bit shortchanged at an hour's length. The lack of any underlying depth, such as skills to master and dungeons to explore, limits your motivation to revisit Story mode for better scores. Fortunately, ad hoc multiplayer boosts replayability by pitting you against friends in a feverish race to defeat the boss in Hero mode. Though Half-Minute Hero may be troubled by repetitive objectives and trivial flaws, its cute presentation style and great speed-driven gameplay offer an enjoyable adventure you won't soon forget.

Cities XL Review

Cities XL Review

Cities XL tries to expand the city-building genre with new ideas, but the solo game is generic, and the online features aren't ready for a ground-breaking ceremony.

The Good

• Slick if conventional city-building gameplay
• Good for beginners
• Intuitive interface
• Online options have potential.

The Bad

• Basic mechanics are on the bland side
• Single-player mode seems like an afterthought
• MMO-style online option is limited and overpriced
• Problems with trading interface and market.

Cities XL isn't as supersized as its title would have you believe. Monte Cristo's latest attempt to knock the venerable SimCity off its throne delivers when it comes to standard city-building genre features, but its massively multiplayer online-style mode, where you interact with virtual city planners across the globe, fails to deliver. Not all of the ground-breaking elements are fully realized out of the box, so you're left with a pretty conventional city builder with a few innovations that hold promise for revolutionizing the genre sometime down the road.

Laying out huge stretches of city blocks is a snap. Instant blue-collar ghetto!

The basics of Cities XL are pretty much what you would expect. This is essentially a revision of the now-classic SimCity formula, somewhat similar to that on display in Monte Cristo's previous City Life games. You take the role of a near-omnipotent city mayor with the ability to lay down roads, build houses, erect factories and office buildings, and so on without interference from nuisances like city councillors and chief architecture officers. Construction efforts are centered on zoning. Just like planners in the real world, you lay out street grids zoned for residential development, heavy industry, high-tech manufacturing, offices, and retail stores. Then you toss in services like sheriff stations, hospitals, electrical plants, bowling alleys, and hotels to keep everybody healthy and happy. The only difference between the gameplay and wrangling with real city zoning bylaws is the ability to be specific about what you want. Instead of setting up areas for homes and establishing allowable population density, you have specific zones for unqualified, qualified, and executive workers, along with the elite upper crust. Each group of citizens is needed for specific employment. Unqualified workers, for instance, consist of a blue-collar crowd needed for factories and the like, qualified workers serve as management in offices and manufacturing facilities, and executives take charge of places like high-tech factories.

Gameplay is geared toward city-building beginners. The solo mode of play is based around 25 sandbox cities in five regions (30 in six regions in the Limited Edition version of the game) scattered around the continents of a fictional globe. Everything is unlocked from the start of play, so you can freely move between cities in green plains where it's easy to develop a thriving metropolis and cities in resource-deprived deserts in the middle of nowhere. There are no set goals or varied challenges in these locales, however, or any spicy frills like massive natural disasters, which can lead to some city-building ennui after a dozen or so hours of play. The satisfaction of laying out cities and watching them prosper is still good enough to get you hooked, but because of repetition and the always nifty sensation of playing God, there's no sense of wondering what's next.

The game's appearance is decidedly bland. While the cities themselves look realistic at certain angles due to good use of lighting in the day-night cycle and scenic backdrop terrain, zooming in low or wandering through cities with the avatar you customize at the start of play reveals little but deserted boulevards and the odd car zipping around. Virtually no pedestrians are out and about, in dramatic contrast to the often crowded sidewalks of the City Life games. There is also little street noise. The only sound effects come when you click on buildings and are recognized by a canned acknowledgement like a doorbell ring for a residence and what sounds like a dot-matrix printer for an office. The soundtrack is also barely noticeable, being a mash of woozy jazz that sounds like something Moby would come up with after drinking a few cups of chamomile tea.

Bankruptcy rarely lasts for long, if you have any experience with city-building games and know how to use loans to your best advantage.

Single-player game mechanics are also somewhat blah, especially when compared to the City Life games that Monte Cristo released in 2006 and 2008. Where those games tried a different approach to city building with six different demographic groups of citizens that you had to keep separated to avoid riots, the game design here is more of a straight-up SimCity clone. This is pretty disappointing, as the class warfare of the City Life games made for challenging urban planning. Cities XL returns the focus to money. Instead of keeping the elites and the have-nots apart, you watch the bottom line. An intuitive interface provides you with all the key information needed to avoid catastrophe. Single clicks access core economic data such as class unemployment rates, cash flow, and citizen satisfaction. Economics are straightforward, with everything based on the "build houses, then businesses" method. You have to deal with requests for police protection, fire departments, health care, education, and leisure, although the great unwashed aren't too demanding. Many buildings are locked out until you hit population levels, preventing you from going off the rails with crazy expensive services. But as much as this keeps you from doing something stupid, it also makes developing each city a paint-by-numbers experience.

Dreamkiller

Dreamkiller Review

Sweet dreams aren't made of this budget-priced shooter.

The Good

• Wonderfully grotesque enemy designs
• A few cool-looking, colorful levels
• Some fun boss fights.

The Bad

• Predictable enemy behavior makes the shooting get old, fast
• Doesn't take advantage of its great premise
• Spawning weapon points cause big headaches.

Psychologist Alice Drake has a special talent: She can enter the dreams of her patients and cure them of phobias by shooting the meanies that infest their brains. But Alice also possesses another amazing talent. While holding a minigun, she can contort her left arm into the most uncomfortable position without ever suffering from shoulder cramps. You'll get past the visual oddity of Alice's freaky arm in time, but Dreamkiller's other problems are less easily forgotten. This run-and-gun first-person shooter grows tiresome quickly and fails to make good use of the intriguing premise, which is a shame considering its virtually limitless potential. Some of the enemy and level designs display plenty of life and creativity and hint at the great shooter Dreamkiller might have been. Unfortunately, wonky game mechanics make this throwback twitch shooter more of an ancient relic than a welcome blast from the past.

Greenpeace won't be happy.

What a great idea: As Alice, you jump into your patients' dreams and blast manifestations of their phobias. Is the patient arachnophobic? You take on hordes of spiders with your flame-spewing fingers and a helpful minigun. Does the subject have issues with machines? You clear his head of mechanical monstrosities by shutting the robotic infiltrators down for good. You may even learn about phobias you didn't know existed. Did you know that ponophobia is the fear of working too hard? Or that maniaphobes are afraid of going mad? Sadly, the potential for a cheesy-awesome story goes untapped. Levels are preceded by scantly written case descriptions, and while the still-image story scenes are beautifully drawn, they don't tell a tale worth hearing. The setup is simply an excuse to let you unload lead into crowds of weird demonic enemies a la Painkiller or Serious Sam.

The early levels are disappointing and conventional, featuring ho-hum level design, predictable enemy behavior, and all-too-familiar hyperactive shooting. And in many cases, the levels fail to capitalize on the phobia that inspired them. It makes sense that you would be shooting creepy-crawlies in an arachnophobe's nightmares, but why are there spiders in the dreams of the guy afraid of making decisions? Too many levels feature the same old corridors and arenas you've experienced countless times before, filled with enemies that are easily outwitted as long as you stay on the move. You clear the area, a door opens, and you move through it to the next area, where a bunch more meanies await. Thus, the more typical levels get tedious quickly and don't offer much in the way of challenge, so blandness sets in long before you've moved to the next nightmare.

How long could you hold your arm in that position?

The later levels still suffer from monotony, but they also display a lot more creativity. Some of the enemies and environments are wonderfully absurd. In the dreams of a teacher afraid of going insane, you take on masked freaks clad in straitjackets that spawn from rickety asylum cots. Another patient is frightened of children and toys. In that dreamworld, you take aim at giant tin soldiers, malformed toddlers, and giant bird figurines in a surreal playroom. Storm creatures soaring through the air, giant flaming trees, and obese medics are among the more inventive foes you face. But even when they look awesome, these monstrosities don't display any smarts, so any sense of challenge comes from sheer numbers and resilient bosses. Some of the boss characters--a hooded demon, a giant robot--are fun to take on. Others--a giant fire demon, a bee-spewing tree--are either overly frustrating or much too easy.

But whether you're fighting bland robots or mammoth medics, certain game mechanics just don't work all that well. The mouselook is super twitchy, so you'll probably want to adjust the sensitivity within the game menus. More problematic is the way weapon spawn nodes are handled. Like in many other fast-paced first-person shooters, you can pick up a weapon at a specified point--but here you can hold only one firearm at a time. (You can also shoot fire and webbing from your fingers.) But weapon pickup points are also weapon drop-off points. If you walk over an empty one, you will drop your gun and be left only with your all-but-useless fire spray. It's easy to do this accidentally in the middle of a firefight; you'll be strafing about quickly while firing at some enemy or another, only to inadvertently drop your weapon while being mobbed by demons because you passed over one of these nodes. It's a bad mechanic that has no place in a fast-paced shooter.

He could stay young and chipper and he'd lock it with a zipper, if he only had a heart.

Dreamkiller makes a few attempts to be original, but they don't energize the action much. You can teleport forward, but plain-old shooting is effective enough that you rarely need to. There are also certain enemies that must be defeated by entering a portal that represents the patient's subconscious. This feature makes certain sequences a bit more challenging, but it adds little to the experience; in many cases, you can just move back and forth between portals shooting the vulnerable enemies on the way. If you become really desperate for a change of pace, you could check out the game's multiplayer options, but you'll probably never find anyone to play with. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Conquest modes are available on multiple maps, but if the game's all-but-empty leaderboards are any indication, Dreamkiller's online play is--and will likely remain--dead.

Dreamkiller is, through and through, a budget game. The visuals are colorful but look decidedly old, the action is as shallow as it gets in a modern shooter, and the sound effects lack oomph. The premise is neat, and some of the enemy designs are legitimately awesome. But if you've been dreaming of some old-fashioned twitch shooting, you should return to the old standbys and let this sleeping dog lie.