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Sight Training (DS)
by Novabug The practice of casual gaming was a concept that had a huge growth spurt in the mid 2000s. The Nintendo DS was a major cause of this, with early titles like Nintendogs and Wild Crossing having a big impact. The DS latched onto the more grown-up individuals, with busy hectic lifestyles not having the time for a 3 hour gaming session ... amidst the pressures of work and family. The ability to play a little bit each day in bite size chunks greatly appealed, and so a direction away from virtual pets to tricky puzzles was inevitable. Sight Training came a year after the steamroller success of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, with a similar idea, interface and presentation. At first it came with connotations of improving your vision and reactions, although Nintendo have clearly stated this was not the case. As such Sight Training should be taken as merely puzzling entertainment and doesn't improve your eyesight radically. Also in keeping with a more relaxed tone, it comes across as a little more fun and approachable with the inclusion of sport based games and overall far less daunting than the aforementioned Brain Training, but keeps the casual element essential for that trip on the bus or a break at the office. Sight Training has a basic set up with a predominantly menu based presentation, bold text and basic shapes. You create a personal profile in one of the four available slots, perform a few adaptations of the included activities to ascertain your 'eye age', and from then on set about improving this score through playing the various games and puzzles. Much like Brain Training, it's set out like a calendar and tracks your daily progress as you play. Everyday, it gives you a pre-set eye workout judging from your current 'eye age'. This is a selection of 4 to 5 games to improve your scores on the 5 parts of vision. These are Hand-Eye Co-ordination, Dynamic Visual Acuity, Momentary Vision, Eye Movement and Peripheral Vision. This is a strict, daily routine according to the game, but you are able to play any activity at will providing you have achieved the level needed to unlock them. Only 17 in total; most people with a degree of decent vision should be able to unlock all of these, it's not all that hard. Once all the games are available and the difficulty level is cranked up, things can get pretty though and challenging. However, the 'eye age' results can be slightly off the mark. My mother of 70, who has only 40% of her natural eyesight, achieved an eye age of 49... Hhhhmm. Needless to say, this score can be taken with a pitch of salt but does provide a target to beat nonetheless. That's the overall goal, to better your scores as it is with any video game. Sight Training likes to tell you your eyesight IS getting better (or worse), and like me you may feel an element of truth to this; however no scientific evidence exists to support this. For a game that focus' on eyesight skills, you would expect things to be presented in a very clear-cut sharp manner. For the most part it is, with pastel colours offsetting against a light blue/grey background. It's not bright or overly colourful, but provides a user-friendly environment that's clean and tidy. The menus are simple to read and understand, with instructions given for every game. It's a shame that these instructions repeat every time you start a new activity, even though the machine knows you have already played it. Eyesight facts and tips always appear after each game too, and quickly begin to repeat ad nauseam. This gets more annoying because the text takes a while to display each time. This aside, it's all easy to navigate around, choosing your daily eye workout or custom game is a breeze. Of the two sets of activities, core skills and sports, the latter is by far the more enjoyable; providing some nice captured animations and realistic settings to pep things up. The core skills are all presented in a black, green and yellow scheme to keep things clear, but it does look a little dull and un-engaging, far removed from the colourful screens of Big Brian Academy or the Professor Layton series. If anything, staring at the same colours constantly puts more strain on the ol' peepers out of sheer blandness. The rest of the graphics are all rather standard, nothing original save for a nice 8-bit style blocky character that accompanies each game. It's the same story with the audio. The usual inoffensive bleeps, clicks and chimes are there to highlight every menu hit or correct answer, the sports games have some decent lifelike samples but I cannot ignore the menu screens' overlaying tune that becomes very irritating. Eventually, you learn to block this music out. In actuality, all the activities are well designed and enjoyable to play. A few are far too simple; such as the basketball task or box tap, and others are a bit temperamental with the accuracy of the stylus. Both the football games being the worst offenders. That said, it is rewarding to beat your own targets and to improve more on your eye age score, you get a feeling that you are doing good for yourself and thusly this can be quite gratifying. Some of the games like the boxing, number flash and number tap are very addictive, and can be more of an enjoyable challenge. Unfortunately, because of the strict parameters of judging the eye age score, all games can only be played once in a 24 hour period. You can repeat them, but any score achieved will be ignored by the system. This makes the time frame in each day very limited, I would say about 30 minutes to get thought all 17 games of play to enhance your score. The sports games are able to be played in the separate option, but I would have liked a way to have a separate score table that records all the games scores. It would have given more life and attention per day so to speak. Sight Training is like the little cast-out brother of Brain Training, wanting to be as subversive but not delivering with the technicalities. The various activities are fine for the most part, but it's those little annoyances that make you want to put it down after a few days and pick up something with more grab-factor. On a personal level, despite the lack of proven research, I have found a slight improvement in my eye movement whilst playing other titles, this I attribute to Sight Training somewhat, as it as helpfully told me on numerous occasions. Not completely useless then and an enjoyable title for casual short stints, but flawed in parts. Not 20/20 vision, but not in need of the bifocals either. Graphics - 6/10 Sound: 7/10 Gameplay: 8/10 Lastability: 6/10 Overall: 7/10 Thanks for Reading © Novabug (This review is also published on The Pixel Empire with full permission) Read the complete review |
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Henry Hatsworth In the Puzzling Adventure (DS)
by TimStain You play as Henry Hatsworth on the top screen, exploring several uninspired worlds in average platforming sections. The twist is that when Henry defeats enemies they are sent to the bottom screen to become blocks in what is essentially the game Puzzle League (which some of you may know as Tetris Attack). These blocks are slowly rising to ... the top screen, and if they reach it, they will respawn into the platformer. Pausing the game lets you play puzzle league and destroy these blocks first, killing the enemies properly and providing Henry with the occasional power up. It's an average platformer combined with a good puzzle game. So why not an average score then? Because somehow Hatsworth is better than the sum of its parts. This is because by blending two genres Henry Hatsworth is one of the few games which is able to have a puzzle game and a narrative work together in a simultaneous package. This is effective because finishing a games story is one of the biggest hooks a game has to keep you motivated to keep playing. This is not a bad thing. A fun game is more fun when you are looking forward to seeing where the story goes or just because you enjoy the humour in its cutscenes (the latter applies to Hatsworth, which features some great, genuinely funny dialogue). Couldn't you just assign your own story to a puzzle game using your wonderful imagination? Tell yourself you're stacking the blocks in Tetris because they represent the rise of capitalism and you're just a corporate shill building towers for your uncaring master only to overthrow your Billionaire overlords with the long thin line of social justice even if it inevitably leads to economic collapse! Well no, that doesn't work because any puzzle game with a story is inevitably awful as I just demonstrated with that last sentence. That's because the link between a puzzle and a narrative is virtually non-existent. There's yet to be a great novel about the Rubix cube for a reason. A platformer however, is much more suited to an in game narrative, and Henry Hatsworth's tale is a charming one. Slight, yes, but with plenty of character and ridiculousness (Henry is a dashing English gent and the scripted clashes with his nemesis are always a highlight). So even though it's not a great platformer, and you literally pause the platformer sections to play the puzzle sections, it works because you can enjoy the puzzle gameplay and be enticed to keep playing by the furthering of the story and the completion of the platformer adventure. Now while this is effective, it only just works. Henry Hatsworth hasn't got the most engrossing story in the world and the gameplay is far from perfect. But it's still great fun and highly addictive, without the weariness you get from playing the average puzzle game for hours on end. Try it before you buy, but if you're a fan of puzzlers and wish they were a bit more than just a break from more complex, story driven games then this might just be the title for you. Read the complete review |
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Picross (DS)
by autumnleaf Picross is a really addictive and fun puzzle game for the DS, based heavily on the Japanese puzzle game Hanjie. Rather than explain all of the rules (which can be found on the net) I will just give a brief summary: You are given a grid within which a picture is contained. You make the picture by painting in the correct grid ... squares. There are number clues on each row and column which tell you how many squares along the line and in which order. The user will have to cross reference columns and rows to determine which cells must be filled in. There are easy puzzles to begin with which will allow the player to ease their way into the game and the rules, there is little to worry about if you know nothing of Hanjie, this game is very easy to get in to and quick to pick up. You will have to start establishing your own rules as you progress through to harder boards, with larger grids. You play against a timer, which gives you a set amount of time to complete, but if you ever fill in an incorrect tile then you will incur a time penalty. If you exceed the time penalty, you can still complete the board, but you will not get a nice flashy graphical representation of your picture, in essence you will have to do it again in order to complete it properly. The game can be played using the stylus or the control pad and buttons. I much preferred the latter option as I tended to accidentally hit the wrong tile with the stylus, and you can zoom in and out easily using the buttons. Overall, I would recommend this game to anyone who has a DS, it is really good fun and will give hours of enjoyment. Read the complete review |
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