Game Reviews

I honestly could not imagine how a game about farming could be fun. Real farming doesn't look the least bit fun to me. After 4 years of reading game reviewers applaud this game, I broke down and bought it for a reunion weekend with a longtime game-playing friend.

When we were well into the first game, my friend put off going to the bathroom for 45 minutes so she could take "just one more turn" and then another and then another. We finally pried ourselves away from the game to go eat at 9:00pm.

It does start out slowly, so give it 2 or 3 times around the board before you give up on it. You start out in debt at the beginning of a new year. One trip around the board is one calendar year. Your goal is to build a profitable farming operation by buying/renting equipment,planting and harvesting, buying and selling livestock. In the meantime, Real Life intervenes in the form of insects, drought, disease, bad weather,taxes,equipment breakdowns, etc. In spite of these frustrations, the fun part is in the harvest. It's sort of like Monopoly with an adrenaline rush! The more fields you own, the bigger the harvest. The more land you own, the more livestock you can support.

The Farming Game is a great educational model for any business, or Life for that matter. You can borrow too much and end up bankrupt. You can have too little cash on hand and not be able to plant. No planting, no harvest. No harvest, no money. No money, no planting.

This is a great game for competitive players. For it to be fun for everyone, players need to be able to count money and either read the cards or be able to follow directions if someone else reads them. If a child can play Monopoly, he or she can play the Farming Game.

We first played The Farming Game with some of our relatives and decided we just had to have it! It was so much fun to go around and see how each year would go.
Not only is it fun, it also teaches how to count money, how to handle your debt, and how to handle your household in order to make it a success.
I would highly recommend this game to everyone. We now have a large group of people that enjoy playing it also, so we sometimes have to have more than one board going at a time!!

My Dad got this game for Christmas and we could not stop playing it. Because he grew up on a farm it had special fun for him. Being a non-violentist (who too frequently expresses his shadow over the game board) I really enjoyed the fact that this game can be as cooperative as you want it to be. There were just a couple of rule disputes that my Father and I had but they were minimal and more family than game related.

This game is addictive and fun. The board follows the course of one year. You begin at Christmas Break and your part-time job (so you can keep farming). The goal is to build a farm large enough so you can quit your job in town and become a full time farmer. You buy equipment, acreage of hay, grain (wheat and corn) and fruit, cows and lease ridges in an Eastern Washington farming Valley. If you are familiar with that area of the country this game might have particular appeal to you. As you travel around the board you come to different harvest times. The dollar amount you earn depends upon how much of that crop you have and a roll of the die. Whenever you harvest you also draw an operating expenses card, and if the space you landed on says so you may also draw a dreaded "Farmer's Fate" card. You realize how hard farming can be when you are $45,000 in debt, you harvest doesn't cover your operating expenses and the IRS comes to audit your farm all in one turn.

This game is a lot of fun for the whole family. I recommend it for its educational value because it requires some simple percentage, addition, subtraction, budgeting skills and for its social implications.

Rocket is a great puzzle game. I've played it all the way through and I had fun all the way. Unlike many other games, the puzzles all had very satisfying solutions. Almost every time I got stuck, I could sit back, give it some thought and have an "aha" moment where the solution became clear.

I also liked the fact that there are not too many puzzles that just rely on gamepad dexterity. Since it's easy to make things arbitrarily hard, I really appreciated the careful game design.

Finally, some of the levels are just beautiful. I spent at least a couple of hours flying around just for fun.

If you liked Mario and Banjo Kazooie, get Rocket. You won't be sorry.

Here at Sucker Punch Productions, we had a fantastic time creating this game!

In the tradition of Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64, Rocket's adventure takes him through a series of fantastic locations and challenges. We didn't skimp on the worlds either -- they're huge and beautiful.

On top of that we've created 7 exciting vehicles, like the hot-dog-dune-buggy "DuneDog" and the paint-ball-firing-hovercraft "HoverSplat". Rocket gets to ride them all in his quest to defeat JoJo the Raccoon.

The game engine features our proprietary "fun-physics" engine which simply means Rocket, the vehicles, and all the objects in the world seem incredibly life like! It's something you have to see to believe.

But don't just take our word for it. In addition to the reviews here, Rocket has been receiving raves in print and online. Check out the November issue of Nintendo Power, where Rocket: Robot on Wheels was the top rated game!

I love it.You can build a roller coaster.IT'S SO SWEET.YOU'LL LOVE IT LOVE IT LIKE ME.BUY IT.There are 12 tickets in each land and 200 tokens.

My family has enjoyed this game for many years. Like the other reviews, we made copies of the sheets and continue to play. We've written high scores and even low scores on the box since the early '70's. Our box has a price of $2.29!. This is a great game and for those that think the cup is noisy....my Dad put felt on the bottom and sides of the cup and it doesn't make a sound! Buy and enjoy!!!

Kismet is definitely a welcome addition to the shake and score dice game family. It is actually a "newer" version of Yacht with some changes. I'll always love Yahtzee, and Yacht is a lot of fun, but Kismet has new intricacies and challenges that draws one in and shakes up your playing strategy. It isn't so much the similarities that makes it fun, but its differences and changes in how you play.

Kismet offers many of the same scoring sections and rules of Yacht, (including the pip totals for Full Houses and minus the "Little Straight"), with the addition of 3 of A Kind (from Yahtzee), Flush, Full House (same color) and 2 Pair (same color). The upper, or Basic section also has a bonus for obtaining a high score; the higher the score, the higher the bonus so a more aggressive approach is required when deciding where to put your best rolls. The game's Poker background is much more obvious with the additional scoring combinations. The dice are tri-colored: ones and sixes are black, threes and fours are red and twos and fives are red. Fans of dice games also know that the sum of these opposite numbers of the same color total seven. These colors offer new challenges in scoring in categories requiring an identical color. Another marked difference is in the lower, or Kismet section; both Full House sections, 4 of a Kind and Kismet (5 of a Kind) award a bonus when gaining the respective score in those sections. Perhaps the most daunting (and probably the most cutthroat) difference in Kismet is revealed when scoring a second Kismet. When playing against other opponents, all other players must score a zero in the Basic or Kismet section near the top of either section AND lose their turns while the player who scored the second Kismet rolls again. This can continue as long as that same player continues additional Kismets! My only problems are with the dice cup; it is much too narrow to shake the dice properly, it's a bit flimsy and is definitely not as pictured on the box. The game also does not make provisions for purchasing additional score pads; these are essential for constant play alone or with groups. Kismet is a fun must have for any lover of dice games, and for fans of the Yacht game family looking for an additional challenge.

I have enjoyed this game for many years, and then it disappeared. Even writing to the company produced no results. So we copied the score sheets and continued having fun. I lost one of my die, and the fun ended! Thankfully, my daughter found the game on Amazon.Com and sent it to me for Mother's Day, and the fun resumed immediately. I strongly urge children and adults alike to partake of the allure and try KISMET...it's a much more challenging game than Yahtzee.

Some games are so competitive that it spoils the fun. Not this one. It is so much fun to play that you don't really care who wins. We played with our adult children at Christmas and laughed until we cried. It is a great bonding experience!

Imaginiff will get your mind cranking...If Fred was an animal...what would he be??? Gather round with your friends and see how well you know them...and the people you are playing with! Great for birthday parties, family gatherings, or just a friday night with the dinner gang. This game will definitely get your imagination going!

I played this game with a group of adult family members and we had a blast! It's so much fun to play and some of the choices are hilarious. It's sometimes scary how "dead-on" a question or choice might be, too. I love to play games with family and would definitely recommend this one! It's great because you can play with such a large age group...our group ranged from 18 to 55. Definitely worth picking up for the holidays!

Our daughter, Mary, age 4, received the Leapster system and the Dora game for her birthday in June, and she absolutely LOVES them. They are great learning tools, but they are fun as well. We already had to replace the batteries, so I can't wait for the rechargable battery thing to be available in stores!

The 3 year old listed by LeapFrog is accurate. Our son was zooming through level 1 at 2-1/2 years old. Maybe our son is above average. Haha.

The Leapster products are AWESOME!

Thanks, Brett

This is a good cartridge if your child likes Dora the Explorer. My 4 year old son loves the show, so he really wanted this for his Leapster. I have liked all the cartridges so far, and I will keep buying them for him. The Leapster is a great idea for young children.

My family LOVES this game. You never know where your inspiration will come from; in my house we've gone from Sinatra to Dead Kennedys to vacation bible school songs. You spend as much time laughing as singing! Forget musical talent! As long as you know the words and can closely approximate the tune, you're golden.

We are big game players and have never had more fun with any other game. It's great for a party of adults, for adults with kids, for college kids...whatever. People always talk about it weeks after we play. Our middle school son and his friends will always join in if they see us playing with friends which says a great deal!! We've played with all of our friends, our kids, both sets of parents (!), relatives, my minister, people from other countries and people we didn't know at all. I would say it's the perfect icebreaker but you won't stop playing. LOL They put the board back in which is great. There should be a tv show! Our 17 year old would be world champ!

The premis for this game is intruiging and fun -- to be able to come up with a song that has lyrics that use words identified by the game.

The reason I gave the game 4 stars, however, is that I had an awful experience the first time I played the game. Here's the scoop...the group I played with included my father-in-law (a country music singer) and young brother-in-law (a rap fan). They repeatedly claimed and sang songs and tunes I had never heard of. I'm not saying that any cheating went on, but I was so far out of the loop about the songs they were choosing that there was no way to tell who was winning and who was losing. Well, OK, I was losing.

This can be a fun game if played with your musical peers. It can be a major disaster otherwise.

I hope this insight helps someone out there.

This is by far the coolest monopoly edition to date; and i've seen them all. The attention to detail is amazing. You won't regret this buy.

I aint kidding when I say this is the brightest, most colorful, most well designed Monopoly game out today. I have collected a few over the years but this one really puts a smile on your face. The board has a map of Springfield in the centre, if you look closer you can spot each character walking about the town. The Chance and Community Chest cards have Homer, Bart etc in place of the Monopoly man, the properties go from the tire yard and Cletus' shack (the cheapest) to the Country Club and Burns manor (the dearest) The pewter peices are very finely detailed, and there's an offer to buy four more. Also the property cards have Simpsons artwork on both sides.

If your going to buy a Monopoly game, it really has to be this one.

I collect Monopoly board games. This is by far the most beautiful Monopoly game ever. If you are a Simpson fan that's a bonus. The board features almost every place in Springfield from the Kwik-E-Mart to Mr. Burns Manor. You could spend hours looking at every little and totally hilarious details. The game tokens are very nice plus you have the option to purchase other limited edition game tokens which are very cool by the way. The property deeds are a work of art. And on plus side if you have children and want to interest them in math and strategy while having fun you can not go wrong with this one. One more thing; if you do deside to purchase this game and plan on using it you better buy more than one or you will find yourself making your friends wash their hands before they could even think of touching it. Do yourself a favor and buy this game. Have fun.

I have gotten both "Barbecue with the Vampire" and "Roswell that ends well" for my 14th and 15th birthday parties. I must admit that both are exalent and have the guests talking about it for years (yes that's right years!) but Roswell that Ends Well has a much better story line.

My friend bought this and set it up for a party on haloween. I was Robin O'Positive (actually her evil twin, Robin O'Negative) and I thought it was the coolest thing ever! I was scared weeks after and everyone there had a blast! This is the best thing you could ever do for a party! Words can not explain how cool it is to play! We're thinking about buying the Alien one for a Luau party on the last day of school. I loved playing this mystery!

Although the age range starts at 12, my daughter's 10th birthday was a huge success with this game. It is very complex, but all eight of the kids really got into the finest details. None of them solved it before the solution was revealed, but had a great time playing the characters and anlyzing the information anyway. From start to finish, including playing through dinner, they needed 4 1/2 hours, and even then I was pushing them along a bit. Be sure to allow enough time for the guests to discuss the mystery as much as they'd like. The downside was that they got into it so much that two of the kids had nightmares about vampires afterward! We did the decorations along with the theme, and I (Mom) dressed as a vampire to add to the atmosphere. With take-out barbeque served, this was the EASIEST, most fun birthday party I have ever done - and my daughter says that it was her favorite party ever. She wants to do the other one, and it's so easy that we'll do it this spring without the excuse of a birthday. Perfect for kids who are into mysteries - this group also loves fantasy such as Harry Ptter.

I played Heroes III earlier this year at a friend's house, and I was hooked. I was about to buy the Mac version when I saw that 3do was finally coming out with the expansion set for Mac. The only flaw in this game is that it sucks up your time. If you are not careful, that "one more turn" can keep you up until the rooster crows and it's time for work.

The game is a nice combination of role-playing and strategy games. I prefer turn-based games like this to real-time games like Warcraft, as it is based more on strategy and less on dexterous mouse-clicking. This game is also great for multiplayer, either online with Game Ranger, or the hotseat version with multiple players taking turns on the same computer. The only caveat is that the first player seems to have a better starting position in most scenarios.

The only critisms of this port would be the lack of the map and scenario editors which are available in the PC versions. While there are plenty of scenarios and the randomly generated maps are challenging enough, it would be fun to create your own. The other is that the manual, which should have been printed and not just included on the CD so that you can use it while playing the game, is not comprehensive and uses the tired scam of trying to get you to spend more money to figure out how to win the thing.

That said, I can't think of a better game to buy for the Mac. This one was well worth the wait.

I can't really say that Might and Magic is actually similar to this game, but if you liked the other Heroes of Might and Magic games, you should like this one. The old Mac game 'King's Bounty' was basically the direct predecessor of the Heroes games... Heroes III encompasses all the old creature names, etc., and concepts (MP, HP, Exp., etc.) Retrospectively, Heroes III is essentially a glorified version of its predecessors... spectacular animations, decent music(adding a great environment to the world) and an enhanced interface, allowing you to manipulate your heroes and empire even more. For a new gamer, it takes a while to learn all the functions; I myself am still learning new features. You can try and perfect your strategy in a Hotseat game(playing with other human/computer players on the same computer), Online Multiplayer Game(play against other human/computer players on-line), a regular campaign game, or one of the many scenarios.

This is a great game! It does get you hooked, though, so be careful. You can always save the game, however, so if you limit yourself you can always come back later to finish a scenario. In this game, you are... well... you are you. You don't have one character that's you, you are as many characters as you recruit. These characters are called Heroes. There are different types of Heroes, all having different abilities and statistics. In the beginning, you can either start was is called a campaign, where it's usually 3-4 scenarios all towards the same goal - in some you carry on your heroes to the next one, in some the first 3 are all different, and in the end you pick the group you want to use. There are more than 15 different campaigns.
For a single scenario, it's just one scenario, you complete it, and you're done. When doing this, you can either start with completely random things, or you can chose what different castles you want, what resource you want to start with, and what single hero you will begin with. There are 9 different castles, and for each castle there are maybe 10 heroes. For resources, you get to choose between gold, an artifact, or a different resource (depending on the castle you've chosen). Then you begin the game. In each scenario and campaign you have a different goal - most of the time it's to defeat all your enemies castles and heroes, but there are some where you have to kill a monster, gather all resource supplies(?), get a certain amount of gold, collect an artifact, kill a certain hero, or defend one of your castles from being captured by the enemy. When you start, it all depends on the certain scenario on what you have. Some start with your only hero, and you have to get a castle before you can really start playing - and in this game, if you are without a castle for a week, then you lose. In other scenarios, you start with one or more castles, and sometimes more than your chosen hero. In your castle, you can buy something to improve it once a day. It has barracks for different creatures to recruit, resource silos that will earn you some resources each day, mage towers that enable your heroes to learn magic spells, castles to improve the defences of the castle, and the greatest thing is the Capital, which you don't get until you get a few other things first, but once you do, it increases the amount of creatures in your barracks each week, and it gives you the mighty sum of 4000 gold per day. In your castle you can also recruit heroes, a choice of two per week - unless you recruit one, then a different one fills its place. And don't get me wrong - it takes money to recruit your heroes and creatures. You can also find money around the map with your hero, but most of the time you'll find yourself short of cash - unless it's a really long game and you've bought everything in your castle, have the limit of eight heroes, and your money is just piling up.
But enough about the castle - it's very important, but what you're trying to do is achieve your goal, and unless it's to accumulate gold, you can't achieve it by doing nothing with you hero. In any case, you have to have your hero capture resource places (ore pits, crystal mines etc.) so you have the resources to buy the things in your castle. You hero has a certain amount he/she can move each day - this increase with certain statistics you can get, or certain artifacts. There are also spells, if your hero is advanced enough to learn them and you have the right mage tower (and level) that enable him/her to transport somewhere on the map. That map in the beginning, by the way, is black, and you can only see things once you've explored there. If you have an ally, then you get to see where they've explored as well. Your hero sometimes starts out with a good army, but normally you have to wait to fight anything until you get enough troops in your castle. You hero has 8 'slots', which you can fill with an unlimited amount of 8 different creatures. There are different levels of creatures as well, and some are better than others. Your hero fights creatures around the map to get places, to gain experience (enough allows him/her to go up a level), to gather resources and artifacts, or to win the game. When you attack 'a' creature, sometimes they will flee and you can chase them (not on the map, your hero stays in one place) or let them go, and sometimes they will join you, which is always nice. You can also kill enemy heroes, but take in mind that if their army is better, you can die. You can make your hero retreat, however, and recruit him/her in the tavern in your castle. You can sort of view an enemies army by putting your mouse over them and holding down a certain key - I think it's the control key, the tap key, or the option key. Some heroes are also better than others from experience. You can also gain experience by doing other things besides killing beasts.
So now you have this very long narrative, and I still haven't told you everything about this game. Don't worry, you can figure it out yourself (I'm so nice). This is a really great game, for children and adults alike. It does involve strategy, however, so maybe you should be at least 10 before playing. It's a great game, and I recommend it to anyone who likes computer games - this version is for Mac OS, but there are Windows versions. This pack comes with three heroes games, all having many different campaigns and scenarios - as you can pick levels to each single scenario, that is almost an unlimited amount. You can also create your own map, but I haven't really figured out how to do this the exact way I want to, so I can't help you there.
I hope this review has helped, even it was really long. I hope you enjoy the game!

Ah! The original LEGEND OF ZELDA for your GBA or SP! Now that's my idea of a great retro package! Here is the original game in all of it's 1987 glory - the simple graphics, the simple music, and the not so simple to beat original RPG. The only downside here is a couple of backgrounds had to be squished a little, and it seems like some of the sound effects are not on here (very minimal!). But most people won't notice at all! They will just be glad to see LINK in his 16 color 2 dimensional original glory! This cart along with SUPER MARIO BROS are the two games to own in the RETRO series from Nintendo. The rest seem to be NES versions of arcade classics - which begs to ask WHY!?!?!? Link is still going strong in 4 SWORDS, and he deserves the look back almost 20 years ago when he first took over our televisions! Welcome back old friend!

The original Legend Of Zelda has long been revered as a video gaming masterpiece, even by the gamers of this modern age. Accordingly, it really comes as no surprise that Nintendo wants to keep the classic's popularity level fairly high. In the late spring of 2004, Nintendo rereleased a series of classic Nintendo games as a part of its NES Classics collection. How does the original Legend Of Zelda hold up? Read on for my review.

PROS:
-THIS GAME IS A DEAD-ON ACCURATE PORT OF THE NES CLASSIC. Nintendo has been promising for years that they would rerelease the game on a modern console, and at long last, they have delivered on that promise.
-EVEN BY TODAY'S STANDARDS, THIS IS A FUN AND CHALLENGING GAME. This is a game that will really make you think on more than a few moments. The puzzles aren't as compelling as anything later in the series, but they add to the fun nonetheless.
-IT'S SO SIMPLE, YET SO COMPLEX AT THE SAME TIME. I loathe games of the modern age due to their high complexity level. The games of today force gamers to spend as much time reading instruction manuals as they do playing the games! This game is simple to learn, but it so compelling that it will keep your attention for an indefinite period of time.

CONS:
-TWENTY DOLLARS (the launch price) FOR THIS GAME IS HIGHWAY ROBBERY! If you were paying twenty dollars for a Game Boy Advance ANTHOLOGY of classic NES or Zelda titles, that would be a good price, but to charge that much for a game that was out before many modern video gamers were even born is just insulting! Why not just whip out your old NES cart instead?
-THE GAME IS HARD, AND NOT ALWAYS IN A GOOD WAY. There is almost no social element in this game whatsoever, so you're more likely than not going to have to use an FAQ or walkthrough to beat the game. You can't tell were dungeons are hidden, nor can you tell where walls can be destroyed with a bomb. Also, many of the dungeon maps are inaccurate - your character can enter rooms of the dungeon that "don't exist", according to the maps. Likewise, the game gives no clues whatsoever as to how some puzzles are solved.
-IT'S THE ORIGINAL - NO NEW FEATURES OR ANYTHING. This is a real shame, because Nintendo could have created a stunningly beautiful remake of this game (kind of like what they did with the Metroid series with Metroid Zero Mission.) This release is a wasted opportunity.

OVERALL:
I know, I complained a lot about this reissue. But that doesn't really change the way I feel about the game itself. This game is a classic, and truly one of Nintendo's greatest triumphs ever. If you've got a Game Boy Advance, give this one a whirl - you'll be glad you did.

I love nintendo, but haven't played the original in about ten years. When the retro gameboy advance with the classic nes series came out it blew my mind. I feel like Link even handels better than the original. The game took me way back to when these games were cutting age and controllers only had four directions and two buttons, cause that was all you needed. It made me remember waking up on my eighth birthday to a brand new NES plugged into a little yellow (it was the 80's) tv and flipping my brain. This game is a must for all you estranged NES fans. It's what video games are all about.