Science Reviews

If you are looking for a no brain action game whith little plot, then this is it. But I would suggest another game for those who want a challange. I beat this game in one day, and while the game was a relif from other stress games, Like bionic commando or pokemon, I found it to easy.

It's ok. Very old. The n64 version is 100 times better. I wouldn't buy the gb version.

I was looking through toys"r"us when I saw thisgame. I couldn't belive [the price]. It looked like a pretty good gameso I got it. It is a very cool game. I only gave it 4 out of 5 starsbecause it is very difficult. Some good things about this game arethere is a wide selection of weapons, very good color and top notchgraphics I recommend this game for people ages 10-20 because it isvery hard.

tHIS is the best viteo game ever!! it is lik wathcing the mobie it takes you back to teh mobie, espeshally the cover teh coool boy wit teh amasing ET!!!! E.T if you dont know stand for Elevator Terriroty, ok thank you, please by this game it is fworth all teh hours of fun. It is amasing like teh movie, ok tank you.

This game is alright-nothing more. All you do is go throught different locations collecting bottle caps and trading cards in order to exchange for parts with other kids. With your parts you can then create your communicator which lets ET phone home.

This game was fun on the first level, the City. However, on Level 2, the Forest, it became rather bad. The animals that are in various levels after the City are unavoidable! If you get near an animal it kills you! It should not be bought( I've had the thing over a year and still ain't beat it).

I bougth this model and my children are just thrilled with it. I called Citiwell Customer Service and they called me back that day and took me through every step and explained all my questions to me. We are looking for an affordable telescope we can use and this is a great model at its cost. My father is an astronomer and Orion, Meade and Celeston sell more expensive models and not what we were looking for. Meade does sell lower cost models that are comparable to this model but Citiwell was the best cost. As a matter of facts the tripod was strong and the optics great. We saw very clear and again my children just love it. I give 10 out of 10 for this model.

I suggest to skip this telescope because it's mount (tripod legs) are not movable. It HAS to move because the Earth will rotate, so the objects in the sky will also move, too (If it dosn't, the object will be out of sight in few minutes!). Also, why should this telescope be at a cheap price? Any good telescope for children and begininers should at least be around $80. Oh, and the Star Searcher? I don't think it will work. Even a planisphear would work better that telescope's Star Searcher! After a while of researching, I found out that telescopes offered by department stores are simply lower quality that the stores who make opitics such as telescopes, microscopes, binoculars ect. for living. I would recommend Bushell, or Orion telescopes to by instead of this. Even though I'm a beginier astronomer, I strongly recommend to skip this telescope, please!

This telescope rocks. It is so easy to use. I love the star cards lets you know what you are looking for and allows you to look for stars that you didn't even know existed.

This is a fun and interesting book on the human body. It is limited in information, so it is more interesting to the 2nd grade to 4th grade set. I am really disapointed that LeapFrog has not produced more books for the quantum pad. I think the concept is great and it is perfect for travel.

My daughter was not very enthusiastic about this book at first. She thought it was pretty gross. She liked the pages showing the different age groups and things that happen to your body at different stages, but was not too interested in the actual body parts themselves. Now, she looks at it every chance she gets. I think it a very good book to learn about the body and systems, but only when your child is ready.

Our son received this for his 4th birthday and loves it! He has played with it for hours. He now can identify many of the bones, muscles and joints by name and type. He also has gained knowledge regarding the many systems of the human body(circulatory, respiratory, etc.) Excellent choice for any child already fascinated by the human body!

This could be a very nice item for its intended use. However, a major drawback that would have me express concern to future buyers and recommend against its purchase has been mentioned before in these reviews. The light not only doesn't work, but the batteries fit loose with over 1/4" of play. This was apparently designed by a committee who could not decide whether to wire them in parallel or series because neither is complete. The whole mechanics of the light is dangerous to sell to the intended market as it can result in an 8 to 12 year old attempting to repair and wind up creating an excessive and dangerous amount of heat. Since "only" 40% of the buyers of the Meade 8200 have a problem with a crucial part of the microscope according to these reviews, it equates to a coin toss on receiving a Meade 8200 that is not defective. I would recommend caution to those whose light works and be aware of not leaving it on unattended. If the manufacturer left contacts and tension springs out of mine, et al, there may be workable ones that are inferior also. Since this was a gift for my niece I bought her a small light and a mirror to reflect to the microscope.

We have not had a problem with the light or batteries. This microscope works as we expected and we have been very pleased with it. The quality of the images is very good. The manual is very easy to follow, even for my nine-year-old.

We were just looking for a beginner scope but this looked like so much more for the price. The lighting really works well to view deatils. We have had fun as a family trying some of the slides suggested in the instructions.

This game is an abomination that should be sought out and destroyed. The game is incredibly boring. The platforming and overall concept of it makes me want to vomit. I would rather eat a baby than play this game again. If you are an E.T Fan, and I mean die-hard fan, then you might enjoy this game. If you are not, you will probably wish the alien had died.

ET has been alot of fun so far. I am looking for a stratagy book to help me as I am stuck in part 4. Please advise if you can. Thanks

Great game for any E.T. fan. The only con is that the humans are not in it. Elliott, Gertie, and Michael are not in it. It is just about E.T. on his home planet going through each level as it gets harder and harder. I am 12 years old and I still haven't finished it. But it is very hillarious seeing E.T. run!

I have the first in this series for my playstation. This translation into gameboy color is disappointing. The only thing that gave it 2 stars instead of 1 or 0 was that the characters can say four phrases. Even for gameboy color, it shouldn't be THIS bland and boring.

which wasnt a long time ago, but this 'shakey flakey' game boy animation was just putrid. From any stand point you would look at a slurgs (aka the lil green blobby things that come out of the blue and eat you for no reason) and youd think it was the FOLLOWING: A.) A BLOB OF GREEN SLOG (Those freaking ... of a dog) CRAP, B.) A PLANT OR C.) WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? In short? My review goes only to that the animation sucked, and that the plot was scarcilly short, stanky, and the only reason I wouldnt give it a LOWER rating is because those damned sligs were kickin .... Oh yes and being a true fan of Simpsons I must end my review as so....

For those who prefer simpler games (run, jump, point, shoot) this game is not for you. Learning the controls to talk to other Mudokons will be frustrating to both children and the impatient alike. It will be near impossible for those who cannot read yet. For non-English speaking people there is the option to select a different language, which I thought was cool. I forgot what they all were, but other languages include German, Spanish, French and maybe Italian.

I spent a week trying to get a grasp of the controls for this game. I'm a true Batman fan and even I had to put this game down after several attempts. It was either too dark so you didn't know where the character was going or you couldn't establish enough control of the game to fight the bad guys. Not real crazy about the commute to the crime location as well, it was hard to locate where you were going, unless you are the true dark knight who knows every inch of Gothem City. Unfortunately, the writers expected us to know as well.

What do you mean "A BIG GLITCH"? Batman & Robin is a mere better than poor! I've looked in a quiz, and two Italian plumbers (Mario and Luigi) both relate to this game. Besides, Mediocre is 10% better than poor.

This Game Is sort Of good but it needs some work with the graphics,sometimes when you go in a corner you get messed up for example it is hard to fight bad guys because you cant see them if you go in to a corner.But the game is really hard. But the really cool part about this game is jumping off a building and start to glide.

Too many reviews of PSone games seem to get a brunt of bad press due to the fact that they're measured up to Ps2 games. This is a pretty cool game, especially for a PSone. It's no resident evil, but for what it is, it's spectacular, especially for a Plastation ONE game.

As for the earlier comment of "No Saves", there's plenty of them. You find "Save points" just like you find weapons, health, and ammo. C-12 is a nice mix of resident evil action, alongside - Spyhon Filter, with just enough identity to make it it's own. If you liked those games you'll like this just as well

this smells worse than my dogs fecis

If C-12 was released four or five years ago this game would have been considered revolutionary, but sadly C-12: Final Resistance showed up for the dying (but still kicking) PS1 too little too late. The storyline is nothing original (you play as a one man army mowing down hordes of alien enemies hellbent on destroying humanity in a post-apocalyptic future), but the action is well done, and the controls are pretty decent. Graphics are a bit of a setback here though, polygon drop out is aplenty here, not to mention some of the enemies look a little ridiculous. All in all however, C-12 isn't a bad game at all, it just showed up at too late a time. Next-generation only gamers will have no interest in C-12, but if your still holding on to your PS1 (or if thats the only system you own) you'll have a bit of fun with this, and fans of the Syphon Filter series will dig it as well.

This game had A LOT of potential which seems to have been almost completely wasted.

I'll start with what this game does right. The overal concept, built in the fashion of a 4X game, was done very well. Essentially the point is to eXplore the galaxy, eXpand your empire, eXterminate and eXploit your enemies. The galaxy size is customizable and can become fairly large. Combine this feature with up to 8 other empires in play and the game can become an epic space opera. The races have their own "living" requirements which allows for a nice diversity of colonization restrictions. Stars which are the primary "dots" you see on the map screen allow for a random number of planets that can potentially be colonizable for your race. This ability and random star placement allows for better replay value. Empire management is extremely easy and it is evident that a lot of thought went in it's design. Most colonies can have their entire build tree set with a simple click of the mouse thanks to the game's well developed "default" build button. This saves a person's sanity in that you are not constantly bothered with having to remember what colonies are building what items especially when you have 20+ colonies. Ship building allows for the setting of a waypoint which allows for ships to "cluster" at a given star. They will move to that waypoint immediately after they are built. The autosave function is a wonderful feature that is unfortunately mandatory if you want to play a full game. The game comes with a VERY comprehensive editor which at first glance looks pretty nice. It allows for complete control over ALL aspects of an empire. It even allows you to completely re-write the technology trees to your liking. Scenarios can be built and linked together to form a custom campaign.

Now what this game does wrong. Probably the most glaring example of this is in the games NUMEROUS bugs. The game crashes constantly! It has at least one major memory leak and some major graphic glitches. It is almost impossible to play a complete game without using the autosave feature. Even when using the autosave it can be difficult to continue as more often than not your game will crash again after restoring to your previous turn. The one way around this I found was to restore a couple turns back and hope that it will progress through the problematic turn. The game also cannot seem to handle it's own complexity without bombing. If you attempt to play the game with more than 3 other empires the game will crash very early and much more frequently than usual. Marine functionality is completely broken. You are supposed to be able to capture enemy colonies with your marines. However when you attempt to do this it just destroys the colony instead. Space combat is akin to playing pong back in the 70's. This is the stupidest, most boring thing I have EVER done in my life. There is absolutely NO thinking or strategy invovled here. You have the option of setting 4 formation choices and 3 range settings then you sit back and watch the computer fight for you. To make matters worse the formations do very little to influence the outcome of the fight. There is no ability to target a specific set of ships and the only thing you need to know before going into combat is to build a bunch of small ships to act as cannon fodder for enemy weapons and take some of the pressure off your big ships. Diplomacy is so oversimplified that it is useless. The one advantage of allying with the other empires is for trade which brings in extra resources for your empire. Another annoying feature is that the galaxy wraps around! What?!? I see absolutely no point in this as it adds nothing but confusion to the game when you expect to see your ship on one half of the galaxy when its really on the other. When you start a new game you're always placed at the center of the map. Some random placement would have been nice but then again maybe random placement is irrelevant since the galaxy wraps around and allows for a constant center position. The game unfortunately just does not have the depth of Master of Orion 2 and combined with the overwhelming number of bugs it very difficult to even play.

This game just doesn't have enough positive features to outweigh the negative. My advice is save the money and buy something else. Major disappointment here!

Reach for the Stars (RTFS) is an excellent strategy game. Unfortunately it has suffered from the sale of its publisher - Mattel Interactive (MI) - just after its release. It has been very difficult to get hold of outside of North America and the new owners of MI have obviously had more important things to do then quickly address various bugs. Nevertheless SSG et al produced a patch fairly quickly to address the more serious crashing problems and I can report that the 1.1 version of the game is stable on my 350Mhz AMD powered machine with a NVidea TNT2 Pro video card. The 1.1 version patch is available at either www.ssg.com.au or www.ssionline.com. Through the Club SSI (www.clubssi.com) discussion forum SSG have announced another patch due soon to fix the remaining gripes mentioned in other reviews.

So why is RFTS an excellent game? Firstly it automates, simplifies and rationalises all of the empire building housekeeping work. The interface is easily navigated with your mouse and there are some excellent hot keys available. This is a major plus, having to individually manage each colony/city each turn used to drive me insane when playing other games.

RTFS deals with this easily with a long easily managed build queue mated with a visual summary of colony attributes. Similarly shipbuilding and research are taken care of in this manner leaving the player to concentrate on strategy.

Unfortunately this subtle approach hides the depth of the game and it does feel strange not having to actively give orders every turn in order to keep your empire going. Depending on which of the sixteen species you play this can be dangerous - you will need to tweak various research or build queues as empires begin to collide. Each species presents a different strategic problem and because each star system has multiple planets each rated for their habitat, it is possible to have several species in one star system. This is where diplomacy comes in.

The object of the game is to build your empire to the point where you can frag the other players. Thus space-fleet combat strategy is fairly important. Here is another misunderstood aspect of the game. If you believe space combat should consist of each sides heroes colliding in a melee of individual dogfights across the battlefield you will be disappointed with RFTS. SSG have decided to treat tactical space-fleet combat from the naval combat (rather than aerial combat) point of view.

Winning fleet battles begins in the ship design screen. Each technology era brings new hulls and weapons to equip them. You must decide which weapons you load onto those hulls. Thus you can optimise your ships for long range missile/beam attack with moderate defensive capabilities or if your hulls are robust enough, you can concentrate on short-range weapons. There are for basic combat ship classes: destroyers, cruisers, dreadnoughts and super dreadnoughts. To win you must build a balanced fleet with all four classes of ships present. Dreadnoughts alone will be destroyed by a smaller balanced force - depending on the relative technologies present.

Finally during the engagement you must select the range and basic fleet formation the fleet will fight in. These decisions will depend on your fleet composition and the weapons they carry, balanced against who and what you are facing.

Yes the combat screen does look like ping-pong, but unless you put some serious thought into it you will get thrashed. I suppose SSG could have put more bells and whistles into this area, except in games lasting only 30 minutes you can end up resolving 10 minor/major engagements in a single turn, with residual clashes to follow as retreating fleets collide in following turns. The stated object of this game is to defeat the opposing empire and rule the universe. Placing emphasis on individual engagements would not only detract from the strategy aspect, but would become monotonous as single turns took longer and longer to finish. I believe SSG have got the balance right.

SSG have also included the editor they used to create the scenarios and campaign. Tech-trees, species, maps, ships, planets, and scripts can all be edited, but the artwork cannot.

However there are a couple of caveats:

Firstly a warning. The game requires the computer to track every fleet and maintain a database of every ship and its weapon load out and damage status within those fleets. As the games become bigger you will find the number crunching required may slow the game down quite a bit. A 350Mhz computer will keep things ticking along fairly well with 3-4 empires and a medium sized map. Any larger and you will find the time lag between hitting a key and getting a response will be annoying.

Secondly, the invasion problem mentioned elsewhere wasn't fixed in the first patch. It will be in the second patch out soon. SSG are a small company and are fairly quick at patching things, but it is an annoying oversight.

Thirdly, there is no espionage or alien artefact research feature in the game mechanics. This is disappointing because skulduggery is bloody good fun and would have added another twist to the game.

Lastly, I would have liked to control planetary invasions the same way you controlled space combat. Designing and equipping armies and then directing their campaign in the same way you direct tactical space combat would have been nice. Alas not in this edition of RFTS - maybe the next one.

Even with these gripes the RFTS ver 1.1 is an absorbing strategy game, the sort of game that grows on you - well worth the money.

Ok so the game has not been released, however you can download a 60 turn demo from mindscapes website. It looks like this could be a nice game.

The game takes much of the tedium of controlling a large empire away by pooling all resources, and allowing entire colony build profiles to be created with a single click. there appears to be a large tech list to research, and the presentation and interface a very polished.

the downsides:

the space battle look fairly simplistic, and uninvolved: you get to pick tactics - which seems to play like a more advanced paper, scissor, stones game. Its a shame they did not take the master of Orion route with combat. Also despite being able to design your own ships, it is hard to determine the affects of different configurations because you are so removed from the action

Still All said i am looking forward to seeing what it is like, and hope that some of these failing have been delt with for the release version.

James Tory