Magic Orbz - PlayStation Network Review

I have always liked a good brick busting game.  I remember Arkanoid quite fondly from when I was a kid and even as recently have been playing Shatter on my PC.  One title I had never really planned to pick up was Magic Orbz on the PlayStation Network, but last year when Sony offered it cheap with their Welcome Back program, I picked it up.  There was also some free addon content you could snag for free with your month of free PlayStation Plus trial.  This was not a long game by any means, but I did enjoy it for the most part and it caught my wife's eye as well with its cute visuals.  Here's a bit more of a breakdown on the specifics.

Graphics - 7:

This is a bright and colorful game that masks the 'brick' layout with actual buildings and hedges and other objects that fall apart when struck.  These visuals caught my wife's eye and she actually took over the controller and played for about an hour that night, and for about half an hour the next.  Keep in mind she spends probably less than 15-30 minutes a month playing video games, so this was quite unusual.  In some ways, the graphics are both this game's greatest strength and weakness, because the visual style is very inviting but it can get cluttered at times and make it hard to see what it going on.  I am okay with losing a ball because my reflexes were not up to snuff, but there are times when there is just so much going on at once on the screen that you cannot even see the ball until its too late.

 

Sound & Music - 6:

The music is pretty bland, to be perfectly honest.  That is not to say it was bad music, it was not - it just was not particularly interesting either.  The sound effects help as there is a fair amount of variation in them, and they seldom got repetitive.  Similar to the music, the sound effects really did not impress in the end, but they served a purpose pretty well.

Gameplay - 7:

The gameplay is pretty solid, though I found the directional pad more useful than the analog stick for accurately controlling my paddle.  There is a decent selection of power-ups (and power-downs) to be had which keeps things interesting.  Some of the later levels were a bit challenging (some would even argue cheap) by how close to your paddle the blocks were placed.

 

Intangibles - 7:

There are quite a few levels, and the free expansions helped extend the fun.  Still, I think you can blow through the main set in under five hours, and the side ones seemed to go even more quickly.  There are trophies to collect for people who like those, and for the most part they are pretty easy to collect just by playing.

 

Overall - 6.75:

I would have a hard time suggesting this title at full price, but I believe I got it and the expansions for about $3 in total, and I felt pretty good about that.  The steep spike in challenge around midway through the levels turned my wife off to it, and my kids though.  That's worth noting because the visuals appealed to both groups of people, but they grew tired of the (you could argue 'cheap') difficulty spike quickly and have never played it again.  I gave it a longer run, but even if you stick with it like I did, you can get through the majority of the content pretty quickly and after doing so there is not much reason to go back to it, though there is multiplayer as an option - but one that just never appealed to me.

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Gaming Thoughts 1/31/12 - PlayStation Plus for Feb

I just saw this rundown of the PlayStation plus deals for February.  I cannot say I am regretting my decision to re-up for a year.  My backlog is eying me angrily as I post this...

IGN posted these as the freebies for the month:

PS3 Full Games:
Far Cry 2 – 2/14 (V-Day Special One Week Offer)

PSN Games:
The Simpsons Arcade Game – 2/7
Sega Genesis Bundle – 2/21
Altered Beast – 2/21
Comix Zone – 2/21
Golden Axe – 2/21
Sonic 1 – 2/21
Sonic 2 – 2/21
Streets of Rage 2 – 2/21
Battle Fantasia – 2/14
Fatal Inertia – 2/14
Hamsterball – 2/14
Inferno Pool – 2/7
Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom – 2/14
Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars – 2/14

minis:
Hungry Giraffe – 2/7
Gold Medalist – 2/7

PS one Classics:
Final Fantasy V – 2/7

Full Game Trials:
Grand Theft Auto IV – 2/14
Deus Ex: Human Revolution – 2/21
Tom Clancy'S H.A.W.X 2 -2/21
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 -2/28

Early Access Demo:
The House Of The Dead III Exclusive Playstation Plus Demo – 2/7

Media:
Qore Episode 44 – February – 2/7

Avatars and Themes:
The House of the Dead 3 Dynamic Theme
Start The Party 2 Dynamic Theme – 2/21
The House Of The Dead III – Agent G Avatar
The House Of The Dead III – Lisa Avatar
The House Of The Dead III – Z1 Avatar

And some discounts too:


PSN Games
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition (Bundle) – 2/14 (PS+ Price: $23.99)
The House of the Dead III – 30% off Crazy Taxi & SEGA Rally Arcade – Drive Me Crazy Bundle – 20% off – 2/21 (PS+ Price $9.59)
Sonic Rivals 1 – 25% off – 2/21 (PS+ Price $5.99)
Sonic Rivals 2 – 25% off – 2/21 (PS+ Price $5.99)
Sar – Search and Rescue Mini – 20% off – 2/21 (PS+ Price $TBD)
Hamilton's Great Adventure – 50% off Sale Price – 2/21 (PS+ Price $2.50)

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Gaming Thoughts 1/6/12... Online Odds n Ends

So, I thought I would just toss together a handful of different items and observations from the last couple of weeks.  I'll start off with a nice horror story - a woman who apparently had her Xbox Gold account hacked, and how it cost her hundreds of dollars.  I've never had to contact Microsoft for a problem like this, but I recall how hard it was to simply get my gold account properly renewed again, and have little trouble in imagining that this issue has driven this lady a bit nuts.

http://hackedonxbox.tumblr.com/post/15365217063/microsoft-a-company-with-no-brains-heart-or-soul

And this was a fun one - major PR fail that got some time on Penny Arcade last week.  Since I work in Tech Support and am always dealing with customer service issues, I tell our techs to handle every customer like gold, and that you never know who they are.  This provided me with amusement though, as this guy's horrible attitude clearly landed him in hot water:

http://penny-arcade.com/resources/just-wow1.html

I've also had some time to spend with the Xbox Live's new dashboard, and at first I really didn't like it.  Since then, I've more or less gotten used to navigating around it, but I'm still not thrilled with it.  The ads are a bit annoying - especially so if you're a gold member who pays for their access.  On top of that, the cloud saves are a nice enough idea, but it's still a pain to move around from one machine to another.  I still have to use a USB stick for my profile so I can jump from one system to the other.  It's also harder and harder to customize your backgrounds as they have gone from the bladed, very customized background view to one where all of the crud in front clutters the view.  There's a bunch of new stations and features added, but almost all of them are ones you have to buy on top of it - so there's still little there for gold members that's new, IMO.  All in all, I'm a bit disappointed with the update, and still feel that Xbox Gold and Xbox Live in general are lagging behind Sony's Playstation Network overall, at least for me and my family.

I will give some credit - there were some interesting Xbox Gold deals over the last few weeks, and I picked up a few games like Bastion, Contra Hard Corps and Radiant Silvergun cheaply and have been enjoying those.

Speaking of PSN - if you are a Playstation + user, there's a ton of cool stuff this month.  My susbscription runs out in a week or so, but I will definitely be renewing.  Between Hydrophobia, Tomb Rader: Underworld, the Minis, Spryo games and everything else I've gotten in the last week, the games actually have had both value and appeal to various members of my family.  Better yet?  I can use those games and so can my kids.  That's so very cool.  I have no interest in Spyro - but my daughters do.  I couldn't care less about Crash Bandicoot games, but my son's playing them like crazy.  My wife was enjoying Tomb Raider.  My new 360 games?  Turns out since I downloaded them on the 360 in my room, my kids can't play them on the living room 360 - only I can (if I tote in my USB drive).  I realize they want to protect developers and make as much money as possible, but it's disappointing all the same to have to deal with.

And lastly, here's the PS+ deals right now - but I've had several friends nudging me about Back to the Future so that right there should pay off this month's investment.

• Back to the Future: The Game (PSN, Free)
• Darksiders (Retail, Discount)
• Darksiders (Retail, Full Game Trial)
• Rocket Knight (PSN, Discount)
• Swords and Soldiers (PSN, Free)
• Syphon Filter (PSone, Free)
• Syphon Filter 2 (PSone, Free)
• Syphon Filter 3 (PSone, Free)

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Playstation Minis - a few quick hit reviews

So recently, I picked up Playstation + for a few months on something of a whim. I wanted to transfer some save files, there were a few deals that caught my eye, so basically I did the 'responsible' thing and spent $17. Given the headaches I got from trying to re-up my Xbox Live Gold account recently (more on that soon), I figured maybe I would get something more out of this.

So far? I've been pretty pleased with it. I've gotten a handful of free games, and it's exposed me to some Minis I probably wouldn't have tried otherwise. Here's a quick rundown on the recent ones I've taken a shot at:

Street Smart - okay, this game is clearly an older titles made before more notable 'beat 'em up' titles. This was probably an arcade cabinet game and not something designed for the PSN by any means. The title is pretty much throwaway. I played through it once. Very simple one on one fights against 8 opponents across the country with very basic attacks. I kept thinking it was meant to be a quarter eater. 1/10

Alien Zombie Death - This is a fun and simple game, but really only in limited doses. It's a very basic shoot 'em up style title with pretty cool visuals. It's a very basic 2D shooter where you use square and circle to shoot to a side while you move about taking on hordes of aliens that continually fly at you. It's nothing fancy, but considering Minis are lower budget games that are usually designed to be 'quick fixes', this one was decent. 7/10

Speedball 2 Evolution - I kept thinking of the old Genesis game, Mutant League Footbal. You have a couple of teams that can score points for disabling opponents, hitting various targets in and around the arena, and for scoring actual goals. High score wins at the end of the timer. The premise is not bad, but the execution is a bit lacking. The graphics aren't bad, but players are completely nondescript and it's hard to tell one from another. Also, what could be sports title with a bit of strategy usually devolves into just beating up players from the other team with slide tackles because you'll earn more points that way than if you try to actively score. There are some cool RPG-like elements where you are in a league, with prize earnings, that you can put into your players to better them. Still, there's a lot to learn right off of the bat, and the after a few games I grew a bit bored overall. Not a bad effort, just not a great one either. 5/10

Age of Zombies - Yup, you can tell a couple of these titles were acquired around Holloween. Anyway, this is another shooter style game, but with more of a twin-stick/Smash TV feel to it. The game is pretty accessible, and there is a lot happening on the screen at once. I actually liked little touches like the voices and the music for different time periods. Sure, the game is not terribly deep, but for a quick fix pick up and play Mini? This is just about perfect. 8/10

1000 Tiny Claws - Here I've saved the best for last. This is a cool little game where you run around using a sword to knock bugs off of the flying platform you are on. There's openings in the platform, at the edges of the platform, and you can power up a special attack or just whack them until they're on the back, waiting to be knocked off of the edge like little (okay, sometimes big) crawling hockey pucks. The story is a bit ridiculous and the game's actual controls could be better. It would likely have felt better using the analog stick and not the D-pad, but it's easy to pick up and play, great in small bursts and is so far my favorite of the Minis I have gotten to play.

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Gaming Thoughts 12/6/12 - Playstation + vs. Xbox Live Gold

I have been fortunate enough to have access to most systems from this generation of gaming, and as a result have found myself in a somewhat rare space in that I have had a chance to see the best and worst of all the different gaming systems and offerings out there. One of the biggest changes to this generation in gaming has been the social aspect of it. For PC users, the option to play games with others has been around a very long time. For those who stick strictly to consoles, there were options in the past with Dreamcast and Xbox and Playstation 2, but the console community has really blossomed this generation (with little to no thanks from Nintendo, who still have a very last generation approach to online gaming with the Wii).

I have stated before that for my household, the PS3 is king. The primary reason? Because everyone has access to online play for free. My daughter would love to play Castle Crashers and my son would love to play Halo with people online on their own accounts. Instead they have to use mine because I refuse to pay $100/year for a family pack, or another $60 for my son to get a gold account. The result for me? A lot of kids I don't know on my friends list randomly asking me to play Left 4 Dead or Halo: Reach. More than that though? It turns my kids away from the 360 because all things being equal, if I have a chance to pick up a multiplayer title - I get it for the PS3. Microsoft's loss.

Beyond that though, PlayStation did create the Playstation Plus service some time ago, and I have had it twice now. The first time was the one month complimentary offering from Sony as part of their Welcome Back package. I tried it again recently due to a coupon code and a desire to port some save files around.

I also recently had to weigh the merits of renewing my Xbox Live Gold status. This gave me an opportunity to consider several things when weighing the two services, and here's my thoughts on them both.

Xbox Live Gold:

The discounts are nice, especially if you buy a lot of downloadable games and content. I go back and forth on this. Sometimes I see a particular deal or set of deals (I'm still holding out home for a Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age 2 discount sooner than later) and I'll gobble it all up at the discounted price.

The cross-game chat is nice. I like how flexible it is chatting with a friend or group of friends while I'm playing a different game.

The Netflix access. We're a big Netflix family - so this is nice (but again free on Wii and PS3)

The Xbox Rewards program - which I believe is open to everyone (you fill out surveys, sometimes get deals offered, etc where you earn points - that can then be turned into Microsoft points). They also do some small Gold Only rewads now and then (like some Avatar items, or bonus Microsoft Points - but in truth there's only been 4 of those this calendar year). Still, I like free points to spend, so this is nice.

For me however? The biggest perk is that you can play games online with people. That's frustrating for me though, since the PS3 offers that functionality for free. There are some other services offered, but I don't make any use out of them to be perfectly honest.

PlayStation Plus:

Full game trials - you download the whole game and you get a full, 1 hour rental to see if you like it. Any trophies you unlock also 'stick'. Not my favorite feature, because I already get in trouble with my cable company for our bandwidth usage. If it were not for that? I'd probably like this a bit more.

Early access to Demos & Beta Invites - I honestly don't participate in demos or betas real often, so again this feature, while nice, sort of misses on me.

Automatic updating, trophy synching, and a few other automated processes are nice I suppose, but not worth updating my service.

Cloud saves - this has been pretty handy for me for bouncing my saves around from one system to another.

Discounts - Like the Xbox gold, there are weakly discounts. There seem to be more of them on the PSN than the Gold account, but not many more and they're about the same in terms of value.

Free games - this is probably my favorite 'find'. You get a lot of free games every month, it seems. They are generally minis, PSone Classics and even sometimes standard titles - I'm trying out Hydrophobia: Prophecy now for example, and snagged a bunch of Crash Bandicoot games a few weeks ago too.

An additional note: the renewal process for Xbox really, REALLY peeved me off about a month ago. My credit card the service was linked to didn't have enough room to re-up, and you can't cancel via the dashboard on the 360 nor online. So, a friend got me a Gold Subscription gift card so I could just do it that way. Problem was, by the time I had, Microsoft had locked down my account. I was less than their free/silver - they had actually frozen my account because my credit card could not process their auto renewal. I went to go online to try and enter my gift card, and it would not take my account. I tried to move it to a new credit card, and it would not let me. I emailed their support, and they said I had to call in. I called in 3 nights in a row - first two nights on hold for over an hour before I gave up because there were some other technical difficulties that night that caused their call volume to spike.

I did finally get it all straightened out, but as you can probably guess - I was not really all that happy with the above headaches. By contrast, the PlayStation plus service is also set up to auto-renew, but you can turn that feature off right in the console's account settings. What a world of difference that made for my experience.

Currently, I'd consider the PlayStation plus a better deal and service overall. That said? There are some new changes coming today for the 360 that addresses some of these things, from what I have read. One feature is going to be the ability to turn off the auto-renewal via your dashboard - something that would have saved me hours of frustration a month ago. Xbox is also going to be adding some new channels - but it has not been really clear what that means (what all the channels are, what they provide, and if like Hulu Plus or Netflix they will require additional subscription services). Lastly, Xbox is apparently going to add some cloud saves as well.

I am also curious about whether or not this will have any bearing on how profiles are handled on the Xbox. I got a new Xbox for free a few months ago with my wife's cpu - but I discovered something rather annoying. While the PlayStation 3 stores your accounts on each device, and simply updates trophy information with their servers when you ask them to, the Xbox 360 does not handle the account profiles nearly so gracefully. Each time I tried to log into one Xbox or the other, it would tell me I had to recover my gamertag. Apparently, while my profile was on the Xbox servers, there is a locally saved component too. This recovery process took upwards of 15 minutes each time I wanted to go from one Xbox 360 to the other.

Finally I got smart and tossed it on a USB thumb drive that I had handy and had a few gigs formatted to for Xbox use. Still, I have to take it back and forth from one machine to the other every time, and one small annoyance with it is that it rattles back and forth when I am playing disc-based games, tapping the framework of the 360 repeatedly and creating an an annoying sound during my entire playtime. I am hoping that with the introduction of cloud saves that Microsoft will introduce more cloud-friendly means of handling our profiles with this update of service as well. I'll post on it in a few weeks after I've had some time to digest the latest update.

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