Magical Mystery Tournament
Review of Battles of Norghan
By Dr. J.

The marriage of a sports management-style game with tactical combat seems like a natural. To be sure, it is more difficult to accomplish than a pure management simulation, but for those of us who are control freaks, it’s extremely satisfying to actually command our ranged units (wizards, mystery archmages, and archers) on when to let their missiles of destruction fly and to order our heavy-duty (knights, black knights, giants, and minotaurs) into melee after the magical and medieval artillery have softened their targets.

Battles of Norghan (BON) offers the features I like most about Colisseum from Stormcloud Creations. Players have the chance to assemble rosters from a pool of freelance fighters and must balance the salary and equipment demands with some measure of profitability. In many ways, BON is like Arcadia that Stormcloud Creations is currently developing. In this case, players recruit fighters into a clan, manage training and equipment, and recruit temporary fighters to meet needs during upcoming engagements. Although BON does not have the quest mechanism built into Arcadia, its training and equipping systems are significantly more robust. Plus, a new clan is instantly placed into the lowest of eight divisions so that it does not have to compete with the toughest clan in the game from the beginning.

Bizarre Worlds and Strange Situations
By Chuck Miller

It’s hard to evaluate Gumboy Crazy Adventures without comparison to games such as LocoRoco, Gish, Wik, and even Eets, as the similarities are apparent. Nonetheless, it stands on its own as a unique title, a refreshingly challenging yet quirky side-scroller set in a fanciful, fairy-tale world. Crazy Adventures indeed!

DWARFED PERCEPTION: The world of Gumboy offers a fairy-tale style experience.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

Gumboy lacks a story element. It has no quests to perform, no worlds to save, and no overarching goals except to move from one level to the next. In fact, it’s pretty much an old-school side-scroller in modern-day garb. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. Its straightforward gameplay is an invigorating change of pace from the elaborate, overly-complex titles that too many developers are churning out these days. Gumboy is simple…and, to this reviewer, that’s good.

So, what’s Gumboy Crazy Adventures all about? Well, physics mostly. Gumboy is a rubber ball that rolls, bounces, and ricochets around his environment performing relatively simple tasks. Not necessarily simple to perform, but clear-cut in their goal. For example, one task might be successfully moving an object from Point A to Point B intact. But, there’s more to it than that. Gumboy must deal with forces like gravity, inertia, traction, adhesion and more.

By Dr. J.

The legions under Theodoric’s command were striking a major blow, deep within enemy territory. As the guard tower disintegrated into a dust heap, the catapults began to creak toward the evil one’s keep. Suddenly, Theodoric sensed something wrong. He had left a stout garrison behind to guard his own keep and he could have sworn that no major force could have managed to sneak by him. Yet, as assuredly as he believed the current battle was his, something was wrong back “home.”

BLOOD DIFFUSION: The artificial opponent in Dark Legions is sneaky enough that, while the good guys made a foray into enemy territory, slaves built a barracks “behind the lines” on the site of this bloody melee.

The “something wrong” described in this after-battle report from Theodoric’s perspective was that a couple of slaves (deemed too unimportant to attack as they slipped through Theodoric’s heroic troops) managed to get past the main thrust of the attack and build a barracks behind the attack. By the time yours truly (Theodoric’s supposed alter ego) realized what was happening, that barracks behind my forces was churning out advanced troops that were decimating the large garrison I had left behind. I don’t ever remember experiencing anything like this. I remember finding structures I wasn’t expecting in Starcraft, but I don’t remember the AI overtly building “behind my lines.” Truth be told, Dark Legions became ever so much more interesting when I realized how diabolical my artificial opponent could be.

In all fairness, my preference is not toward so-called “real-time” strategy games. I consider them ill-named since they are certainly “compressed-time” strategy games where frenzied hordes come at you faster than “real-time” and I will be up-front that I tend to focus on one portion of the battle or scenario and forget to keep building and reinforcing while I’m pursuing my tactical objective.

Hollywood Mogul 3
"Screenplay" by Dr. J.

In real-life, I listed with a Hollywood agent when I was college. I didn’t expect movie work. I was hoping for voiceover and radio work. That work never happened for me, but I was in the agent’s office long enough to hear him take other calls and use about five of the top 10 Hollywood clichés. Long after grad school, I met a disappointed screenwriter named Carey DeVuono. Carey had gotten closer to the Hollywood life than I had and he gave me a lot of insights about the “management by committee” styles that forced mediocrity on so many of the films we see today. Carey wreaked revenge on the Hollywood establishment by exposing some of the flaws and some of the process in a little Visual Basic game called Hollywood Mogul.

AWARD WINNER: Using a fan-created database, you can insert photos of actual stars in the game.

I was fortunate enough to be able to assign myself the review when I was working at the once legendary Computer Gaming World magazine. I loved the mix of customizable activities, decision points, and cute displays on the screen. I didn’t care that the graphics were crude, the screens were text-heavy, and that the program was sometimes slow. It was, in those days, our kind of game—more steak, less sizzle.

Of course, we’ve seen the bulk of computer/video games move toward the sizzle side of the continuum. But thanks to a few independent visionaries, we still see a few products that are chewy, juicy, tasty, satisfying steaks. For strategy gamers who like a simulated slice of real life (and I suppose I have to use that term loosely when I speak of the “business” of Hollyweird) and the ability to control lots of details like the control freaks some of us are, Hollywood Mogul 3 is such a steak. This sequel to that old Visual Basic game has a tremendous amount more to offer than that earlier game.