Even if one gets involved in the ‘Splosion Man playgame or simply watches it being played, the Twisted Pixel’s release on Xbox Live Arcade looks to be one of its best games up to date. ‘Splosion Man is a single-player game with a multiplayer option that offers funny moments to deal with.
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The game delivers you the controls for a person who due to some experiments has the ability to explode himself into pieces that carry him through higher levels of the game. These levels are in a number of 50 and allow you to exploit and explode your skills delivering the possibility of blasting yourself through many obstacles while racing for the exit. As the game advances the challenging is getting higher, you are enabled to have a perfect timing for your explosions, thus blasting off the obstacles or travel over distances that seem hard to be otherwise covered.

Though the game presents itself as a platform playing, the gamers are advised to approach a style closed to a timing-based puzzler. Since you are provided with less direct control on ‘Splosion Man you have to accurately time your explosions and have good reaction reflexes when it comes to overcoming the obstacles. The action of the game displays itself pretty fun and rewarding to keep your attention on while blasting your way to reach the end of each level. The fun part comes together with the character’s actions, such as performing a flying through the air pretending to act as a Kung Fu fighter, or the moments when he stretches out his arm looking like an airplane ready to take off.

These actions are performed on a background which reveals scientists being killed in an ejection of steaks and meats to replace the blood and fat enemies who are picked up on the sounds of “Everybody Loves Donuts”, all these making the game a delicious place to be part of. The ‘Splosion Man’s humor sent out by comic situations helps to ease up the frustration that a player will feel while facing some absurd difficult sections.

The critics have shown agreements and disagreements on the aspect of the game. For instance, IGN praises the humor and personality of the game offered by the independent developers, with the new videogame character that can easily become endeared by the one who is in the action of the ever more surprising game. From ‘Team Xbox’ the critic agrees with the visual style that contains funny moments conferring an acute sense of delivering hilarity. Whereas the ‘Eurogamer’ sees with the progression of the game a structure that starts to be revealed having a feel of lumpiness, while out of the three chapters delivered only the first one defines the concept of the game.

‘Activision’ has decided to postpone the release of “Singularity” until the first quarter of 2010, because, as it was declared, it needed to be separated from the competition revealed by the holiday marketplace. This decision is mainly seen as the Activision’s desire to lay a distance between Singularity and Wolfenstein, so long as they are so similar one to another, well at least they look like being the same from far distance, but if you play them you’ll figure out the difference.
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Singularity is an FPS featuring time maneuvering where the alteration of game’s time has an influence upon the state of singular objects. Targeting some objectives may lead to their destruction and once their ruins being found you are able to restore them. The mechanic of the aging and restoration is constructed in such a way that it generates some attractive puzzles. Everything that is destroyed seems to work in your favor, creating paths for you to continue your way along the game. But it is not something that you can pass through at your own will; the puzzles that are displayed apparently lead to a single solution.

/>To manipulate the time there are other features incorporated such as targeting at human foes and make them to age transforming them in horrific ghouls. The purpose of this feature is not quite that clear, but there are some other utilities presented with the restoration and aging feature, for instance finding a destroyed box that once restored it reveals ammo and useful items inside.

The island where you play is loaded of messy leftovers from the Russians strange experiments performed by them in the 50s. And the fact is that you are able to view into the past to spot items that belong to the past and drag them into the present. The fun part happens with the explosive barrels that are pulled from the past amidst a firefight in the purpose to be chucked at your foes; you can catch and reverse projectiles using them like rockets, and with adequate timing you can boomerang an RPG out of the air.

Beside all these powers you are offered a feature described as a telekinetic thrust that doesn’t damage too much but it reveals itself to be a useful tool to fight against your devilish enemies. Some of those creepy corpses can slide between a state of tangibility and the one of ethereality. While they are tangible, you can shoot them into pieces, but being ghostly, you are quite restricted in that you can’t do pretty much of anything.

The controls of the game are not sensitive at all, and the demo presented, failed to teach players how to use the field of skills, but this is mainly because of the demo’s poor construction and not a problem of the game itself. “Singularity” looks like “Wolfenstein”, but while playing it offers a totally different experience and a good one indeed.

Yes, it is maybe so, that Nancy Drew used to be your mother’s detective heroine, but while stepping in the world of Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships, you have to forget about this. The team from “Her Interactive” has turned the game into a collection of puzzles and mystery offering a package suitable to be played with family and friends. The action of this game takes place in Bahamas, due to a winning trip that Drew and her friends have won. Upon their arrival, one of Drew’s friends has been kidnapped, and Drew is forced to solve a mystery in order to get her friend back. The mystery is revealed to be the discovery of a long lost treasure that once belonged to a Spanish fleet. This is the pretext of the game to begin solving some interesting puzzles, while you are carried through unusual situations; no, not that kind of danger or menace.
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You are supposed to start your quest for clues, at the same time facing common obstacles that stay in your way. In your quest and trial you meet a lot of characters who are there to help you, but only after you help them first. The interesting thing is that an entire variety of things to do are offered to put your skills (navigating a map, decipher messages) at work. Unfortunately, the puzzles are not working that well, and beside this there are some reflex-based puzzles that test your ability to hit targets, and in case you are a slower paced thrower then it is a real problem for you.

At some point of the game you are allowed to take off on a boat and do some scuba diving handling a metal detector in order to find more clues. The further you advance, the more difficult the puzzles become, and for those who enjoy being brainteased this is for sure a way for you to feel excited. In your play there are situations when you might need to use pen and paper in order to take notes, but more useful seems to be a cell phone’s camera because there are some puzzles that need to be analyzed with a timer countdown. In this case the camera may help to take a photo of map directions, without you needing to write it down.

The game provides two difficult levels, one for the junior detective and the other one for the senior detective. Once you started as a junior you have the option to replay the game as a senior offering you in this way a more challengeable playgame. The values of the game’s production are low-tech, being displayed in a 2D without the possibility to adjust a resolution that is fixed. The exciting thing is that this game can be played on any PC that exists, and has an audio system appropriate for most of its part.

The feeling one gets, while playing is that of navigating through a series of puzzles that are connected by a not so convincing narrative style, rather than a mysterious game that offers puzzles to be solved. IGN games rated Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships at 7.3 which is considered to be a decent game.