The game that I am going to review today is a tower defense one, which is based on the general idea that you build your safety wall and try to protect yourself from the boogie man. In this game’s case the boogie men are zombies and the weapons of defense are plants (duh…). Maybe you figured out by now that I am talking about Pants vs. Zombies.
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The game is not build on an original idea which was never ever used in the plot of the games; the element of originality and novelty stands in the way the game was thought and developed. The graphics of the game are very colorful and attractive; the characters are very cartoonish and not at all scary, meaning that you can let your 8 year old play the game because, other than the crazy jalapeño which looses its temper in a matter of seconds, nothing seems to be scary.

The main plot of the game consists in the fact that you have to plant seeds on your front lawn in order for them to grow and become Rambo like characters which will shoot and butter up the enemies; which in this case are zombies. At a first glance the game seems simplistic and that it lacks strategy, but I assure you that this is not the case. If you play the game, and I urge you to do it, you will see that the zombies like to eat all kinds of vegetables with the exception of garlic. They hate the smell of garlic. Other than this, you will see towards the end of the game that there is a zombie professor which created a very big zombie robot. Well now, perhaps this is why they want to eat brains; to get smarter and smarter.

There are various levels that this game provides you; and you will see that the more you advance the more zombies will try to conquer your lawn and eat your brains. The zombies differ from one another, you have the plain zombie which is very easy to kill, the water loving zombies which have a ducky “flotation device” around them, the football jock, the athletic zombie, the bucket loving zombie and many others. Therefore, as you advance, the zombies have all kinds of new things that are used as shields or weapons.

The only thing that zombies do is to walk slowly towards your house and eat the plants in their way; some of them have some sorts of cars that seriously damage your lawn. Plants vs. Zombies is a high class casual game that has everything you need: colorful graphics, upbeat audio, a well thought game design, uncomplicated controls and most of all mushrooms that give you little sparkles or energy. Also, the game has an 8.5 score on GameSpot.

In The Treasures of Mystery Island: The Ghost Ship, you play the role of a reporter, sent on a seemingly desolate tropical island to discover the truth behind stories of ghosts, death and a lost ship on the sea. At the arrival, you discover that the Guide / your friend is missing, which gives more depth to this puzzle game. You can find out where your friend is and discover the secrets surrounding this mysterious island before another tragedy occurs?
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Sixty years ago, a giant cruise ship called "Queen Margaret" was lost after being hit by a huge wave, sending passengers and crew in the ocean depths. The ship is closely linked to a nearby island, where a shaman is trying to invoke, using black magic another wave that will provide its residents the same macabre fate. Ghosts from the "Queen Margaret" appear to warn you of what will follow, and you will have to find the shaman before the arrival of the eclipse and the huge wave.

Even if The Treasures of Mystery Island: The Ghost Ship has a superb story, this FROG (Fractured Object Game) lets you discover on your own most of it, through the many newspaper articles, notes and other pieces of paper scattered apparently randomly around the island. If you do not find them, you'll probably lose a part of the depth that this puzzle game has to offer. When you are not looking for parts of the story, you will spend most of the time collecting pieces for the dozens of broken items ranging from tools and oil lamps to collection of butterflies, gold plates and musical instruments. As you fix these destroyed things, you will be able to use them elsewhere, which may cause too much backtracking in the game. However, this is easily forgotten when you see that every object has a meaning or a purpose in relation to the environment where you are and when you know exactly what to do. Even if you will not interact with scenes of traditional hidden objects and you will not see the list of items that you need to find, you'll find a few puzzles along the way which is slowing things a bit. These puzzles come in the form of sliding puzzles; escape puzzles (reorganize objects to create a way to get the key element) and so on. There's nothing really extraordinary here, but neither should be.

While each individual item of The Treasures of Mystery Island: The Ghost Ship can be found elsewhere, including the rescue of the ghosts (which involves placing the wooden dolls representing ghosts in a model of the ship "Queen Margaret" and recalls of another Alawar game called „Stray Souls: A Dollhouse Story”), each of the game’s characteristic is forming a very nice pack which can easily hold you at your PC for 3- 4 hours, depending on how many clues you use and how many puzzles you skip. There are bonus items that can be found in almost every scene and the variety of items that you need to rebuild is sufficiently large to create an interesting experience, even if the gameplay can be considered relatively repetitive.

Mahjong games are exactly what you need when you want to lose the time: they are easy to learn, relaxing and can be played for five minutes or five hours. So it's not surprising that the manufacturers of casual games are trying to create a unique Mahjong experience by adding some new options, such as the 3-D graphics, upgrades or a timer, while others resort to certain themes, such as Caribbean islands, outer space or ancient Chinese history.
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This brings us to one of the latest games from MumboJumbo - Luxor Mahjong which turns out to be a very well done adventure, addictive and challenging, addressing to a wider audience as possible. In Luxor Mahjong, your objective is to recover the stolen treasures of Egypt by matching tiles over 200 unique layouts, spread in three game modes. The Egyptian theme is reflected well in the whole game when it comes to graphics (with specific color tones and glyphs), music and models of tiles with Egyptian images, including ankhs, cats and scarab beetles and so on. Also, players can choose one of three unique tiles.

If you've never played a mahjong game before (sometimes called Shanghai or Taipei), this ancient tile-matching game challenges players to match and remove pairs of identical tiles. In Luxor Mahjong, for example, you can fit two pieces each with five beetles on them, or two identical fish or birds, and so on. By matching, you will remove them from the board. The aim is to clear the board until you discover and match the two special ankh tiles, which is leading to transition to the next level. But mahjong games also have a specific rule: only the top tile and the sides are available, to which is added the fact that often there are several possible matches and if you pick the wrong one, tile's underside can become inaccessible. Some tiles can be matched if they are related, not necessarily identical, such as matching the two types of flowers or two Egyptian characters in different poses.

Also, Luxor Mahjong introduces five tiles with power- ups in order to clean the game board faster. For example, the tile “Horus Transformation”, that looks like a knife, let’s you select two tiles and the second one will miraculously transform in a mirror- image of the first one, the one chosen by you so that you can eliminate it. Another power- up is “Set’s Storm” which lets you click on a tile and all identical pieces on the board will disappear. “Vision of Isis” will show you all the possible matches for 30 seconds. The game offers three game modes: “Adventure”, where you have to travel through Egypt to find the stolen treasures, “Single”, where you can play any of the previously released layouts from “Adventure” and “Traditional” with dozens of new layouts which subsume to Egyptian theme (such as cat-shaped table, pyramid, ankh, and so on).

Also, each of the three game modes offers three difficulty levels: Pharaoh's Challenge (expert), Noble's Adventure (normal) and Journey's Scribe (beginner). This addictive game is another great idea of those from MumboJumbo, which created another game that will keep your attention awake. Mahjong fans (and Egyptian history enthusiasts) will easily fall in love with this fun, relaxing and generally wonderful PC game.