This is a rather simple, sweet wee point-and-click game that I downloaded from Xbox Marketplace when I was looking for some time to kill. You control the character of Axel, an artist trapped by an evil rat in a perilous Dream World of Axel’s own creation. Your task – to find a way to beat the rat and escape from Axel’s crazy dream world.
As you move through the different chapters you need to find the usable items and solve various puzzles – some are logic problems, some are button games, and all of them will put a smile on your face – unless of course you have no soul and were never a child, in which case, you’ll probably hate it. As well as solving the various problems in your path, there are tubes of paint to collect, sketches to complete, and of course bones to collect as treats for Pixel.
When you reach the end of the final chapter you have to face the tree troll, a button game that will ultimately lead you to a successful escape and return you to your normal life where you can complete the painting that all the sketches have contributed towards.
There are also 3 mini-games as you go through, and if I’m honest, I found them a little frustrating at times as I’m not a huge fan of mini-games, but they’re really very short, and not enough to detract from the sheer light hearted fun of the game.
This is never going to be one of the great games of all time, and if you’re looking for something with hours of entertainment, lots of bloodshed, tactically challenging battles or state of the art visual effects, then this is not the game for you. On the other hand, if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare and you want a light hearted, easy going way to fill them, then this is a fun and innocent way to do it.
I bought Tap Tap Revenge 3 yesterday for the bargain price of $0.99 – I hasten to add that I have since paid $2.99 for a bundle of sings, but that’s a whole different matter, and not really necessary unless you have a particularly strong desire to play along to some of your favourite songs rather than just the free tracks available.
This has been pushed really hard of late on tv over here, so I thought I’d download the demo of Brutal Legend and give it a go, see if it was worth all the hype. I have to admit, I was quite looking forward to it. I do like a lot of Jack Black’s stuff, and thought this looked quite funny and entertaining from the adverts, so I had pretty high hopes. I now feel a bit like I do when I come out of an overhyped film – it just didn’t live up to its promise. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t all that.
