I’d love to make a post right now…

Posted by oddbob on July 17, 2006 · Lovingly Filed Under Other peoples games, Personal, Things I Enjoyed 
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…but I’m too busy playing Dotstream

Sorry!

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Speak your brains

7 Responses to “I’d love to make a post right now…”

  1. Jeff on July 17th, 2006 8:52 pm

    Are these games region-free? I’ve been interested in the Bit Generations series for some time now. Where did you import your copy from? Did you get any of the other Series 1 games?

  2. Oddbob on July 18th, 2006 12:50 am

    Hi Jeff,

    Picked up all 3 from PlayAsia - not too cheap, but could have bit worse.

    They’re all region free - Boundish is a sort of mentalist pong, very stylish and some neat tricks, feels good to play but I can’t see it lasting the night out for play time.

    Dialhex is clunky and slightly overly complex as puzzle games go - it seems very much like a concept that hasn’t been thought through too well. As if someone said “Oooh, I’ll have a puzzle game set in a hexagon with some gravity and and and…err…something else” then forgot to add the something else and decided to make the control feel awful as a bonus.

    Dotstream is a clear winner by a mile. It looks simple, but feels the most complete out of the three - unlockables, rucks of races to run, some very well designed levels and incredibly pick up and play. Its very 8-bit meets current market demands, but not to its detriment. I’ve lost about 4 hours to it tonight in total.

  3. the2bears on July 18th, 2006 6:48 am

    Dotstream looks fantastic from the video… I’ll have to give that an order next time I have some games coming from PlayAsia. Which is usually not that long :)

    Thanks for the mini-reviews buried here in comments ;)

    Bill

  4. Jeff on July 18th, 2006 5:22 pm

    Thanks for all of the information! I see that Play Asia’s price is the same as NCSX. I still think the prices are pretty steep for what you get. I wish they would have bundled all of the Series 1 games on one cartridge.

  5. swith on July 18th, 2006 5:47 pm

    Dotstream is everything I need from a game, in its most potent and pure form. The very fine tight-rope walked by anything attempting to nail the ‘retro-minimal’ look can either have the end product looking lean and sexy as fuck, or completely shoddy and amateurish.

    Dotstream is *so* sexy and slick, DialHEX looks like a linux guru’s entry to a 48 hour coding competition.

    I can’t recommend Boundish enough myself, a VERY close second to Dotstream, pretty much exclusively because of the PondFlower, Human League and Box Juggler games.

    I really, really love Human League. I never thought a pong clone would get me by the balls ever again, having been pushed beyond the boundaries of irritation by the squillion other clones, but this feels like God himself decided to make the Pong experience.

  6. oddbob on July 18th, 2006 9:49 pm

    Wreee! Swith, man - you’ve just put DialHEX in a better nutshell than I could manage :)

    Box Juggler is turning into a cracking chill out game now I’ve given it more time - the way it throws more and more at you as you up the score, leaving you to decide when to give the boxes a good old slap or just pass them around from arm to arm and hope that you don’t misjudge and a load come crashing down around you across the length of the screen adds an ace tactical level to it. And, it always feels fair.

    Its Game&Watch sensibilities I suppose :-)

    I’m not getting on with Wild Go Round at all, although I’d love to see something similar attempted with a spinner control on another format somewhere - I get confused far too easily trying to go round in circles as it is. Reminds me of why I don’t get off my chair too often!

    Human League, ah - why did I try it last night on the default difficulty level? Now, up the stakes and get a good fast series of volleys going and its break into a sweat and curse whilst playing time. In the best possible way.

    Ah shit, I was meant to be playing Prey through to the end but I’ve got nobbled by these taking up far too much of my time.

  7. oddbob on July 18th, 2006 9:54 pm

    Bill, I *really* want to write up full reviews at some point soon for all 3, but the problem is - that involves stopping playing long enough to get my thoughts down.

    See, I’d be crap as a professional ;)

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