When Daydream (the makers of Safecracker, one of my all-time favorite puzzle games) and Dreamcatcher (the publishers of Cydonia, one of my all-time favorite puzzle games (notice the pattern?)) got together to bring us a new puzzle game, I thought I’d be in heaven. And mostly, I was. Traitors Gate is a totally brilliant game with beautiful art, a fabulous interface, engaging sound, and best of all – ingenious puzzles. It is marred only by some loading and startup problems that I will get into later. In the game, you are Raven, an agent with the CIA. The head of … Continue reading Traitors Gate is crown jewel of two companies→
Puzz 3D has been producing high quality three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles for several years. Now they have made the leap from coffee table to CD-ROM, and they’ve done it with style. As a 3D puzzle fanatic, I wondered how easy the on-screen puzzle pieces would be to manipulate. I shouldn’t have worried. In addition to the expected ability to move and rotate individual pieces, the player can collect and sort pieces in up to seven "trays." This process is almost as good as it can get in two dimensions, except that you can’t manipulate pieces within a tray. They must first … Continue reading The Orient Express is a puzzling thriller→
Jigsaw puzzles never had an equivalent on the PC until Pandora’s Box. With an understated environment and compelling puzzles, Pandora’s Box might be nirvana for those with obsessions for visual brainteasers. In Pandora’s Box, seven mythical tricksters have escaped to wreck havoc on the world. The player must capture the seven one at a time by solving many of the 350-plus puzzles. Puzzles fall into ten different types, each somehow shuffling or screwing up photos, paintings, sculptures or other miscellaneous art. Ultimately, your job is to put the art right. It occurred to me that this may just be another … Continue reading Pandora’s addictive box is worth opening→
Music and art make Cydonia a memorable experience. Mars. Exciting and new. (I would continue substituting lyrics to the "Love Boat" theme, but none of us really needs that, do we?) Mars has been a lofty, and sometimes thought of as an unattainable goal for us meager humans for decades and decades now. And now, with Pathfinder still in our thoughts and the International Space Station actually underway, an adventure game that takes place on Mars seems only logical. Cydonia more than fits this bill. Cydonia is set in a somewhat-far-ahead-but-it-could-happen-to-us-if-we-don’t-watch-out sort of future. The Terran League [the governing body … Continue reading In the Valley of the Giants…→
If you thought Tetrisphere was a mind sweeper, wait until Wetrix splashes home on your N64. Wetrix is by far the most challenging 3-D puzzle fighter I’ve ever played. If you don’t have the patience or the I.Q this game will leave you soak and wet! Congratulations to Ocean for developing a game that has originality and will nearly burn all your brain cells before you master it. Wetrix isn’t a "love at first sight" type of game, but you gradually grow more and more addicted to it. Don’t even think about trying any of the other modes until you’ve … Continue reading Wetrix: no love at first site, but love none the less→
Safecracker is an intriguing collection of puzzles and clue searches, all intertwined together and layered prettier than a Dorothy Hammil haircut. In this first-person solve-em-up, you are left without any intro or other preparation and, in the spirit of games like ‘Hacker’, you are thrown into the game running (actually, in this case, standing in a phone booth with the phone ringing, but you get the idea). After you answer the phone (I never dared to not answer the phone), you are given your instructions (which you had better pay attention to) and off you go. This is a good … Continue reading Just when you thought it was safe…→
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