Skip to main content

4 Elements #2 and Puzzler's Wrath

    Hey, global neighbors. I am listening to some oldies as I type this. Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu by the great Johnny Rivers is playing at the momento. Today I need to give some love to the puzzle lovers. One of the great puzzle games that I have played is 4 Elements. But, like many sequels, 4 Elements 2 is making some people mad.
      I have actually done a review of the original game so I guess I won't go through the whole gameplay mechanic. Suffice it to say that you are trying to assist a faerie in her desire to get stuff that appears to be lava from point A to point B. This is done primarily by running your finger over like-colored stones and causing them to melt out of your way. Sometimes you must shift some pipes so that flow can go through them. That is different from the original,  by the way. It is a fun game and cool as a moose. There are mini-puzzles as well, in which you must find hidden objects or play I-Spy, or whatever. I usually get Carley to do that stuff for me. She loves those things and I loathe them. Ha, ha. But hey, if she needs a zombie executed, she knows who to call.
     The sequel, just released, is more colorful and has 64 levels like the original. It is a 131 MB file. Playrix, the maker of the game, has seriously P.O.'d a bunch of folks. I went over to the app store and read the reviews for the game. The story is one of love/hate. The game is very good, but the price has been raised to $6.99 on this sequel.
     Puzzle games are normally a little cheaper than games like Nova 3 and Modern Combat. They went up on the game like 28% and told everybody that the game was free. Well, the first 5 levels are free. Then you must pay to play. This doesn't bother me because I never get upset about puzzle games. But puzzledom is surely ready to storm the Playrix castle and dethrone the king. I understand their frustration. Just say, up front, what the game costs. Sounds simple.
     I also noticed some confusion over the fact that the titles were very alike and one guy seemed to think he had paid $4.99 for the game and then they wanted another $6.99. I think the original 4 Elements was $4.99, so I figure that he bought one, then tried to play the other. I know that Carley played Cover Orange all the way through. Then she bought Cover Orange HD when it came out, thinking it was a whole new game. Wow! The hot place has no fury like a puzzler shortchanged.
     What shall we see in the future? Can we make a soap opera out of this situation? What shall we call it? As the Lava Flows or perhaps, As the Puzzle Turns.
     From the spokesman for unhappy puzzlers everywhere, CE Wills.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Game Review: NFS, Hot Pursuit

    This game was one which I refused to download for a while, even though it was on sale for 99 cents. I thought that it looked boring and narrow. Boy, was I wrong! This game totally kicks butt. It is one of those rare games that will actually give you an adrenaline rush. It is that intense. The developers, EA Games, have recently updated the app to include two main avenues of play. You can either be the cops or the racers who are trying to evade the cops. As a racer you have to deal with cops trying to hit you and make you crash, cops buzzing you with helicopters, oncoming traffic, tack strips spread across the road and roadblocks. In the cop mode you are a cop and you are trying to stop a reckless racer by any means, fair or foul. As a racer you can use nitrous oxide for increased speed, overdrive capability and oil slicks. You also can jam the cops communication with a jamming unit. Like almost all games these days, it gets harder as you go along. I prefer my games to...

Four Free Games

     Hey, everyone. If free games makes the start of a new week a little better, we're in luck. Check these out on your friendly, neighborhood app store. 1) Cowboys vs. Aliens vs. Ninjas- This is a dual stick shooter, much like Mini-Gore . You are an old-west cowboy with a vast array of weapons (earned gradually). You have to move and shoot, avoiding death, as you battle Ninjas and aliens. Some aliens are quite large. Some enemies are big Sumo Wrestlers. There are sword-wielding ninjas and these aliens that yield a mini-nuclear explosion when killed. When your enemies die they leave behind little stacks of money, or skulls. You collect these items because of a strange hobby of trophy grabbing for your macabre collection. Just kidding, the items can be spent or used as the game progresses. This is a good game and I played it for a while last night. 2) The Heist - A puzzle game with a twist. As you try to open a bank vault, you must face a series of different puz...

Bottle On The Doorknob

      Hey, everyone. I took a day of vacation today and really enjoyed it. We went out and bought some flowers. Flowers don't do well up here as a rule so we buy some and have a couple of big pots of assorted flowers on the deck for the summer. This year we are going to set the pots out in the yard a bit. The reason for this is the moisture and dirt in the pots seems to attract ants, scorpions and perhaps gnats. Bloody drag, what?     This weekend there seemed to be a bad odor in the house in the area of the master bedroom and the master bath. We could not isolate what the problem was. We did a number of things, including pouring vinegar and baking soda down the drains, which boils them out in rather spectacular fashion. Put a handful small amount of baking soda down them first, then pour vinegar down them. Very cool.     We finally deduced that a mouse had crawled up between the floor and sub-floor underneath the jacuzzi, after ...