Great American Golf 2		Grade: F
	Publisher: Xdra (1994) Reviewed: 2002/7/22

I was hoping for an animated golf game along the lines of Hot Shots (Playstation), but Great American Golf is more like a golf documentary. It contains a selection of video clips explaining different aspects of the sport including the origin of the game and its greatest players. The historical stuff is fairly interesting, and the "Minority Golf" segment is especially revealing. It admits to golf's racist past, and features a clip of a young Tiger Woods on the junior tour. The video accurately predicts that Tiger would make quite an impact in the pros. Great American Golf 2 also contains a trivia game for those who think they know everything about golf (casual fans and normal people need not apply). There's a golf game thrown in, but despite some nice graphics, it's barely playable. You have very little control of your shot, and can't really aim. Overall, Great American Golf 2 doesn't have enough substance to recommend. © Copyright 2002 The Video Game Critic.

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1 or 2 players

Jack Sprite vs. the Crimson Ghost		Grade: F
	Publisher: Oldergames (2003) Reviewed: 2004/10/3

Jack Sprite versus the Crimson Ghost is a well-intentioned but ill-advised attempt to combine old black-and-white film clips with conventional 2D fighting action. For you youngsters out there under the age of 60, the Crimson Ghost was a 1950's detective serial featuring a frightening villain donning a ghastly skull mask. Despite the cool villain, most of the action in the series consisted of lame fistfight sequences between guys in suits. In stark contrast, the star of this game, Jack Sprite, is a wacky, computer-animated geek who speaks in an annoying high-pitched voice. With Jack manning the "control desk" on the bottom of the screen, you view video clips by selecting from seven locations including a hotel, office, and warehouse. Jack narrates as you watch the grainy video, and prompts you to "inject him into the scene" at critical moments. When this happens, the game suddenly switches to a colorful screen with 2D graphics and sparse scenery. Here Jack must punch and kick his way through a parade of goons that all look the same. These fights are extremely lame thanks to unresponsive controls and a limited number of moves. The quirky background music that plays during these fights is almost unbearable. Some action sequences end with an encounter with the Crimson Ghost himself, who serves as a boss. The main problem with this game is obvious: the pieces don't fit together very well. Juxtaposed with the grainy video clips, the clean-looking 2D sequences look sorely out of place. And unlike campy games like Night Trap, you won't want to sit through these dull video clips twice. What nearly saves the game are some funny, Mystery Science Theater-inspired voice dubs that play when you select an irrelevant location. Nevertheless, the unlikable lead character and general poor design makes Jack Spite and the Crimson Ghost impossible to recommend. © Copyright 2004 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player

Jigsaw		Grade: D-
	Publisher: Philips (1991) Reviewed: 2007/4/23

Billed as "the ultimate electronic puzzle", Jigsaw lets you assemble old-fashioned puzzles by swapping "pieces" on the screen. And if you think that sounds boring, you're right! Jigsaw isn't as much a game as it is a prelude to a nap. The puzzles are sharp, digitized photos that range from Mount Rushmore, to a surfer on a wave, to a cat's face, to a scientist working with test tubes. You can peruse the categories by subject, and even select the shape of the pieces. The pieces are fairly large, so none of the puzzles take more than a few minutes to solve. As you methodically put the pieces into place, relaxing light jazz plays in the background. Philips could have injected some excitement into Jigsaw by incorporating some kind of scoring system, but they didn't bother. Puzzle fanatics may find Jigsaw mildly appealing, but most gamers will regard it as a pointless exercise. © Copyright 2007 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player

Kether		Grade: B
	Publisher: Philips (1993) Reviewed: 2004/7/21

Rest assured that Kether is NOT just another cheesy FMV (full motion video) title. No, this is a fully interactive space expedition into the dark corners of the galaxy, or at least that's what the box says. Piloting a starship, your objective is to travel to five temples located on various planets. Your first challenge is to navigate one of the harrowing obstacle courses. These stages involve negotiating an asteroid belt or weaving through the buildings of a city skyline. Viewing your ship from behind, you must dodge obstacles while whisking through the scenery. The smooth graphics are basically pre-rendered movies, and they are very easy on the eyes. The Asteroid fields remind me of Silpheed (Sega CD), but the best stages are the ones where you navigate through virtual cities - they can be quite exhilarating at times. Alas, since your path is predetermined and the camera tends to swing wildly, it's difficult to judge the position of obstacles (nothing a little memorization won't help). Once you reach the temple, you must solve a puzzle to gain entrance. This "puzzle" is little more than the classic game of Memory, except played with mysterious hieroglyphics. Once inside the temple, you find yourself in a dark labyrinth with a first person point of view. With the help of an overhead map, you must locate the six special rooms while blasting wandering monsters. Oversensitive controls and rough animation make these stages a bit frustrating, but they're still intense. The graphics and audio effectively convey an aura of isolation and fear. Kether's first-rate voice acting, crisp sound effects, and futuristic synthesized music all add to the eerie atmosphere. Some of the screens resemble works of art. I wasn't expecting much from Kether, but I found it to be an intriguing journey. © Copyright 2004 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player

Link: The Faces of Evil		Grade: C-
	Publisher: Philips (1993) Reviewed: 2007/4/23

Some games are best left forgotten, and Link: The Faces of Evil is one such game. If Nintendo could turn back time, I suspect they'd bury every last copy of this ill-conceived Zelda title in some New Mexico landfill. Subtitled "The Humilation of Link" (by me), Faces begins with a heinous cartoon intro that portrays him as the most whiney pansy you've ever seen. Between the cringe-worthy dialogue ("how about a kiss for luck?") and the flamboyant "acting", it's impossible to watch this thing with a straight face. The game itself is a marginal side-scroller, albeit with above-average graphics and sound. The music is well orchestrated, and the backgrounds are rendered in a style that looks like an oil painting. Sadly, the gameplay is marred by sluggish controls and cheap hits. Faces of Evil is less forgiving than its sister game (Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon), and there's too many unavoidable projectiles and deadly leaps. Certain creatures, like the baboons, seem mysteriously impervious to your sword. The dialogue makes no sense, so speaking to characters will just leave you hopelessly confused. And how come when you exit the game, the credits start to roll?! What the hell? Compared to the NES Zelda games, Faces of Evil is an utter disgrace, and Link was fortunate to retain his manhood after this debacle. On any other system this is game would be considered "bottom of the barrel", but on a system so lacking of action titles, Faces of Evil seems almost respectable. © Copyright 2007 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player

Litil Divil		Grade: C-
	Publisher: Philips (1994) Reviewed: 2002/8/23

This game reminds me of a Disney version of Hell. You control a little animated demon that battles monsters and solves puzzles in an fiery underground labyrinth. Litil Divil suffers from excessive cuteness (beginning with its name), but it's hard to criticize the visuals. The cut scenes are cartoon quality, and the game itself features large, nicely animated creatures. A well-orchestrated musical score complements the action well. Playing the game involves wandering hallways full of traps, solving puzzles, battling monsters, and jumping platforms. You can also purchase items with money you'll find lying all over the place. The items you buy are used automatically and are key to defeating most creatures, so buy everything you can. One room features a gigantic, hideous spider, but once armed with the bug spray, you can spray it until its head explodes (gross!). Your game is saved to memory in special save rooms, but there's not nearly enough of these. Litil Divil features plenty of eye candy, but it also has a lot of problems. First of all, the control is not what I would call responsive and the game is too slow in general. You'll absorb a LOT of cheap hits. The hallways all look the same after a while, and even with the auto-map feature, you'll either get lost or just plain tired of wandering aimlessly. Although the canned animated scenes are amusing at first, you can't skip them, and you'll become weary of watching them over and over. In the end, Litil Divil is a nice showcase for the CD-i, but comes up short in the gameplay department. © Copyright 2002 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player

Lost Ride, The		Grade: D+
	Publisher: Philips (1998) Reviewed: 2005/7/23

This ultra-rare CD-i title boasts some of the most vertigo-inducing visuals I've ever witnessed in a video game. As you careen down a rolling, winding track in a futuristic pod-shaped car, you shoot obstacles to clear your path and trigger junction switches to change your course. With its smooth animation and first-person perspective, Lost Ride conveys the feeling of being on a roller coaster like no other game. The sensation of speed is so convincing that I practically became ill during my first play! But leave it to Philips to take a promising concept and make it a chore to play. Lost Ride's main issue is the unreasonable difficulty. The first stage of any game should be relatively easy, allowing the player to get comfortable with the controls and learn the basic strategy. But Lost Ride's initial level is both sprawling and agonizingly difficult. It's set in a mineshaft, and zooming through tunnels and over suspended tracks is great fun - for the first half hour or so. But once you get tired of going in circles, you're ready to advance to a new stage. Good luck with that! Navigating the tracks requires constant checking of the map - which is only available at certain intervals. An onscreen map would have been helpful. In addition, switching tracks is needlessly tricky. While it should be a simple matter of shooting an arrow, more often than not your shots don't even register. That's a serious problem, because once you start heading in the wrong direction, it could be a LONG time before you work your way back. Since you're limited to the track layout, you're often forced to travel lengthy sections before reaching the next junction. The shooting aspect of Lost Ride is equally lame. Although you can blast flying bats and boulders, these appear at random and their only purpose seems to be to break up the monotony. I should also mention that the game contains programming glitches that cause your "ride" to temporarily go off-track, although the program does recover. Lost Ride should have been called "Lost Opportunity". Had it been designed with shorter, more reasonable stages, it could have been a hit. © Copyright 2005 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player