Trash Panic (PS3, Pub:SCE, Dev: SCE Japan, Rated E for Ewwwww)
Lowdown: A Sentiment Torontonians Have Uncomfortably Grown Accustomed To.
-/+ For People Looking For Another Tetris
Tetris-like is usually the best description for any arcade puzzle game, but Trash Panic throws a wrench into the machine, and a lightbulb, and a desk, and a hamburger. Where many puzzle games will test your focus, tidiness and planning Trash Panic is much more about rolling with the punches. By which I actually mean...
- - Game Mechanics Are Really Hard to Wrap Your Head Around, Even Harder to Predict
Not many puzzle games have a physics engine, and sometimes you’ll wonder what maniac designed Trash Panic’s. Okay yes, rubber balls bounce and it is pretty clever that you need to work that into your strategy, but aside from that certain techniques never seem to work the same way twice. Just as you are getting cozy with your strategy something goes askew and you’ll never know why. Using the fire, water, and decay techniques are also key to success and yet despite this the game is very vague on how these mechanics properly work. Right when your entire plan hinges on having all the wooden chairs go aflame is usually when the fire just refuses to start. So with all this said this is...
+ For People Who Like Tetris Looking For Something That Isn’t Tetris
Many puzzle games have the same layout as Tetris and even more play like Tetris, but what is so honourable about Trash Panic is that in no way does it play like Tetris, and just like how Tetris’ multiplayer was so great...
- Multiplayer is lacking and thensome
There is only one multiplayer mode, and I can’t believe I’m complaining about this but the one mode isn’t even online. You basically need to sabotage the opposing player’s side until they flub up and drop ONE piece of trash from their half-the-regular-size can. This will usually take about thirty seconds, and it’s hard to get riled up about something only double the time it took to load.
++/ Alarm Heat
I can see where Trash Panic was going but it just hasn’t found the right balance between chaos and order, though if anything it could be good practice for stacking your backed up garbage for the returning pickups.
Rock Band Unplugged (PSP, Pub: EA/MTV Games, Dev: Harmonix, Rated T)
Lowdown: New Rock Band introduces revolutionary technology by not filling your apartment space with more fake plastic instruments.
+ Gameplay of Amplitude, Song Cred of Rock Band
I loved Amplitude, I remember sacrificing way too many sunny days for that gem. And yes I guess if there was one complaint about it, it was that with nameless DJs and a remix of the one Bowie track no one’s heard of the song list was not setting off too too many fireworks. So here we have Rock Band Unplugged, which is actually a new version of Amplitude that looks like Rock Band and best of all, has the same sort of song access as Rock Band. Now the initial on-disc tracklist may not be everyone’s rock and roll heaven, but it is for better or worse varied with a handful of zingers, not to mention it’s hard to whine when in the back of your mind you remember that in only a couple months you’ll have an Ipod Shuffle’s worth of downloadable tracks on PSN. And hell for a PSP game the...
+ Graphics Are Surprisingly Spry
There’s been some trims, tattoos and facepaint now absent, but the character customization is near identical to its console brother. And of course, that means you could still be too ugly to be mirrored in Rock Band. Regardless the polish and visage of virtual rock life is still here, though there was one moment where I noticed their on-screen playing was in no way synched with the song, but you’re concentration as usual will be elsewhere... In fact only you are looking at the screen... And that’s because...
- - - There’s No Multiplayer Whatsoever = Taxing on Initiative
Rock Band made it through its gauntlet by letting the whole posse join in, the way the pacing works usually pits you with the same song repeated in less than an hour’s worth of play, but who cares you’re drunk as hell and having a good time. No more, this is a solo flight, not even the multiplayer offered on Amplitude is seen. And it was around that time of realization that I remembered why I even bothered unlocking all the tracks in the first place, I did them ahead of time so that later I would have a ball with my buds. The whole thing just starts to feel self gratifying, or even depressing, when the only person you are really showing up to is yourself.
- Some Amplitude/Rock Band Gameplay Elements don’t Play Well together
For whatever reason, despite taking most all of the gameplay elements of Amplitude, they left in the health bar system from Rock Band... Which isn’t the smoothest combo. It’s no longer if you are overall doing bad, it’s if you have one instrument that is specifically lagging behind, and if it goes down you don’t die but you probably will with those magic rock powerups seemingly harder to come by in this rendition.
+++ Alarm Heat
It doesn’t improve on the formula, but it doesn’t destroy it either. If in this online, social gaming day and age still okie dokie with playing a music game alone and was like me, head over heels for Amplitude than there is probably something to see here, otherwise you could always spend your forty bucks on, I don’t know, an actual music album or something if anyone still gets those.
