(May 13-May 18)

Double-Dose of Disappointment

• Boomtown Deluxe - Was initially excited about this game because it looked like a fun little building sim... Too bad that it turned out to be an extremely shallow experience. The 30-day "campaigns" can be completed in a little over an hour, and even though you can technically continue on with your city, it does encourage you to start a new town (for some sort of scoring). The actual city-building is incredibly boring, with no real thought needed to how you organize it - just watch their demand sliders and buy whatever they need. There are some additional building you can construct to increase the area of effect of some of the original buildings, but it is a minimal improvement (Doesn't seem to increase the effect... only the range). And as far as the mining goes, which you would think would be the highlight of the game, that too falls flat. Place a few bombs over the map to find a hot spot, drive to it (and hope you have enough gas), and return it to your drop-off point (you can buy more places to deposit later, but I found no way to change your "starting" position)... Lather, rince, repeat for 30 days.
  


• Death by GameShow -. It's a fine action-strategy game, but the demand for grinding upon failure ruins it.
  
  It starts off easy enough (albeit with a very cluttered UI), as it teaches you how to use your different free-units (The ones you don't have to buy from the stage/win from the spinner). As you progress, though, you will slowly realize that the free-units are not enough - you will be forced into using some of your gold to buy new buildings/units... Which is fine and all, except for the fact that if you scrub on a mission, everything that you used is gone - all the buildings, robots, health/time-extenders, etc.. Which, of course, means going back to previous levels to grind out either the gold to re-buy those units, or the spinners to hopefully win new ones. Where this proves to be really agrivating is late game (final 10 levels) where the game introduces 2 new types of enemy-buildings; Ones that have have 10x health, and ones that simply can't be destroyed at all... You are essentially forced into using the most expensive units at your disposal, in hopes of getting past these walls, praying that a stray mortar shell doesn't wind up hitting you (multiple times I encountered single shells insta-killing me, despite being at full health... possible glitch?). Now, there is a difficulty slider in the game, but it really only really effects the rate at which enemies spawn... your dude is still just as squishy at 100% difficulty as he is at 0%... A few quick explosives from the enemy (or even your own buildings, which for whatever reason create explosive debris that will harm you), and you are dead, buried with everything that you hoped would aid you in that mission.
  
  Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I bought the KB9 bundle just for this game, I would have quit the game at around stage 47/50. That was around the point where I had just spent about an hour grinding for spinners, only to lose everything due to a few quick bull*%# explosives (one of which rocketed at me from what had to be the other side of the planet)... Now, if the game allowed you to repeat missions with your inventory still in-tact, I'd be more than willing to recommend the game to others. I'd still be cursing at some of the deaths, but I'd be able to forgive it... But as it stands, the forced grind after a failure is an insult to injury that makes it so I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
  Oh, and as a sidenote, if you do play it and get to the final level, there is a typo that changes how you should play it. It states "The rocket has landed... get to it in under 20 minutes", but in actuality, it plays like a "survive for 20 minutes" mission... I rushed to the platform, only for there to be no rocket waiting for me. I nearly reset the mission, thinking it was another glitch, but instead decided to wait out the final 5 minutes just in case (I expended far too many fireworks and high-quality bots to want to reset)