| Software Author: ? |
www.pdamill.
com |
| Product: |
Joker's Quest |
| Cost: |
$19.95 |
| Reviewed By: |
Russ Terrell |
| Rating: |
|
Boulderdash style games seem to be a very popular game genre for the PPC lately. Joker?s Quest is a very good styling of the game. There?s a back story of the Light Pearls of the underwater Kingdom of Luphia are stolen and Princess Sephine was been kidnapped. You are called on to recover the pearls and rescue the Princess. You are a clown fish (and look very much like a certain famed movie fish) named Joker. Your job is to explore the sea and find the stolen pearls. There are 4 worlds to explore, each with 25 levels. Each world has a boss to beat.
The concept of the game is to collect all the pearls and the seahorse in each level. Collect the number of pearls indicated and the exit opens. You earn points for all the items you collect and all the enemies you kill. Some levels are easy, just dig, push boulders and collect the pearls. For some levels, you will notice that there are fewer than the required number of pearls. On these levels you need to push boulders into the pearl plant to create pearls. Doing this can also create sleeping turtles.
You?ll come across detonators and exploding fish to clear out areas. You will run into several different enemies, such as sharks, crabs and Sea Monkeys. Anchors can fall on you. There are numerous ?power ups? you can use. Overall, there are lots of obstacles and lots of ways of getting around them.
Once you have collected 16 seahorses and finished all the levels in that world, you meet the boss. The boss is hard to beat, but after playing the level a few times you will figure out (with luck) how to beat it.
Conclusion
I think the popularity of this style of game is the fact it?s not a high-speed ?twitch? game. For the most part you have time to stop and examine the puzzle and figure out how to solve it. If you run across a telescope, be sure to use it to examine the whole level.
*Tip*: When you go after the boss, be sure to collect every harpoon and key. The best tactic I found was to ?hide and hit?. Hide and then push a rock or send a turtle after the boss. Be sure to note where the plants are to regain your health.
This game is nearly perfect. Sound and music are good. The graphics are bright with charming animation. The game play is very responsive. I found the puzzles very thoughtful and not impossible to solve. The enemy?s weren?t overly aggressive in the easy mode. I found you can hide from them most of the time, although I did get stuck in a corner with one a few times (slow reaction time on my part). You spend a lot of time with the tutorials, but I found that they helped me to really understand the game. There is a help bottle on each level, just in case you have a hard time figuring a level out.
What would make it the perfect game? Two things would, a lower price and a level editor so you could make your own levels. |
