Games Blog

Age of Mythology Gold Edition

Part of the Essential Collection: more than 130 games for just £6.95/month - Turn the world into a real battle of the TITANS. Age of Mythology: The Titans adds a fourth mythology, the Atlanteans, to the existing Greek, Egyptian and Norse mythologies in Age of Mythology. A new single player campaign adding another chapter to the expansive ancient folklore along with the addition of new scenarios. Atlantean players will be able to call upon the might of the Titan gods and may also upgrade human units to heroes. The Titans expansion includes 12 new god powers, 15 new human units and 12 formidable myth units to the original Age of Mythology game.

Price: 6.95 (GBP)

Freeciv is a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, fighting to obtain the ultimate goal:To become the greatest civilization. Freeciv is maintained by an international team of coders and enthusiasts, and is easily one of the most fun and addictive network games out there! That also means it has very extensive multilanguage support, something rare in games.

The goal of Freeciv is to build cities, which in turn can build armies to attack the other players. You start with 2 settlers and 1 explorer. Using the numeric keypad, move the settlers to a good location and build a city by pressing b (for build). Freeciv is turn based; every unit can move once per turn.

Cities also produce units, which can be used for various purposes, from fighting wars to enhancing infrastructure. Different strategies depend on different focuses between things external and internal to a city.

The eventual goal of the game is to win either by using military units to conquer all opposing civilizations, or by using massive scientific knowledge and production to build a spaceship to send to Alpha Centauri before your rivals can do so.

Read more: Freeciv 2.1.4 - Can you create the greatest civilization

The game of Sudoku seems to have replaced the humble crossword as the king of bus travel pursuits.

What’s more, the way people are playing the game is changing too, and more and more people are using digital incarnations of the game. When you first load Impossible Sudoku you’ll probably fall out of your chair when you see the game board.

Unlike the games you get in puzzle books this one has loads and loads of little numbers as well as bigger numbers filled in every square on the grid. It’s a little daunting at first but don’t worry because these are here to help you. They are actually ‘auto marks’ that indicate the numbers that are available to enter in a particular square based on the current state of the grid. Don’t worry if it’s too confusing for you because you can switch the feature off (you can’t toggle auto marks, unfortunately and the change will come into effect in the next game).

There are lots of other things you can customize in Impossible Sudoku, and it’s actually one of the most impressive number games I’ve seen in terms of its options. You can undo, redo, mark, check moves, solve the puzzle, and access all manner of statistics. There are five levels of difficulty, and you can even create your own puzzles from scratch.

The presentation of the game is pretty impressive - there’s a choice of nine bright, colorful skins and the sound effects that play when you enter numbers are quite cool without being annoying.

In fact, the only thing that really lets the game down is its feeble help system. All you get is a one-paragraph description of the rules and there’s nothing in the way of tips and tactics that might help beginners.

Overall though, this is a wonderful simulation of Sudoku.

Review by James Thornton

Read more: Impossible Sudoku 1.05 - Brain-bending version of the popular numbers game

I’m a big fan of spot the difference games and have recently become addicted to the ones you get in pubs where you need to touch the screen to find the differences.

Thankfully now I don’t have to stand around drinking for hours in order to get my fix of picture puzzles thanks to Crazy Spot. This well-presented game charges you with the task of finding the differences between two pictures in the alloted time.

The images used are high quality photographs ranging from a herd of giraffes to a girl sniffing a flower. It’s a diverse mix of pictures, though I noticed that some of them crop up again and again, making it easier to solve. To select the differences between the images you simply need to click the appropriate area of the screen on either of the pictures.

The game is a real joy to play, and the multiplayer mode only adds to the fun. Even spot the difference novices will love Crazy Spot thanks to the in-game hints system. The only thing that will really drive you crazy is the horrid techno song that plays in a constant loop.

Crazy Spot is a polished conversion of the spot the difference game.

Review by James Thornton

Read more: Crazy Spot 1.01 - Find differences to score points!

There’s nothing in this world as determined as a hungry penguin, as this platform jumping game proves.

The object of Greedy Penguins is to guide your little penguin down a series of platforms as the screen scrolls upwards. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you remember that penguins can’t fly.

You can choose one of four different penguins (Daniel, Bonnie, Justin and Doud) who you must then guide down a series of levels, gobbling fish and collecting coins along the way. Not all the platforms are safe to stand on - some have spikes on them, some fall away when you stand on them and others send you shooting back up in the air. All this serves to make it a tricky and, at times frustrating quest, which will take you ages to master.

There aren’t much in the way of options - there’s only one difficulty level and you can’t even enter your own name in the high scores chart (it just records the name of your penguin) so it’s hard to keep track of scores if lots of you are playing the game. One neat thing though is the online multiplayer mode, where you can hook up with other penguin pushers over the Internet and challenge them.

The graphics aren’t that tasty but if you’re hungry for a challenge that Greedy Penguins will certainly satisfy your appetite.

Review by James Thornton

Read more: Greedy Penguins 1.00 - Guide your penguin across the icy platforms

There are many different football videogames to suit all tastes: some like soccer simulators where you get to play actual games on field, while some others prefer a more strategic approach, that is, managing the team as a coach.

The later will probably like Bygfoot Football Manager, an open-source football management game that puts you in control of a football team during the league season. As a coach/manager, you’ll be in charge of training sessions, contracting new players, selling other players and defining team’s strategy in order to succeed both in league and other football competitions.

Being an open-source project, you shouldn’t expect high-res graphics or amazing physics. In fact, the game barely shows any animations as it’s all controlled through windows and menus. However this should not be a problem for hardcore football manager fans who doesn’t care that much about the realism of graphics, but about the gameplay in itself. In that sense, Bygfoot Football Manager is going to surely please them.

Bygfoot Football Manager doesn’t have brilliant graphics or jaw-dropping physics, but as a classic football manager it proves to be quite complete and very entertaining.

Review by Elena Santos

Read more: Bygfoot Football Manager 2.2.0 - Manage your own football team

If you are nostalgic for the days when you had a Sega Megadrive then you will love Gens which emulates the classic games console.

Gens has a number of features to enhance your playing experience such as Window mode - for playing within a small screen on your desktop or Fullscreen mode - for a genuine Sega Megadrive experience. The emulator also supports Joysticks to make your playing experience even more realistic (if you’ve still got one!). There’s also support for Netplay and Save/Load state support meaning you can continue your gaming a later stage. However, you may find that it can’t read some Sega Megadrive CD ROMS because its not compatible with all CD ROM drives. The developers advise that if when you put a Sega/Mega-Cd game in the drive and boot and you get the menu screen with tracks, this means that the Sega/Mega-Cd doesn’t recognize the cd as a game. In addition, if you get a message telling you that the program is “Checking the CD” continually, it’s likely that the CD’s are dirty or scratched. However, don’t worry as you can run games from a CD image file instead of a CD so all is not lost.

For anyone who loved their Sega Megadrive, this is a great way to roll back the years and breathe new life into your dusty game collection.

Review by Nick Mead

Read more: Gens 2.14 - Sega Megadrive emulator

Sonic Games is a set of arcade games with the famous blue hedgehog as protagonist. From the main program’s page you can select among 7 games listed in the game menu. The titles sound exciting: Sonic 3D Snowboarding, Sonic Character Designer, Sonic Lost in Mario World, Sonic Pacman, Sonic Tetris, Sonica and Ultimate Sonic.

The application lacks of basic functions, like pause, but at least the game’s frame is resizable. The idea of a collection of Sonic games is really nice, but it’s a pity that the playability is as good in the original MegaDrive version and that the graphics are so scarce. They would probably be still enjoyable on mobile devices, but on Windows, the experience ends up being pretty boring.

If you are a fan of Sonic, you might want to have this set of games for Windows, but mainly for collection purposes rather than to play with them as both graphics and playability are pretty poor.

Review by Francesca Migliorini

Read more: Sonic Games 1.0 - Remember Sonic? Relive the old days with this game collection

I’m not particularly very good at maths. I need a calculator for the simplest operation - not to mention mental calculations. This is why Kitsune may be a good program for me and all those of you who are also hopeless at numbers.

Kitsune is based on a popular TV show (Des Chifferes et des Llettres in France, Countdown in the UK, Cifras y Letras in Spain) where you had to build words with a bunch of selected letters and achieve a given number by performing the necessary calculations with some selected numbers. This game picks up only the number part (why didn’t they keep the letter bit? I’m much better at letters!) and challenges you to obtain a certain result with the numbers you’re provided with.

Though the aim is easy to understand, the interface is not. It took me a while to see that you can’t actually write the numbers inside the fields, but rather you drag and drop numbers inside those fields. If you want to undo any of your movements you have to click on the Eraser button, and if you want to start again from scratch then press the round arrow button.

Kitsune is a brain trainer that can help you improve your maths capabilities, except if you’re a hopeless case like me.

Review by Elena Santos

Read more: Kitsune 2.0 - Are you good at numbers?

When I downloaded Airport Mania: First Flight I thought I would get a tycoon-style game where I could manage an airport by myself. Well, you do get the opportunity to work as airport manager but in quite a different way.

The difference is that this game is mainly addressed to children, as you can easily tell from the characters on it and its general design. Planes are colorful machinery with friendly, smiling faces, and the airports are designed in a very cartoonish style. Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not saying that this is a negative point, but I’m just warning you in case you expected a more adult-like game.

As for the game in itself, Aiport Mania: First Flight is quite fun. Children follow an easy tutorial on how to control the four basic steps in managing their airport (I never thought it was that easy) and can then start going through the game’s several stages. Each stage includes a few increasingly difficult levels that will demand more attention and speed as more planes arrive to your airport. As you progress along the game, you’ll also be able to upgrade facilities thus making gameplay easier for you.

Aiport Mania: First Flight is an easy and cute tycoon-style game that’s mainly addressed to young players.

Review by Elena Santos

Read more: Airport Mania: First Flight Demo 1.05 - A fun way to learn how to manage an airport