Let’s end this year with one last look at reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com! As always, please click on the links and read as many reviews as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. Ok let’s begin!
It’s the holiday season where a lot of licensed games come out for parents to get kids, and I got to review a few of those, so here they are. For several generations, youngsters have enjoyed watching shows on the Nickelodeon cable channel for kids. Heck, even when I was little back in the 80’s, I enjoyed watching Nick shows such as You Can’t Do that on Television, Danger Mouse, and Double Dare. Even more recently I’ve been known to watch shows on that channel like Invader ZIM and The Penguins of Madagascar. My younger brothers would watch shows on Nickelodeon, too, such as Rugrats and SpongeBob Squarepants. A couple of years ago we got a Smash Bros. clone featuring Nickelodeon characters from all generations, and now we get a sequel to that.
Your favorite DreamWorks computer animated movie characters have come together to race each other in this kart game! Compete with characters and race on tracks based on all sorts of DreamWorks franchises like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Bad Guys, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon, Boss Baby, Trolls, and Megamind!
With a couple of musical movies, holiday specials, and a TV series, Trolls is one of DreamWorks most successful franchises. And now there’s a new video game! An evil troll has hypnotized everyone by playing smooth jazz from his magical clarinet, and now it’s up to Poppy, Branch, and others to stop him in this 3D platformer. You can even create your own troll character to play as!
I never had an Intellivision game console as a kid, but my cousins did and I remember playing it over at their house when I’d visit them in Alabama. While I mostly remember playing Frog Bog with my cousin, I also remember Astrosmash. I could’ve sworn it was the pack-in game for the system, but it wasn’t. But it sure was popular and I recall seeing it everywhere. They even used it in one of my local TV station’s TV Pow segments as a kid, which was a thing back then (look it up). At any rate, Astrosmash is a like a cross between Space Invaders and Asteroids, and it was one of the Intellivision’s top sellers. And now you can play a remake of it on some game consoles and PC, but it’s reviewed on Switch here.
Battle Royale games, where you compete online against a bunch of others for the number one spot, are becoming very popular lately. Most of these are shooters, but some are a bit more creative, like Tetris 99 or the more recent racer F-Zero 99. And now there’s a music/rhythm battle royale game with Head Bangers: Rhythm Royale! Play as your very own head bobbing silly pigeon as you play music mini games (kind of reminds me of Rhythm Heaven), as you compete for the highest score. And on a personal record, it’s the first Battle Royale style game I’ve gotten first place on!
Arrange blocks to fill a playfield in Settris. It kind of reminds me of the pentomino board game, which Tetris was based on, as well as those tanogram puzzles.
Help Lily, a pill-shaped happy face, get through 50 single screen puzzle platform stages in Lily’s Puzzle World
Play as a mean alien as you drive around your buzzsaw equipped UFO and mow down cows in Excessive Trim.
And that’s all for now! Thanks for reading my reviews and posting ‘likes’ and comments on them. I do appreciate it. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Later! --Cary
Excessive Trim sounds like a smaller version of Destroy All Humans!.
Astrosmash was okay but more like a faster paced Space Invaders. I may have played it a few times back in the day, but I was much more into Sea Battle and the many sports games with my neighborhood friends.
I guess Excessive Trim would be a VERY small version of Destroy All Humans, and also a very bad one.
I liked the Astrosmash remake way more than the Shark! Shark! remake anyway. Which is the total opposite of how I feel about the original games.
Something about the Astrosmash remake looked interesting even though I'm not overly keen about the original.
I think the Astrosmash remake did a good job of adding new elements to keep it interesting, but still retaining the basic gameplay of the original. It's just simple fun.
I'm playing the Breakout remake now. It's neat, just doesn't have a lot of content or variety.
I got to review a couple of those "Recharged" Atari remakes, but after a while they stopped responding to my emails requesting review copies of their games. Oh well.
I love the silly pigeon ascethic of Head Bangers lol
Yeah it looks very Aardman-like. I like how you can twist and snap their heads and necks around and they'll make funny noises and voices and when you do so.
