Classics for Good Reason

Here are some of the most influential works created for portable platforms. Best of all, they're still available if you want to add a classic or two to your devices.

Breakout: Among the most important games ever created, this challenges users to clear a wall of blocks using a ball, paddle and the best angle to rebound the ball to damage the wall and clear the level.

Dope Wars: This morally challenged classic was originally developed for calculators and has spread to almost every mobile platform imaginable. You play an aspiring drug dealer who must sell stock to pay off a debt. You must work to stay alive, battle police, check local markets for favorable drug prices and save as much money as possible.

Tetris: Created in 1985, this became one of the most popular and recognizable games of all time. Centered on the idea of creating order from chaos, players shift, rotate and move falling random shapes into place to create solid lines. Once lines are complete, they disappear, earning points and advancing the player to the next level.

A combination of simple gameplay, increasingly frenetic pacing and terrific music matching the pace keeps players coming back for just one more turn.

Bejeweled: It was first released as a Web browser game in 2001 and has been translated to other platforms. Players clear a grid filled with jewels by rearranging them to create a line of three identical stones. Then the jewels disappear, earning points. A timer keeps players on their toes, and bonus points can be earned by arranging more complex combinations that clear four or five jewels.

Snake: Snake took over calculators in the '80s and grew from there. Available on almost any platform, the game is popular for play that takes only seconds to master.

Full Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/AR2008030601278.html

C-Evo

C-Evo is billed quite simply as a freeware empire building game for Windows. In my opinion that sells it somewhat short. This is a great game.

As with other empire building games you start with a small settlement and some eager manly outdoors types willing to go and make you another one. You improve your technology and eventually progress to "space travel and the colonisation of other planets" which is the eventual goal of this game.

There is a wide variety of technology to be developed and explored - I am pretty sure I had steam powered nuclear attack cruisers at one stage in a game. On top of this there are a number of political systems to implement - each with their own pro's and con's. You can even create your own 'tribes' (including the in game graphics for them) allowing personalisation of your nation; which just adds to the longevity.

The creators of the game would probably like me to now go on and on about how great the AI is and how it "doesn't play to the player's actions" but has "it's own agenda and plays as another human player would" - I am not going to do that despite the fact that they seem to think that that's this games main 'selling point'.

If you want to win, I suggest making a starting position like this one.

Indeed I am of the opinion that the fact the computer 'plays like a human' makes the game extremely hard for a casual gamer to get on with. News flash for developers; the computer has the ability to make 45,933 (et al) choices per turn for each and every one of it's cities and units etc; most humans, can't be bothered! This life fact gives the AI somewhat of an advantage over all but the most hardcore gamer and is likely the reason that a lot of empire building games adopt the 'reactive' AI over the 'human like AI'. I digress...

Regardless of it's difficulty C-Evo is a very entertaining game. You can even make your own maps to play on; designing the geographical features of a whole world which you can then march all over with fascist boots or liberate in a girly democratic manner. It's up to you.

Summary

Great game if you like empire building. Don't get too attached though for reasons best known to the developer there is an arbitrary 3000AD time limit - you lose your empire no matter how well you are doing. Doh.

Where Can I Get It?

http://c-evo.org/

SGR Rating


85%