Game Tunnel is proud to publish the December Independent Video Game round-up, the latest in our long-running Famitsu-styled panels that review all the latest Indie PC games. The 10 games reviewed for December include Soldak's Kivi's Underworld, New Star Soccer 4 from New Star Games and Zompocalypse from Toadtrip. Read reviews from each of the panelists on all 10 games in the December Indie game round-up.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

New Star Soccer 4 is the kind of game that garners obsessive playing. To say that this is a soccer game is a little narrow. It's a focused life-sim. You are a budding soccer star and must manage your life and your game all at once.

The game is heavily focused on the simulation aspect. You can actually play in soccer games and perform in drills, but the controls are basic and it can be a bit awkward. Those items are essentially more interactive ways of applying stat boosts in the game. It doesn't make them any less compelling though, once you're into the groove of living your soccer life.

Things really feel like a long-term commitment in-game, as you're living your life in a very tangible day to day fashion, which is different from previous life-sim titles like Kudos, which use a pretty nebulous concept of time, making it difficult to connect.

New Star Soccer is a simple title with a viciously addictive hook to it. If you don't like soccer or sims, there's absolutely nothing for you here, but anyone who wants to live the life of a sports star will be engrossed.

Pany Haritatos: 8

New Star Soccer is a sim game where you play the life of a rising soccer star. If that sounds like something that would appeal to you, then I doubt you'll ever find a game more perfectly suited to this task than New Star Soccer 4. There is a lot going on in this game, from dozens of way to improve your soccer skills through exhibition games, performance enhancers and free training. But, there is also a lot of other sim related activities that directly or indirectly enhance your performance in the game, from gambling to how much time you spend with your friends and family. When it comes time to play soccer, it's fun to participate or even just to sit back and watch your teammates and the opponent duke it out. New Star Soccer 4 is clearly someone's labor of love. The attention to detail shines through in every facet of the game, particularly in the subtle elements of a real soccer game, like changes in the audience cheering, or the way teams employ real life soccer strategies on the field. The music in this game is phenomenal. I would leave it on just to listen to it even if I had to step away from my computer for a minute. This game is obviously not for everyone, but if you're interested in soccer, you'd be hard pressed to find a more complete game dedicated to the life of a rising soccer star.

Coby Utter: 8

Part soccer game, part life simulation, New Star Soccer 4 is flush with depth, options, and re-playability. In New Star, you'll be in charge of taking a fledgling soccer player from the unknown to the height of sports glory. The game is split across two completely individual parts: playing soccer and managing the personal life of your star. The soccer part is simplistic but solid and by itself would be a complete and enjoyable casual soccer experience. In games you can only control your character, but it still manages to be quite enjoyable. The personal life section is far more complex; you must train to improve your player's skills, you have to manage a social life, keep your fans happy, and even get a girlfriend. The interesting part here is that the better you do in one of these sections, the better your performance will be in the other. If you get depressed because of personal issues, your player's in-game soccer performance is bound to suffer as well. The marriage of these two components offers a solid and robust sports star simulation.

Sports games do not often suck away at my spare time, but I found myself strangely addicted to New Star. There are a few things which could have been improved with the interface, and the in-game soccer graphics are pretty rough, but overall, it's a solid and engaging title. Of course, the pace of the game can slow to a crawl, so New Star is only for those with enough patience to see their budding player rise to stardom.

Russ Carroll: 9

NSS3 was one of the best sport games I've ever played. NSS4 takes that game to 3D with mostly positive results.

The game still sports the deepest and most interesting soccer game available. You will control every aspect of your player from what drills they practice to how they spend their free time. Skip out on too many team activities and the guys on the team will ignore you on the field. Drink or gamble too much and you'll have an addiction that will keep you from being able to compete. You can play in any league under the sun, work up from lower to higher leagues, get called on by your country to compete in the World Cup and live the dream of becoming a soccer star.

The only negatives I found were the constant loading, which was slow (note: do not ever try 12 leagues at once, one is plenty!), and the loading time for things like practicing, which led me to turn off active practicing as it just took too long to go through all the screens. Otherwise it's the same great game with a layer of pretty over the top.

Michael Scarpelli: 8

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. My Tribe is about as much a clone of Virtual Villagers as you can find. It's also way better than Virtual Villagers, which I'm sure has someone over at Last Day of Work peeved.

Both games deal with a persistent world (a game that keeps "playing" even when you don't have it open). Your goal is to help a group of stranded explorers on a tropical island. You teach them to gather supplies and food, build structures and research advancements to help the tribe get along. There are potions to create and experiment with, mysteries to solve and trophies to earn.

My Tribe differs from Virtual Villagers in a couple very key ways. The graphics are much better, with adorable animated characters and crisp, clean lines. More importantly, the game is more inviting. Virtual Villagers is punishing. I lost several tribes when I tried to play it. It's really frustrating to do your best trying to train up a tribe for a few hours, and then waking up the next morning to find everyone dead because they were too stupid to breed before they all died of old age.

It's pretty clear that Grubby Games set out specifically to overcome this issue. It's easy to specify actions for your tribe members to perform, it's easy to get them a food source that won't run out overnight. There's just not as much of a barrier to the gameplay. Your tribes people are even smart enough to breed on their own if they're about to get too old to do so otherwise.

The game could use more content. About two weeks of play will get you all but one or two trophies, which would take WEEKS more play to earn. While it lasts, though, My Tribe is addictive fun.

Pany Haritatos: 7

My Tribe is pretty much a clone of Virtual Villagers. That being said, it is a really good one! Across the board it does everything as good as or better than Virtual Villagers. If you're a fan of Virtual Villagers, you probably will enjoy My Tribe if you can get over the blatant copying. I can't help but wish they had done something else to make the core gameplay a little more distinct, but everything is at least as good as the game it mimics. It would seem that islands are randomly generated before you start your game, which I thought was pretty awesome. This is a prettier, more interesting Virtual Villagers, which is only a bad thing if you don't like Virtual Villagers.

Coby Utter: 8

Typically I try to stay away from comparing games to others on the market, instead focusing on each title individually, but there is hardly a way to avoid comparing My Tribe to Virtual Villagers. The look, feel, and even sounds are so similar, that My Tribe might even pass as a sequel to Virtual Villagers. Interestingly, My Tribe is actually better than Virtual Villagers, keeping many of Virtual Villagers' best features intact, while improving in other areas.

The first thing I noticed was the visuals, which deliver a quick kick to the rear of Virtual Villagers. Everything in-game in My Tribe looks better: cleaner characters with smoother animation, better environments, and lots of ambient animations. The only part of the visual scheme that I didn't enjoy was the UI, which has a hand-painted look that clashes a bit with the clean and crisp in-game art. From an audio standpoint, I don't think there is any way to tell the two games apart. That's a good thing for My Tribe, as the music and sound of Virtual Villagers was pretty good.

My Tribe also plays very similar to Virtual Villagers. Like its counterpart, My Tribe is persistent when you are not playing. You can command your little village folk to build structures, explore, reproduce and study agriculture and science. One big difference is the ability to choose a randomly created island to play on, which greatly enhances My Tribe's re-playability. Other than that, the only difference for me is intangible: My Tribe felt more 'personal' than Virtual Villagers. It's difficult to describe, but it's a good thing. The only real drawback with My Tribe is a lack of innovation. My Tribe has taken the Virtual Villagers formula, improved the visuals and some minor gameplay features, and the result is a good, yet unoriginal, gaming experience.

Russ Carroll: 8

My Tribe is in many ways very similar to the Virtual Villagers series. Both are set on islands and feature a group of people trying to survive and escape. Even some of the sound effects sound nearly the same.

However, for every similarity there is a pretty substantial difference as well. VV games are puzzle games that play like a sim game. My Tribe plays more like an RTS, where you harvest (wood and rock) and then build on the island. Due to that approach the game is much more engaging. There are still some puzzles, but building up your tribe is more of the focus, and with billions of islands that can be chosen, there is a lot of game play to be had.

Michael Scarpelli: 8

Forgotten Lands: First Colony pretty much grabbed me by my eyeballs, slapped me in the brain and said "You play me!"

An easy way to think about Forgotten Lands is that it's like playing an RTS, but without the combat. Your goal is to meet certain target production numbers by creating units and having them build and work at structures to produce things like gold, wood, gems and more. The game is all about balancing the number of units you have in play with your ability sustain them. Swapping units back and forth, upgrading structures and maximizing output is the name of the game and it's pretty severely addictive.

It helps that the game has great presentation with cute little super-mini colonists and some solid music and voice-work. But more than that, there are a BUNCH of little colonists and structures to deal with. Every level you play for a long time into the game introduces a new wrinkle to the strategy, whether it's a new unit, new goal, new building or new feature of the land. I'm more than 20 levels in and still finding new elements to play with.

Pany Haritatos: 7

If you mixed Virtual Villagers and Warcraft 3, the result would look something like Forgotten Lands - First Colony. This is a casual strategy game with obvious inspiration from the base building aspects of more traditional hard-core RTSes. The game has excellent audio and the graphics are appealing. Reconstructing artifacts, like shipwrecked sailing vessels or abandoned windmills left by your ancestors has to be my favorite part of the game. It was interesting at first to try something new, but unfortunately the game didn't really hold my attention after the initial favorable impression wore off. It's a unique idea that is well executed and definitely fun at first but the missions started feeling too chore-like after the first few hours of play.

Coby Utter: 8

There are several genres that are scantily represented in the 'casual' market, including real time strategy games. Apparently the developers of Forgotten Lands have been thinking about this for a while, because Forgotten Lands is undoubtedly an RTS with all of the sugar coated simplicity of appearing 'casual'. And for the most part, it is pretty successful.

Forgotten Lands pits you as the leader of a small group of colonists trying to develop a new land. You have the basic RTS options at hand: gather resources, build, explore and expand. The UI and controls are exemplary in taking a lot of data and making it easily accessible and intuitive. The game also has plenty of helpful tutorials that explain the basics as well as describe the various units and buildings you'll need to develop. The entire game is developed around the idea of making a complex and deep simulation readily accessible and in that regard it succeeds.

Visually, Forgotten Lands keeps in line with the casual feeling with small, iconic characters and clean and simple environments. The visuals are the weakest link in the game, however. They aren't bad or even inconsistent, but merely adequate. The other major drawback of the game is the pace: slower than slow. I suppose that this is consistent with the game's goal of feeling casual, but when your settlements start to get large, it feels like ages go by waiting for things to complete. Aside from these quibbles, Forgotten Lands is exemplary in making a complex game easy to understand and play, without sacrificing depth or fun.

Russ Carroll: 7

As an RTS for more casual and non-violent fans Forgotten Lands is an amazing success. It takes your typical RTS game and breaks it down into lots of small chunks that are quick to play through.

For the most part you are really doing just the building side of things, which has its pluses and minuses. If you prefer the strategy of building, you get a unique take on it. The negative is the obvious lack of battles. Additionally, I found the pacing to be really slow and the small chunk approach to levels exacerbates this as you feel like you are doing the same thing over and over with one tiny little twist thrown in on each level. This keeps things from getting overwhelming, but it can also lead to it feeling a bit boring at times. Fun and interesting, it's a nice non-casual casual game..

Michael Scarpelli: 7

It's always hard to review a game that you, as the reviewer, are not very good at. What do you say about the game? Is it the game's fault that you aren't good at? Is there some impediment to your learning? Or do you just suck?

Tennis Elbow 2009 is a mix of those things. I can tell that I'm playing a solid tennis title in the vein of Virtua Tennis, but I can also tell that I'm not playing it to its full capacity. Part of this is that I don't think I ever got very good at it, but on the other hand, the game doesn't have a very structured tutorial environment, so I'm not sure that I can really be expected to have picked it up.

Control in Tennis Elbow is what leads to this little conundrum. Basic controls are very simple. Hit Ctrl or Option to serve, use the arrow keys to move on the court and if you don't want to do anything else, the game will volley automatically as long as you're standing in the right spot. Actually playing around with the kind of serves and returns you're using is where the game gets tricky. Pulling up and back and to the side and combining usage of Ctrl and Option will change your strength and angle and spin and type of return. Outside of the training mode, though, it's really, really tough to tell if you're sending a shot right into the net or right out of bounds. Most of my victories in the game came not from outplaying my opponent, but from my opponent finally managing to hit a return right into the net.

However, it's very apparent to me that if I was to just practice practice practice in the training mode (which is really just playing a regular match but with highlighted markers showing you where shots will land) I could get into a groove and really become a bit of an ace. The question is: do you have that kind of time?

Pany Haritatos: 6

I can't tell if I'm just really bad at this game or if its really hard. I can't seem to beat the AI, even though I'm getting pretty good at controlling my shots now. The game uses a pretty compelling system for pinpointing where you want the ball to land on the opponent's side of the court. It takes a little getting used to, but once you get it down it makes you feel pretty accomplished and skillful. My problem was that even when I could consistently land shots wherever I wanted, the AI could still get there and return the ball, where as I could not fly around the court with his same deftness. I generally had to wait for the AI to screw up in order to score a point, which has resulted in me winning only two sets in over twenty. Demoralized, I have given up on trying to win in singles. Doubles has gone a lot better because I have one of these ubermensch on my team. Difficulty aside, the game is really well done and is fun when you feel like the AI isn't cheating. It has a very interesting RPG-like character progression that occurs between matches, and the core gameplay is very fun. I just wish the AI would let me win sometimes.

Coby Utter: 7

Tennis Elbow '09 is a fun tennis game that does a few things very well, but could have used more time for tweaking and adding a bit of polish. Let's start with the good things. The control scheme of TE09 has its backbone grounded in easy to pick up mechanics. This is a great way to introduce new players to the game and I was comfortable with the controls really quickly (which says a lot since I'm not exactly fluent with Tennis games.) Fortunately, the developer also gives the player a lot of flexibility with the speed, direction, and spin of the shot allowing for more precise and advanced hits. The marriage between simple controls without limiting the player's abilities is nicely done and results in a lot of fun. You'll also find a lot of re-playability with this title. Although I progressed deep into the World Tour, I frequently jumped into the game just for a quick match.

On the reverse side of things: the presentation is hard to describe in one word, but I'll try anyway -inconsistent. The menus and UI are heavy and lots of images seem blurry. It's all functional, but in this case poor form causes dysfunction. The in-game art is better, but still a bit washed out. The models themselves don't look too bad, but their movements are painful to watch. Normally I wouldn't criticize a game so harshly for poor animation, but in a sports game it can totally kill any sense of immersion and is awfully distracting. The individual animations themselves are fairly fluid, but there seem to be no transitions and going into or out of an animation is extremely jerky. A little animation blending could have gone a long way here. Peel away some mediocre presentation issues, and you've still got a solid core holding things together. TE isn't great, but it is casual Tennis fun.

Russ Carroll: 8

Tennis Elbow 2009 is the newest game in the Tennis Elbow series, and like New Star Soccer 4, it also saw its base engine move from 2D to 3D.

TE2009 is a very good tennis game that has hundreds of hours of play in it as you climb the ranks and try to win major tournaments as a tennis player. The normal default difficulty level is plenty hard to keep you busy for a long time, and there are 4 more above it! You can enter tournaments playing singles or doubles, and play co-op if you want (or versus if you prefer). There's also online play to round things out. Overall, it's a great package with really good control on shots and an arcade game play mode to simplify things just a wee bit more. (I personally recommend lowering the difficulty and going into options and turning on the ball cursor as it greatly simplifies the game and makes it much more enjoyable as you get the hang of it)

I really enjoyed Tennis Elbow 2009. It's a very fun and gets amazingly addictive as you try to rise through the tennis ranks or fight your way out of duece after duece.

Michael Scarpelli: 5

Kivi's Underworld is pretty underwhelming. Oh yeah. You see what I did there.

The website for Kivi's underworld touts it as a casual hack and slash game, and that's certainly what it is. It delivers on its promise, but I think its promise is a poorly thought out one. Games like Diablo, which are just glorified hack and slash, subsist on at least having a modicum of depth to them and this is what Kivi chooses to eschew. As you progress through the dungeons, pointing and hacking as you go, the gameplay never varies. You're always just pointing to attack and hitting buttons to fire off your magical attacks. From time to time you pick up stat boosts that are temporary for the specific level you're on and in between levels you boost overall stats for your characters – but there are only a couple of stats to boost. There aren't even any weapons or armor to equip and play around with.

So, while it's pretty clear that the goal was to make a hack and slash without those elements to clutter the experience, when you take those bells and whistles away it turns out that hack and slash is really boring. Gameplay like that is based on the notion of being a collector. I want to hack my way to the über armor and the über sword and the über spell, and when you take that away from me, all I have are endless legions of enemies to click on. There are a bunch characters to unlock, but all you get from using them is a single unique special attack. You don't even have to focus on any one character to level up their stats, as when you level up stats you are leveling up global stats.

Pany Haritatos: 8

Kivi is an impressive indie game. The quality of execution is top notch, with stand-out 3D graphics. The gameplay is pretty much Blizzard's Diablo with a few new twists. The character development and equipment hoarding has been simplified. Scoring lots of points on a level gives you the ability to upgrade your character between the different missions as a replacement for a traditional experience-based leveling up model. Instead of equipment, you come across power ups that all grant a temporary bonus with most of them lasting no more than 20 seconds. Because these are temporary bonuses, you find them frequently and looting forms a significant part of this game.

At the beginning I was really quite taken with the unique approach to character progression and equipment hoarding, but after three or four missions I started finding myself wishing I could modify my character, or find new equipment that was permanent that would make me feel more badass. The game seems to rely heavily on traps to trip up the player, which got old pretty quickly as most of them are fairly annoying to avoid. Frequently you will set them off by mistake in the heat of battle which can often turn the tides against you. Unlike a lot of other action RPGs, the lack of experience and equipment drops makes the click-fest feel a little less rewarding. I didn't really feel compelled to hunt down any chests or enemies after I had completed the mission objective as it was unlikely their drops would provide me a reward I could carry to the next mission.

It's pretty and well done, but it is not without its subtle flaws. That being said, Kivi is quite an accomplishment and is sure to provide action RPG fans with at least a few hours of good fun. The game also offers the ability to create your own levels and characters, which should give fans even more fun content to explore.

Coby Utter: 7

Kivi's Underworld is an isometric hack-and-slash similar to Blizzard's popular dungeon crawler. It is very much a 'what you see is what you get' kind of game, which in this case is both positive and negative. The controls are typical point-and-click; a proven mechanic for this style of game. Underworld plays just as you would expect, and the execution is solid. The key difference between Underworld and the majority of the other hack-and-slashes out there is in character development. Underworld forgoes the typical routine of leveling up a character and decking them out with rare and powerful items. Instead, the levels are littered with boosts that give your character temporary abilities or status alterations. The result is like the soul of Gauntlet trapped in the body of Diablo. It mostly works and can be mindless fun for a good while, but it lacks the deep and complex substance that typically draws RPG fans in for hours and hours.

Russ Carroll: 7

Soldak's last game, Depths of Peril was an amazing game mixing diplomacy and RPG party/guild building in a unique way that landed it in the GT Top 10 games of 2007 (at #2 no less!).

Kivi's Underworld is a much more straight-forward offering, that will likely make it easier for most people to digest, and unfortunately, it will probably sell better.

That's not to say it isn't a good game. It's a very competent dungeon crawler with tons of content and editors to make your own campaigns. There are secrets and characters that can be found, which expands the play and keeps you interested. The game play is rather Diablo-esque with lots of clicking for fighting, but is spruced up with mana attacks and special attacks. The special attacks, which were similar in effect to spells from other games, I especially enjoyed as they are liberally distributed around the levels making for lots of fun as you use them. It's a solid, competent dungeon crawler. My only disappointment stems from Depths of Peril being so much more.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

Somersault is a funky little title. You control Bally, a little... thing that rolls into a ball and bounces around. You control movement the same way as Kirby's Canvas Curse for the Nintendo DS. With your mouse, you paint a platform on the screen. Bally will be able to bounce and slide off this platform and by carefully angling and placing your platform, you guide Bally through the levels, steering him towards bonuses and away from danger.

There's something a little awkward about the game overall, but that's also the game's charm. There's an easy feel to the title. It's not necessarily true that the game is easy, but it feels comfortable to just sit down and bounce little Bally all around the screen. The music is groovy and the levels are interesting and grow more and more dynamic as the game progresses. They get down-right crazy the farther in you get.

I didn't have my socks blown off by Somersault, but I was certainly happy to sit down and play and create little rainbow arcs around the screen as Bally jumped around.

Pany Haritatos: 4

Somersault is a game that didn't need to be made. The core mechanic wants to be a puzzle game, but somehow it is packaged as a platformer. In this context it goes from being a somewhat interesting premise to a "Oh my god, I can't make any mistakes or I'll die in the water/fire/be destroyed by the UFO" way. With these threats dogging you at every turn, and as early as a few minutes into the first level, the game quickly becomes a terrible cycle of: Lose Control Of Character. Hit Something. Die. Repeat. The difficulty in this game is simply ridiculous and would not even appeal to the most masochistic gamer out there. The game has decent audio and the graphics are pretty cute, but the core gameplay and level design make it impossible to like this game.

Coby Utter: 7

Somersault is the quirky title of the month. It's a physics puzzle game where your bouncing protagonist must be guided through levels collecting rings and avoiding all sorts of environmental hazards. The interesting part is that you must guide your elasticized hero by drawing platforms with your mouse. The length and angle of these platforms determine how your bouncy character ricochets around. You can also swing any platform you've made around one of the ends acting as a pivot. The core mechanic is simple and fairly intuitive, although it will take a good deal of practice to be able to effectively get your character where you want.

The drawing mechanic works well enough, although being limited to only one platform causes some frantic drawing occasionally, and this usually results in poorly placed platforms that work against your progress. Visually, Somersault is an eccentric mix of 2D and 3D. While not amazing, the presentation is functional and the bounds and hazards of each level are clearly recognizable. There are some situations where your heroic ball can get into places that are really difficult to get out of and the physics need some ironing out, but overall, Somersault can provide short bursts of solid entertainment.

Russ Carroll: 7

Somersault was a nice surprise this month. The game is played by drawing lines to bounce your little guy turned ball through a variety of dangers from bugs to bread slicers.

It has a happy visual theme that is reminiscent of the Mario games and which looks much better in playing than I would have guessed.

The downside is that drawing a line, especially with the mouse, is somewhat imprecise as a control method and the levels require lots of precision, which can make the game at times feel amazing as you manage your way out of difficult situations, but often, even very early on, can leave you feeling rather hopeless in your attempt to save your people from an alien invasion. Different, visually inviting and interesting, it feels like the kind of thing you'd expect to play at the IGF.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

Zompocalypse sets the perfect tone for itself. It's styled as an old coin-op arcade side-scrolling shooter. The little touches make this game. You get weapon upgrades for your current gun by booting zombie babies across the screen. You recover health by smooching chicks, which, at the end of each level is logged as "bitches nailed" which, misogyny aside, is totally hilarious.

The Arcade mode of the game is you as one of two grizzled and badass looking dudes fighting through wave after wave of zombies. As you down zombies, you earn experience points for kills and for gathering the items they drop. You can interact a little with levels, exploding barrels to cause massive damage or dodging cars or trains that will run down errant zombies. The game is fun and stylish, but you really end up just running back and forth, shooting and reloading (which looks awkward as you move, as the walking animation sort of freezes up). Leveling up gets you new weapons, which is great, but the weapons sort of stop feeling useful after the shotgun, which is the second level gun. The bolt-action rifle you get on your fourth level is totally useless, as the fire/reload reaction time in the game is really bad.

The thing that really kept this game from scoring big with me was that it's incomplete. The version that we reviewed has a menu item for a Story Mode, but there's no Story Mode yet. The Arcade mode, as it has no continues or lives, is fun but is the kind of thing that gamers are going to cap out on. I seriously doubt that I'd be able to get past the sixth stage in the game. I've tried and tried, and I've failed enough that I'm just done with the game now. I need me an update. [Quick Addendum: There's a free flash version over at Kongregate.com – got some extra swearing, but is a fun mini-version of the game]

Pany Haritatos: 6

Zompocalypse is tasty zombie-grinding goodness. I had a blast playing this game. This is exactly how I like my 2d zombie games to play. The game is missing the story mode, which is a pretty significant hole, but the developer promises it will be delivered soon. If it is delivered at the same quality as the survival mode, then I can't see any reason why this wouldn't score another point or two. The game has great graphics and audio. I didn't like that I couldn't really pick which weapon I wanted to use, but it was only a problem when I would get the sniper rifle by mistake. It's simple, stylish, gory and fun.

Coby Utter: 6

With endless hordes of zombies, mounds of blood, and obscenities abound, Zompocalypse is probably the game of dreams for many players out there. I was pretty excited to start tearing through zombies myself, but repetition is the bane of Zompocalypse's existence and it eventually sucked the desire out of me to keep playing. Up until that point, the game was a lot of fun though, and it does some things really well.

The premise is simple: pick one of two rough and tough cops to obliterate a never ending wave of zombies which are overrunning the city. The game plays as a side-scroller with depth (a la Streets of Rage). You simply move, fire, and reload. Your character can level up as you play and there are a few different weapons you can pick up. For the first 15 minutes it's pretty fun to blast zombies into smithereens, but variety is not a strong point in Zompocalypse. The gameplay never evolves beyond what you do the first 30 seconds of the game: move and shoot. You are forced to dodge around a lot to try and avoid the lumbering enemies, but beyond that there isn't much strategy involved. At least it's beautiful to watch all of the carnage unfold; the sprite art work is superb throughout the game, and the pixilated style is captured wonderfully. Zompocalypse starts on the right path but it never moves forward. Hopefully a sequel is in the works that expands on the premise of this first episode, because Zompocalypse is something that I could really enjoy.

Russ Carroll: 4

Well, it has zombies, lots of zombies in it. However, unlike this year's fun Zombie Shooter, Zompocalypse just doesn't really have anything going for it.

Profanity is sprinkled liberally everywhere, perhaps to take your mind away from how uninteresting the action is on the screen. Lots of zombies being shot, but the shooting and reloading is laborious and difficult. Reloading, specifically, is slow and tedious and you quickly end up wishing there was something more to the game other than mindless shooting. I'd recommend Zombie Smashers or the aforementioned Zombie Shooter if you're looking for a Zombie-killing fix.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

This review for Galatron, in what is becoming a trend started by Strange Attractors 2, started out much worse than it is ending up. This is apparently also a trend in physics-based games. I start out hating them, and then I ease into the experience.

In Galatron, the notion is that you're a tournament space fighter. You pilot a satellite style ship orbiting around a planetoid, trying to outlast three other opponents and battling with the gravitational pull of that central body. In between rounds you purchase and upgrade equipment for your ship. That's basically it. Combat is a simple matter of changing your ship's rotation, shooting and applying thrusters. The gravity of the central planet in each level greatly affects combat, bending bullets and sucking ships into its maw. The goal of combat is really to never have to fire your thrusters, because the slightest adjustment in your orbit can place you into an inevitable spiral into the planet's surface.

It's this central conceit to the combat that was my biggest problem. You're technically safest doing nothing. Sure the glory comes from running and gunning, but so too do the fastest deaths.

Outside of that, my biggest issue was that the ship upgrade screen should be easier to navigate. It was tricky for me to figure out what prices meant what and what buttons resulted in upgrades being applied. There's no good reason not to have text making things crystal clear there.

In all, I ended up enjoying Galatron, but each level seemed to be the same experience over and over, so I don't think it could sustain the enjoyment for long.

Pany Haritatos: 6

My score for Galatron started as a "4" but after several hours with the game it slowly nudged its way up to its current score. The game makes a tragically bad first impression. Some of the writing in the game barely qualifies as English it is so awful. The worst part has to be the first few minutes when the tutorial falls apart. It is easy to press the wrong button by mistake and make it impossible to complete the tutorial. Good times! If you survive that, the gameplay begins and it's this space shooter with awful controls where all you can to do is collide with the planet you're spinning around or your opponents who are plagued by the same ever present gravitational pull.

That is precisely where I was when I gave up on trying to move in Galatron. I sold my ship's engines and replaced them with dual mine-layers. The game turned from a horribly slow paced space arena shooter into this really bizarre tactical artillery game, which I can only describe as a real-time Scorched Earth, in space, and everyone is orbiting a planet. The core game took on this fascinatingly unique gameplay, which then melded perfectly with the inter-arena ship upgrading to suck me in for about 6 hours. I didn't stop until I faced final boss, who I cannot seem to defeat.

I don't know if the game was designed to be played this way, but I felt compelled to keep playing once I had given up on trying to move. I suspect that this game would not appeal to many, even when played in this manner, but I can't deny the hypnotic affect it had on me. If you're going to try it out, don't even bother trying to navigate around the planet, just see if the gravity-based firing mechanic interests you at all. It pulled me in and would not let me go.

Coby Utter: 3

Galatron is one of those games I just don't understand. At least I hope I don't understand it, because what I did figure out wasn't enjoyable. To preface this cruel and biased review: I didn't get very far into the game. I tried, but failed, failed some more, took a break, and then failed a few more times.

Trying to categorize Galatron is a bit difficult (usually a good thing) because it has roots as a thrust-based shooter, but I did very little thrusting and even less shooting. Your ship is automatically locked in orbit around a planet with a few other ships, although you can break orbit with your thruster and venture off under your own control – which I don't recommend as it resulted in a lot of crashing for me. Your thrust fuel and firing are tied to an energy supply which fills up painfully slow. Couple this with a massive energy drain for firing, and you'll often find yourself just drifting around the planet waiting for a chance to fire and hoping that an enemy doesn't hit you first...although they probably will. There is an upgrade system but I wasn't able to explore it very far. Hopefully you can unlock some devices that will help make the core game more fun, but I don't know many people who could suffer through the beginning parts of the game. The menus are very nicely done with a cohesive UI that displays a lot of information without cluttering up the screen too much. The menus are actually the best part of the game, although as I initially went through them they built up a lot of anticipation for the game, which unfortunately, failed miserably at being a good time.

Russ Carroll: 7

Galatron is quite a dichotomy. It's both bad and fantastic.

First the bad. The controls "take getting used to." Of course that is another way of saying they are initially frustratingly difficult. The game doesn't do a good job of introducing you to what you are doing either. There is a tutorial, but it isn't all that helpful (fly around until you think you've got it! as though the game was about flying? - a free hint, you don't want to fly!). You'll be pummeled for the first 30-60 minutes as you desperately try to figure out how to play. And then you will.

The game is built around entering your ship into different death-match arenas and moving up the rankings as you improve your ship. It's incredibly compelling, especially when considering the very basic nature of just floating around the planet. In fact in describing the game as "you float around a planet and try to destroy other players," I can only think that the developer is amazing, because the game is so much more enjoyable than it should be...once you get the hang of it.

Michael Scarpelli: 5

I have two large gripes with Lost City. The first is that I cannot click an item and tell my character how to interact with it from afar. You have to click on things to walk close to them, and then click them again to activate the context menu for actions. It makes interaction clunky, as everything is a two step process.

The second gripe is a crippling problem for the game. It is a major, major pain in the butt to figure out where you can and cannot walk. I spent a LOT of time clicking around the screen and not moving because the game wasn't smart enough to walk my character in the general direction of where I clicked, it just noted that that EXACT spot I clicked was designated as an inactive area for the player to move through. The cursor is hard to follow and it's exceptionally tricky to see where you can move to in some places. For a game based around the idea of exploration, this is a hideous error. It seems like the biggest puzzle in some locations is just how to move through them.

Adventures games are only ever as good as their interface. It's hard enough to solve puzzles without having to muddle through clunky interfaces and shoddy navigation. It's a shame, too, because I wanted very much to get into Malathedra. It has an energetic script and a unique (if not fantastic) graphical look. A new version with improved navigation is something I would welcome back with open arms.

Pany Haritatos: 4

The Lost City of Malathedra should win an award for its painfully bad controls. The game uses a node based pathing system to navigate, but in most scenes (like the prologue!), the path is completely hidden from you, which means you'll spend at least 75% of your time just begging your character to move to a spot on the screen that hopefully he/she needs to get to. Pretty soon you'll be performing mouse acrobatics hoping to trigger the magical click-sequence that gets your character to move. The action interface makes things worse by requiring a click-hold on an object in order to interact with it. Combine that with scrolling when you miss a click and clicking a small object can take about five times longer than it should. What is sad is that the rest of the game seems to be genuinely well executed. The story looked interesting, and the music is phenomenal, but I had to give up on the game after only a short while because it became physically painful to continue.

Coby Utter: 6

Lost City of Malathedra is a point-and-click adventure game that centers around the mystery of a lost city and the secrets kept inside. The core mechanics are text-book adventure: you explore environments, examine objects, speak with characters, and solve puzzles to advance the story. Malathedra has a slick UI system that exposes all of your options for interaction, and your inventory is just a right-click away. The usability of the inventory is a little suspect however, or at least unintuitive. It often took several tries to use an inventory item as desired. Movement also posed issues for me. It's not a true point-and-click kind of movement, but some kind of quasi directional-based movement that often left me frustrated as I couldn't get my character to move where I desired. It doesn't help that in many cases there aren't clear visual indicators describing where you can and can't move. Another gameplay issue (something that has always irked me in adventure games) is having multiple identical objects in an area, where one or two have special properties for interaction.

The music and sound design in Malathedra is very good. The thematic pieces are solidly composed and there is always plenty of ambient sound. The visuals, on the other hand, are all over the place. The environments consist of realistic textures and cartoon-like sprites, and the main characters are blurry with rigid animations and transitions. There are some nice technical effects, including the lighting, but just looking at the screen screams inconsistency. Malathedra has a lot of potential, but ended up being solidly mediocre and much less of an adventure than anticipated.

Russ Carroll: 5

The Lost City of Malathedra is Ethereal Darkness Interactive's second game following up on the RPG Morning's Wrath.

Like that game, this one features a female protagonist, but Lost City is a 3D adventure game, not an RPG. I really enjoyed the story, though the movement in the game is really difficult and will likely keep most adventure fans away (along with all non-adventure fans). It seems you are always clicking to go to places and are rarely ever going, well anywhere.

Like Morning's Wrath there are bits of brilliance marred by game play that feels slow. I'd love to recommend it based on the story, character graphics and obvious care and love that went into the game, but getting your character to do what you want is just too difficult and sure to try anyone's patience.

Michael Scarpelli: 5

Gunbolt is colorful and friendly and manic and filled with enemies and tons of gunfire and is totally and completely boring at the same time.

The notion is that this is an old-school side-scrolling shooter like Contra, but more light-hearted. As you march through levels, destroying staggering number of enemies - all brightly colored and fun to look at - they drop colored orbs. Picking up those orbs will fill up a grid in your HUD. Once you've maxed out all the colors, a bonus will appear. If you shoot the bonus you can change what the effect you receive is. More health? Heat seeking missiles?

The boring part comes into play when you realize that the game is just astonishingly easy. You can simply hold down the fire button and march through the levels. Anything in front of you is weak enough that they'll be destroyed before they get halfway across the screen. There are so many enemies that it's a simple matter to get a power-up and either refill health or restock your missiles. Most boss fights are simply a matter of standing toe-to-toe with the boss and handing out damage. You've got enough health to take it.

There's a reason why god-mode in games is something they leave as a secret or un-lockable. It turns out that part of the fun in games is the stake you've invested in it. When you play a game that doesn't seem to require you be concerned for yourself and your health in-game... then you're not concerned with that game. Gunbolt was fun to look at and could have been fun to play, but it's just too easy for me to care about.

Pany Haritatos: 3

Gunbolt left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I couldn't find anything to like about the game. The audio was fairly annoying. The graphics ranged from decent to bad. The controls were frustrating and as far as I could tell made it nigh impossible to take on the bosses without suiciding on them. The gameplay is simply uninteresting: a very basic run and gun with almost no depth which was only exacerbated by the non-existent level design. Gunbolt doesn't really have any redeeming qualities.

Coby Utter: 5

Although run-and-guns do not typically need a dearth of strategy, something more than holding down the run and gun keys is needed to keep my attention. Unfortunately, there are only a few moments in Gunbolt where the player must actually do more than simply moving forward while persistently pressing 'fire'. Occasionally, you'll have to make a small leap to collect an item and the bosses all require a unique approach, but every single level fails to produce any kind of real challenge – unless you can't continuously hold down two keys for a few minutes. It's really the only fault of the game, but it crushes the overall experience.

There is a ridiculous amount of carnage going on at all times: enemies come in from all directions in vast hordes, there is explosion after explosion, and the whole time it feels like you aren't going to make it. But as mentioned above, you don't actually need to do anything to make it through a level; it's quite the conundrum. Gunbolt has nice production values in both art and sound; my only complaint here would be that the explosions are completely opaque and due to their vast quantity, can make it hard to see what's going on. I really wanted to have fun playing Gunbolt, but the game simply wouldn't let me and that's an unfortunate tragedy.

Russ Carroll: 6

On the surface Gunbolt resembles Gunstar Heroes, and that's a wonderful compliment. Underneath, the game doesn't have much to offer beyond endless side-scrolling shooting. The whole thing takes a bit less than an hour to play through and though there are different difficulty levels and 2 characters to choose from, there isn't much reason to play further. The weapons appear completely interchangeable as do the first 6 levels (during which my son famously remarked "You're playing this level again!?").

The levels are pretty repetitive with you rescuing chicks, and the level design isn't very inspiring. So after all that, I certainly could rate the game lower than a 6, but it has 2 things going for it. The graphics, especially on the explosions, are pretty alright, and the shooting feels satisfying. It's fun to blast through things, which makes the overall experience ok.