Game Tunnel is proud to publish the August 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 August include the quirky freeware adventure game Ben there Dan That!, the 'funky' dating sim Summer Session and Vega, a game that one reviewer called "the least fun game I've ever played." Read reviews from each of the panelists on all 10 games in the August Independent Video Game round-up.

Michael Scarpelli: 8

Ben There Dan That is pretty much totally awesome. It's free (huzzah) and is a faithful and sly homage to games of yore and send-up of the games of today. The game is filled with cheek and loaded with old school adventure game charm.

Sure, like all adventure games it has its interface quirks (I got pretty tired of right-clicking through my interactivity options and began to wish I could double-click to jump to locations instead of having to watch my guys walk everywhere), but it's a gem beyond that, and for me the far and away highlight of the month.

I laughed out loud more than once and played it right on through to the end. By and large, it has much less frustrating and obscure puzzle solving than most adventure games offer, as well.

Pany Haritatos: 8

For the price, it's pretty hard to beat Ben There, Dan That. I couldn't help but wonder why the developer had decided to release the game for free, as it is certainly worth far more than the entry fee. Perhaps Zombie Cow has some tricky plan for world domination up their sleeves. I hope they do, because anything that makes it more likely that there will be another of these games is a good thing in my book. BTDT is classical golden age graphical adventure game goodness. If you remember the glory days of Sierra and Lucas Arts fondly at all, then you owe it to yourself to give BTDT a spin. Chances are you'll be gripped in the first few moments, and it won't let you go until the ride is over. The game is really well written, with a lot of great jokes and humor to push the story along. It's not perfect, though. Some of the puzzles are a little too obscure, and I admittedly had to cheat a couple times to proceed. I also wanted the interaction cursor to be a little more context sensitive. Other than these two minor gripes, BTDT excels. It has great audio, great writing and great graphics. Adventure game fans, BTDT is for you.

Coby Utter: 6

It is easy to see that Ben There Dan That is both an homage and a parody of the old point and click adventure games. The two titular characters are tasked with all kinds of bizarre quests, with humor and pop-culture references abound. You'll need to collect various items through inspection and dumb luck, and combine them for often hilarious results as you try to solve each section of the game.

Deep down I was hoping that something marvelously breathtaking and original was lurking in the game, but it is entrenched firmly in the classic adventure mechanics. The humor and wacky events buoy the game, which is otherwise quite unremarkable. The text can be hard to read and mouse-over object highlighting would have been extremely welcome, but this game is free, so it's hard to complain. Despite plenty of room for improvement, there's absolutely no reason to avoid downloading it and giving it a chance yourself.

Russ Carroll: 7

I kind of dug BTDT for awhile. Like really dug it. It's the polar opposite of Dan's last game that I played, Gibbage. Where that one is set on hyper +11, BTDT is slow. In fact, at times, like when you're in the elevator, it's PAINFULLY slow. The game has your typical adventure game frustrations of wondering exactly what you are supposed to do at times, but it makes fun of itself and the whole adventure genre along the way, so it doesn't feel as frustrating, I guess. More interesting than Gibbage (and the Penny Arcade game from a couple of months ago, which shared a similar writing style) and pretty fun.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

Summer Session manages to be innocent and pervy all at once. It's the best way to explain it that I've been able to come up with: "Pervy". This is basically a small U.S. version of many very popular Japanese dating sims, or a downloadable version of any number of Newgrounds-style flash dating sims. You take on certain actions to boost certain attributes and make yourself more attractive to particular girls at school.

Note that I say "girls at school": this one is clearly aimed at the male audience. The pervy bit comes into play that, while the game's content is pretty strictly PG throughout, the goal you have with each and every girl is to get it on with them.

The game itself is addictive, largely due to the fact that it's a puzzle to figure out what each girl likes and the order of operations needed to court them successfully, but it is pretty hard to get over just how sort of funky the game is.

Pany Haritatos: 8

Summer Session is a relationship simulator. Unlike most games of these types, this one gripped me and would not let me go. I played it dozens of times just to satisfy my curiosity about the many relationships you can develop with the different characters in the story. The graphics were spectacular, and really appealed to my suppressed inner otaku fanboy. I found it rather difficult to game the mechanics, which is a good thing (believe me, I tried..). The writing was also excellent. A great all around package with a unique gameplay experience. Summer Session is good times and gets two thumbs up from me!

Coby Utter: 7

Dating simulations have never really interested me and Summer Session was my first experience with such a game. Taking on the role of a student in summer school, you must pass your biology class, and build relationships with your fellow students and teacher. Each week you set up a schedule of activities from studying to partying which boost or decrease certain stats. The core gameplay focuses on your interactions with several lively and unique characters, where you can make enemies or find the girl of your dreams.

Summer Session's presentation is very solid, with an intuitive UI system and vivid characters. The writing, which is what the game is largely focused on, is very good, and makes the experience compelling. The major issue with the game is its extreme brevity and lack of depth. Thankfully there are multiple endings to encourage replaying the game but eventually the dialogue and other writing repeat very frequently. Despite its shortcomings, Summer Session piqued my interest in the genre and was actually a bit enchanting.

Russ Carroll: 8

I have only played a couple of dating sims, so my perspective on Summer Session is really poor. That said, it has a lot of things going for it. For one, the dialog and story is interesting. Where I often find myself skipping anything that looks like text in every game I play, I often took the time to read the text in SS, and though the characters sometimes come-off a bit one dimensional, I found it hard not to be captivated.

In fact I played through the game way, way too many times trying to reach all of the endings, but I kept coming back sure that if I made just one change here or there I'd solve the puzzle and win the girl's heart.

It's likely my lack of experience with the genre that made the correct paths difficult for me to discern, but it's also the reason why I had so much fun trying to figure them out. At times Summer Session is a bit risqué for my tastes, but it's very entertaining nonetheless.

Michael Scarpelli: 8

I think Time of War might benefit from what has been a dearth of quality this month, but� I ended up being pretty jazzed for this one. Isometric run and gun shooting action awaits you here.

Like all good shooting games, the ammo is plentiful, the enemies are everywhere and there are just tons of things you can blow up. I would have liked to see a better of angle for viewing your foes (the horizon line is oddly clipped, and makes me feel like if I bend down, I can peer under my screen and see more of what I want to see), but beyond that this is a fun romp.

Like a lot of shooters like this, your gameplay options are limited and levels will generally be pretty repetitive, but just because the formula is tired doesn't mean it's not executed well. The hard rock soundtrack is the exclamation point on the end of this review, too.

Pany Haritatos: 6

Certain aspects of Time of War shine with a heavy amount of polish. The audio is generally well done, the graphics are top notch, the physics are fun, the weapon selection interesting, and the inter-mission story book panels are of top quality. Ultimately, however, the game suffers from a few critical flaws. The most significant issue is the camera angle. It is somewhat of a mix between isometric and third person. I think the developer was trying to do something new here, but it didn't really work and this is partially because of control choices that conflicted with this set up. The character fires at the cursor, where ever it might be on the screen, which means that often times you'll find yourself firing into the barriers in front of turrets or at the ground in front of the enemy soldiers. In a top down or isometric point of view, where your character automatically fires parallel to the ground, these types of issues don't exist. Needless to say, it is very frustrating to waste half a clip and take several blows to your health before realizing that you were aiming too low to tag your target. The aiming is also a bit too twitchy. I had the hardest time hitting targets until I realized it was easier to adjust your aim by moving your character rather than adjusting your firing angle. This would be fine if I was firing a high precision weapon like a sniper or something, but for a hand gun or automatic rifle, there should be some amount of assisted aiming, or, at the very least, some smoothing of the input so it isn't so sensitive. Another part of the game that I was dissatisfied with was the repetitiveness. I suspect that if the control issues were sorted out, this would be less of a concern. The last quibble I had with the game is that it is too dark. My monitor might be a tad bit on the darker side, but the game was basically unplayable until I turned up the brightness. The game should not have been that dark, or should, at the very least, allow for some amount of gamma correction if it wants to push the limits of visibility. Time of War does enough things right that it's sad that the most important parts of the gameplay, the viewpoint and controls, don't live up to the standard established by the rest of the game.

Coby Utter: 8

Time of War has tons of action, loads of explosions, and steady pacing. Couple all of this with a strong presentation and you get a pretty good game out of the deal. Like most action games, you are single-handedly tasked with taking out a whole lot of bad guys using a variety of weapons. Most of the missions can only be accomplished one way: kill everything that moves. There is little in the way of stealth and the prevalent skills necessary are simply strafing and firing steady.

Visually, the 3D graphics are good, with nice lighting, shadowing, and other effects. The game did have performance problems for me on the highest settings, but with some minor adjustments the game ran smoothly. My largest complaint is with the view, which is an odd hybrid of third person and overhead views, that always keeps the forward looking distance rather short. Despite this, and the lack of original mechanics or the need for sound strategy, the game is a solid and enjoyable shooter.

Russ Carroll: 6

Onric Games is responsible for Project Xenoclone, a game the panel reviewed almost exactly 2 years ago, and like Time of War it was a shooter. Another similarity between the two games is that they both fall short of the best indie shooters available (Alien and Zoombie Shooter), in the case of ToW, I'd say well short.

Time of War has a nice graphics engine going for it, but the firing is very bland with overly precise targeting and boring levels. There are enemies everywhere and you seemingly shoot them because they are moronic. Very moronic. They always fire when you get close enough to them, even if they are facing away from you, which leads to some good laughs as you walk into a room and see an enemy fire in the opposite direction and then leave a circle of bullets as they adjust their aim towards you. Shooting through doors is a great tactic at times in addition to being a nifty trick! Overall ToW is fine, but it doesn't measure up to the great shooters out there already, and honestly, I even enjoyed their first game, Project Xenoclone, more.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

I think I like what Shelled OnLine is trying to be more than I actually like Shelled OnLine. This is basically a first person, 3-D multiplayer version of Scorched Earth. You control a funky turtle shell with a cannon on it and you fire smaller, explosive turtle shells at other players.

On-line matches have a few different game types like Capture the Flag or Assault the Base, but the matches are quick and the controls for the shells are anything but. You can fly around on jets, but your fuel doesn't last long and takes a good 10 seconds to recharge (this is an eternity in a match lasting around two minutes). Your firing method involves setting trajectory and then watching an active sliding bar for power, which you must stop when it reaches the right point. The problem here is again that matches are so fast that waiting for the power bar becomes frustrating very quickly.

Anyway, points for effort, but the execution didn't get there for me.

Pany Haritatos: 6

Shelled is the best attempt at 3D Worms/Scorched Earth that I've seen yet. The interesting part real-time, part turn-based combat works really well, and helps make the game feel faster paced despite its tactical nature. The game's controls are fairly tight and the user interface is generally well thought out. By and large, the graphics are charming, and the audio is unobtrusive, though I found the music a tad bit cheesy and the terrain texture a little out of place. The plethora of single-player levels and online multiplayer means that if you like the core gameplay, there will be plenty here to keep you busy for hours. My favorite feature in the game is its awesome shot camera, particularly when minimized. My biggest gripe with Shelled! is that it can get a tad bit repetitive. The wide variety of weapons makes the game more interesting, but once the novelty of those wore off, I felt like I had seen everything the game had to offer and I was ready to move on. The game is certainly one of the best of its kind and will entertain anyone who finds the core mechanics to be enjoyable. If you've been looking for a well executed 3D Worms/Scorched Earth, then Shelled! might be the answer for you.

Coby Utter: 8

Far and away, I spent more time with Shelled Online than any other game this month. It's a 3D tank game where you pilot a turtle-like vehicle with jet boosters and try to blow up your opponents. At your disposal you have a variety of shells, ranging from the basic one shot to a satisfying mega nuclear attack. All of the action takes place in real time, but you have limited movement which encourages smart tactics. Firing a shell is as simple as altering the angle of your barrel and charging the power of the shot.

Shelled Online's single player component can get pretty difficult towards the end, but remains fun throughout. The game truly shines, however, when you take advantage of the 'online' part and pit yourself against other humans. Lag was minimal across most of my sessions, and the experience was quite satisfying.

Although the presentation is very basic, it is clean and consistent, and takes very little away from the enjoyment of shelling with the best of them. This is a game I'll be playing for a while.

Russ Carroll: 6

The panel reviewed the original Shelled back in December of 2006 and the game has certainly been improved. Visually it stands out as being much more helpful in the power meter for your shots and the whole game feels much more polished. Unfortunately, I didn't really dig the game then and even as a more polished version of the game I still find it rather 'meh.'

Shelled is Scorched Earth in 3D, which means lots of moving and missing, but as this game is real-time instead of turn-based, you spend a LOT more time missing as you won't have time to hone in on your target by changing your angle by a few degrees and cranking down the power meter. As soon as you go to do that, the target moves on and you miss again or get blown to bits. The weapons are interesting, but not new and other than the nuke you are really just wasting your time on them. Good, but not great.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

Crumb is a bright and bubbly little 2-D puzzler modeled after the old school likes of The Adventures of Lolo. You need to grab certain items and move to a certain exit point. The game adds a bit of high score action by being able to get awards for completing levels under a certain number of "steps"� but beyond that is basically a game for very little kids or very, very basic gamers.

The story is charming and the game is easy to pick up and put down, but there's really nothing to recommend it to any but the most inexperienced gamer.

Pany Haritatos: 7

Charming graphics, captivating writing and calming music makes Crumb a pleasant gaming experience. I'm not the biggest Sokoban fan, but Crumb had enough going for it that I wanted to keep playing just to see how the story would unfold. The difficulty level felt just right. I never felt frustrated or overwhelmed. I found the graphics to be particularly appealing, from the mission progress screen all the way through the character sprites and background tiles. The musical choices really helped reinforce the other elements of the design to round out the whole package. There are two things that bothered me about the game The first is I preferred the keyboard controls, but the story screen required a mouse click to continue so I ultimately changed to mouse control, so I wasn't constantly switching between the two, even though I felt like the keyboard controls were tighter. The other would be that I usually wished I had some sort of mini-map or a way to glance at the whole level, without needing to explore it first and then restart to reset my move count. Other than those two quibbles, it's easy to recommend Crumb to fans of the Sokoban genre, and puzzle games in general.

Coby Utter: 6

Puzzle games need to be addicting to sustain long-term playability and unfortunately, the core gameplay of Crumb is not. In each level of Crumb your goal is to collect all of the magical crumbs scattered about the area. Some of these crumbs are inaccessible, so you must find a way to make a path by moving stones around, or blocking off enemies. You can also obtain certain items which will help you stun enemies or cross dangerous terrain. The puzzles are quite easy, although I can imagine some of them would be challenging for a younger player. Although colorful and bright, the presentation is only average, with static environments and minimal animations and effects, although the music fit the mood well.

After pushing blocks for a while, the only thing that might keep you coming back for more is the fairytale which is unlocked in a secret journal after each level. In the end, the game is just not rewarding, innovative, or challenging enough to bring about much satisfaction.

Russ Carroll: 7

Crumb is a Sokobon game with a great story contributed by Aveyond creator Amanda Fitch. You go around solving puzzles to collect 'crumbs,' and after you have collected enough, you move onto the next level. The story didn't really feel all that well integrated to the gameplay, it was interesting to read in-between the levels, but I had trouble connecting it to the gameplay. The game play was good light puzzling fun without being overwhelming and the bright and cheery graphics mixed with some nice airy music made this a game that I kept going back to all month whenever I wanted to relax away to a magical world for a minute. The only downside was the fact that it's a sokobon game at heart and occasionally that leads to puzzles that are more tedious than entertaining.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

Dreamball, right down to the infectiously poppy soundtrack (that I enjoyed but I believe Pany hated after 30 seconds), is a nice bit of simple, throwback gaming. You have a ball, you must guide it through hoops. Voila! It's sort of like Super Monkey Ball, but less wacky and less frustrating.

Basically, you just guide your ball with the mouse around obstacles and through gates. Short of hitting a major stoppage point at Level 25, I found the game to be a nice, refreshing bit of fun. As the game progresses, the fact that it's sort of a one-note title becomes clearer, but it's a pretty good note.

Pany Haritatos: 6

Dreamball was a decent gaming experience. It's a fairly standard roll the ball around and collect stuff experience, with a couple new twists to keep it mostly interesting. The graphics were passable, and the sound effects were fine, but I found the music to get completely obnoxious after the first few minutes. In terms of gameplay, I had some issues with the lack of consistency. When I play a game like this, I expect a clear cause and effect relationship. Unfortunately, things don't always behave the same way, and often objects will appear out of thin air when you accomplish totally unconnected tasks. This makes my actions feel somewhat arbitrary and took away from the fun. The level design suffered from a religious adherence to symmetrical layouts, which made it feel like I had to solve every level twice - first the left half then the right half. Cutting out one half of all the levels would actually make this game more fun! There were some fun 2d puzzles thrown into the mix with the 3d ones, and that gave the game enough life to push me forward a few more levels every time one came up. Deaths were kept pretty painless, which definitely makes this type of game much more fun. If you like the roll-a-ball genre, I'm sure you'll enjoy it, but Dreamball doesn't bring enough to the table to make it stick out from the others that came before it.

Coby Utter: 7

I often enjoy casual physics puzzle games, and Dreamball 64 wasn�t an exception. You control a ball that you must roll through a series of hoops across levels filled with spikes, ramps, and jump pads. The controls are mouse based and often make or break this type of game. Fortunately, they work like a charm here. The level design isn�t mind blowing, but it�s consistent and sometimes clever.

Aesthetically the game is sharp and looks pretty good with bright colors and landscapes. The music and sound fit it in, and the overall experience is very cohesive. The game doesn�t bring a whole lot of originality to the table, sadly, which is its largest fault. Dreamball 64 is solid and fun; it�s just unfortunate that it didn�t push any boundaries in terms of gameplay or level design for the genre.

Russ Carroll: 6

DreamBall is by the same developer that brought us Snoogles back in April and they share a lot in both the sugary sweet look and the happy happy fun joy joy feel to the game.

Game play wise, DreamBall is much more similar to Hamsterball or Overball than Snoogles, giving players a ball to direct around a course. The goal is to go through a number of gates. The levels are occasionally quite clever, but for the most part didn't really inspire, which is what I think keeps DreamBall from really scoring with me. Though it's certainly a fun play for about an hour, which is about how long it will take you to clear through the game's 71 levels, there are similar games out there that are better.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

Gemstars was oddly hypnotic for me. I played it, and it was instantly accessible, in the way that any experienced gamer can pick up any game anywhere and fiddle with it for a bit and figure out how it works. That doesn't mean I knew what I was doing. When I started playing it just looked like I was playing a sort of Tetris, but where I added the blocks to a circular structure I could rotate before deciding where to drop each piece. It wasn't until I went onto the game's website that I realized that I'm supposed to be rebuilding stars for constellations before the maker realizes they've disappeared.

Gemstars is a competent puzzle game, but it just doesn't hold my interest very well. After you've progressed to levels that you can't pass by creating big combo blocks with suitably flashy animations, the game reveals itself to be pretty tedious. There's no real urgency to finishing any level, so putting down piece after piece to link up single gems just gets boring. Even in the non-story mode, where you have a time limit and gain time for getting high scores, I was able to elevate my available time to more than 30 minutes without really breaking a sweat. After that, I just stopped playing. A puzzle game without any real urgency or clear goal is basically just a way to waste time.

Pany Haritatos: 4

Gemstars is like playing a mildly drug-induced 80s film about astronomy. The game isn't bad, it's just not good. The gameplay itself isn't very revolutionary. It might be trying to put a new spin on an old mechanic, but it is a transparent attempt. The graphics are bizarre and not in a good way. The sound effects are fine, but the music really helps reinforce the visuals and that's not a good thing when the visuals are bad. Elements of the game, like the UI, seem decently well polished, but as a whole the game is just flat. It's not a compelling experience, the visuals don't score it any bonus points, and generally the experience is just a resounding "meh." Unfortunately, Gemstars just isn't worth a deeper look.

Coby Utter: 6

At first, Gemstars struck me as an interestingly novel spin on the classic Match-3 formula. Instead of the traditional grid, the player faces off against a series of wheel and spoke like hubs made up of different colored gems. Each hub has certain gaps that the player is able to fire new gems into, trying to create matches and cascades that free up more slots for firing. The player simply rotates the hub to expose a slot, clicks to fire, and whoosh, the chain reactions begin.

Gemstars failed, however, in keeping me hooked into the game. It is hard to quantify this intangible element which keeps players immersed in the experience, but after a few levels and several hubs, I found it lacking in this area. Pinpointing this exact cause isn�t easy though. The game�s presentation won�t blow you away, but it�s solid, and there weren�t any technical issues encountered. It simply became stale after a short while.

If you are a huge fan of match-3�s, or are looking for an interesting twist on an old formula, I�d suggest picking up Gemstars and seeing if it draws you in, otherwise you�ll probably want to look elsewhere for your puzzle fix.

Russ Carroll: 7

Most rotation puzzle games are horrible. It's really hard to think in a circle to move objects into the right position to solve the puzzle. Gemstars, at times, bucks this trend when it mixes speed and thoughtful strategy to create fast-moving puzzles.

The thing keeping it from really being great, in my mind, is that it doesn't keep things moving fast enough. Making good matches leads to combos, called cascades, in the game where pieces fall into place in a very rewarding manner. However, often puzzles break down into what feels like a chore as you slowly clear the stragglers.

With great tunes (some of which I've heard before in indie games - see Dark Archon for starters) playing in the background, Gemstars comes together in a very satisfying way when it's working. It's hands down the best rotational puzzler I've played.

I had a couple of graphical glitches, complained out loud about not being able to use the mouse wheel for rotation and wished for more speed combos and less clean-up, but Gemstars is otherwise a fantastic package that fits with Lumines and Meteos as my favorite new puzzle concepts in recent memory.

Michael Scarpelli: 5

Make Bouncy Bounce kind of makes me want to commity-mit suicide. There's a fun feel to the game (right down to the fact that you can make your cube look like Portal's Companion Cube), but the fun feel is a lie.

In the game, you're meant to move your bouncing cube from platform to platform on your way to the level's end. With each platform you land on, some different effect will occur, most usually one that increases your ability to be able to bounce. If you miss, you have start over by bouncing over to the start again.

In the end, the game is too touchy. It's too easy to fall and fail right at the very end of a long strong of platform hopping, and this becomes hugely frustrating. The keyboard controls aren't precise enough to be usable and the mouse control can't overcome the game's central control flaw. The fact that the game's 3-D nature makes figuring out exactly where you're going to land a bit wonky, and you have a recipe for frustration.

Pany Haritatos: 5

This game has wonderful audio (some of the best I've heard in a long time) and some simple but charming graphics. Its great weakness is the gameplay. It is a 3d platformer. This is not an easy genre to design for, and even the best have tried to make 3d plat-forming fun and still failed (I can count the number who I think have succeeded on one hand). The simple fact is that it is difficult for a human being to plot and execute a precise jump in three dimensions. Add in some interesting, but ultimately loose controls, a mostly fixed camera, and minimal fault tolerance and you have a recipe for a very frustrating gameplay experience. In 2d, I suspect that this would have been a gratifying and engaging experience. As is, though, it is grueling, punishing and ultimately unsatisfactory.

Coby Utter: 8

Make Bouncy Bouncy is pretty aptly described by the title. The whole game revolves around bouncing from platform to platform to reach your goal. The game is a non-traditional 3D platformer, where you only control your heading and whether or not you move forward. Your little elastic cube constantly bounces and is propelled into the air by various things like jump pads.

At first the game was pretty difficult for me. It didn�t take long (and some options tweaking), however, before I could cruise through the tutorials and was making my way through the core of the game. The premise of the game is very simple, but I always wanted to keep going forward. The originality and presentation of the game score it some points, as well as the overall polish level. It felt like I was playing a well crafted gaming experience from start to finish. Although the game probably isn�t for everyone, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Russ Carroll: 5

Make Bouncy Bouncy is a perfect example of how different people like different things. I've played hundreds, no wait, thousands of games since starting GameTunnel and I'm always excited to have a game submitted by someone who "put(s) fun over profit every time."

The biggest (only?) issue I had with the game is that I just didn't enjoy it and there is no way I could.

If you are someone who thinks the best part of plat-formers is making difficult jump after difficult jump and having to restart the whole sequence if you make one mistake, then Make Bouncy Bouncy is your dream game.

The game has long twisting platforms that move, rotate, and bounce, making for a wonderful challenge in getting from point A to point B. If you are skillful and make the jumps quickly you'll grow bigger and after enough skillful jumps in a row you'll make Bouncy, who is your character, bouncy! When you miss, like me, for the 14th time in a row after having made the first 10 platform jumps perfectly, only to have to start all over again, you'll be wishing you had a Nerf mouse.

Michael Scarpelli: 5

PreVa wants very badly to be Gundam or Macross, but just falls short. The idea of pseudo-squad-based gameplay (you have a squad, but cannot control them) in giant robots is awesome. The end result here though is as rigid as the graphics.

The 3D in PreVa looks very much like late �90s polygon-based graphics, and even with this dated look manages to have some jumpy graphics on an overpowered desktop machine. And the gameplay simply isn't dynamic enough to live up to the game's anime roots. Most missions can be accomplished by standing still and firing constantly. Enemies don't move too terribly much and your starting weapons system is a simple machine gun that only has 30 rounds and takes forever to reload. The movement system can be fun, and feels a bit like VirtualOn of the arcade days, but without more interesting weapons for more varied combat, the game is just sort of a dud.

Pany Haritatos: 4

Preva is a lot of mediocre. I liked the pre-mission briefing, something that usually irks me about most games, but that's pretty much it. Everything else felt like an attempt at awesome, but none of it succeeded. Maybe the gameplay in the later levels magically gets better, but I wasn't patient enough to sit through more than the first few levels. The starting weapons are a machine gun and a melee attack. The machine gun firing just wasn't fun. It was literally just point and click till the AI unit died. I hoped the melee stuff would be more interesting, but its novelty wore off after the first successful strike. The robot models are the biggest trespass in this game. I understand that it's 3D and that sacrifices need to be made in order to render the game efficiently on older hardware, but the software rendered Mech Warrior 2 (circa 1995) looked better than Preva does. I have to give Preva some props for attempting epic cutscenes, and they were decently executed, but with the unimaginative art design, I wanted to see less, not more. Preva needs better gameplay and more imaginative art design.

Coby Utter: 4

PreVa is an FPS that puts you in command of a mech in a squadron engaged in small scale warfare against other mechs. The game is all about the action, but unfortunately, the action fails to satisfy. To be clear, the action isn�t broken, it just wasn�t fun. You can boost about and fire away while your AI squad mates help clear the area (and cheer you on like the chosen one), but everything felt loose and messy.

Visually, PreVa is equally unimpressive. Some of the environments are absolutely horrendous, the effects are kept to a minimum, and variety is non-existent. The game is also plagued with technical issues (even after the patch). This combination of factors is just too much to keep the game afloat.

It�s great to see indie teams take on larger scope projects, but sacrificing the quality of the game for scope is a no-win situation and it would be hard for me to recommend PreVa to people.

Russ Carroll: 5

So I should mention right away that I'm not a fan of first or third person shooters. I enjoyed Halo, and I like the Metroid Prime series, but it's like a country music station in the desert for me. I listen because I like music, not because I enjoy that type of music.

So with that said let me give you my take on PreVa. It's a decent game in many respects. The GUI is fantastic, so good, that I was expecting a lot from the game, but it appears the A6 game engine that the game uses, just isn't up to the challenge.

I kept feeling that they would have been better served by doing a mod on an existing game as the low-poly visuals, that fit somewhere between the PS1 and PS2, feel very dated and really take away from the experience. Doing a mod also would have given them the power of better AI than what is found in the game.

Your troops will often run in-between you and your targets. The enemies, for their part aren't much smarter as they often will run in place against walls as they 'try' to get away, making them easy targets. Clearly a lot of work went into the game, it makes me feel bad that it is being held back by such out-dated technology.

Michael Scarpelli: 2

Iega might be, in all seriousness, the least fun game I've ever played. It's not the worst game ever, but I think it's the most devoid of fun. It's not even really a game, it's a chore. And not like, "Here's the key to the riding mower, do the lawn." It's more like "Here are some scissors. That lawn won't cut itself."

You're in a space pod by a space station and inexplicably falling through light gravity are various canisters of items. You must, using thrusters on your pod, try and guide these canisters as they fall to a landing pad for the station. However, don't let too many items strike the shields for the space station. It will start to be damaged. Also, don't let them hit the ground, because they will explode. And don't hit them too hard into anything, and don't hit the station yourself.

Okay, this leaves you with about three-quarters of the screen to move through. That's fine. But typically the items fall far faster than your pod can keep up with, and you have semi-realistic movement and thruster behavior, which means moving quickly to reach something will rocket you well past it as your thrusters try to arrest your momentum. And the canisters are dispersed randomly, which means that they might not even be possible for you to reach.

And then you run out of fuel and drift off the edge of the level.

I tried to like it. I tried many times. I tried playing with multiple pods at once, which just lead to rapid-fire frustration. It sucked the life out of me. Seriously, go ahead and download it and see what I'm talking about. Maybe you'll love it, but I'm betting you'll nod your head and say, "Yeah, I see what he meant."

Pany Haritatos: 1

A caveat: I couldn't suffer through this game enough to even successfully complete the first level, though I tried many times. That being said, I can't imagine any person so completely bored out of their mind that they would be able to play this game, let alone ever purchase it or even pass the marathon- like first level. Vega wants you to be a sheep dog for space junk using Lunar Lander like controls. Take away the fun core gameplay in Lunar Lander, add in several useless layers of complexity, impossibly long play times, and you'll get something that approximates Vega. The graphics are unimaginative low quality 3d renders. The user interface is an overwhelming mess of barely relevant information. The gameplay is so shockingly awful that everything else would be great in comparison. You are tasked with bumping space junk onto your landing platform, instead of allowing it to destroy your base station. You're doing this while juggling the spawning of additional space pods that you'll also need to keep from exploding while trying to accomplish your main objective. You'll need to do this for at least 30 minutes to pass the first level. Vega takes a simple, fun mechanic and layers so much unnecessary clutter on top of it that any possibility of fun is crushed in the process.

Coby Utter: 3

Vega was my least favorite game this month. You control a pod in a zero gravity environment using directional thrusters to try and guide falling resources into a landing pod. This simple premise hides the fact that actually doing this can be very difficult and typically frustrating. Weak side to side thrusters can barely overcome the momentum you gain, and your pod is tricky to control effectively. It took me 17 tries to get pass the first mission. Either I am very horrible at this kind of game (which is quite plausible) or the game is just unforgiving.

The production values are actually pretty decent of what little I saw of the game. Nothing stood out as rough or unfinished, but nothing jumped out and grabbed my attention either. Vega was simply a grueling and frustrating play for me.

Russ Carroll: 3

Vega is an amazingly difficult game. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the game was really made by aliens who are conducting research to see how long people will punish themselves trying to play it, when it's abundantly clear that there is no hope of actually passing a single level of the game.

So in Vega, you're a pod that due to gravity and 'realism,' will take every ounce of your patience and skill just to maneuver. However, that's not the game!

No the game is about indirectly maneuvering an even more difficult to maneuver object to a specific location on the screen with your difficult to maneuver pod before you run out of resources or happen to overcorrect just a TINY bit and crash and die!

After you die, you can continue the alien's experiment by starting again, even though you know it's entirely hopeless and not any fun. If you do succeed I'll bet aliens will abduct you like in the Last Starfighter, except in this case you'll have to maneuver a Lander around indirectly moving objects for the rest of your life!

On the plus side I thought the visuals were good.