Mike Hommel: 6

A much watered down version of the lovely Chromadrome from a couple years back. One major tip with this game: it goes from awfully dull to fairly intense if you crank the difficulty up. This increases the speed to reasonable levels. I switched it to "Insane" difficulty, which I would call "normal". It's not too bad, but it is totally linear, much too slow to be fun on the default difficulty, and a rehash of stuff that's been done better.

Seth Robinson: 6

In this day and age of glibly deceptive advertising and half truths it's refreshing to find something that delivers on its promises in spades. You do indeed use jets to do quite a lot of jumping. In this 3D futuristic solo race it all comes down to timing bounces over gaps. Everything works but after some soul searching it appears I just can't be overly fond of any game that forces me to repeat lengthy levels after a slight wobble in my craft caused me to barely nick a gate causing an instant failure. Not bad at all.

Brian Clair: 7

This is one of those games that you initially think won't be much fun, but find yourself playing hours of. In JetJumper, you control a jet car that is constantly moving forward through various levels towards a finish line; and your only form of control is moving from side-to-side and jumping while collecting gems. It sounds basic and is, but JetJumper ends up being quite entertaining. The levels are well laid out and grow increasingly more complex, featuring power-ups that help spice up the action in a logical way (i.e., power-ups aren't there just to fill up space). While the level textures are bland, the game as a whole makes for a great arcade experience.

Russ Carroll: 7

A fun game that is much better than you think it will be by just looking at it, but not as good as you wish it was after playing it. I couldn't help but feel that the game didn't convey a real sense of speed and often had me saying 3...2...1...SLOW! as races started. Certainly it didn't build up the way the somewhat similar Chromadrome did though the graphics are notably better than that game. I have to say for the most part this game just made me want to go rent F-Zero GX. My appreciation for JetJumper did increase after I started over on the hardest difficulty level, but the speed was still lacking, which is too bad because there's a good amount of fun to be had with the challenge of timing multiple jumps so you just make it to the perfect spots to collect items.

Mike Hommel: 8

A really cool and original game. Or it would be if it wasn't a totally blatant rip-off of Puffbomb (I mean really, the "destroy bricks" even?). But it does add a lot of good ideas with different bombs and a well-implemented and really useful time slider. The only major downside is that a lot of the levels are practically just guesswork and inchy smidgey twitches, since you can't really predict the behavior of a 'spin field' without performing advanced calculus in your head. The scoring system is good and encourages you to really work out the best path. It's a great game, but I'd rather blow up hamsters.

Seth Robinson: 7

Set up timed bombs and bumpers to get balls to go where they're supposed. Impulse does a superb job of integrating a timeline to control when events are happening. It's like using Adobe Premiere to complete logic puzzles. In lieu of the puzzles having any kind of personality or themes you get volume: 100 of 'em. Happy to see in-game solutions. Boo to no level editor, solution or high-score sharing, things that make a difference with this type of game. Good stuff.

Brian Clair: 6

I don't think I've come across an explosion simulation/puzzle game before, which makes Impulse unique to me. There aren't any visual frills here; the player is presented with a ball that they must maneuver to a target area on each level. To accomplish this are four types of devices to designed to influence the ball's position: a bomb (complete with adjustable timer), a bouncer (the ball will bounce off this object), an implosion bomb (essentially the opposite of the bomb), and a teleporter. On each level you'll be given one or more of these devices in order to accomplish the task at hand. Thankfully, the developers have included a slider that moves time forward/back through your most recent attempt so that you can adjust things logically. It's an interesting, non-standard concept that requires you to think about how the various objects will interact with one another.

Russ Carroll: 6

I actually enjoyed this less and less as time went on (perhaps because I enjoy challenging games less and less as I get older). Impulse is an interesting physics game where you use the explosion and implosion forces of objects that you set on the screen to direct the path of a ball to its goal. It feels like Armadillo Run, but constrains players to less available objects. It's different and fun, but in the end left me wanting to go back to Armadillo Run for more open-ended gaming.

Mike Hommel: 6

It's like playing breakout: in the Matrix! No wait, scratch everything past the ellipsis. This is about as standard as you can get, with one thing worse than usual: instead of an 'insta-win' power up that drops when you are making no progress, it drops a multiball, so it's just that little bit more tedious than other breakout games. Breakout's been done better, but it's also been done a lot worse.

Seth Robinson: 6

This darkly futuristic themed arkanoid-y game covers the bases nicely. Besides some neat background animations I just don't see a whole lot new here. One serious annoyance for me is the mouse controls have a tiny milky lag to them - I had to break out (ha ha) Ricochet to verify it was not my imagination. The easy to use level editor is a nice touch. I'm really sorry for rating so many games as "average" this month but that's my honest reaction. Not bad, but all things considered, no better than the rest.

Brian Clair: 6

Deep Ball Defender is another arkanoid clone for the round-up that tends to stand on its own. What I mean is that it is neither very appealing, nor is it bad. Odds are that if you enjoy this genre that you'll like Deep Ball Defender, but I didn't find anything special here. The graphics are decent, if dark, and the levels are nothing extraordinary.

Russ Carroll: 5

I want to give it a 6 based on the fact that the backgrounds and most of the graphics are really nicely done. I love the cityscape with the scrolling smoke. Unfortunately, I don't love the gameplay. The more I played the more I wondered how much time had gone into level testing. They simply weren't fun and many, such as level 2 or 7, were horribly un-fun. The sound effects could really use another go over as well. So poor game play and good graphics should mean an average game right? I just couldn't bring myself to do it based on how frustrated I was after playing.

Mike Hommel: 7

On the plus side, physics=fun. On the minus side, this game is everything I've come to loathe about Breakout from the endless waits to the rain of stupid powerups/powerdowns. It also has another big minus in the form of: player-control-physics!=fun. The controls are very mushy and slippery, you'll drop many a ball because of it. It is quite cool to watch the stacks tumble down as you pummel them, but other than that, hello Breakout with bad controls.

Seth Robinson: 6

Quite a lot like the original Shattera. (double checks to make sure I downloaded the right one!) It's a 3D physics-focused brick-breaker that uses a chubby shirtless gentlemen for a paddle. I love seeing large structures come crashing down. The avatar is just too slow and slidey to make multi-ball fun. Glancing shots that should be cool saves always end up lost balls. What's with the moon gravity? Play if you like seeing stuff get knocked over, otherwise there are better breakout games out there.

Brian Clair: 6

The first thing that caught my eye in Shattera 2 was the sharp 3D engine that powers the game. The camera angles play nicely with this arkanoid clone and, when matched with the physics engine, really catch your attention. In fact, it's the physics that make Shattera 2 stand out. As your ball destroys the blocks that comprise each level, you'll see the whole play surface shakes and breaks apart. The use of some special object types help with this too, such as wood and glass. Of course, no arkanoid game would be complete without power-ups, and Shattera 2 doesn't disappoint here either. My favorite is the bomb which, as you'd expect, let's you blow up most of a level in a devastating explosion. Unfortunately, there's a major drawback to this game: you usually end up taking a back seat while your ball does the work. It's not that the elements to fix this aren't present, they are (though there could be more of them), it's that they don't appear in many levels and some are too hard to use (like the boomerang). This ends up making Shattera 2 somewhat boring, if pleasing to the eyes.

Russ Carroll: 7

Shattera shows us why you should do a breakout in 3D...to have real physics interact on the screen before your eyes. It is wonderfully fulfilling to knock out the base of large towers and watch them twist and fall to the ground. Unfortunately, that is where the game runs into a little trouble. Spending a few minutes knocking over towers and other cool structures is FUN! Spending 5-10 minutes to clean up all the rubble one brick at a time isn't much fun and quite a let-down from knocking over the tower! It would be nice for the collapsing tower's bricks to be destroyed as they crash to the ground or have some other way to get through the levels more quickly so you could spend more time knocking out the foundations of the different structures. Still, if you are looking for originality or physics, this is the place to find it.

Mike Hommel: 6

The other day there was a discussion on indie gamer about casual games being like popping bubble wrap. That's what this is. No investment, no tension, no emotion, just a mind-numbing waste of time. The only positive is that the dozen or so special weapons can be fun to watch (except the ones that are totally worthless. bad balance!). It's impossible to make an intelligent decision on which to use, so you just end up spewing them at random. But they look somewhat exciting.

Seth Robinson: 6

What sets this galaga style shooter apart is its complex enemy patterns and large arsenal of special weapons. You soon learn that aliens require five hits to die with your puny gun, as well as most of the special ones. You'd think a one time use super-laser could kill a drone in one hit. Nope - might take two or three. At times the action is very good, at other times, it feels like mowing the lawn. Perhaps the perfect companion to this game would be a book on tape to listen to while you play.

Brian Clair: 5

Here we have the latest arcade shooter from Alawar Entertainment that once again pits your lone space fighter against countless hordes of bloodthirsty aliens. Astro Fury features some pretty nice weapon and background graphics, but that's about all I can say. The gameplay here is bland, with generic looking enemy ships and some questionable design decisions. For instance, the Help section doesn't tell you anything about your secondary weapons, so while there are a lot of them, you have no idea what they do except by trial and error. Also, for some inexplicable reason the developer thought it would be fun for players if they put up barriers between your ship and the enemy on certain levels. The enemy can shoot through the barriers but you can't. Instead you need to blast through the barriers which can take a long time since your primary weapon is weak (secondaries don't seem to do much damage to them either from my experience – you certainly don't want to waste them).

Russ Carroll: 8

There are some flaws in this game and they come early. For example, the lighter colored background for the first 10 levels makes it awfully hard to see the enemies bullets. This is compounded by the problem of enemy explosions that flame out in different directions, often masking enemy bullets (as well as looking like bullets!). If you get past that, you are sure to be rewarded by some of the coolest massive attack power-ups I've ever seen in a game. The power-ups should not be missed! The game is not up to Titan Attacks quality, but with your own tunes playing in the background, it's a very worthy shooter.

Seth Robinson: 5

A reoccurring theme in these round-up's is the freebie "college project first person combat game" - it usually consists of one inventive idea, bad art, an abundance of geometric objects, meager audio, and requires three drunk friends for the 'real' LAN battle experience. Well, I played fifteen minutes (sober), it was interesting, and I was done. It's like walking inside a lego world and breaking it apart, yet not quite as cool as that sounds. Simple capture the flag really isn't a great application of this; they just become crazy projectiles. I recommend checking it out for the sand-box mode.

Brian Clair: 6

Toblo is a student created freeware game that is really quite impressive. Since it's a student project, no middleware was used, but Toblo features a 3D engine and physics. Essentially there's one gameplay mode which is capture-the-flag. Each team controls three flags and you win by capturing each of the enemy team's flags and returning it to your base. Your only weapons are the blocks which make up the bases and landscape. You can take out an opponent by throwing and hitting an enemy with one of the blocks, which frags him for a period of time. The AI is pretty brutal with its aim, but I found it lacking in terms of tactics. Sometimes my AI teammates would make an offensive rush, but generally would stick back to defend our base and vice versa. Luckily, you can “force” your teammates to charge with you using the middle-mouse button to gather them close to you, which works pretty well. Overall, if Toblo is the shape of things to come from future developers, things are looking good for PC gamers.

Russ Carroll: 6

A good demo of a great idea. The only down side to this one is that it doesn't feel at all like a finished game. The idea of totally destructible environments that double as weapons is quite a bit of fun. Would love to see quite a bit more work done on this to make it a more proper game. The AI for your computer allies and enemies leaves a lot to be desired (as does the graphic and sound work). Understandably it's a student game, and it shows a lot of promise, it just needs some proper finished product polishing.

Mike Hommel: 8

Don't run away from the name! It's not actually a match-3! No, it's a platformer, and it's fun. Very simple, almost entirely about grabbing stuff. This is really one for the kids, but that's all the more reason why I enjoy it. I'm simple. The only real minus is that there's so little to consider while playing that you'll get bored long before you've finished all hundred million levels (there's a lot in this one!). Oh, and the main character is hideously disturbing.

Seth Robinson: 8

Finally, a casual platformer that really nails the controls! From the elegant interactive overview map (reminiscent of TMNT on the NES) you choose one of two kinds of levels, standard and a speed mode where you fly through the level with only one button. All the small details that many games skimp on are here - like tiny playing animals visible through the pet store window, trains zooming by in the background, and other non-essentials that should be, well, essential. Looks and sounds great, no complaints other than wishing I had a big gun from time to time.

Brian Clair: 6

Pizza Panic is a side-scrolling arcade game with something of an identity crisis. As a delivery boy, you're tasked with bringing pizzas across town. However, your delivery job is really secondary, as most of the gameplay revolves around collecting objects on the maps that aren't related at all in order to earn a top score (four stars are possible on each map). Some of these objects are floppy disks, playing cards, footballs, hamburgers and others that don't seem to relate at all to pizza. Additionally, there are creatures on each level that you need to avoid, or destroy by landing directly on top of them. These creatures are there only to sap the precious coins you receive for a delivery; if you lose one by getting hit you can forget about a perfect score for that level. However, there's a simple way around this annoyance – simply go through the level before you make any deliveries and take out all the creatures (some can't be destroyed, but these are easily avoided). It's hard to say if this part of the design was intentional or not, but I consider it a significant gameplay flaw.

Russ Carroll: 7

Hard to argue with this one. I might like a little more variety, but after playing it a few times I couldn't help but think this game did a fantastic job of transporting me back to being a little kid playing arcade games at the roller rink. Simple straight forward game play collecting various food like objects (think Wonder Boy) while delivering pizzas on a skateboard. Race levels were definitely a plus. Well worth spending a couple of evenings on.

Mike Hommel: 6

The irony is that this game with its emphasis on strategy and details actually gives you fewer options to control the ball than an arcade-y golf game. You can't spin it, you can't adjust your shot power other than normal, overpowered, or easy, and you have almost no control over putts. Now that's kind of unfair, because the real emphasis here is on running a career, not on playing the game. But I actually found the golfing part fairly fun, while the career stuff seemed not only boring, but extremely lacking in choices and things to do. Time for MDickie to make a golf game! Warning: Installs eLicense, which cannot be uninstalled without downloading a separate uninstaller. It's not spyware (they say.), but it runs in the background, and them's my resources!

Seth Robinson: 7

For those new to the world of ultra dork sports simulations, they goes like this: You install, then go to the prominently linked "unofficial community site", download the PGA player, tour, and course data and plug it in. Golf freaks like me veg out clicking through stats and trying to recreate our own sad experiences at the local course. I was pleasantly surprised to find the actual "golfing" portion to be more than dry text; it's a pretty neat mini game where strategy really matters. Intriguing multiplayer league support. Huge thumbs down on the messy install and broken uninstall (for me at least) as well as the system commandeering eLicense protection. Full-screen mode please.

Brian Clair: 6

I had a hard time with this game, as I'm not a big golf fan. Total Pro Golf is a management simulation where you control the career of a pro golfer. While you can even play rounds of golf on the green, this isn't really the title's focus and it shows. The presentation here is really quite nice and sleek, until you get to the green where things become very basic sprites. The management aspects are more fleshed out, tasking you with selecting from a variety of golf clubs and balls for your virtual player, to hiring a coach and caddy (though most won't work for you early on until you gain some fame). For those who are golf fans, Total Pro Golf may be your cup of tea, just remember this title isn't designed to be Tiger Woods Golf. It's much more abstract and aimed at a niche audience.

Russ Carroll: 6

I'm a big sports fan, but this golf sim left me wanting for something more. The biggest issue with the game is the unrewarding sim engine that only gives you the golfer's score at the end of each round leaving you unsure of how you did in relation to the field. This takes away a lot from feeling involved in what is going on and the need to stop the sim to get to the overall money list and see if you were moving up didn't improve things any. I was also disappointed to see some of my golfer's statistics (notably my work with the wedge) never increase and eventually decrease despite only starting at 10/100 and having a coach who had a 9 on the short game. The more interactive approach to playing the holes only lead to frustration in watching way too many missed puts for my golfer with 100/100 in the putting category. Though it makes me interested in their upcoming Basketball sim, TPG is short of spectacular.

Mike Hommel: 7

I was really excited about this one! Then I was really let down by it. It's supremely hard to control - half the time I wanted to order a unit, I ended up deselecting it instead. The ship controls are particularly insane. It's also extremely slow paced, even when cranked to maximum speed. I know that's sort of the idea, that it gives you time to manage all your stuff (I had the same idea for a game once! And now I know not to do it!), but it still makes for a boring game. The style is awesome, though, and if it were simplified and sped up, it would be a whole new kind of Risk.

Seth Robinson: 8

This game let's you feel like Matthew Broderick in War Games sans the parachute pants. Introversion perfectly nails the ambience of the classic movie "big world map" where tiny cute nuclear missiles arc across the board before obliterating Moscow. If you're expecting a deep RTS game, well, you'll be disappointed - it's more about positioning your units and guessing where the enemy put his and pressing the launch button. Like a game of Battleship but you yell "Hey, you sunk my Europe!" instead. With its easy to use multiplayer lobby setup and active mod scene I have to recommend it. If nothing else to impress family members; it's just that cool looking.

Brian Clair: n/s

Gamers, especially those of us who grew up in the 80's, have often wished for a title that mimicked the movie Wargames. Who wouldn't want control over the Cold War with the power to end all life on Earth? After a successful go with Darwinia, Introversion took up the call and managed to capture the feel of nuclear war and the movie Wargames with Defcon. Unfortunately, that's about as positive as I can be with this release, as I honestly found it incredibly boring (and I realize I'm quite possibly the only game reviewer on the planet who believes so). Defcon is primarily a multiplayer game, with a very minimalistic single-player mode against AI bots that are less than stellar. With multiplayer in-mind, I tried to get a decent game of Defcon going with little success. Most of the time I wasn't able to connect to any open matches; and the few times I did, I got dropped mid-way through. It's due to this that I've opted not to rate Defcon – I simply couldn't get enough successful multiplayer time in to warrant issuing a rating with an open mind. In terms of gameplay, there's just not enough to do and after placing your initial pieces, you're pretty much left to sit there while time passes until DEFCON 1 hits and the nukes start flying. Even then, there's just not much to do since after you assign your targets and launch your birds, you're left to sit again, hoping some of your nukes get through the enemy's missile defense. For only $14.95, it's hard to justify any complaints outside the constant connection trouble, but for all the hype, I'd expected a deeper play experience.

Russ Carroll: 7

It's really hard to follow-up a game of the year. Defcon is an interesting game that looks a lot slicker than it plays. The mouse control mixed with the keyboard doesn't quite work and leads to a high learning curve in just getting the movement down. However, you'll have plenty of time to figure out how to move as the game progresses at such an agonizingly slow rate that you might be able to run for dinner in the middle of the game and come back without missing much. The grim theme to the music seems at once both deeply somber and openly mocking nuclear war. I can't tell if the game's approach to massive numbers of people getting killed by a nuclear attack is in horribly bad taste or if it's just British humor. Overall the game didn't quite grab me, though I expect, as was the case with Darwinia, that further refinements to the gameplay will make it a much better game over time.

Mike Hommel: 7

Another game overcomplicated beyond necessity - several of the keys you use for more obscure moves aren't even shown in the keyboard config screen! It plays fairly nicely though, like a much more playable Gibbage. I was unable to get an internet game working except a brief moment when Seth and I ran around in a lobby. I think internet play is really the entire point of this game, so take my score with a salt chaser (then again, none of the Panel could get it working online, so maybe I overscored!).

Seth Robinson: 7

This is a slick combat platformer with a focus on internet death-match play. I like the retro pixilated look and overall the action is pretty good. The hard part about reviewing this is my online experience was less than stellar; we played a bit but then were unable to join up again. Strange. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt here and assuming it's something on our end to blame. Single player experience is a little weak.

Brian Clair: 6

I have some mixed feelings about Robotopia. On the one hand, it's a nifty, somewhat retro arcade side-scroller. This makes for interesting gameplay that allows the title to stand out. On the other hand, I found the controls so unintuitive as to ruin most of the experience. While you can play Robotopia with a gamepad, the vast majority of people will use the keyboard and it's far harder than it should be. Besides the lack of precision movement by using the keyboard, some ability keys are just assigned in awkward places. Instead of using the more familiar WASD setup, here some functions are assigned to delete, backslash, and require combos of the arrow keys and shift or control. It's all just very uncomfortable to handle.

Russ Carroll: 6

I think my first problem was that the controls mapped horribly to my joystick and seemed senseless on my keyboard. Then I realized in the tutorial that I would have to use bizarre keys on my keyboard while simultaneously using my joystick to do basic things like put up barriers (luckily I have 3 hands...no wait...). The graphics remind me of games of yesteryear and overall it feels a little like Turrican meets Soldat. I gave up on internet play after 45 minutes of reconfiguring my router to no avail.  Play control is really the big let down though, a problem that could certainly be rectified...or if I had many hours I could figure out how to play around it...I guess...

Mike Hommel: 7

This is an action version of a point n' click adventure. It's pretty nice. The actual gameplay and controls are clunky, but it's more about the puzzle-solving than getting around and dodging bullets. I wish the player moved about three times faster than he does, though. The 'puzzles' mostly involved a lot of backtracking rather than thinking, but that's quite common in adventures. A very tame sort of adventure overall with a unique presentation.

Seth Robinson: 7

An adventure arcade game with a lot of dialog and traveling back and forth to complete quests and unlock additional areas. A bit like Hyper Space Delivery boy if you'd played that. It works. The movement speed is a bit slow for my tastes (if I was being chased by a cat with a gun, I wouldn't be walking slowly!) but the patient will be rewarded with a long (and slowly paced) journey full of witty text. Why does a 15 MB game take twenty seconds to load and 450 MB ram? Adventure fans should definitely check this out.

Brian Clair: 8

Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso is an adventure game that features more depth than you might first give it credit for. When I first started playing, I thought it was going to be aimed at children, but in fact is much broader in scope. While the puzzles aren't too difficult, they are intelligently thought out and interwoven into the storyline. I almost forgot I was playing an adventure instead of an RPG at times – that's how involving Mr. Smoozles is. If there's one big sour point on this title, it's that the initial load times are terrible. I have a hardcore gaming rig, but Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso takes over a minute and a half to launch – to the point where I had to check to see if it had locked up or not. Despite this, the time to get into this title is well spent.

Russ Carroll: 8

An overhead adventure game. The bad is that like many adventure games a large number of the tasks you are undertaking are not very intuitive and borderline insane. Of course insane isn't bad, and the storyline of a cat getting hit by a mind ray that has made him crazy gets two thumbs up from me. Watching a cat running around with a gun trying to kill you as you try to keep the fabric of reality from being completely distorted only made things better. The somewhat sluggish keyboard controls and lack of the ability to point and click is the thing keeping me from absolutely adoring the game.  The unbelievably long game boot up time had me sure the game had crashed the first time I tried it.  I clicked it twice more only to have it crash my system.  If you try the demo (and you certainly should) be patient on loading the game!