The Buzz

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon playing Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering, or have ever gotten hooked by an collectible-driven game the appeal of PoxNora should be easily apparent for you: you are a summoner who collects various monsters, spells, relics, and Avatars and summons them to defeat your *opponents [*both human & computer opponents are instantly available round the clock] in fully realized turn-based battles against other summoners. I picked this game up, played through all of the starter campaigns back-to-back, and now I’m knee-deep in creating and customizing my ideal Battlegroup; An elusive, yet oddly addicting task. Honestly this is the only online computer game I’ve made a habit of playing daily. 

The real beauty & addictive quality of PoxNora appeals to any gamer looking for an addictive and strategic online game. It has triple-A makings, SOE [Sony Online Entertainment] is handling the title & gleam of polish that nearly all ‘free-to-play’ titles are missing.

Check out this video to see if PoxNora up your alley:

The combat in PoxNora is highly strategic, turn-based, & grid-based. If you’ve ever played any of the games in the ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ series you should feel right at home after a few adjustments to some of the games interfaces. For those of you who’ve never played a Tactics title it’s better for you to imagine PoxNora like a mix of Pokemon [or Magic: The Gathering] and Monopoly. Complete with guilds, tournaments, and even booster packs. There are 1,000+ runes in PoxNora for you to add to your deck.

You still collect characters, abilities, & spells but you play them at the cost of your Nora, the game’s main currency, on a game board that serves as your battlefield. Across the battlefield there are Nora Fonts that add a set amount of Nora to your Nora bank at the beginning of each turn [think Energy in Pokemon or Mana in Magic: The Gathering]. Game are won by destroying your opponents Shrine [their base, basically].

In the standard mode of the game you find players in heated battles over control over the vital resources of Nora Fonts, which adds a nice little ‘king of the hill’ aspect to the gameplay, and feverishly defending their Shrines while plotting the demise of their enemies. Gameplay takes place over turns with preset a time limit that, like many other of the game’s rules, can be manipulated by the players. 

All in all PoxNora is one of those easy to pick up but abitch to master games that will suck you right into to it’s addicting web if you let it.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Lately, I’ve taken a new fond liking to computer games. So, when I don’t find myself on Playstation Home, I am usually on steam getting demos to new computer games. Lately, I stumble across a game from Square Enix that wasn’t a Role-Playing Game. People, I present to you the casual game of Yosumin.

Yosumin, is a casual puzzle game for the casual gamer for the PC. The are two modes for the game which are Yosumin adventure and then the endless mode (which isn’t so endless, and I’ll get into that a little later on in my review)

In adventure mode, you have to go on an adventure to find the stained glass that has been shatter or stolen (can’t exactly remember to well as I played this demo a few weeks ago) The objective of this game is to make rectangles and or squares with the Yosumins. The more you make squares you get chains that do something spectacular, but as I have yet to be able to really make multiple chains (my eyes aren’t as great as they use to be) I have yet to see what this spectacular thing is.

In endless mode, you actually get timed! I think that without a doubt defeats the purpose of endless mode. I’m playing endless mode and then it says “Times up” I’m thinking it the time up for my demo and it was the time up for endless mode? Perhaps, Square Enix miss the memo on endless mode not being time, and that you can play it endlessly.

All, in all if you are a casual gamer I would only try the demo, I would not buy the full game. The game if you want to buy it is going for 9.99 on steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/23300 . However, as far as I’m concerned perhaps Square Enix should stick to Role Playing Games.

Recently, I viewed a lot of videos on youtube featuring the game AudioSurf, which is a PC game that uses your music to generate levels to play. So after, seeing these video’s on Youtube, I decided to get in on the action.



In order to play AudioSurf you need to go to http://www.audio-surf.com/ and from there you need to click on the demo or if you want you can buy the full version of the game for $9.99. As I’m still new to the game I choose to download the demo which allows you to play up to 4 songs.







Once you choose rather you wish to purchase the game or download the game you will then be re-routed to this site http://store.steampowered.com/app/12900. This to me reminds me a lot of GameTap. Anyway, in order to get the download you have to download the steam downloader; if you don’t have the downloader downloaded it will prompt you to setup an account to download the game.



After going through this then you will be able to bask in the gloriousness that is known as AudioSurf!







As I stated before, AudioSurf is a PC game that uses your music to generate a level for you to play. The game is all about creating clusters with three different colors which are usually yellow, blue and red; red being the one that gives you major points. Depending on how you’re song plays is how the difficulty of the level will be determined. So if you’re song starts off slow and gains speed; the level will become more intense.



At the end of the song in the full version you have to ability to post your score for whatever song you decided to play from you’re library; and to put it up against others who have also by some chance have played the same song













AudioSurf has other features such as a mono mode which only involves one color so that you can enjoy the fun of your music and the game. You only use your mouse for this game. Holding the left mouse button allows you to bust the clusters and the right mouse button allows you to drop pieces into your cluster.













All in all if you’re looking for a fun hip game that allows you to use your music on your computer; then I will say AudioSurf is probably a good buy for you. If you’re not so sure then try out the demo before purchasing the full version of the game.

Well, I don’t know what really possessed me to play either one of these browser games. Perhaps, with all the hype of Café World; I wanted to play a game that would be nice and soothing that would also entertain my one year old son as I play [he enjoys watching me play Café World] So, looking at my options I ruled out Sorority Life, Mafia Wars, and FarmVille. I mean do I look like someone who would enjoy pretending to be in a Sorority? Farming isn’t really my thing and I’m certainly no gangster. So, that’s when I decided to try FishVille on Facebook and Happy Aquarium on tagged [this is also featured on Facebook, but I play on tagged because the tagged version is better].



FishVille is an online browser game brought to you by Zynga who also provides the ever so popular Café World, Mafia Wars, Farmville, and the list goes on.

In FishVille, you are giving a fish tank that is supposed to hold up to ten fish (but really only holds nine) that you take care of. The way of leveling up or gaining experience is that you feed the fish until they reach adulthood or junior status and then you sell them to obtain experience and more coins to build up your fish tank. You can also purchase items to obtain experience; as well as visit your neighbors [if you can find any] in which you can click on their treasure chest that pops up a wheel and gives you things [fish, coins, sand dollars, etc.)

Some of the items and fish costs what they call Sand Dollars [sand dollars couldn’t they have been a tad bit more creative?] which you have to obtain by purchasing them with a credit card or paypal account. The cheapest prices for the sand dollars are twenty-five sand dollars for $5.00 USD. The highest is $40.00 USD and get you 240 Sand Dollars. So, if you wish to upgrade your fish tank you’re going to have to have other neighbors or again purchase a new fish tank with sand dollars.

As far as I can see this is the only goal and purpose of this game. Buy fish, feed, sell; repeat. Oh, you can give your fish love in which when you do you are giving more coins to buy more things for your fish tank. So perhaps the correct formula would be:

Buy Fish, Feed Fish, Love Fish, Sell Fish; repeat.



On the other hand, Happy Aquarium is an online browser game brought to you by Crowdstar whom is a relative new company.

In Happy Aquarium, you are also giving a fish tank that literally holds up to ten fish [that’s one more fish then what FishVille will let you have without saying you have to upgrade.] You can also, play this game in full screen mode, as in Fishville you are only limited to the browser screen window.

In Happy Aquarium you can do all sorts of things with your fish. First and foremost, you can train your fish which you do so by playing a mini game that allows you obtain more coins and fish food and teaches you’re fish a new trick. Each time you train your fish you get a chance to win more coins and fish food.

You can also mate your fish, which is pretty cool because when they mate they just do this little spin around thing and hearts swirl around them and out comes a fish egg. So, you don’t necessarily have to purchase more fish you can buy two of each of the cheapest ones and then mate them and get new fish.

If you ever get tired of looking at one of your fish you can always choose to release the fish into the ocean [also known as sell the fish] and then purchase another.

The way for obtaining experience in this game is through training your fish, feeding your fish, cleaning your fish tank, so all in all taking care of your fish.

To purchase items for your fish tank you have to part with coins or pearls. This isn’t that bad because they start you off with so many pearls. Also, each time you level up you are giving another pearl and for those who just have to have certain items you can also purchase pearls using a credit card, paypal, Amazon payments and even at 7-Eleven. The lowest package is only $1.00 USD and gets you 12 pearls, the highest is $20.00 USD and gets you 365 pearls [which is $20.00 USD less then what Fishville wants for 210 Sand Dollars]

All in all if you decided to play one, I would have to say Happy Aquarium is most definitely the better of the two. You get to do more things with your fish and in the long run if you decided to pay to play it is the cheaper of the two.

Fantasy Earth Zero is a MMO for the PC made by Square Enix and GamepotUSA that I manage to stumble across while searching toykopop.com. The game is a free MMO and when I first saw that the first thoughts that came through my mind was Square Enix made a free MMO get out of here! So, rapidly I downloaded the program to my computer, to see what this game was all about.

The game takes place in the Realm of Melpharia, which was a peaceful and prosperity land that has now been waged into war over the control of one ancient kingdom Ecetia, which once upon a time was the seat for the Mythical First King. The five other kingdoms who all believe it belongs to them are Hordaine- Controls the land of Oreole and are the youthful and most active kingdom, Netzavare – Controls the land of Victorino and is the home to non-human creatures., Yelsord-Controls the land of Pedestal and are all about knowledge, The Royal Alliance of Cesedria- controls the land of Akelnar and is ruled by an elfin queen, and The Gevrandian Empire- Controls the land of Strictor and are (just as they’re continent name says) strict and big on military.

The controls to the game remind me a bit of the controls from Guild Wars. However, the characters and scenery are very beautiful, and the game doesn’t take that long to download. It took me only about two hours to download it, and it holds all the characteristics of a traditional MMO. (You get to create your own hero/heroine, come up with a name, select a class etc.

The game play is a tad bit difficult at times, because the game does not use the traditional arrows keys to move the character, but the keys they use shouldn’t be that big of a problem w is up, a is left, d is right and s is down. So at least they are not all over the place. Sometimes it can get quite confusing because I accept what I thought was a quest, but in yet the quest did not pop up in my quests log.  How it goes it that you accept a letter red for beginners, blue for intermediate, and yellow for advanced and these are how you obtain your quests.  They also make it to where you have to really read the quest and take in the information; for those who have a bad memory you might want to write it down, because there is no going back to the quest giver to re-read the quest. It took me almost 15 minutes before I asked where I was supposed to deliver the letter too. Although, looking at the board does give you some insight on where the letters are delivered too, because each of the places will be in red, blue, and yellow.

All in all minus these few minor setbacks, I still gave it a try and I ended up really liking it. So, if you would like to find out more on this game and/or try it out you can visit the website at http://fez.gamepotusa.com/ and/or watch the trailer which I’ve posted here.

Fantasy Earth Zero: Trailer

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