Guess what I got! ♥

Click the image above to get the amazon.com product page.

♪ ♫ ~ A got Aquazone Deluxe 2 with GUPPIES! ~♫♪ ♫

Complete with instruction manual and jewel case!

 

Anybody who knows me personally knows that I'm a sucker for virtual pet games. Petz, Petz 2, Petz 4, Petz 5, Petz 6*, Aquazone, Nintendogz, Pokemon, Tamagotchis, Fish Tycoon, Plant Tycoon, to a degree Shin Megami Tensei ; the list of pet games that I own just goes on. I even owned freeware pets from a game called Monster Pickle for a while and I still have the game on my computer. For some reason, of all these games, the two that appeal to me the most are Aquazone Deluxe 2 with Guppies and Petz 4. But I'll talk about Petz some other time.

To help better describe this game it's more apt to call it a sim even though you are raising pet fish. Its focus is on raising a healthy, pretty tank of fish but the gameplay lends itself to a more 'grown up' audience. The graphics, interfaces and controls are not always child-friendly but it is deep and involving for experienced fish-keepers or amateurs looking for a mess-free alternative to real fish keeping.

I don't know whether this game appeals to me so much because I'm one of those people who has to care for something or if it's because I like to keep busy. Maybe it's because I actually do own a 55 gallon tank but don't have the means or knowledge to raise real guppies. Maybe it's because I'm fascinated by genetics and by complicated systems. Maybe it's because I enjoy looking at pretty fish... Whatever the case, I love AQD2.

I can't just gush about why I love a game, though. I need to tell you about its features, its feel, and what you can do with it.

The first thing you notice, when you load up the game is that it gives you the option to start a new tank or load an old one. You can choose to load a pre-made tank if you like but I've always preferred to start my own tanks from scratch. If you hit new, you can choose the size of your tank in pixels from a dropdown or you can customize the dimensions yourself. For the sake of this review, I started a new tank with the smallest dropdown size available.

Say hello to your new tank.

The new tank only starts with a few basic things. A humming filter, a light and a heater. Unless you're like me and have a real aquarium humming in your computer room, you might want to disable the game's sound  since the droning sound can give you a headache. Unfortunately, it doesn't save your sound settings but it's easy enough to turn it off.

You can add things like a background and your substrate (gravel, sand, soil, etc) from the item menu. While the item menu is pretty cluttered, it isn't hard to find what you need. You can simply store each file type in a new folder. Yes, there is some maintenance that you need to do and it's a little tedious if you have a lot of items, but this sim doesn't come with too many. You'll see items in this review that don't come with the original game, by the way.

Once you've decorated your tank with plants and accessories, you can start adding fish.

I think now would be a good time to add that you can kill your fish if you neglect them or if you don't tend to the water condition. Doing things like adding plants, performing regular water changes and cleaning the filter all contribute to the tank's health. It's also a good idea to not over feed your fish or use medication that the tank doesn't need. Using chlorine remover when you establish a small tank like the one above can cause ammonia to develop and increase very quickly, for example.

Once you've set up your tank, however, maintenance is very easy. You can set an auto-feeder to feed your fish as often as they need to be fed, you can tune the light to have it automatically shut itself off every night (you can't set the times manually, but you can set the length of time in hours) and other than occasional water changes and cleaning the filter, all you need to do is watch your fish grow.

Some of you out there are interested in the guppy breeding aspect. While I don't have a lot of experience breeding guppies, virtually or otherwise, I have scoured the net for websites on guppy breeding for this game.

Unfortunately, I only found one that was especially helpful. Not even archive.org's Wayback machine could help me find much information. The site above, though a little dated, has a nice Genetics Primer section that should assist you in developing your own strains of guppies. I wish I could tell you more myself but since I haven't bred my guppies yet, there's nothing I can tell you. Maybe in the future I'll have a more complete review of the guppy genetics but I just wanted to show you the basic game.

So what else can you do? You can breed and care for other breeds of fish! While the basic game doesn't come with much in the way of fish and plant variety, it still comes with enough breeds of fish and plant types to help you come up with many beautiful tank layouts. A lot of fan-made accessories are also still available on the web and you can find many of them with a quick google search.

How are you going to take care of them? With the interface. It comes with many helpful windows that you can move independently of the main tank and independently of each other. Most of these, you can have next to the tank, just for the purposes of monitoring and for convenience, but there are some that 'lock up' the controls until you close that window.

These are the ones you'll be using the most.

This is the most important window. In order from left to right it allows you to quickly feed your fish without dealing with the Attend... interface; it allows you to view the status and health of all of your fish; it controls the sound (here, it's off); it allows you to control the lights; it maximizes the screen; it switches you to full screen and back; and shows you the names of all the fish.

You open this window through Options > Tool Bar on the menu bar on the fish tank window.

 

This is the Attend... Food window. From here on out, I'll use (A) to represent the Attend... item on the menu bar. Here, you can control how much of each type of food you would like to feed your tank using the arrows and the food list. To add foods, you click on the button on the bottom left; to remove foods from the list, you click on the second image; the book gives you information on the food that you have selected; the clock gives you the auto-feeder menu and the upside down food container feeds your fish the specified amount.

You reach this window with Attend > Food...

 

While you can't use this window to change the condition of your water, you can use it to monitor changes and to determine what changes to make or whether you need to change the water in your tank. For more detail on the amounts of each item in your water, you only need to click on the bar beside it.

This is not totally important since many of the fish that come with the game are very hardy, but it is interesting to keep notes on the condition of the water in your tanks if you're a more advanced user or aquarist and want to care for more delicate species or want to breed fish that only mate in specific conditions.

Keep NH3 to a minimum.

To access this window, use Reference > Water...

 

 

Finally, this is the fish information screen. Use this to keep track of the health and fullness of your fish. Their vigor, courage and power increase as long as their health is good and are more likely to breed and produce healthy, long-lived babies as long as these stats are high.

The buttons on the bottom have some added function. From left to right, the first allows you to see the fish's family tree, lets you add notes to your fish, opens a reference to the fish's species, cancels any changes, and closes the window and saves changes.

To get here, you can either use the fish icon on the Tool Bar or go to Reference > Fish > Individual Info...

This game is very involving for anyone who is interested in keeping fresh water fish or anyone who is interested in starting but doesn't want to invest the money in a tank and all its dressings. While I wouldn't recommend it to most, I find it very mentally stimulating and it's very rewarding to take care of a healthy, beautiful tank for a long time. Breeding guppies has its own rewards but I'll save that for another time.

If this sounds like your kind of game and you can get your hands on it, load it up, make yourself a beautiful tank and share it in the comments.

Happy fish keeping!

Rayman Origins

This is one of the better 'difficult' platformers that I've played over the last year or so and, though I have a lot to say about it, you should check out Yahtzee's review here.

While I agree with some of the critics out there that this game can be difficult for non gamers, it still has the decency to provide hard-core platformers with that rare, piss-you-off-just-right sort of challenge that I've been searching for. In recent years, the only platformers off the top of my head that try to match this type of difficulty are Donkey Kong Country Returns (though I do hate the Super Kong feature) and Super Meat Boy.

The main game is very short and I was able to beat it in a few weeks, only setting aside about an hour or so every time I played it but, and I'm a little ashamed to admit it, I haven't unlocked the Livid Dead yet. I count it Beaten, but not completed. Still, I am glad that the game is as short as it is because it works well with the difficulty curve that the designers had in mind. Everything seemed to flow together very naturally given the short amount of actual game time. The graphics and music also worked very well, matching the mood and themes beautifully, though I did grow very tired of two of the game's swimming-world songs.

Speaking of the swimming world, there are a total of 5 worlds, each with two parts. Worlds 1-5 cover each of the four islands where you need to rescue the four fairies (I'm not spoiling anything) where they'll give you all the abilities and powers you'll need to beat the game. Once you've rescued the four of them, you need to defeat each of the island's guardians in worlds 6-9 and finally, in world 10, you need to defeat the game's boss. (I need to brush up on my Rayman mythology)

Attacks made sense in that not only could you attack underwater but you could also do it while running up walls, hanging from ropes and jumping which made attacking feel very natural. If you wanted to, you could charge your attacks to say... break open the cage at the end of the level in one hit. While I'm praising the controls, under water and above, I do need to bring up two problems that I had with them. In the game, you'll find that you can cling to walls and wall jump, from the very beginning of the game. While this is great for jumping up through a tunnel, or rescuing yourself from a pit, the maneuver will get you killed more than you'd like. I've been smashed, stabbed and run into  far too many times. I would run, not realize I was pushing up against a wall or cliff and jump away, thinking I'd be able to just jump over an obstacle instead of in the opposite direction. I have fallen so many times. Same goes for the running attack. It becomes a habit for speed-runners like myself to hold the sprint button while I'm running through a game, even when I'm standing still. Unfortunately, Rayman does a spinning attack that launches him in the direction he's facing, whether he's moving or not, as long as I'm holding the sprint button. The controls are the same for every other playable character in the game.

Bitching aside, the controls are very natural, very tight and very responsive. No -real- complaints here, except maybe the running attack.

The level design is genius and the time and passion really shows in two particular parts of the game. All of the 'treasure chest' levels and in the final chase with the game's boss. I'm just glad that the game has checkpoints between rooms so that I don't have to pick up from the beginning every time but in the harder levels, the levels get longer and it becomes more and more frustrating every time you fail. Thankfully, you get a little further each time and you keep pushing forward. This is one of those games where it really helps to take breaks, sleeping on the game after very difficult platforming sections since it isn't hard to get too frustrated to keep going with that particular section. Once you beat the game, though, you're on top of the world.

In all the game is a very fun, intense ride all the way through. it challenges your skills and your patience every step of the way without ever getting cheap.

The credits are insanely long, though. Get some coffee, make a sandwich, use the bathroom, read War and Peace...