Game Review: Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times

System: Nintendo DS
Submitted by: Yueying (member)
Genre: Virtual life

In Animal Crossing: Wild World, you get manipulated and exploited by a Bell-grabbing raccoon. Now, Konami let's you enjoy being exploited by principals of a magic school. Solve the 52 mysteries, because you are the chosen one! It is the same formula, in your own time and target, earn money, buy stuff, annoy all the people living in the town.

Gameplay: For those who have never experience the world of Animal crossing on DS, this may offer a refreshing gameplay, you either love or hate. Lacking a real ending or aim in this game, you set your own goals to achieve, be it collecting all the bugs available, solving all mystery quests or becoming a Master Wizard accolade. You get to buy clothes, furniture, instruments and music CDs to customize and enrich the life of your playable character. Since the game is in real time, events will also occur on special days. However, being designed to last at least 365 days, the waiting time for the next quest or new classes could be unbearable and gameplay could be reduced to repetitive fishing, bug catching and interactions with the NPCs. Magician Quest: Mysterious Times is also striking similar to "Wild World". With slight modifications and the addition of 'quests' to complete, you should reconsider buying the game unless you are excessively interested in the quests available in the game. The game allows Wifi and multiplayer options but I do not have the ability to test these features.

"Your evaluation depends on this, you better do as told."

Sounds and graphics: The background music is nothing impressive, mostly consisting of variations of classical pieces. The music you get from the CDs cover a wide range of musical genre but most of them causes headache for whatever mysterious reasons. The 3D graphics could be considered cute and pretty well done with the constraints of the DS, there are some glitches when using the stylus though.


The school is embarrassingly small.

Replay value/ Extra features: It isn't a question of replaying but whether you want to continue playing it since there are changes over time, such as residents moving in and out of the town and seasonal changes. To actually restart playing the game, serves very little purpose. A thing I fail to mention above is about the spells you cast, you can play pranks on other NPCs by making them fart or zapping them. Something you can do all day, imagining that those residents are people you don't like in real life.

Verdict: It is essentially fun in a mindless sort of way since you can do what you want. Plus, you never have to fret over getting Game Over unlike harvest moon. Thus, it deserves a 7! (Highly unrecommended for Action-seeking players)

Game Score: 7.0/10

Disclaimer: Pictures are video are shamelessly taken from other websites

VG Dept. Head's Comments: I Like this review. I'm really digging your humorous style of writing. I'm a fan of the Animal Crossing series, and I was surprised at how similar this game was to it. If the residents in this game are anything like the ones in Animal Crossing, the part about zapping them with spells sounds really appealing to me :). Keep up the good Work!

Game Review: Plants Vs Zombies

*All pictures can be clicked to enlarge*

System: PC
Review Submitted by: Kenneth Lee (AMCC Member)

What do you get when you throw a generous dash of humor, zombies that are adamant to eat your brains and plants that are loyal to you? Well, in Popcap’s latest game, Plants vs. Zombies, you get to find out for yourself just how wonderful the end product is!

Plants vs. Zombies (PvZ) is a tower defense game that breaks from tradition. In this game, zombies of different types move from the right of the screen to the left. In order to stop them from entering your house, you plant different types of defences which will either stall them or destroy them.


While most games of its genre are based on combat of the serious kind, the developers have gone on to change the mood of this game by introducing humor, aesthetically pleasing game design and elegant game mechanics into the mix. Added upon that is the fact that there is an almost endless amount of gameplay for the people who want to milk the game for all it is worth!

The humor in the game comes from every single element. Zombies come in all shapes and sizes from football-playing zombies to snorkel zombies and even a Michael Jackson zombie! They shuffle, stumble, dance and hop their way across the screen, reacting in comical ways when they meet their end at the hands of opposing plants.

The game also mixes in some fantastic game design choices. Instead of gloomy, characterless defense towers, the developers used plants with personalities to give players a sense of connectedness and understanding of their functions by looking at them. For example, “Wall-nut” is a walnut plant that does exactly what it is supposed to do: Be a wall! Brightly-coloured Sunflowers bop about happily and produce sun power for you to plant more defenses and green peashooters fire peas to take zombies down. The combination of rich, bright colours and pleasing animations make PvZ a sight to behold.

The gameplay holds up as one of the most interesting tower defense games not because of the sheer number of units it provides (it does provide a huge number of zombie and plant units) but because of the way it challenges you to constantly adapt your style of gameplay to push back the constant waves of zombies. The game starts on a very easy difficulty with an open backyard and simple zombie types, but as you progress into the game, it throws you a curve ball by having you defend you backyard with a pool at night and even forces you to play blind with only occasional lightning flashes to let you see in the dark. It eventually moves to the roof, where the game will throw a huge number and variety of zombies at you, making you think twice about where you set down your plants. Indeed, the gameplay is intriguing and varied enough because there is no one way to win. You can use different plant combinations to win (or lose) depending on your play style, but once the environment changes, you will have to figure out new ways to defeat the never ending zombie horde!

All in all, PvZ is a great game with good design choices, appealing aesthetics and solid gameplay. Its value lies not just in the adventure mode, but in its other minigames and endless survival mode which throws endless waves of zombies your way. In the end, if you are looking for some zombie killing fun, but don’t feel like playing through a dark campaign of Left 4 Dead, you can always turn to PvZ for some hilarious and exciting zombie killing action.


Here are some Screenshots from the game:

[Picture 1] Another "helpful" note from the Zombies.

[Picture 2] Two entries from the Suburban Almanac, one from the Plants side, the other from the Zombie section.

VG Dept. Head's Comments: An Excellent review! Very Well thought out and written. I hope this review will be the first of many from you. To anyone reading this, please be inspired by Kenneth's example and start writing! - Brandon

One head of the Hydra. The AMCC VideoGames Blog.

You might be thinking "AMCC already has a blog, Why on earth do they need another?" Good question. The main blog is for announcements and up-coming events. This blog is for you guys. The Videogames sub-blog is dedicated to member written videogame reviews and other user submitted content for the AMCC Videogames department.

How we intend to do this, is users who want to post something on the blog should email the content to us at amccsg@gmail.com. We will then edit the message (if necessary)and post it up on the blog. Don't worry, full credit for the post will be given to the sender. The important thing is that we want you to contribute to the blog and for your works be seen by a larger audience.

Aspiring writers, put on your writing caps, do some finger flexes (stretching is important) and start typing!

Remember kids, You can also add in pictures and videos to give your reviews more kick to them.

~ Brandon