Download Games Roundup
Gemini! Hoard! Flux! CreaVures! Rustle!
Hoard
- PSN - $14.99 - Trailer
- EU release late March/early April. Price TBC.
- Coming soon to PC/Mac and PSP.
It's all gone dragony around here all of a sudden. Dragon Age 2 is almost upon us, Dragon's Lair has been (unwisely) ported to PSN for the hopeless nostalgics, How To Train Your Dragon continues to surprise everyone by actually being genuinely good, and now Big Sandwich Games wants us all to fry meddlesome ingrates and steal all their riches. With a dragon.
In what amounts to a gigantic real-time strategy spoiler party, you wait for idiotic humans to collect resources and build villages and castles, and then proceed to swoop down, breathe fire over them, scoop up the winnings and head back to their lair, cackling maniacally.
After a while, the humans start to shore up their defences, and take great pleasure in lining up knights and archers outside. Blunder in carelessly, and you'll end up having to scuttle off back to HQ to heal, and lose your hard-won booty in the process.
So, with score-chasing concerns, (and, later, fellow dragons to compete against) Hoard evolves into a curious strategy-shooter hybrid, when diligent use of power-ups and racking up your multiplier becomes all-important. You also have the delightful option of capturing squealing princesses and holding them to ransom (also present in a dedicated princess ransoming mode), while also roasting any daring thieves that try to make off with your gold. Cheek.
With its immediate sense of fun and slick controls, Hoard hooks you in right from the off - whether in campaign mode or competitive multiplayer - and it's also a formula with a surprising amount of depth. Terrorise a town without laying it to waste, and the populace will actually send you gold for your merciful benevolence. Harsh but fair, just how we like it.
8/10
Castle Rustle
- PSP - £8.79 - Trailer
Are we over Tower Defence yet? No? OK then, well here's another minuscule variation on the overused formula for us to rip apart in the most polite manner we can muster.
This time, we're not fighting zombies, oh no. Or popping balloons. Or even crunching big stompy robots. We're facing an evil sorcerer with apple jelly for brains. Bear with me.
In his desperate desire to raid a castle, he sends gigantic squishy insects and wobbling monsters that, apparently, can be dissuaded from being nasty by firing sweeties in their general direction. You probably know the rest.
So, yeah. You plonk down the appropriate turrets, you hoover up the currency and sloooowly build up a massive arsenal in order to take down the oncoming procession. Absolutely nothing new to see here, but lots of it if you've go the stomach for the fight.
It all looks suitably colourful and jolly, but without a single crumb of a new idea to differentiate it from the seventy four thousand better (and cheaper) TD games waving frantically in your general direction, it's hard to see why you'd pick Castle Rustle out from the crowd. Game Factory has at least distinguished itself by coming up with one of the most forgettable games of the year. Well done, I guess.
4/10