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I would just like to first off like to say that I hope Pickle had a great birthday. I would also like to say thanks to him for being such a great guy and friend to all of us here at SB.
Thanks for letting us celebrate you tonight with food and fun.
Love,
Dots 😉
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So, being the nerd that I am I went to ilovebees.com right at midnight… and there is still a five hour countdown.
I suppose I have waited this long to see what it is, I can wait five hours more. I am just disappointed. I am not, however, waking up at five in the morning to see the countdown end.
As most of you know by now, Cone and I have added a child to our household. Our son is the reason that I have been MIA on the website and my reviews and articles are few and far between. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love being a mom more than anything, more than gaming even. But this is not an article about being a mom and how wonderful it is, after all this is a gaming website you are going to. This is the article that I have been meaning to write since we brought Ethan home from the hospital. This is the article about when gaming met the baby.
Let me give you a quick history of our gaming life…once upon a time there was a married couple that spent a lot (I mean a lot) of time sitting in front of the TV with a controller in their hands. They would sometimes spend entire Saturdays playing through Halo for the 900th time. They would spend hours upon hours on Ratchet and Clank or any other game they were into at the time. Then Dots got pregnant and Dots had a baby. Our lives were taken by storm by the new bundle of joy. Mesmerized by every move and cry we spent all of our time loving and caring for our child. Soon, we noticed that the Xboxes were putting personals online and that the Gamecube and PS2 were volunteering to spend time with relatives. The Gamecube had a lengthy visit with my sister. We decided it was about time to pick up our controllers and give playing a try again. Once we swept the cobwebs away, we were good to go; or so we thought.
Let me tell you a little known fact about babies: they know when you are doing something other than devoting 100% of your attention to them. We couldn’t get two minutes in of game time before we had to put the control down and tend to baby. So, we gave up. Well, I did anyway. I came to resolution that Cone would have to be the gamer in the family now and I would just have to sit and watch. But Cone felt bad, so Cone didn’t game. Then before you knew it the consoles were holding picket signs up demanding to be played. As time went on we realized that we had to make time for gaming, we were part of a gaming website. Plus, Cone was being to have convulsions of the thumb from gaming withdrawals. So, we tried again, this time with a new method.
Cone would play for a while and then he would take the baby. Then I would play for a while and then take the baby back. You’re all smart people, you get the idea. This was all fine for a while. Let me tell you another fact about babies: they grow up and want you to play with them really fast. Soon one of us holding him was not good enough. He needed to know what the other parent was doing while he was being held. We invested in some entertainment for him to try and ease his boredom. Sixty dollars and one Fisher Price Jumperoo later we had found our own personal savior. I keep meaning to write Fisher Price a letter and thank them for the wonderful invention that is the Jumperoo, but I just haven’t found the time. Our son will jump for hours at a time completely content. Okay, I exaggerate; he jumps for 20-30 minutes at a time with total contentment. But still…a half of an hour is better than none of an hour. Do the math! All was well in our gaming world once again.
Then the baby grew some more. Now he doesn’t want to sit in his Jumperoo for even 20 minutes. He is trying to crawl. He scoots around on the floor, but has to be rescued (a lot) from the licks of our loving, dear, sweet, totally psycho hyper active, bounce off the walls dog, Molly. So gaming while he is on the floor is not an option. What are two parents to do? The Halo edition Xbox is threatening to take the cat hostage if we don’t act fast. I am going to tell you another fact about babies: when they get to the point where they are sleeping through the night, they get strapped with a little thing called a bedtime. The bedtime! What a life saver this is. I used to hate having a bedtime growing up. I used to fight tooth and nail going to sleep forcing my mother to lay in bed with me, bring me water, tell me stories, etc. Now, as a parent, I totally, 100% understand why God invented bedtimes. I never like it when my mom would tell me A
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/eggmania/cover.jpg[/floatleft]Egg Mania is nothing special when it comes to puzzle games. There is nothing that puts it a huge step above the rest, but I really like it. There is just something so addicting about playing it that makes you want to keep on playing it until hours have gone by and you are still sitting there mashing buttons and building towers…
Like I said, nothing all that special about Egg Mania. It is a puzzle game a lot like Tetris, but backward. You flip and position blocks to build a tower, but your lines don’t go away as you make them, they make your tower stronger and taller so that you can reach you ultimate goal… the blimp thingy that says you’re the winner.
There are two modes to play in, Egg Mania and then there are all the Extra Modes. Now, in my opinion they should have called them eggstra modes, but then I am not a game developer am I? In Egg Mania there are eight levels to compete in, each getting slightly, but not much harder than the one that precedes it. Your goal is to build the tallest, but most stable tower and get to the top before your CPU (or live person) opponent. The blocks fall out of the sky and you catch them, flip them, and move them around to the position you like. At first this task is pretty easy to accomplish, but then they introduce bombs to throw at one another, baddies that pop up and knock you off of your tower, hammers that break your tower down, and more baddies that steal your blocks. There are also things that help you build as well. A shoe that allows you to jump higher to retrieve your falling pieces and a token that helps your tower fill in its gaps. The nice thing is that unlike Tetris, a gap in your structure is not permanent. You can go lower and fill in your holes if you get a piece that will fit. Remember, the key is stability. If you just build a tall slender tower, I assure you that you will be sitting on the ground in a heap of rubble while the other person is winning. There is a meter at the bottom of your screen that lets you know how stable your tower is. Keep an eye on it, it’s a handy little device. The sad thing is that there are only eight levels to compete in and then Egg Mania is over. Too short, really.
[floatright]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/eggmania/ss03_thumb.jpg[/floatright]The Extra Modes offer a selection of five mini games. The first is my favorite – BOMB mode. In bomb mode you play through eight levels like in Egg Mania, but the point isn’t to build, it is to destroy. You catch bombs and throw them at your opponent’s already existing tower as they do the same to you. The first person to fall into the water under the tower is the loser. They too get more complicated as you can catch blocks and rebuild your tower in the higher levels. There is a definite art to bomb throwing. The longer you hold onto the bomb, the quicker it blows up when you throw it across the screen, but hold it too long and you will be blown up by your own bomb.
The other modes don’t stand out as much as the bomb mode does. There is a solo mode where you can play alone to get the highest score. There is a survival mode where you play until you lose, the further you get without losing, the higher your score. There is a custom mode that lets you build your own mini game, so there is potential for some fun there. The last mode is the tournament mode in which up to eight people can compete in. This would make a fun party game.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/eggmania/ss06_thumb.jpg[/floatleft]The controls in Egg Mania are a bit weird. It takes a little getting used to. There is a practice mode that teaches you how to play the game. I recommend using it to learn. Like I said, the controls are just a little weird. Just an example of this, to jump you don’t push a button, you push the direction up. That took the most getting used to. There are several characters to choose from, all eggs of course. Overall, Egg Mania is a fun game to play, that can be very addicting. If you like puzzle games, and especially if you like Tetris I think you should give Egg Mania a try.
I too would like to say thanks to everyone that made it out to Peter Piper’s and DB’s. It was really cool to put faces to the names I know only from the forum. Planning for Meetup #2 is in the works possibly to occur in August, so clear those calenders!
