My Week Unwrapped: June 12, 2018 – Perspecto, The Ancients AR, Alleys, Stories of Bethem, M&M Elemental Guardians and More

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Hi everyone and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the iOS games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. I won’t be covering too many games tonight, but there are still some that you need to know about, and others that maybe should be avoided. Anyway, let’s skip the fluff and get straight to business.

Perspecto

I spent a good chunk of my week playing this cross-platform puzzle game that released on iOS, Android and PC at the same time. Perspecto is by the same developer as Rings. and Sticks., two match-three games that really shake things up and make you plan out every move if you want to achieve a high score. They’re also free with ads and a one-time payment to remove ads if you like the game enough to play long-term. Perspecto is a rare paid game, and on its surface it may not look like much. But it turned out to be one of the better puzzlers I’ve played this year and I couldn’t put it down until I finished all ninety levels. If you’re a puzzle fan, just grab it now. But if you need more convincing, I wrote a proper review here. I also started a walkthrough if you get stuck.

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The Ancients AR

Immersion announced their augmented reality game, The Ancients AR, a while back, and the graphics looked pretty impressive from what I had seen, with Poseidon-like titans crushing ships like they’re nothing. I’m not a fan of AR, especially since I don’t even have a table in my apartment to spread out on. But the game works without AR, so I gave it a chance. It seemed promising at first, but I spent too much time fumbling with the controls to ever enjoy it. Basically, you control some ships and have to move them over to enemy ships and wipe them out. After a while, you get the opportunity to summon an Ancient, which is a powerful creature that comes to your aid. It’s a cool concept, but I found it too hard to manage all my ships. I’d tap the screen and accidentally send a ship in a direction I didn’t want it to go. And even though I’d set a ship up right in front of an enemy, it required constant babysitting to keep attacking. Since there’s always more than one ship and they’re often coming from different sides of the ocean, I had to somehow manage multiple battles at the same time. That might be fine for turn-based battles, but these real-time battles just had me frustrated and constantly sending my ships in the wrong direction because I was frantically tapping. There was also some jittery animations and the graphics are just not as impressive when you’re playing without the AR, as you’re always looking at a top-down perspective. I wanted to like this game, but unfortunately it was not a good experience for me. You can check out my video below to see if it’s something you might like.

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Alleys

Not much to say here. I spent more time with Alleys and got the third Town Key! I’m still looking for the treasure and a bunch of other stuff I’m missing, so look out for more video from me this week. And you can see the rest of my videos here.

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Stories of Bethem – Full Moon

I’m always open to a good Zelda-like game, as it was one of my favorite franchises back when I used to still play with my Game Boy Advance. So I figured I’d give Cristobal Mata’s Stories of Bethem a try. It’s free to try, after all, with a one-time price to unlock the rest of the game. It did not make a good first impression, as the main menu is controlled via the d-pad and on-screen buttons. Instead of just tapping “Play” or “Settings,” you have to use the arrows to scroll down and then press A to select. The same controls persist in the game, and there’s even on-screen START and SELECT buttons. Not ideal. Still, I was enjoying it to an extent. Instead of a sword, you have magic. You start off with wind and can basically shoot bushes and enemies as long as you have enough mana. It’s pretty generous with lives, too, as you get fifteen of them. In fact, I probably never would have died in the time I played expect for the fact that I kept finding myself surrounded by holes and the giant d-pad was too big to allow me to carefully maneuver around them. So I kept falling in unless I moved super super slowly. After a lot of that and feeling like I had no guidance as to where to go next, I gave up on the game. But again, it’s free to try, so give it a go and see what you think. Maybe it feels better on a smaller iPhone screen.

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Might & Magic: Elemental Guardians

I grew up playing Might & Magic VI and up, buying each one as they released even though I never finished any of them. So, despite the fact that Elemental Guardians looks nothing like the games I used to play, I still had to give it a chance. And it does look great, especially the giant dragon I fought at the end of the first area. The animations are slick and polished. It kind of feels like a Pok╬ô├╢┬ú╬ô├«├ëmon game made up of just the battles. That’s not necessarily bad, and the free-to-play monetization has been fair so far, considering the game gave me like 17000 in currency to start off with. There is energy, though, and I probably would have felt it soon if I tried to continue playing much longer. Overall, the game feels like a million other games and I don’t see myself sticking with it. But check out my video below and see if it’s something you want to try.

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Faraway 3: Arctic Escape

Not much to say here. I made more progress with my Faraway 3 walkthrough, including more video.

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G30 – A Memory Maze

It took me a while to do this because the last few levels are really tricky and every time I had the solution memorized, I forgot it by the time I played it next. But I finally made a video for the last area in the game, so if you were having trouble with it, this should help you. And you can find the rest of my walkthrough here. If you haven’t played the game yet, read my review and then correct your mistake.

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And that’s everything I’ve been playing this week! Sorry it wasn’t a more jam-packed roundup, but hopefully next week will be busier. If you think there are any games I should be covering, let me know in the comments section. And I’ll see you back here next week with more of My Week Unwrapped!

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