HIQ Ace (PS4) vs HIQ Ace Unlimited (PS4/PS5) Review

 

There are nearly a dozen different F2P Puzzle Games on the Playstation Store. Today we are taking a look at two of them: 'HIQ Ace' and 'HIQ Ace Unlimited'!

Both games are extremely similar. They share the same design and gameplay. In both games you have to solve classic art puzzles by placing puzzle pieces in the correct position and revealing a target picture. Both games have 3 different game modes: Relax, Arcade and Expert.

In Arcade you have the choice between 6 different puzzle pieces and one missing part of the puzzle is highlighted, in which one of the 6 selected puzzle pieces fits. You can however also place one of the other 5 pieces in the right spot, if you can guess it without assists. You have a short time limit of around 10-15 seconds to place a puzzle piece correctly before the selection of 6 pieces and the highlighted spot are being replaced with new ones. If you place enough pieces correctly in a short enough time, than a boost bar will fill, which will allow you to auto-place 1, 3 or 5 pieces for you.

The Expert Gamemode is very similar to Arcade, just that you can now rotate puzzle pieces, which makes it significantly more difficult to place them. Because of the strict time limits I actually found this gamemode to be a bit stressful. As the name suggests, this Gamemode is mostly aimed at big Puzzle fans looking for more of a challenge.

In the Relax Gamemode all time limits and the boost bar are removed. This is the right mode for Puzzle Purists and is probably the closest to the experience of Puzzles in real life.

All 3 Gamemodes feature 3 difficulties, which only change the size of the puzzles. You can also take a peak at the full puzzle image at any time for a quick orientation in all 3 modes, but it is not a see-through hint like in 'AAA Dynamic Scenes' for example.

HIQ Ace and HIQ Ace Unlimited both only feature 6 different Puzzles for free. The rest have to be purchased for money. A big difference between the games is, that HIQ Ace locks both the Relax and the Expert Gamemode behind a Paywall, while HIQ Ace Unlimited gives you access to all 3 off them for free. Other than that however, the gameplay in both games is identical.

HIQ Ace features 31 additional DLC Level packs, which sum up to 192 Puzzles in total. Except for Levelpack 22 they have however all been removed from the Playstation Store. Instead, you can now buy HIQ Ace Deluxe for 3 Euro/Dollar, which consists of all 192 Puzzles of HIQ Ace. Technically this would be the third HIQ Ace game, but since it is just HIQ Ace with a different name and all Puzzles unlocked, I won't be treating it like a separate game ( I also just don't want to purchase it). Interestingly enough the HIQ Ace base game has been removed from the North American PSN Store, while it is still available in the EU Store. American users would therefore have to either purchase HIQ Ace Deluxe or download HIQ Ace from a different server region.

HIQ Ace Unlimited on the other hand features 6 additional Level Packs, which can be purchased for 5 Euro in total on the Playstation Store. Unlimited therefore only consists of 42 different Puzzles.

While HIQ Ace only has a PS4 version. HIQ Ace Unlimited also released a PS5 version in 2020, only a few weeks after the global PS5 release. The PS4 and PS5 version however are practically identical. With a magnifying glass you might be able to spot tiny differences in the resolution, but they certainly didn't put any effort in trying to get a true 4K resolution or add anything else to the game. To be fair, it's not entirely true. In the PS5 version you can't purchase Playstation background themes, since they don't exist on PS5.

Let's now also take a short moment to check out whether the HIQ Ace Games are worth playing for achievement hunters. HIQ Ace has 5 easy trophies, which can be completed in around 1 hour. The game has no Platinum trophy and only 1 Gold one. The buy-to-play version HIQ Ace Deluxe features 9 trophies, but also no Platinum and should take a little longer to complete, since you have to finish at least 96 Puzzles.

HIQ Ace Unlimited has two PS4 trophy sets and one PS5 list. The European and North American PS4 trophy lists are identical to that of HIQ Ace. The PS5 list has 7 trophies, including 2 gold trophies, but no platinum and should also be completed in around one hour.

The trophy lists don't feature a platinum, but should still be worth a look for people, who are looking for easy and relaxing 1 hour 100 Percent lists.

 

Result:

While the core gameplay is very basic in both HIQ Ace Games, it works well and the combo feature brings in a bit of a unique element. These games are particularly well suited for Puzzle Speedrunners, but also offer the relax mode as a calmer alternative. In comparison to some other puzzle games however, both games suffer from a relatively small amount of free Puzzles. Puzzle Galaxy, Piece out Avatarland and Puzzle Drop Carnival all offer significantly more puzzles for free. While the HIQ games might still be worth a look for trophy hunters, they lack the ominous Platinum trophy that a lot of F2P Puzzle games offer. HIQ Ace Unlimited is clearly the better of the two games, if we only consider the free base games. Without the the additional Relax and Expert modes, HIQ Ace lacks in variety in comparison and is therefore one of the weaker F2P Puzzle Games. HIQ Ace Unlimited on the other hand is in my opinion clearly part of the better half of F2P Puzzle Games on Playstation. 

 

HIQ Ace: 5.5/10

HIQ Ace Unlimited: 6.5/10

Avatar Island (PS5) Review

 

Avatar Island is an exclusive F2P Slide Puzzle Game on Playstation 5. It therefore immediately reminded me of Slide N’ Go, another free Slide Puzzle Game for PS4, which I reviewed 2 years ago on this blog (https://gamereviewnation.blogspot.com/2024/01/slide-n-go-ps4-review.html).

I don’t think I need to extensively explain what a Slide Puzzle Game is. You have to solve a picture puzzle, where the slides are mixed up and one of them got removed. You can only move slides into the empty missing space and have to move all slides around in a way that restores the original image. 

While Slide N’ Go allows you to solve every Puzzle with 3x3, 4x4 or 5x5 tiles, you are limited to 4x4 in Avatar Island. There are no variations (Just as I was about to publish the article, they patched in a new 3x3 variant). Avatar Island also offers far less Puzzles to solve. The first 10 are included with the game and another 10 I was able to download for free, but all future Puzzles will have to be purchased for money. According to his own words, the developer intends to add new Puzzles monthly. Slide N’ Go on the other hand features hundreds of Puzzles and all of them are available for free.

And let’s also talk about the allegations of Copyright Infringement. Avatar Island has Puzzles that seem to feature Venom from Marvel, Vegeta from Dragon Ball and even a Pokemon! I have to say, the accusations of Copyright Infringement and being an AI Slop don’t seem very far-fetched. It also doesn’t help that the acronym for Avatar Island is AI. Neither does the fact, that the Avatar Island title font is clearly trying to make you think this would be a game belonging to the popular Avatar franchise by James Cameron. Slide N’ Go on the other hand has no accusations of copyright infringement. The pictures don’t look like anything special, but at least they are not stolen.

I however want to mention the one thing Avatar Island does clearly better than Slide N’ Go and that is the trophy support. Admittedly Slide N’ Go also did have some very noticeable technical issues in the past, but they seem to have been fixed, because I didn’t encounter them again when replaying the game for this review. Oh, and Avatar Island also has one really obscure technical issue. For some reason it doesn’t send any activity to your TV when you are solving the Puzzles, so that your screen protection measures will activate after a few minutes. I didn’t encounter this problem in any other Puzzle Game, so I am pretty sure it’s an Avatar Island problem.

Anyway, Slide N’ Go features 0 Playstation Trophies. Avatar Island on the other hand features a very easy trophy list, including a Platinum Trophy and 11 Gold Trophies. For Trophy Hunters Avatar Island can therefore be totally recommend for a quick and easy Platinum.

 

Result:

Avatar Island is a very simple Slide Puzzle Game. For Trophy Hunters I can indeed strongly recommend the game. Otherwise, the game is far more problematic. The core gameplay is very simple, but gets the job done. Slide N’ Go however is also a free Slide Puzzle Game and essentially does everything better. Avatar Island is more limited in the size of the Puzzles. It offers far less Puzzle images, only a few of them are for free and in contrast to Slide N’ Go most of them images were likely stolen or poorly programmed by AI. Whether you are able to overlook the last aspect is a personal choice, but the much smaller amount of content forces me to give Avatar Island a significantly lower score than Slide N’ Go. Since it fulfills its function as a Slide Puzzle Game mostly as intended, it still gets a 4/10 from me.

 

4/10

Nintendo Virtual Boy (Remake Console) Preview

 

In 1995 Nintendo released as the first of the big publishers a VR-Headset as a Videogame Console. This was many years before anybody else considered doing so and that has many reasons. The most important is, that the technology simply wasn’t ready yet.

VR Games in 3D only started to actually take off in 2013 with the first Oculus Rift Headset. The Virtual Boy in 1995 was mostly producing 2D Games, just with a red taint over them. Don’t get me wrong, this was still impressive and a unique experience back than. But it’s fair to point out that, neither was the general public ready nor was the technology of the time.

The Virtual Boy couldn’t just be worn as a regular headset and instead required a stand, which wasn’t only a bit awkward to place and use, but was also quite prone to failure.

The Controller looked like a Gameboy, that somehow got severely deformed. A Gamepad with two different D-Pads… I don’t think we have ever seen something like that before or afterward, a true Dr. Frankenstein creation.

The Virtual Boy sold less than a million units, which for a smaller company might have been acceptable, but for Nintendo was a huge commercial failure. Only 22 Games were ever officially released. A really small library, but the quality was actually not too bad. Admittedly, there wasn’t a single “system-seller” game out there, but games like ‘Virtual Boy Wario Land’ or ‘Mario Tennis Virtual Boy’ look quite good and except for perhaps a handful of them, there weren’t any real stinkers.

Nintendo in the last decade has been joining the trend of re-releasing both many of their most successful games on multiple consoles, as well as many of their consoles themselves in smaller formats. I am personally not the biggest fan of products like the ‘NES’ or ‘SNES Classic Mini’. I already own real versions of the NES and SNES and the Mini-Consoles don’t come close to replacing the original products for me. The consoles are much smaller, which I am not a fan of. The library of pre-installed games is very small and the emulation upscales them too much in some cases. 240P older games often look best via a RGB-, a Component Cable or perhaps a 720P upscale at most.

Long story short: I prefer the original hardware over the new Mini versions, especially since popular consoles like the NES, SNES, N64, Mega Drive, PS1 are all quite affordable to this day, due to a huge quantity of consoles out there in the wild.

The Virtual Boy on the other hand is “failed console” when it comes to most metrics, which has lead to them becoming extremely expensive. Getting a Virtual Boy in 2025 would probably set you back at least 400-500 Euro/Dollar and they are even quite prone to technical failure…

In such a case I wouldn’t mind a Mini- or Re-Release Console at all, because it would at least  allow us to get one for an affordable price. But that’s not how Videogame companies operate. If the Console or Game flopped, they see Remaking and possibly improving them as an unacceptable risk. They instead just remake Videogames and Consoles that do not require a Remake, because they were already Masterpieces in the first place. Just another vicious circle…

I would love Mini or + Consoles for the Atari Jaguar, the 5200, the Sega 32X or perhaps other older consoles like the Colecovision or the the first Magnavox Odyssey, but I doubt we are ever going to get them.

But that’s why I was extremely excited when the Virtual Boy Remake was announced by Nintendo. I couldn’t wait to click on that Trailer and than the disappointment kicked in. The new Virtual Boy isn’t even a real console and requires a Switch to be operated. Ouch, that’s certainly not optimal. Especially since Switch 1+2 are the only mainstream Nintendo consoles I don’t own, but fair enough. I am probably eventually going to get them.

But than came a real slap in the face. You can’t even purchase the new Virtual Boy, unless you are an active Nintendo Online Subscriber… What kind of nonsense is this? Don’t they want my money? Are you that rich already, Nintendo? But wait, it gets worse, much worse… You can’t even purchase Virtual Boy Games, neither physical (they should be physical) nor digital. The only way to play those games is to also be an active Nintendo Online Subscriber… I consider that a hate crime!

This means Nintendo could simply remove all of the Virtual Boy Games from their Online Service at any time and you as a consumer could do nothing about it. The Virtual Boy Remake device would immediately become useless plastic trash on your shelf. You couldn’t even turn it on or do anything with it and let’s not kid ourselves. Nintendo has done this before. Remember Super Mario Bros 35? A Game, which was only available for Nintendo Online Subscribers and they shut it down permanently! Remember Pacman 99? Yeah, the same story.

 

Result:

I would love a real Virtual Boy Remake Console. Sure, it wouldn’t set the world on fire, but I could see a decent enough size of Nintendo fans and Videogame Collectors being curious and interested enough to justify the production cost.

The terrible Remake Console (it even feels insulting to call it a Console, since it’s actually just the Switch displaying all the games) costs 80 Euro/100 Dollar, but I would easily be happy to pay 150-200 Euro/Dollar, if if was a real self-operating Console with either all Virtual Boy Games built-in, or they could even sell them as re-release cartridges for 20 ‘Bucks’ a piece on Amazon, like Atari has been doing with their 2600+ and 7800+ Consoles. I am sure Mario Tennis or Virtual Boy Wario Land would generate more than enough interest.

This terrible Virtual Boy Remake Console on the other hand, that treats its customers like servants, is a disgrace! I can’t even recall the last time a company sold you a Console without any electronics or games in it. I don’t want to be impolite, but this device can go to hell...

Feverdream Rainbow Chaser (PS5) Review

 

Feverdream Rainbow Chaser is a F2P Battle Royale Game on PS5 and the Epic Game Store. In the Playstation Store it even features a couple of PS Plus Bundles, which only a select few games receive. Either the developer of this game has been paying a lot for this privilege or somebody at Sony lost their mind, because Feverdream is a scuffed Battle Royale Game with Rainbows by a one-person developer. A game like this shouldn’t even be in the Playstation Store in the first place. Steam or Itch.io have huge F2P sections, where thousands of smaller games from Indie devs can be found. Many are real hidden gems, but there is also plenty of trash to be found (some of those I reviewed on this blog). The Playstation Store has a much smaller, more selective F2P section and Sony usually has a quality control, which prevents low effort games from entering the store unless they got a price tag (in that case obviously everything is allowed, because it makes them money). In the case of Feverdream the system must have clearly failed.

It reminds me a bit of Fun with the Fitzgeralds, which I reviewed recently, but Feverdream is actually even worse. You play as characters in some kind of dream world and with the power of rainbows you can travel between different floating islands in the sky and fight the other players.

The rainbow surfing is probably the best part of the game and even that feels pointless and boring. It’s slow and unexciting. When you think about the idea of surfing on clouds in the sky, than it actually sounds thrilling and fast. The game has nothing of that to offer.

The combat is even worse. Attacks feel super clunky and you and the other players will just move around each other, while desperately trying to get an attack in, so the matches go over more quickly. Feverdream doesn’t only look very cheap, the entire gameplay also feels very scuffed.

You might however not even get to experience this atrocity, since the playerbase is super dead. I was queuing in around a dozen occasions for around 10 mins and I could only ever find 2 matches. In order to start a match you only need to find a single other player. I think that says enough. In one match the other guy quit after a few minutes after we couldn’t find each other and he realized what kind of game he was playing. I really can’t blame him for that.

Feverdream features 12 Playstation Trophies and Epic Game Store achievements with no Platinum Trophy and 4 of them being Gold Trophies. If you boost it with a friend (good luck finding someone for this game) or a second console, it should be relatively easy. Otherwise, it will be very grindy due to the low playercount. I didn’t bother with it and I can’t recommend completing the list.

  

Result:

The developer of this game must have really had a Feverdream when he developed this abomination. I don’t like to hate on games, but this is just terrible. After Fun with the Fitzgeralds and Dead Grandmother Online Battle Royale this is the third abysmal F2P Battle Royale Game I reviewed in the last months. Perhaps the PS5 F2P section is actually getting worse… The combat is atrocious, movement feels boring and scuffed, the visuals don’t look good and there are absolutely no players. Save yourself the time and don’t download this game!

 

2/10