Parcel Mania (PC) Review

 

Parcel Mania is a competitive package delivery Platformer Game. Players have to pick up the most parcels and deliver them to their respective customers within a match. Attacking other players will make them drop their packages and even the customers can be attacked, so that they have to respawn at a different location. If you deliver enough packages, VIP customers can spawn, which require multiple packages, but also reward more points.

The highlight of the game is probably the verticality of the maps. Players can use jump pads to traverse the maps and reach different areas and one of the maps even allows you to walk on walls and the ceiling.

That however is about it with the positives. There are not many maps to play on, the visuals are rather simple and ugly and there are very few players, if you can even find any. Movement and combat are also pretty basic. The gameplay doesn't feel terrible, but can also not be called enjoyable or engaging.

 

Result:

Parcel Mania is an underwhelming package delivery platformer with combat elements. One of the maps has a really nice verticality, but that doesn't really make the game worth a try.

 

4/10

Poker World (PC) Review

 

Poker World is an Offline Poker Game by Playtika, the developers of games like Governor of Poker 3 and Monopoly Poker. Let's not beat around the bush: This game is pretty terrible.

It manages to look significantly worse than Governor of Poker, which I didn't think was possible. Everything looks inferior and reduced in comparison to Governor of Poker 3. The bad mobile UI has once again returned. There is less of it, but looks really terrible, like a 15 minutes barely slapped together UI for a terrible Mobile Cash-Grab game (that's probably exactly what it is).

You can only play Solo against stupid Bots, which either go all-in all the time or make completely ridiculous decisions. Some will say it is nearly like playing against real people in Online Poker. I would however disagree, since with Online Poker you at least have the chance to meet decent other players.

There are multiple reports from players on Steam, who spent money on Poker World and lost all their progression in a wipe. The developers didn't seem to have responded and apparently no compensation was offered. That's of course awful, but I honestly ask myself how somebody can look at this game and than decide to invest money to play against the bad Bots.

 

Results:

Poker World is an absolute shitshow of a game. Horrible UI, abysmal visuals, dumb Bots, random progression wipes, there is nothing really redeeming about this game. The game isn't broken and lets you play Poker for free, but that's about it with the positives. If you like Poker, you should just play one of the many, many, many better alternatives. Either an Online Poker Game (there are many free ones out there), Poker in real life or search for a better Singleplayer Poker Game. This can impossibly be the best Offline Poker Game there is.

 

2/10

Sparkle 2 (PS4) Review

 

Sparkle 2 is the successor game to Sparkle Unleashed and has often been called a copy of the 'Zuma' games or 'Luxor'. Sparkle 2 originally released in 2013 on PC and was in 2014 ported to the PS4 and PS3. It later on also got versions for Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and in 2020 was even ported to the PS5. Upon watching videos on Youtube of all 3 versions I couldn't spot any differences between them whatsoever, which isn't too surprising, given that it can't really be a hardware demanding game. The PS4 and PS3 versions of Sparkle 2 were also PS Plus games in September 2018, so it might be part of a lot of players Playstation libraries.

Sparkle 2 is a Puzzle Game of sorts, in which you shoot coloured balls onto other coloured balls, named orbs. If at least 3 orbs of the same colour are matched right next to each other, than they build a combination. The orbs disappear and the player gets rewarded with points. The catch of every level is that the balls are slowly moving towards one or multiple holes in the ground. The player has to prevent the orbs from getting into the holes to clear the level. Some combinations will also reward powerup orbs, that players can collect for temporary bonus abilities, like colour switches. 

Sparkle 2 has a campaign mode named 'The Quest', in which players traverse a map in the search of magical keys. There are animated pictures cutscenes, which tell a very basic story. It's nice that there is something like a story campaign, but nobody is going to play this game because of the lore. During the Quest players can unlock and select from different Bonus Effects, which can make orbs move slower or reward more points. There are also two additional difficulty settings for the campaign, in case one doesn't feel challenged enough by a normal playthrough. They massively increase the gameplay speed and while I thought the gamepad controls were generally fine, they didn't feel precise enough for the highest difficulty. The game can certainly be beaten this way as well, but I didn't feel motivated enough to play through it again.  

Additionally there are also two other game modes in the form of a Challenge mode and a Survival mode. In Survival mode one has to "survive" the match as long as possible, before some of the orbs drop into one of the holes. In Challenge mode you have to complete matches on all 3 difficulty levels. Otherwise, it is pretty similar to regular Quest matches.

In general Sparkle 2 is very similar to its predecessor game Sparkle Unleashed. Both games have a Quest campaign and a Survival mode, but the Challenge mode was a new addition to Sparkle 2.  The biggest difference between both games however got to be the positioning of the cursor. In Sparkle Unleashed the Cursor was moving around at the bottom of the screen and could only shoot vertically. In Sparkle 2 however the Cursor has a fixed position (usually somewhere around the middle of the screen), but can now rotate its aiming in any direction. Otherwise, Sparkle 2 and Sparkle Unleashed look nearly identical. Zuma's Revenge additionally had some Boss matches, which the Sparkle games on the other end unfortunately lack.

This would have brought a bit of variation to Sparkle 2, which the game unfortunately lacks. The Quest has 91 stages, but all level variations get repeated at least once or twice. Generally the game is unfortunately too repetitive. I did enjoy the gameplay of building combinations just in time before the train of orbs arrives near a hole. Nonetheless, every stage played somewhat similar and after around 10 levels in a row, I always got too exhausted and needed to take a break of Sparkle 2. Other games may also have similar gameplay throughout their playtime, but in Sparkle 2 it can really start to feel monotonous after a while.

 

Result:

Sparkle 2 is a fun game for a while, but after a couple of hours you will have seen everything the game has to offer. Fans of the Zuma games should definitely consider checking it out, even though it doesn't really add much new and it is probably not going to hold anybody else's breath. Fans of this gameplay should still get what they are looking for and the additional difficulty settings might be enough replay value to justify the purchase.

 

6.5/10

Big Fat Battle (PC) Review

 

Big Fat Battle is a flopped Third-Person Shooter, which released in November 2023, already transitioned to a F2P model one month later and has now shutdown in March 2024. This feels like the speedrun of any unsuccessful Live-Service Game.

Big Fat Battle had an interesting premise. There was only one game mode, which is a round based team mode. There were 5 rounds and each round the least successful players got eliminated and the teams reshuffled. This brought a bit of variation and also kept teams somewhat balanced. Unfortunately a single game mode and less than a handful of maps made the game desperately lacking in content. Cosmetic "content" however the game had much (like a Kim Jong-Un skin).

The only other aspect I liked about the game were the visuals. Certainly not stunning or anything of the sort, but it did reminded me of the Wrestling Battle Royale game 'Rumbleverse', which I liked.

The biggest problem of the game had to be the utterly terrible performance. As soon as anything was going on, the framerate would not only dip, but the gameplay would often become nearly unplayable. This didn't seem to be affected by hardware or visual settings. It's unclear, whether the game was just horribly optimized or the servers were terrible, but it might have been a mix of both.

The game never had a playerbase big enough to even fully fill up the 32 player lobbies. After trying out the game, I can't blame anybody for not sticking around. Thankfully there were Bots. They were however not affected by the terrible performance and could easily take you out while you were watching the slideshow of this game.

 

Result:

"Big Fat Battle is a big fat mess" is what I would be saying, if I was a mean person. The idea, of removing players in rounds and reshuffling teams, is interesting. The gameplay itself would be okay, even though not terribly exciting, but the abysmal performance unfortunately ruins the entire experience.

 

3.5/10