Flash Game Reviews: ZEIT GEIST & Climate Change

ZEIT GEIST:

My first impression of ZEIT GEIST was "OOOO! An ancient times Mario!" and that is definitely not a bad thing. The game is about a character called Seargent Eryn who is called upon by General McLoven to go back in time destroy the robotic creations of 0-Zero-Hundred and to put a stop to his plan for changing the course of history to his will by introducing microchips to the Greek Empire and the Egyptian Empire. In order to go back to either civilization the player is required to know a few basic things about both civilizations. These are common things like Zeus being the god of gods is in Greek mythology or that Ra was a sun god in Egyptian mythology. Afterwards the player is taken back in time to whichever civilization they choose.

Presentation is something this game has done well. The opening cinematic consist of clicking a button to the next scene in the manner of a slide show. While the people are composed of circles and square, the coloring and detail like cameflouge on soldiers make the player think twice about "graphics". During the intro we are treated to half of a garage band instrumental and half of a decent techno/electronica groove. Thats a nice touch to make me feel like this is going to be a relaxing game even though the scene shows a plot to rewrite history. I especially liked the twisted sounds during the portal. The time portal's color expansions and contractions give me the feeling I'm going through a hippie colored portal on the show Sliders. The music during the levels gives one the feel that they are back in time in that period.

As an egyptian Eryn wears ragged brown shorts, brown shoes, the head of Anubis for a mask, and wields magic missle shooting golden staff that has the head of a snake. The god Anubis sounds like a perfect disguise. No one would mess with a god inless it were a robot who could clearly see through your disguise. The square grey robots in Egypt were clever enough to construct floating metal ovals that contain x's and dots as to show which one they could jump on in order to move around. Appearently an 'x' doesn't mean wrong, it means that you chose the metal oval that will hold your weight and not let you fall through. Robots that jump at your from floating ovals while wielding sounds scary, but unfortunately these robots suffer from a missing bolt that was lost in time travel and can now only move back and forth helplessly as Eryn shoots them with his magic missle snake staff. This level does a good job of providing a nice Egyptian atmosphere with sand, pyramids, sand bricks, pyramid traps, torches, and showing the player that in order to get into a pyramid that one must go through an underground passage which is realistic. This lasted until a golden giant wielding a giant dough pounder wiped me out over and over again.

In the Greece level I was transformed into a centurion who is complete with a chestplate, skirt thing I forgot the name of, cape, and a helmet. As a centurian I threw spears at floating zeus robots' heads and snake robots' heads who also suffer the same missing bolt illness their Egyptian counterparts suffered. I walked by a countryside, parthenon, snow, and jumped off both marble blocks as well as magical cloud escalators that didn't hold any weight for more than a few seconds. At the end I went into a Greek temple was terribly slain by a giant squid or a Kracken.

I liked the gravity in this game. It had that slow fall feeling of Mario Brothers that let choose where I was going to fall mid jump. I didn't enjoy not being able to turn around to shoot. That made me feel helpless and killed me a number of times early on with the game. Overall, the gravity was nice, the controls worked, I didn't see glitches aside from particles of a vanishing enemy killed me once, the weapon fired whenever I wanted it too, and the presentation was welcoming and accurate to that time. This is a good game.





Climate Change:

Climate Change gives the player of the daunting task to rule over all of Europe. This is far from an easy task as I found out. As a 'President' of Europe I had to reduce emissions by the year 2100, encourage other nations to do the same, stay in good relations with other countries, manage the economy, manage utilities, keep the citizens fed, and above all I needed to keep the people happy at the same time. This is done through slick comic book graphics and a card game. The player can choose only 6 cards per turn or until money runs out. There are different types of cards to choose from: National, Trade, Industry, Local, and household. These cards let you import/export goods, repair things, research technologies, introduce carbon reducing habits to the public, and build housing. The box on the top left shows how much you have of food, water, and energy. The red on the resources' bar shows how much you will have for next turn based on the decisions you made and the cards you purchased. Putting your cursor over a card shows the ups and downs of buying that card, what that card does, and a public approval meter pops up on the bottom right of the screen displaying their thoughts of you. After one selects cards they hit a green arrow that passes the turn over to the U.N. interaction part of the game, but not before adding/removing emission clouds from the sky above your card selection buildings and having a news paper about everything you've done that turn popping up. The newspaper gives the player a good insite into the public's view of the player as a leader. Interacting with other world leaders let you hear other countries opinions of your policies and pay them money to improve their emission programs.

This is a fun game for me to play. For some reason I was reminded of Monopoly and Civilization IV. This game taught me two very hard lessons. Lesson one is that I stink at this game. Lesson two is that it seems almost impossible to keep the public happy, stay at good relations, keep the economy running, keep utilities/disaster relief in check, and to trade with others all at once. Whoever can do thins NEEDS to be a leader. On sepereate occasions I was impeeched, my people were struggling to find shelter, we had no food, and our trading policy stunk. By god my emissionless continent sure was clean though.