I cannot keep a rhythm for long, musically retarded so to speak. I hate music games, really. All those Singstars, Rockbands and Guitar Heroes. Was never good at them, will never be. Music Bounce is a music game and I like it.

Yeah that sounds crazy but I do not have to sing nor do I have to press a few buttons a million times in the right order to beat the game. It’s more about strategy than anything else.

The game board consists of 15 lines. Some of the lines contain different colored bricks which represent music notes. The aim of the game is to release enough balls on the left side so that all bricks get hit. The number of balls, or gates as they are called in the game, is limited and timing is essential to beat the later stages of the game.

In later stages some of the blocks have to be hit twice, those are the darker colored blocks. It basically comes down to finding the best timing for the amount of balls that are available to hit all the blocks of a level to advance to the next level.

50 levels are available on the Kongregate website and more than 500 await the player on the developers website that hosts user generated ones. It is also possible to create your own level.

Music Bounce is an excellent game for the short break.

I stopped playing Team Fortress 2 about six months ago and only went back recently to the game to see if the game has changed in that time. I played it for about 3 hours in the last few days and did realize that indeed a lot has changed in the game.

The most notable change, apart from the new Goldrush map which brings a protect the VIP type of game mode to TF2, is a new achievement system which is currently only enabled for the medic class. Achievements are a great way of rewarding the player for certain accomplishments. They had been in the game before but now class specific achievements have been added that award the player with weapon power ups.

That would not be bad either but the problem is that these are only available for the medic class at the moment. This has the consequence that you will encounter more medics than any other class on a server. It’s no fun to play on a 16 player map with 8 medics. Medics are support characters and are utterly useless if they cannot find another player to support.

Since half of the players on a FFA server are achievement whores the maps become frustrating and sometimes unplayable.

I have nothing against achievements but if they change the game design dramatically they have to go. Valve made the error to enable them for one class only which is going to change in the future but as of now TF2 is more Medic Fortress 2 than anything else.

Brute Wars is a turn based strategy game that puts you in command of six animals to aid them in their task to reach the top of Mt. Asio. Each animal has certain abilities like hitpoints, a power rating or actions and attack directions.

At the beginning of the game six animals are preselected and the player receives ten randomization points that randomize one animal per try. Three animals will be placed in the first combat row while the other three take their position in the second. The attack directions play an important role while placing the animals. It does not make lots of sense to place an animal in second row that can only attack the field in front of it (which would be a team mate). This would have the effect that the animal would not be able to attack for as long as a team member occupies the position in front of its position.

Some animals attack a field that is two positions ahead which makes them ideal candidates for the second row. Others are able to attack multiple fields at once.

Some enemies do have counter attacks which means that they will hit you in turn if you attack them even if they would not be able to attack the animal when it’s their turn to attack.

Combat ends when all opposing animals have been eliminated or when time runs up which would equal a tie.

Some animals have spell like powers that can for instance heal all party members or increase an attribute like counter attack damage for a few rounds. Those spell like powers can only be used if enough spell points have been accumulated during combat.

Party members who died or have been injured during combat can be revived or healed in camp which is available after each combat. Revivers and Food, those are the items needed to perform the action are limited and can be bought in shops for points that have been earned in combat. Some specialty shops can increase the hitpoints of all characters once.

The level of the animals rises after a while which makes them more powerful obviously.

Brute Wars is an interesting game that motivates the player to fight just one more battle. Combat is strategic but can become a bit dull after time because it’s basically always the same actions against different enemies.

Still a nice game with the option to save it after each combat to make a pause and come back later for just one more fight.

Zero Punctuation is one of my favorite review series next to The Angry Video Game Nerd and I have decided to post the newest episode here at Take9 as soon as it comes out. Enjoy.