Review: Glyph from Astraware

After playing the demo mode for a little bit, I couldn’t help but add Glyph and My Little Tank (I’ll review that one later) to my T3.

Astraware is well known in the handheld world for producing some really visually stunning games, especially considering the limitations of the hardware (320×320 screens, 16 bit colour, etc). Two of my favourites are Bejeweled/Bejeweled2 and now I have Glyph to add to that as well.

Anyone who’s played Bejeweled before won’t have a hard time figuring out Glyph. Like Bejeweled, the object is to match 3 or more crystals of the same colour to clear them of the board. The difference is that Glyph has a story behind it. By removing the crystals, you uncover various elemental symbols (glyphs) which you need to piece together to save the world of Kuros. There’s a different pattern for each level and different challenges. Helpful artifacts such as items that convert all the crystals to a single type, eliminate entire rows or columns or of a single type pop up now and then to help you along the way. After unconvering 4 glyphs, you have to ‘reassemble’ the glyphs by replaying a pattern of tunes 2 or 3 times, very much like playing the old Simon game.

Like Bejeweled, it can be surprisingly addictive and fun to play. It’s got a nice little soundtrack of soothing electronic music playing in the background that can be muted for more discrete playing. Like most of Astraware’s offerings, the graphics are very nice and continues Astraware’s tradition of bringing high quality game to the Palm platform.

So far the only downside I’ve encountered is that the crystals are all on the small side, so you tend to get a bit of eyestrain after playing for a while.

Review: Night at the Museum

Last night the wife and I went to see Night at the Museum. I wasn’t expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. Funny movie, interesting story and pretty cool CGI. I couldn’t decide which character made the show most enjoyable for me: the bone-fetching T. Rex or Attilla the Hun. Ben Stiller puts his usual decent performance dealing, but if you’re expecting a slapstick funny performance from Robin Williams, you might be a little disappointed. He does put in a pretty good show as a wax Teddy Roosevelt though.

4.5 starts out of 5.

Review: Eragon

I haven’t read the book, and have no plans to either. The story behind Eragon is a pretty standard one among the fantasy genre, and as a result isn’t terribly original. The dragon characteristics are pretty much taken from Anne McAffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series (although I did think feathers on a dragon was a little odd), and there are other familiar elements to the story. Plot and character wise, it’s pretty cookbook. CGI work on the dragon was well done. Monsters and goons could have been done better. You get the impression that most of the FX budget went to the CGI effects, leaving not much for goon costumes and makeup. Jeremy Irons puts in a good performance, and John Malkovich is pretty good as the villain.

Kids will probably enjoy this movie more than adults, particularly if they’re fans of the book and can overlook the parts of the book that were probably left out of the movie.
3 stars out of 5.

Review: Happy Feet

Went out to see the IMAX version of Happy Feet tonight. Cute movie with some great tunes.

Cartoon musical I guess you could call it. The animation was great (even better on IMAX) and the songs and dancing were terrific. Robin Williams’ characters were hilarious as were the crew of rock penguins. I think they kind of stole the show once you met them. Elijiah Wood, I don’t think I liked so much in this movie. He just didn’t seem penguin-y enough. There was even an environmental message squished in there, but it was more of a side plot and largely took back seat to the singing and dancing.

Skip the regular theater. Go see it on IMAX. It’s fantastic there.

4 stars out of 5.

Numb3rs

Anybody watch Numb3rs? Finally managed to catch an episode of it last night while waiting for Battlestar Galactica to come on and rather enjoyed it. It’s nice to see Rob Morrow and Peter McNichol back on TV again. Yesterday’s episode was about trying to figure out a pattern to blackouts some guy was causing so that some bad guy drug dealers could get into a prison and eliminate someone that was going to testify against them. Some of the math technobabble stretched things a little, but overall it seemed pretty realistic. The slide rule Peter McNichol’s character was playing around with in a few scenes was a nice touch.

Now that I know when it’s on, I’ll probably try to tune in a little more regularly.