Smooth Operators Holds Your Attention.

Unless you’re living the incredibly exciting life of a cop, drug dealer, vampire, teenage mother, surgeon, space Marine, or Octodad, your career is underrepresented in  gaming.. 
 
For now. Farming simulators, truck driving simulators, and even robot vacuum simulators are gaining word-of-mouth buzz, and some critical praise too. Finding the joy in the mundane is hot in gaming right now,  and ditching the laser guns and damsels in distress for something a little closer to home is often times a breath of fresh air.. 


Case-and-point: “Smooth Operators ($2.99)”, a charming-as-hell call center management simulator.

“Smooth Operators” is an exercise in barely-controlled mayhem, each business day a balancing act of managing employees’ happiness while trying to eek every last bit of productivity from them. 

You’re consistently behind the 8-ball, worried about meeting quotas, granting vacation requests, which buildings to upgrade, under-staffing, over-staffing, and lots more. Couple that with random events like employees simply up-and-quitting over things like a lack of quality reading material during break time, *and* the fact that your progress and success is judged by a single report that comes out at the end of every day, it's easy can see why working in a call center qualifies as a high-stress gig

The stress is worth it though, as the symbiotic relationship between all the different employees you can hire is a delight. Managers scream at employees to increase their call taking speed, IT techs kick the back of broken computers until they work, and each call taken by an employee results in a smiley face, sad face, or a L2-escalation thought-bubble, giving you pleasant visual feedback on in-game developments while hiding the actual ones and zeroes of it all. Numerous details like bikini posters in an office, trash piling up if you fail to hire a janitor, broken computers smoldering, or the building literally falling apart until a handyman is brought aboard, immediately endear you to what “Smooth Operators” has to offer. Heck, you can even drill down to find what your techs thought of individual calls. 

It’s one thing to hire a janitor. It’s another to be able to watch him go about his shift, bathroom and lunch breaks included, tracking how much he does in a given day with fascination.

There’s a “RollerCoaster Tycoon”-playfulness to it all;
A hard-to-quantify, staring-at-a-fish-tank-esque quality that makes the act of simply watching characters on screen do their thing mesmerizing. 

“Smooth Operators” actually has a quite a lot in common with Chris Sawyer’s deceptively weighty series of theme-park sims. Namely the deceptively weighty part. Similar to how you could adjust individual ride settings in “Tycoon”, here you can educate employees, place various objects like book shelves and potted plants to increase the aesthetics of your facilities, give raises to keep disgruntled employees on board, and about a dozen or so more intimidating-but-not-overwhelming tweaks. 

“Smooth Operators” falls short of “Tycoon” in one area - fun factor. The best sim games are also perpetual motion machines; you can play them as they’re intended, or bork around with the mechanics and see how everything smashes together. Building a roller-coaster death-trap in "Tycoon", unleashing a tornado on your “Sim City”, or seeing how many barrel rolls you can do with a 747 in a flight simulator adds fun, creativity, and longevity to any gaming experience. “Smooth Operators” doesn’t offer this sandbox-style opportunity for misadventure, which is a minor shame. 
But at the same time I’m not sure how they’d fit it in without completely redesigning the core experience. Thus, "Smooth Operators" is a well built obstacle course, not a sandbox.

But that said, you'll revel in this game’s depth, charisma, and attention to detail for hours - this is Tiny Tower with teeth. Pixel People you can actually play. The barrier to success is three-brick-wall thick, and it takes quite a few restarts to understand what you’re doing.

While I'm being negative, I'll add that employee information is tucked away inside the game menu, versus being easily accessible like HR and vacation requests are in the top right hand corner of the screen, so assessing the mood of a manager or janitor requires an extra tap or two.

It’s perfect for mobile devices too, fantastic in bite-sized chunks as well as extended play-sessions.

And it's also a great game to play on hold.  



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Wizard Golf RPG Review: A Tin Cup

Wizard Golf is a free iOS game with a great premise that should have dropped the Golf or hired a course pro. Why? In order to progress, you're required to do more than simply make par on a given course. In fact, the majority of objectives on a course involve throwing your score out the window in order to defeat all enemies, open magical chests, secure all the gems, and so on.

Without the challenge of shooting for a good score, you putz around a level until you hit or collect everything you should, with no real challenge or strategy - it's single player Go Fish. There's no point because there's no thrill or challenge or tension. Multiple objectives are great, adding variety and an incentive to replay past levels, while extending the amount of value you get from a game. But objectives need to be enjoyable, otherwise they're just filler - if these secondary objectives came with a minimum shot requirement then we'd be talking..

But first impressions are great, and you'll have a quite a bit of fun before you're required to violate the very spirit of golf itself. You're given control of a 16-bit wizard and his magical wand that shoots either a fireball or ice ball, depending on if your shot has full power or not. You aim, hit the power meter at the right moment, and watch your shot plow through enemies, bounce off walls, occasionally a power up, and land in the hole, ideally under par. 

Which like real-life golf is easier said than done. Hitting an enemy can slow your momentum and re-direct your shot, you can fly off course into water, and various other hazards are more than happy to ruin your score. A lot of this is naturally by design, with various dungeon enemies and other gaming tropes serving to replace your typical water hazards and sand traps.This lends the game a aggressive undertone that's thus far only been seen on the SNES classic Kirby's Dream Course and that one time things got out of hand between me and my buddy on the driving range. 

But there are also unintended hazards and obstacles. The fact you can only plow through enemies with a fully powered shot is troublesome because this kills your momentum dead in its tracks. The lack of a third dimension is tricky too, and the lack of lofting ability is missed. You'll also occasionally clip a wall you shouldn't, and think you're solidly in the hole when it turns out you're just on the edge - though you won't ever 'overshoot' a hole, much to the delight of power-putters everywhere. Golf is frustrating. It's one thing if you miss a shot because you screwed up - that's arguably the whole point of golf. It's a whole other thing, a bad thing, even, if you miss a shot and the age-old notion of "the computer cheats" starts creeping into your frontal lobe.
How long Wizard Golf holds the attention of your frontal lobe, depends on what you want from your golf games.  WGT Golf, Golf Star, Stickman Golf, and Let's Golf cover a wide range of difficulty curves and accessibility levels. Of them, Wizard Golf is the least golf-like. Perhaps Wizard Billiards RPG would have been a better choice.

Regardless, this game is colorful and bright, confident in its visual presentation and RPG-esque progression;  offering numerous upgrades and skills and spells for paying and non paying players - and passes the poop break test - you can get in quite a lot of Wizard Golf in under 10 minutes. If you have a friend or relative or spouse or child that you demand become a fan of the sport - there are worse ways to ease them into it. At the very least they'll understand the glorious triumph and bone crushing defeat of the sport, and be complaining like an old pro in no time.

Battleheart Legacy Review

Battleheart Legacy is an exceedingly well designed action RPG, that for 4.99, provided 22 hours of swashbuckling fantasy adventure. 

Rarely do mobile games feel this complete. Many iOS games function as hamster wheels; hop on, spin around, and check back later to see how big your city, crops, empire, or clan of barbarians have grown. This sort of design isn’t always bad; games like Dead Ahead, Booking Revolution, and All Guns Blazing utilize this strategy in combination with fascinating gameplay to provide literally endless entertainment.

But like a buffet, these games will beat you before you beat them. You’ll grow bored, distracted, or move on before the game ends because the game can’t end.  You will gander at the icon and sigh wistfully for satisfaction that, by-design, is impossible to obtain.

So there’s something to be said for a mobile game that is a three course meal. and Battleheart Legacy is sort of classic in that regard. It has a beginning, middle, and end. Much like Metal Gear Solid or Gears of War or Max Payne 3 or Mass Effect 2, Battleheart Legacy won't feel you feeling peckish or overstuffed. 

Legacy's overarching story isn’t off the menu or anything, but the writing adds a post-modern pop by encouraging child-like chicanery. For example, about 8 hours in, I stumble upon a mage academy. The headmaster tasks me with securing ‘magic’ mushrooms so I can summon an evil spider-boss. The idea is if we defeat him via the power of arcane magic; his students will know that good-old fashion magery is *just* as cool as the dark arts of necromancy and witchcraft.

I secure the mushrooms after killing the dirty hippy that got there before me, and summon the spider in the presence of the mage and his students. After an exciting battle that felt like the best parts of World of Warcraft, I slay the spider in real-time via flame arrows, a sharp axe, and damage buffs. Hooray! I beat the quest! ...Right?

"You're SUPPOSED TO USE MAGIC!" exclaims the mage. Out of my reply options, I accuse him of being a mushroom-loving drug addict. His class laughs him into resigning from the academy. 

The students turn to me for direction, and not being a mage, I can offer them none.

Later, I follow these students to a secret hangout where they learn ‘dark arts’, obtain a possessed skull, and black out. When I wake up, everyone at the mage academy is dead by my hand. The skull transforms into a humanoid necromancer and challenges me to kill him...if I don't want to learn from him. I wasn't powerful enough to kill him, so...I learned how to resurrect the dead. Spooky.

Battleheart Legacy strikes just the right note, tone wise. It isn’t so much satire or parody as it is self-aware, it favors humor over melodrama, and it’s designed with the understanding brevity is the soul of wit; You create and customize a character, distribute some stats, and head out on an adventure. You’re presented a world map, points of interest, some quests, and simply have at it. 

And how it will have you! I mentioned WoW, but picture any ‘home-row’ MMORPG and you’ll get the picture - assign your skills and spells and buffs to a bar, target enemies, manage your health, target, attack, retreat, loot, smile giddily. Occasionally you'll gain a companion or pet,  each dungeon and battle is streamlined, boiling Battleheart Legacy into a ‘healthy choice’ portion of RPG battle goodness - perfect for the mobile platform. Unless you’re in the arena trying to break a record, rarely does a dungeon crawl extend beyond 15 minutes. 

How you get these wonderful spells and gizmos and skills actually feels quite a bit like another major RPG series - The Elder Scrolls. You’re not shoehorned into a given class, and the combinations are boundless. You can master the elements and burn, freeze, and shock enemies. Poison the masses. Be a brawling Barbarian. A sneaky Witch. A Paladin with a pet puppy. A Rogue that can charm the pants off enemies to do your bidding. Boost your charisma to talk your way out of battles.

But unlike Elder Scrolls, the combat is action-packed and enthralling and tough; rewarding strategy over skill points. This means different things depending on your play style - for Rangers it means timing multi-shot arrows with ‘enrage’ buffs, for necromancers that means poisoning the strongest foe and letting them contaminate their comrades, for Wizards it means casting as many spells as possible while teleporting all over the map, and so on.  

Regardless of how you want to play, you’ll *want* to play.

Battleheart Legacy is so expertly paced, so confident in its gameplay and writing, that it appears effortless. Like any great RPG, the narrative, gameplay, and progression gel wonderfully - but if you ask me what makes the game special is that it's not overstuffed.  Major console games that strive to shove 27 different mini-games and activities into their 'open world experiences'  that are 'pretty good', Battleheart does four or five (depending on how you count) things exquisitely - as a famous sailor once said: it is what it is, and that's all that it is.  

Save for a final boss with an instant-death spell, and the fact I missed out on a quest chain because I killed a bandit I should have worked with, my biggest gripe with Battleheart Legacy is that there’s no word of a sequel or DLC. Funny how the things we wish would end never do, and the things we wish won’t, forever will.