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Before we start let’s clear a common misconception up. Mah Jong is an old four player Chinese game (primarily for gambling) that typically uses 144 hand painted tiles. Mah Jong’s origins are still speculated to this day and to make matters more confusing there are many other offshoot games which have lazily been dubbed as Mah Jong too, so to be sure if you are playing Mah Jong or one of its siblings takes some research. As it turns out the version of Mah Jong I’ve played on computer over the years is actually known as Solitaire Mah Jong (or single player Mah Jong), it may not sound like a big difference but they are actually quite different games and it is quite annoying to find out that I’ve had such a big misconception of the game for such a long time. But now I’m happy I know which version I am playing when I turn on my DS. Right with that out of the way let’s get onto the Mah Jong Quest Expeditions review.

You have probably guessed by now (after my spiel) is that Mah Jong Quest Expeditions for DS is indeed based on the Solitaire version which you may have played yourself at one time or another. Mah Jong Quest Expeditions has been developed by iWin.com; they have lots of experience with Mah Jong games after producing over 20 different Jong titles on their popular flash website. The simple aim of the game is to match Mah Jong tiles (usually pairs) until none remain, the tiles themselves are stacked in piles onto the board in special patterns which generally only provide two or three different solutions thereby introducing the addictive strategic element. If you simply keep picking pairs there is a good chance you will get stuck with many tiles left but none that pair up and will be forced to restart, you’ll need to study the board before making choices in a similar way to thinking ahead moves in a game of chess. Mah Jong Quest Expeditions DS has three main game modes; Quest, Classic and Puzzle – each full to the brim with tile matching action.

Quest: Kwazi, a young Chinese teenager is walking down the street when a strange energy force causes the world so divide. He is inadvertently caught in the middle of the energy bolt and the power ends up splitting his metaphysical being into two different bodies; a boy and a girl. He is dressed in white and his female alter ego (for want of a better explanation) is dressed in black. Now this is where you the puzzle solver comes along. Your goal is to clear enough Mah Jong tiles in order to free them from each board (by pairing the hat tiles) so they can proceed in their goal to realign the world. This nice little story really only strings together the fact that you need to complete 64 progressively difficult Mah Jong boards in this mode, you do get some nice artwork and some cut-scenes to accompany the levels (as well as a fortune cookie at the end of each board). The Quest gameplay is generally as you’d expect, though the addition of special tiles which have powerful effects on the board make things a little more interesting. Here are a couple of my favourite new tiles to use to your advantage; Dynamite which blow ups obstructions and Magic Wands which can change the suit of certain tiles.

Classic: As the name suggests this is the standard Mah Jong mode with none of the special tiles that you’ll find in Quest and Puzzle mode. This is pure Mah Jong Solitaire at its very best and what the purists will be after, but if you do fancy adding some extra spice to proceedings why not choose one of the alternative game sequences which can do such wacky things like randomly move tiles around as you play.

Puzzle: Similar to Classic mode but this time the boards are more straight forward in design but now only have one solution which really makes the time limit feel shorter as you struggle to work out the correct matching sequence. The undo and restart buttons come into play in this mode more than in any other. As with classic mode you can change the game sequences for added mayhem but you’d have to be a pretty hardcore Mah Jongg fan in my opinion.

Graphically Mah Jong Quest Expeditions for DS are pretty decent; everything is sharp and clear and oriental typically looking, the comic book style sequences in Quest mode are rather nicely done too. Due to the small size of the tiles on rare occasions they can be slightly obscured but the ability to flip the board horizontally or vertically solves this little problem and can even help you spot pairs when you’re going tile blind. The music and sound effects are oriental and rather good too; the soothing music helped me relax before bedtime so not only did I have fun gaming, but I got a good night’s rest as well.

Mah Jong Quest Expeditions DS is a good puzzle game for the DS, it plays very nicely and is a perfect title to carry around with you for portable gaming. Coming in at a great budget price (£19.99) I don’t think you can’t go wrong as it features about 128 different boards (or layouts) which will take a fair time to complete unless you’re a professional MahJong player. The addition of an undo button, simple touch screen (or dpad) controls and the special tiles make things feel more accessible, up to date and well worth a purchase for all puzzle/board game fanboys and fangirls. Sadly there is no multiplayer mode to be found, it would’ve nice to get a bit of head to head match making but nevertheless I give MahJong Quest Expeditions a rather good 7 out of 10 and can highly recommend playing it in bed as opposed to reading a trashy novel.

Get the game now
Preowned: Mah Jong Quest: Expeditions – Pre-Played from Gamefly.com
Rental: Rent Mah Jong Quest Expeditions – free rental trial from Gamefly.com

Related: Professor Layton and the Curious Village review, Soul Bubbles review

Tags: Mah Jong Quest Expeditions, Mah Jong Quest, Expeditions, Mah Jong, mah jong tiles, Mah Jongg, mahjong

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After 60 years since first release Subbuteo is the probably world’s biggest selling football game. Yes that’s right, not Fifa or Pro Evo nor the classic Sensible Soccer; it’s Subbuteo that blows them all away. Now fair enough up until now Subbuteo has always been a board game of sort’s but it was only a matter of time it made its way onto our screens.

Having been born into the digital generation with video game consoles such as the Atari 2600 (released in 1977) it’s hardly surprising to say that Subbuteo passed me by. Why flick little plastic dudes around on a green piece of felt when you can move a few single coloured 6 pixel characters around your TV screen?…Exactly! So what with the aforementioned Pro Evo 2009 and Fifa 09 here to admire, what can this portable board game bring to the football video game simulation table? Let’s take a closer look and find out in my Subbuteo for the Nintendo DS review.

Subbuteo for the DS was developed by an Italian outfit called Artematica…no I’ve not heard of them before either but a quick check of their website reveals they’ve developed some interesting PC titles in the last few years and now seem to be moving towards the console market with some interesting sounding Wii games in development.

After booting the Subbuteo DS cart you’re treated to an FMV intro, it’s not too bad but the video compression is quite noticeable but considering the Nintendo DS cart restrictions it’s still impressive. As far as the main game options go its slim pickings; you can choose from either a quick match against the CPU, World Cup mode or Multiplayer. Options such as match length, auto/manual keepers and offside can be changed if desired,.

Quick match is your typical friendly game against a CPU opponent, choose the teams and get playing. You don’t get anything special for winning but its good practice for World Cup mode.

The World Cup is where things become more interesting; with a 32 international team group stage split into groups of four. Only the top two from each group will go through to the knockout stages where it’s one for all on the route to winning that coveted Golden Trophy. With extra time and penalty shootouts in the offing it’s just as tense as the real thing.

Your reward for winning the World cup is an optional shiny new base for one of your little men. These bases add different properties to your shots; the red Sidewinder allows for greater swerving skill, meaning you can flick your player around opponents with much more ease. The blue Cobra base is smoother and designed to travel further and is much more powerful when it comes to shooting.

So how does it all work?

Well looking at the basic fundamentals and controls first I’d have to describe Subbuteo DS as more strategy than soccer. Both screens always focus from a top down perspective, the top screen in zoomed in on about 1/4 of the pitch at any one time and like most other football games the score and match time are displayed in at the very top. The bottom screen is where lots of the work takes place; here you’ll find a full overview map of the whole pitch showing every player and the ball. After tapping on the desired player you move your eyes over to the right hand side of the bottom screen where an interactive panel is waiting, this features your virtual hand and an oversized Subbuteo player. By moving the floating hand around about you are adjusting the direction in which your finger will strike the ball (the spin/swerve) and the height of the shot. Choose the direction of the shot by either pressing the left or right arrows on screen and then it’s onto the shot power, simply drag your stylus up and down over the index finger to set the strength. Tap the little guy when you’re ready and watch the proceedings back up on the top screen.

Yes I know that all sounds complicated but that actually pales in significance to the nature of how it actually plays. Once your team has possession you can kick the ball around as much as you like as long as each player doesn’t kick the ball more than three consecutive times in a row, if that does happen then play switches to the defending team who then obviously become the attacking side. If the ball strikes an opposing player then possession will change over to them, this forces you to be accurate when aiming your shots and dribbling towards goal. At most major events (free kicks, throw ins, etc) the defending team get a set amount of moves to flick players into defending positions before the attacking side can make their move, usually this means moving a defender or two in between ball and goal. Whilst Subbuteo fans will be pleased to hear that Subbuteo for DS follows the real game as closely as possible with its slow pace and tactical moving, it’s not that much fun for a Fifa fan.

The good stuff:

Subbuteo for DS is a nicely presented title and does replicate the genuine Subbuteo very well indeed. The FMV sequences are a nice touch and it’s great to see a developer adding extra polish to their Nintendo DS football games. The World Cup mode is fun to play through and is challenging even on the easy difficulty setting, prepare to be beaten by an ultra accurate CPU opponent if you set it to the hard setting. With extra footballs and bases to unlock Subbuteo does have a bit of incentive too, but is it enough to outweigh the bad points?

The not so good stuff:

Whilst in early development there was speculation that Subbuteo DS would feature online play via the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, sadly that hasn’t materialised and as such requires a head to head match to be played locally with each player needing to own a copy of the game, that’s right – no single card download play at all, thankfully they do manage to give us the option to take turns on a single Nintendo DS video game. It’s not great and reeks of the 1990’s but it’s better than nothing right?

Even though the game box suggests you can create your own team, it’s not exactly true – the in game editor basically lets you rename one of the 32 countries to one of your choice, whilst you can also change the shirt colour (to that of another nation) it’s not really what I call creating a team. But if you’re like Matt and would like to pitch Liverpool up against Brazil then the option is there.

However all that aside the biggest disappointment for me was that you don’t actually use the touch screen to flick your players which in my opinion is really the main focus of Subbuteo. Perhaps during development and testing they found that sliding the stylus around the touch screen just didn’t feel right, it’s hard to believe but could well be the case – all I know is that the shell sliding mini game in Super Mario 64DS worked fine. The ingame visuals are pretty poor too; the players are far too small and when you rotate the camera everything the players and pitch lines all look jagged. It’s such a shame because the menu’s and game screens are nicely presented. The sound effects are another sticking point, there only seem to be five of them and to make matters worse two crowd sounds are excruciatingly bad and become very annoying very quickly.

To sum up I would say that to genuine Subbuteo fans this could be a fun game to buy; it’s fairly accurate to the physical game and does at least provide a CPU to play against…perhaps you could even learn new techniques from. The downside for non Subbuteo lovers is that this game doesn’t bridge the gap; if you hate Subbuteo in real life you’ll hate it here. For being an authentic experience for genuine Subbuteo fans I have to award this game 7 out of 10, but if you like your footie games less like Chess then look elsewhere.

Related: Fifa 09 review, Pro Evo 09 review

Tags: Subbuteo, Subbuteo for the DS, DS, subuteo, subbuteo Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS football games, Nintendo DS video games

On this weeks Gamesweasel gaming video podcast we give away Fallout 3 along with a brand new Playstation 3, plus the usual blend of video games news and reviews:-

• Fallout 3 cancelled
• 50 Cent Blood in the Sand
• Star Wars The Old Republic
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 review
• Fallout 3 and a PlayStation 3
• Spore review
• Mirrors Edge

We have Fallout 3 and a PlayStation 3 to give away by 10 November 2008, full details of how to enter can be found on our competitions page. Always great to hear from you, our email address is gamesweasel@btpodshow.com. Also be sure to pay a visit to the Gamesweasel blog for articles on Digimon online game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 release date, Call of Duty 5 release date and Grand Theft Auto 4 cheat codes. You can also stream Gamesweasel episode 071 direct to your desktop, and watch the Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 review and the Spore review on Youtube.

Gamesweasel is brought to you with GoDaddy.com and offers you some great discounts on domain names and hosting. Use our Gamesweasel November 2008 GoDaddy codes to save money – weasel1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and weasel2 gets you 20% off orders over £25 or $50. Some restrictions may apply so see the GoDaddy web site for details.

[STREAM] | [DOWNLOAD MP4] | [VIDEO PODCAST RSS FEED] | [SUBSCRIBE IN ITUNES]

On this weeks episode of Gamesweasel we discuss:-

• Fallout 3 cancelled
• 50 Cent Blood in the Sand
• Star Wars The Old Republic
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
• Fallout 3 and a PlayStation 3
• Spore
• Mirrors Edge

We have Fallout 3 and a PlayStation 3 to give away by 10 November 2008, full details of how to enter can be found on our competitions page. We want to hear from you, so send those emails over to gamesweasel@btpodshow.com. Also be sure to pay a visit to the Gamesweasel blog for articles on Digimon online game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 release date, Call of Duty 5 release date and Grand Theft Auto 4 cheat codes.Want to see the games we’ve been talking about? Check out the Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 screenshots and Spore screenshots on our Flickr feed. You can also watch Gamesweasel TV episode 071 direct to your desktop, plus watch the Spore review and the Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 review on Youtube.

Gamesweasel is brought to you with GoDaddy.com and offers you some great discounts on domain names and hosting. Use our Gamesweasel GoDaddy discount codes November 2008 to save money – weasel1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and weasel2 gets you 20% off orders over £25 or $50. Some restrictions may apply so see the GoDaddy web site for details.

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This week on the Gamesweasel PSP RSS Website Matt Cuttle talks about:-

• Fallout 3 cancelled
• 50 Cent Blood in the Sand
• Star Wars The Old Republic
• Review of Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
• Fallout 3 and a PlayStation 3
• Review of Spore

We have Fallout 3 and a PlayStation 3 to give away by 10 November 2008, full details of how to enter can be found on our competitions page. We want to hear from you, so send those emails over to gamesweasel@btpodshow.com. Also be sure to pay a visit to the Gamesweasel blog for articles on Digimon online game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 release date, Call of Duty 5 release date and Grand Theft Auto 4 cheat codes.

This show is made especially to be added to your psp rss channels videos – see our PSP videos page for full instructions on how to get the mp4 automatically to your PSP. You can also watch the Youtube Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 review and Youtube Spore review videos, as well as streaming episode 071 of Gamesweasel direct to your desktop.

Gamesweasel is brought to you with GoDaddy.com and offers you some great discounts on domain names and hosting. Use our Gamesweasel GoDaddy codes for November 2008 to save money – weasel1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and weasel2 gets you 20% off orders over £25 or $50. Some restrictions may apply so see the GoDaddy web site for details.

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YouTube Spore review

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Developers Maxis have been letting us all play god for some while now. We’ve run huge metropolises with Sim City, had fun with a virtual doll’s house with The Sims, and now Will Wright’s gone all Darwin on us with Spore. It’s marketed as a personal universe in a box. Sounds like a deep and meaningful game but actually what you get is five mini games which vary in complexity as you play through the stages.

You begin as a single cell and have to play the equivalent of a flash game you may find on the internet. Simply eat things smaller than you and avoid becoming dinner for bigger things yourself. Whether you eat plants or animals depends on what you evolve into in the next stage, where you grow legs, take to land and then do the same on a bigger scale.

Now the world’s in full 3D and you either have to attack other species to make them extinct or make friends with them. It’s simple exploration and icon clicking as you choose attacks and mimic creatures to make friends with them. Earn DNA points and you can mate at your nest, using the superb creature creator to add features that make you faster, meaner and give you more skills.

The creature editor is where this game is really at. It’s so intuitive you’ll be making multi-limbed beasts in no time and uploading them to the Sporepedia for the world to see.

Once your brain’s big enough you make it to the tribal stage. No longer do you control an individual creature, but a tribe in a mini strategy game. Here you must once again befriend or attack neighbouring tribes to evolve and grow.

You then enter the civilization stage where the action zooms out further and you create vehicles to get your creatures about. This game’s a bit like an RTS where you can beat your enemies using religious, military or economic factors. Once again it’s pretty light stuff but once you get through this you finally get into space.

This bit’s really the main event. You now control a single ship as you zoom around galaxies, terraforming planets to support life and plonking new creatures into the mix. You can even swoop down to the planets and have a good nose around – it’s nice because when you’re in stage two you see ships doing the same as you wander about eating things.

Take any of Spore’s parts individually and to be honest they’re a bit of a disappointment. Luckily, the game’s more than the sum of its parts and does have genuine charm with its creature creator, and the wonder and humour you’ll experience as you play through it. Girls love it too so if you’re a bloke and you’re trying to get your girly into gaming, get her to give this a go. Spore Galactic Edition includes stacks of bonus material and there is also Spore Creatures for the DS for playing the game on the go. Spore gets a very good 7 out of 10.

Get Spore now
New: Buy Spore from Amazon.com
New: Buy Spore from Buy.com
Preowned: Spore Creatures – Pre-Played from Gamefly.com
Rental: Rent Spore – free rental trial from Gamefly.com

Related: Spore Creatures for the DS, Spore Galactic Edition, Youtube Spore review

Tags: Spore, S.P.O.R.E., sim, sims, simulation