Arkadium Gamedek

Once the file was safely saved in my Downloads folder, I executed it. I have to say this was one of the smoothest installations I have ever experienced in a beta test. I had no file errors, no exceptional wait times, and I was up and playing in less than 2 minutes. The beta was a little spare on game options, but the 10 or so that were available turned out to be very interesting. I will talk about a few of them here.

In Skeet Shoot, you use your mouse to guide a virtual gun to hit the flying discs. The catch was, you only had 2 shots before you had to reload by hitting the space bar. This was ok in the first 2 rounds where the discs all came from the same place and were evenly spaced out. After that, unless you have perfect mouse control and superhuman reflexes, forget it. I missed 80% of the discs my first time through. My personal best was only about 45% hit in round 3. The game definitely gets your adrenaline (and bad words) pumpling and is a must for anyone who has a gun rack in their home.

I was tempted next by Treasure Hunt, a game similar in premise to the much-lauded Bejeweled from PopCap Games. The idea of the game is to get 3 or more identical images in a row, then they disappear and the row falls down to add new images to the screen. Arkadium gets a leg up on PopCap, and increases the addictiveness of this game by allowing you to move your match from anywhere on the screen. You lose some points when you do this, but you actually keep the game going longer than normally possible. After getting trounced several times, I discovered that this game required more skill than I had available, and I abandoned ship. However, hardier ones than I should definitely take a dig at this one.

Next, I met Mr. Munch. A souped-up PacMan for the modern world, this perfectly aligned set of chompers has to keep on the run from the evil dental instruments (edis) that are trying to take him down. You control him with the arrow keys, and hope that you really make that right turn to safety. Run around the maze eating whatever is in your way. Eating a power pellet puts the bad guys at your mercy and you can chomp on them for extra points. Bonus fruits also pop up sometimes. The mazes become more complex at each level, and my hand-eye coordination has never been that good, so I was a-mazed that I made it through several tries without a root canal. The graphics are really neat and I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who is thinking of going to Dental School.

If Mr. Munch doesn't do much for you, you should try a card game Arkadium-style in the form of Pyramid Solitaire. You have to try to make matches of 2 cards that add up to a total of 13, or if you get the King, you can just select that (Jack=11, Queen=12, King=13). I was never the best at math, so the game was somewhat daunting. The idea seems simple, but after a few mind-numbing rounds against the undisputed champion, I was ready to check myself into a mental hospital for some rest. He told me that he practised so much he barely had to look at the cards to know what matched. I congratulated him on his numerous victories and stumbled off to find a less enumerating challenge. In Alu's Revenge I found an enemy. You are supposed to click on any two or more masks and they disappear. There are also supposed to be special "ben-ben" stones that give you bonus points (I never saw any). As you are trying to make matches, more masks are falling from the ceiling! Click, click, click... my eyes were jumping all over the screen. I got dizzy trying to keep up with the fast pace. The game is more challenging than Treasure Hunt, ergo, I didn't last long. The game ends when the masks hit the top of the page, and needless to say, that was less time than it takes to drink a glass of water. After I dusted the failure off, I limped over to a place where victory was sure to be mine.

I ran straight for the Mahjongg area and promptly whipped about 10 peoples' butts; I was in heaven. The goal in this Mahjongg solitaire is to match up the identical tiles. Anyone who knows anything about Mahjongg knows that there are 4 tile sets and extra tiles like Dragons. Arkadium chose to use a classic Asian tile set which takes a little getting used to. You can maximize your points by shuffling the tiles once when you get stuck. I was actually hoping that this would be a true Mahjongg where you have to deal tiles and you play against 3 others, but the solitaire will do.

3 new games were added post-beta. I had the pleasure of playing one of them: Metro Match. I was surprisingly good at this, and beat up my oponent like a 3rd grade bully. There are 3 rounds in which you are faced with pictures of popular locations (Paris, London and New York) that you have to match up. I whizzed through with a top score of 3715 and my opponent's exclamation "You are good at this!"

All that being said, Arkadium had its downside. The game rooms take a while to load on 56k, the other players are not always responsive and you don't have the option to play practice rounds by yourself. The games are pretty cool, and the money that you can win from the tournaments is a really good incentive to enter. Right now, they are offering a bonus: If you put down $5 on your account, you win $20 in Bonus bucks which can be used to enter tournaments, but which you cannot withdraw from your account. I think that this is a fair deal and will be taking advantage of it shortly.

by Aviendha the Just