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Yeah, I woke up ultra-early this morning, and considering I went to bed late last night, I get this feeling that I'll be feeling this come around mid-day...
ANYHOW. I've been playing a few Facebook games and I've recently come to the realization that all I'm doing is clicking. Clicking here to search an area, clicking here to use some action points, clicking here in a quick mini-game. I have a feeling someone else has done something similar to what I'm about to do (I've played to Level 20, now I'm giving my review), and I really don't think I need any more things on my plate as it is, but I may as well do this to get it off my mind and unload the game.
I've been playing CSI: Crime City on Facebook. What first caught my attention was the super-deformed look of the characters, including reasonable likenesses of ...that girl and ...the old man, and ...whatsisname from The Matrix. Lawrence Fishburne. Right. I'm horrible with names. Anyhow, you start off by choosing a male or female avatar and join up with a CSI agent to search murder scenes.
Surprisingly enough, the first murder scene you come across has the body laying there in the washroom stall. Even though the character designs are meant to be cute, this was kinda surprising for me to expect to see, and on the "family-friendly" Facebook website nonetheless. But anyways, you click in the squares and examine around for clues to figure out whodunnit. You have a set number of "Action Points" that recharge over time (1 point every 90 seconds), so you can click in for a few minutes, then don't have to play again for a good 4 hours before clicking around some more. If you find anything, you bring it back to the lab, where you have to wait a while for the CSI team to analyze it (anywhere from 5 minutes to 90 minutes), so while you wait for that, you head back to the areas you've unlocked and keep uncovering more stuff. Some areas require more energy due to them being more detailed (fingerprints or bloodstains, for example) so they'll drain your energy faster. The CSI Agent that accompanies you just stands there, watching you examine every square on the ground and offers up helpful information like "they didn't wipe down the fitness machines". It's not a hint either, the evidence is randomly placed in each scene. It's not like you're going to find the cellphone in the locker - you're going to find it behind a plant.
There are a few things you can find in the areas aside from clues and evidence. You'll find "Funding Boosts" which give you a little bit of virtual cash to spend on upgrading your tools (or add a funky disco theme to the lab, if you're so inclined), "Energy Boosts" which are a simple match game to gain coffee (for extra action points), and just recently they've added collections - bugs, keys, bullets, matchbooks... collect them all and you get... the ability to add things like a butterfly collection to your wall, or a pool table. It's kinda strange, and since I would be the only one to see these things (I had no other friends playing it) I never invested any time in ultra-spiffying my laboratory.
Once you've got all the evidence in a particular area (there's 2 or 3 items per scene) and the time limit's been passed for their "analysis", you progress the story a bit by having your avatar and your CSI buddy talk with a witness or suspect. You then progress on to the next stage. There are usually 3-4 scenes per case, so you get a little variety of rooms to look at. These interrogations, accusations, and arrests are simply cutscenes, no choices are available for you to try to solve the case yourself. Even the final "showdown" comes down to a simple exchange of words, a little graphic of the cute character being slammed behind a jail cell door, and you move onto the next case.
Really, after a while I realized that all I was clicking into the game to a) listen to a cover of "Who Are You" and to fill bars. There's no deduction necessary to play this game (and I think it really could have been awesome to do that yourself, I love mysteries and detective-style games), and once I was on the 6th case (roughly 20 scenes), I found it was ultra-repetitive and not worth my time. That being said, I just went into my Application Settings and removed the application. There's no need for me to keep playing it if there's nothing for me to do.
I'd suggest checking it out if you're a CSI fan, definitely. But I would even suggest that you find another CSI friend on Facebook too, just so you have a little camaraderie (and a race in the morning to grab the free coffee in the lab).
ANYHOW. I've been playing a few Facebook games and I've recently come to the realization that all I'm doing is clicking. Clicking here to search an area, clicking here to use some action points, clicking here in a quick mini-game. I have a feeling someone else has done something similar to what I'm about to do (I've played to Level 20, now I'm giving my review), and I really don't think I need any more things on my plate as it is, but I may as well do this to get it off my mind and unload the game.
I've been playing CSI: Crime City on Facebook. What first caught my attention was the super-deformed look of the characters, including reasonable likenesses of ...that girl and ...the old man, and ...whatsisname from The Matrix. Lawrence Fishburne. Right. I'm horrible with names. Anyhow, you start off by choosing a male or female avatar and join up with a CSI agent to search murder scenes.
Surprisingly enough, the first murder scene you come across has the body laying there in the washroom stall. Even though the character designs are meant to be cute, this was kinda surprising for me to expect to see, and on the "family-friendly" Facebook website nonetheless. But anyways, you click in the squares and examine around for clues to figure out whodunnit. You have a set number of "Action Points" that recharge over time (1 point every 90 seconds), so you can click in for a few minutes, then don't have to play again for a good 4 hours before clicking around some more. If you find anything, you bring it back to the lab, where you have to wait a while for the CSI team to analyze it (anywhere from 5 minutes to 90 minutes), so while you wait for that, you head back to the areas you've unlocked and keep uncovering more stuff. Some areas require more energy due to them being more detailed (fingerprints or bloodstains, for example) so they'll drain your energy faster. The CSI Agent that accompanies you just stands there, watching you examine every square on the ground and offers up helpful information like "they didn't wipe down the fitness machines". It's not a hint either, the evidence is randomly placed in each scene. It's not like you're going to find the cellphone in the locker - you're going to find it behind a plant.
There are a few things you can find in the areas aside from clues and evidence. You'll find "Funding Boosts" which give you a little bit of virtual cash to spend on upgrading your tools (or add a funky disco theme to the lab, if you're so inclined), "Energy Boosts" which are a simple match game to gain coffee (for extra action points), and just recently they've added collections - bugs, keys, bullets, matchbooks... collect them all and you get... the ability to add things like a butterfly collection to your wall, or a pool table. It's kinda strange, and since I would be the only one to see these things (I had no other friends playing it) I never invested any time in ultra-spiffying my laboratory.
Once you've got all the evidence in a particular area (there's 2 or 3 items per scene) and the time limit's been passed for their "analysis", you progress the story a bit by having your avatar and your CSI buddy talk with a witness or suspect. You then progress on to the next stage. There are usually 3-4 scenes per case, so you get a little variety of rooms to look at. These interrogations, accusations, and arrests are simply cutscenes, no choices are available for you to try to solve the case yourself. Even the final "showdown" comes down to a simple exchange of words, a little graphic of the cute character being slammed behind a jail cell door, and you move onto the next case.
Really, after a while I realized that all I was clicking into the game to a) listen to a cover of "Who Are You" and to fill bars. There's no deduction necessary to play this game (and I think it really could have been awesome to do that yourself, I love mysteries and detective-style games), and once I was on the 6th case (roughly 20 scenes), I found it was ultra-repetitive and not worth my time. That being said, I just went into my Application Settings and removed the application. There's no need for me to keep playing it if there's nothing for me to do.
I'd suggest checking it out if you're a CSI fan, definitely. But I would even suggest that you find another CSI friend on Facebook too, just so you have a little camaraderie (and a race in the morning to grab the free coffee in the lab).
no subject
I hope Whitney doesn't discover this. I'd probably be roped in to help.
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no subject
And you've gone through Backyard Monsters - like you said, it's definitely not social on the friendly scale, since it involves destroying other people's yards. The only social part is helping each other level-up, and that's minimal at best.
When it comes down to it, though, it's almost too much to expect a lot out of these games since they're meant to be "casual" - play for a few minutes at a time. A full-blown RPG would be ... well, better-suited for its own site.
no subject