I'm not much of a gamer. And my older child seems to only be interested in games that involve Luke Skywalker or wii bowling, so I was in a conundrum when sent the latest game by Ubisoft. Enter my teenage godson, Elijah. He's a video game freak (read: a typical teenage boy). He think it's so very cool that his Auntie Robyn gets sent video games for free and would love to get his hands on some Teen or Mature games to review. Therefore, I invited Elijah over to test out Battle of Giants Dinosaurs Strike (rated E10+) and tell me what he thinks. Perhaps I'm starting Elijah career in video game reviews and in 10 years we can remember when we knew him before he was famous. Or perhaps, I just kept a teenage kid busy for a couple of hours during Winter Break.
Dinosaurs Strike is a battle game of, you guessed it, dinosaurs.
Things Elijah loved about Battle of Giants Dinosaurs Strike:
- Ability to customize your dinosaur. You can use your creative juices to make the dinosaur of your dreams and of your opponent's nightmares.
- Easy to learn moves. Unlike his old-fogey of an Aunt, Elijah didn't need to read the instruction manual. He dived right in with easy menus and helpful hints.
- Decent graphics make it easy to keep score. It was cool to see what moves caused what sort of damage on your opponent.
Things Elijah thought could be better:
- Playing against the computer is too hard. While you can battle with up to four players (making the plyaing field more level for all beginners), playing against the computer was a tough match. Elijah won the first few battles, but then got stuck with this tiny dinosaur that kept kicking his butt. He felt like it shouldn't be so tough so soon (especially for younger players).
- Eliminate the codes to unlock features. Spoken like a true gamer, Elijah hated that there were special codes to unlock features. We get why companies do it (it makes you play longers), but he wanted full access from the very beginning.
And now, since my kid heard "hard" he won't touch the game. Honestly, I think if your kid is playing against another kid then the game would be a ton of fun. And if I wasn't holding a newborn during most of Elijah's visit, I would have jumped in just for the chance to try to beat my teenage godson (who is officially at the age where he thinks grown up are dumb, out of touch, and easy to crush in the gaming world). But I didn't get that chance. My loss is your gain.
I'm giving away my review copy of Dinosaurs Strike to one very lucky Who's the Boss reader!
To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post by 9am PST on Monday, January 10th.
You can get an extra entry by following me (@whostheboss) and/or tweeting (or blogging) about the contest. You do need to leave extra comments with your twitter handle or permalink URL for those entries to count.
I'll be mailing the game out myself, so this contest is open to anyone where a regular first-class stamp will suffice. Please give me three weeks to send the game - things are still crazy round these parts with an infant.
Disclosure: While Ubisoft provided me with this game to review, the opinions I've expressed here are solely my own and represent my honest viewpoint. Ubisoft, Clever Girls Collective and I promote Blog With Integrity.
