Top Trumps

Title: Top Trumps

Publisher: Winning Moves UK Ltd

Design: RedMullet Design

Platform: Card

Breakdown

Top Trumps is a card game played by two or more people. There are several types of decks to play with, each boasting a separate, customized theme. These, of course, have to be purchased separately. Themes range from animals like horses, predators, and sea life, sports themes like WWE, football (soccer), and basketball, pop culture icons like the Simpsons, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Indiana Jones, and many many other types of cards.

To win the game, one player must gain all of the cards through fairly simple gameplay. Each card in the deck is a different representation of something involved with the theme. Using the Doctor Who Collectors Edition pack as an example, the features of the card can be explained. Cards in this deck can be one of the eight doctors, one of the many companions, or one of the many villians/monsters. In Top Trumps, there are several categories to use during a fight. In this set, the categories are Adventures, Global Threat, Brains, Style, Strength, and Fear Factor. There are numbers next to each of these categories. The Sontarans card has 4 adventures, a global threat of 36, 48 brains, 6 style, 18 strength, and 133 fear factor.

Part of the strategy of this game is getting to know the cards. The Fourth Doctor has the highest adventures, the Daleks have the highest fear factor, the Cybermen have the highest strength, and all of the eight doctors have equal but the highest brains. Part of learning to play this game is also learning what is high for a particular category and what is low. While fear factor goes all the way up to 180, strength goes up to only 20 and style even less than that.

So how does one play Top Trumps? The dealer shuffles then deals out all of the cards, each player getting an equal number as everyone else. These cards are not to be looked at. Only the top card can be viewed by the player. The person to the left gets the first turn. Looking at the top card, the player reviews their choices, eventually picking the most likely to win category. After announcing the category, every player puts down their top card, revealing the numbers in that category. Whoever puts down the card with the highest number in that category wins all of the cards placed down in that round. If there is a tie, the cards placed down are put to the side and the player who had chosen the category takes their next top card and chooses a category again. Whoever is the next winner of a round gets the cards from all preceding unclaimed tied rounds. This is were learning which cards are fairly high and which numbers are low is useful.

What other games is Top Trumps like?

Top Trumps is a re-imagining of War, clear and simple. The simple card game of our childhood is given stylized cards and some strategy in an attempt to make the game accessible to older players.

Meat Boy

Title: Meatboy

Creators: Jonathon McEntee and Edmund McMillen (Team Mic)

Platform: Internet Game

Genre: Action Platformer

Breakdown

Meatboy is a game where you are a boy made of meat whose female friend made of bandaids is kidnapped repeatedly by a brain enclosed in a jar wearing a top hat and monocle. The objective is to rescue her by reaching her at the end of a level. To do this you must use your incredible jumping and running skills to scale walls, leaving a red trail of meat juice on any surface you touch. Unfortunately, a few deadly obstacles such as buzz saws, fire, bullets, salt, collapsing platforms, and more lie in the path between you and the pink kidnappee. What is your relationship to this female and why is she constantly being kidnapped just as you reach her? The game doesn't explain, but we know she better be really grateful when we finally get to her because completing a level gets more and more complicated and time-intensive as the levels progress.

The controls of Meatboy are well-implemented and straightforward; arrowkeys to move left and right, space bar to jump. And you will be using that space bar a LOT because most of the game consists of timing jumps between walls to go up. The learning curve in the first chapter helps a player get used to the controls and use them like a pro. Well-designed for this purpose, a player who is used to the delicate precision needed for the later levels can breeze through most of the levels their first try when redoing the levels.

Completing levels lock later levels, though not all levels are needed to be completed to move on. If one is really giving you trouble you can simply quit to the menu and try the next one. Later chapters will require a lot more effort than chapter one. Patience is needed for these later levels because you will be dying left and right as you figure out how to beat each part of the design. Whether it's timing just right or knowing the best places to place a jump, there will be a lot of death and, depending on the person, a lot of cursing before the strategy is perfected.

What else is there to do in the game? Well every few levels you will find a bandaid in an inconvenient location. My question is, did those bandaids come from your female friend? Did she lose pieces of herself while being carried away? Forgetting the question of where the bandaid came from for a minute, if you collect the bandaid (and then don't die before rescuing the pink girl) in enough levels, new characters will be unlocked. The first secret is unlocking a paint bucket named C-Crasher you can play as instead of Meatboy. C-Crusher leaves blue trails instead of red. You'll have to figure out the rest of the secrets for yourself!

Another great thing about this game is the level packs. Four chapters are included in the main campaign of the game, but if those are beaten there are many player-created levels ready to be downloaded and played.

One tiny thing that annoyed me was that there is no options menu so the music can not be turned off unless you mute the computer. The music fits the mood isn't bad (though it is a bit repetitive) and changes for different levels.

In the end, what are we left with? A game which has obviously seen a lot of love and a lot of thought. Is the premise a little strange? Yes, but with meat trivia, jokes, side-swipes at vegetarians, and more greeting you every time you win the level, you'll wish there were more meat-themed games. Will you be frustrated? Yes, but the key piece of this is, through your tears when you die right before reaching your friend after navigating the level for the thousandth time you will without a thought of quitting try again and again until you finally reach her.

What other games is Meatboy like?

At its heart, Meatboy is an action platformer like Mario or Megaman without any enemies to kill. But don't think that because it is the same genre it is the same game. Meatboy is unique and creative.