Time for Crappy Horse Game Revue!
Dec. 4th, 2006 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calzephyrAnd it's a double feature!
I picked this game up back in the summer, and I haven't finished it. It's not for lack of trying, however. The game physically makes me ill :-D When you're jumping or grooming your horse in any other game, usually the background stays still while the character moves around. Not so here! The whole screen goes up and down as well. At first I thought I was just coming down with something, but after trying to play several times, the vertigo was not coincidental at all :-)
So alas, I was not able to finish Adventure Mode or create my own jumping course. Adventure mode was pretty dull, actually. It involved a lot of grooming and then being told to "come back the next day" for something new to do. Alas, there was never anything new to do but run around the same course and do more grooming.
The graphics are not bad, kind of so-so. The bright yellow ground and green grass was really off putting though.
Ah yes...another title from the Time to Ride series :-D The first two games were pretty good despite their flaws, and even had endings that could satisfy this "big" girl. I just finished this game tonight and it's somewhat of a stinker. If you're a teenage girl, I think you'll be thrilled with this game. Everybody likes a good story though, and the one this game provides is so sadly bare boned. The developers should just abandon the Virtools platform and work off a decent gaming engine that would allow them to do more - the horse gets stuck on fences and trees and sometimes the viewpoint is obscured. I really don't know what's with the weird camera angles as well - a lot of the chores play out viewed from above. There also isn't a way of gauging when to jump as in the other games, except to hit the spacebar and hope for the best :-)
The heroine of this game is a plucky red haired teenager named Amanda. She and her father leave the city to live on a horse farm. Not much happens as you try to level your horse up through cross-country, jumping and dressage. The dressage part was very mystifying as the manual didn't have instructions for it. The pattern you are supposed to follow does change colour, but in the end I gathered that your score depends on how smoothly you take the turns and how straight you can go in a line. There is actually only one competition, a jumping one, and it's essential to the plot. There are two "dreams" in this game, which were kind of neat. The goal is to get Amanda's horse, Sapphire, to follow a light in a dark forest while being pursued by a strange force. The second dream is very hard because Sapphire gets stuck on trees, and the view is often blocked by trees too!
This game differs from the others in several ways. First of all, it's very linear and they made things as dumbed down as possible. For example, question marks appear near places of action, so players don't have to go blindly searching around for things. Secondly, the long distances between places has also been removed; now when Amanda wants to travel, she simply exits the farm and you get to choose between the town, where some smart mouthed kids hang out behind the tack shop, or the riding club. Amanda also has a bedroom in the house, where you can change her outfits. Lastly, the savegame file isn't as easily modified as the other two. One could change all the variables and never have to groom a horse again. The variables aren't labelled in the savegame.
On the other hand, the graphics and music are very nice and pleasing. It would be nice if there was more of a "free form" place to ride as in the other games. The chores are also much easier to do, even if there are more of them. It's more apparent when a task is done as well. Sometimes you only need to do a couple of tasks and upon exiting the barn, you'll find that the ones you didn't do have checkmarks.
The ending seems to indicate that there might be a sequel; oh man, I hope not :-D I don't know why I keep getting suckered into these games. My husband watches over my shoulder and shakes his head. "You do know," he said once, "that all these games are basically the same?"
I know, I know. But I keep hoping that one of them will be decent too :-)
I picked this game up back in the summer, and I haven't finished it. It's not for lack of trying, however. The game physically makes me ill :-D When you're jumping or grooming your horse in any other game, usually the background stays still while the character moves around. Not so here! The whole screen goes up and down as well. At first I thought I was just coming down with something, but after trying to play several times, the vertigo was not coincidental at all :-)
So alas, I was not able to finish Adventure Mode or create my own jumping course. Adventure mode was pretty dull, actually. It involved a lot of grooming and then being told to "come back the next day" for something new to do. Alas, there was never anything new to do but run around the same course and do more grooming.
The graphics are not bad, kind of so-so. The bright yellow ground and green grass was really off putting though.
Ah yes...another title from the Time to Ride series :-D The first two games were pretty good despite their flaws, and even had endings that could satisfy this "big" girl. I just finished this game tonight and it's somewhat of a stinker. If you're a teenage girl, I think you'll be thrilled with this game. Everybody likes a good story though, and the one this game provides is so sadly bare boned. The developers should just abandon the Virtools platform and work off a decent gaming engine that would allow them to do more - the horse gets stuck on fences and trees and sometimes the viewpoint is obscured. I really don't know what's with the weird camera angles as well - a lot of the chores play out viewed from above. There also isn't a way of gauging when to jump as in the other games, except to hit the spacebar and hope for the best :-)
The heroine of this game is a plucky red haired teenager named Amanda. She and her father leave the city to live on a horse farm. Not much happens as you try to level your horse up through cross-country, jumping and dressage. The dressage part was very mystifying as the manual didn't have instructions for it. The pattern you are supposed to follow does change colour, but in the end I gathered that your score depends on how smoothly you take the turns and how straight you can go in a line. There is actually only one competition, a jumping one, and it's essential to the plot. There are two "dreams" in this game, which were kind of neat. The goal is to get Amanda's horse, Sapphire, to follow a light in a dark forest while being pursued by a strange force. The second dream is very hard because Sapphire gets stuck on trees, and the view is often blocked by trees too!
This game differs from the others in several ways. First of all, it's very linear and they made things as dumbed down as possible. For example, question marks appear near places of action, so players don't have to go blindly searching around for things. Secondly, the long distances between places has also been removed; now when Amanda wants to travel, she simply exits the farm and you get to choose between the town, where some smart mouthed kids hang out behind the tack shop, or the riding club. Amanda also has a bedroom in the house, where you can change her outfits. Lastly, the savegame file isn't as easily modified as the other two. One could change all the variables and never have to groom a horse again. The variables aren't labelled in the savegame.
On the other hand, the graphics and music are very nice and pleasing. It would be nice if there was more of a "free form" place to ride as in the other games. The chores are also much easier to do, even if there are more of them. It's more apparent when a task is done as well. Sometimes you only need to do a couple of tasks and upon exiting the barn, you'll find that the ones you didn't do have checkmarks.
The ending seems to indicate that there might be a sequel; oh man, I hope not :-D I don't know why I keep getting suckered into these games. My husband watches over my shoulder and shakes his head. "You do know," he said once, "that all these games are basically the same?"
I know, I know. But I keep hoping that one of them will be decent too :-)
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 06:25 pm (UTC)And of course, your character in the game has horsemanship skills that are frankly legendary. He can accurately shoot a bow from horseback - no mean feat - but he can actually stand on the horse while in motion and fire his bow. While facing BACKWARDS.
So yeah, Agro reacts perfectly. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 07:29 am (UTC)And I can't for the life of me get the horse to turn tightly enough to get around the turns on the mountain at the speed needed to stay away from the ghost rider. ;_;
I'm still debating buying Horsez when it's released for the DS.
-Alexandra
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:55 am (UTC)Evidently some Swedish "manga artist" did the character designs for it or something. O.o That's how I first heard of it, and a couple days later, I end up getting a Pony Club membership offer randomly in the mail with something else, and it's like "OMG, the first part of that game!". It was kind of funny.
-Alexandra
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 08:21 am (UTC)-alexandra
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:49 am (UTC)I didn't know that they had come out with Horsez. Ye gods! I played Dogz ten years ago ;-) I like a little plot. Grooming and chores is just...too much grooming and chores for me :-) From the trailers it looks like they took a lot from Saddle Up.
Did you ever play anything out of the Rosemond Hill collection? Oh, I do have the Disney Princess horse game, that was quite entertaining. I should get Barbie Horse Adventures...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 04:54 am (UTC)No, I haven't played the Rosemond Hill games at all.
Equestriad doesn't have chores and it's a lot of fun, although the graphics look painfully blocky now. It even has a replay feature.
I am looking forward to playing Oblivion some day, whenever I finish Morrowind (might have a L33T gaming system by then too) because you can ride horses there.
BTW, are your animal mods for ZT 1 or ZT 2? Do you have them uploaded anywhere? I tried use the APE editor for the first game, but I found it to be too much of a PITA.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:32 am (UTC)