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Games news (11/17/2007): New Orions & Azgard update, free, decent Bejeweled-clone etc

1. Azgard Defence and the two Orions (Legend of Wizards and The Second Age) have been updated!

These three (unfortunately, Pocket PC-only – no Smartphone / Symbian / etc. versions are available) astonishingly good games (Orions: Legend of Wizards and Azgard Defence won this year in the Turn-based Strategy and in the (plain) Strategy categories, respectively - and they certainly deserved it!) are a must-get for all Pocket PC users. (See my review of the latter HERE and that of Doug Goldring of the former HERE.) Now, they have received updates.

The changes to Orions are as follows (with my remarks in italics):

Balance Changes:

* Tython is now slightly stronger. (More HP and attack damage)

* Tython's casting no longer costs water elements. I’m not entirely sure this, along with the previous balance change, was a nice idea – after all, Tython has already been THE best way for mass re-healing. Now, a player having this card will be next to unbeatable (if he’s playing using the right strategy and is, otherwise, decent)

* Lightning Bolt damage increased to 6.

* Remade Avatar. The most important change as I really didn’t see the point in this card at all. Nice the developers have listened to me.

* Guardian: now loses less health each round. Great, now, it’s much more useful because it won’t die that fast

* Fixed cast cost for Spider. This was more of a bug and should belong to the “Common bugs” section IMHO

* Imp: Health increased. Nice idea because it was REALLY weak – now, combined with Diablo (which, unfortunately, has been made pricey), it’s much better than before

* Infernal: Level lowered to 10.

* Diablo casting now cost 1 Fire and weakened a little. Oh dear, it used to be SO cool to quickly make other Fire creatures unbeatable... ;)

Common Bugs:

* AI no longer casts Scylla's abilities too much. Oh dear, now, we can’t take advantage of this bug to quickly bump up our Water elements… ;)

* Leviathan, Nixie, Demon - elemental issues solved. (No more exchange nothing for fire/water). See previous remark

* Fixed Black Market issues.

* Fixed Necromancer multiplayer issue.

Incidentally, the homepage of the developer has a poll called “What game would you like next?”. Currently, “Orions: Duelist Edition (No campaign, all new cards)” has 95% of the (currently, 365) votes. This is certainly good news: we DO want more and even more cards (and, preferably, lounge-based multiplayer support!) Personally, I haven't played the campaign part of the game much - I like the dual gaming much more. Therefore, I'm absolutely satisfied with the (current) poll results.

2. A VERY decent, really multiplatform, freeware Bejeweled clone, Snowed In 6: Deep Freeze, has been released!

Last year, I’ve reviewed the previous game, Snowed In 5 - Flaked Out, in the sequel and kinda liked it – except for the lack of music.

The new sequel is available HERE for download for ALL (!!!) non-Java mobile platforms – even for Symbian S80, S90 and GP2X (not only the "traditional" ones like Pocket PC, MS Smartphone, Symbian S60(v3) / UIQ)! Quite a feat, isn’t it?

The Pocket PC version, as with the previous sequel, supports all screen resolutions (even square screens) and the VGA version natively supports hi-res, which is also very good news. Unfortunately, it (still) has no in-game music, in which it’s certainly inferior to the two Bejeweleds, the absolute star in this category (mostly because of its music). But, after all, you can run a MOD player in the background, playing back the music of Astrware’s classic as is thoroughly explained in my related tutorial. Then, you'll get a 100% - in high resolution if you have a VGA device (again, Bejeweled doesn't support high resolution on VGA devices).

3. OmniG Software has released Super-G Stunt for both the Pocket PC and the MS Smartphone platform

Unfortunately, OmniG Software's new title doesn’t support the 3D accelerators (the 2700G in the Dell Axim x50v / x51v Pocket PC's (or the GoForce 5500 in the O2 XDA Flame / Toshi G900.) Their only title to support the 2700G (but not the 5500) was Chopper Fight reviewed HERE.

As these games heavily depend on 3D, this is pretty much a showstopper for me, mostly because the new game is suffering from the same problem as ALL the other OmniG Software titles; most importantly, the REALLY repetitive music and pretty dull gameplay. Not recommended - if you want to play something like this, go for for example Warelex' Sky Racer instead (reviewed HERE) instead (not that that title were THAT good...).