Dodge That Anvil!

For the past few nights, I've been busy writing for About This Particular Mac (ATPM) a review of the game Dodge That Anvil! (DTA!) from Rabidlab. As the name aptly describes, the goal of the game is to avoid being hit by anvils falling from the sky, while pulling carrots and such out of the ground. Well, it's just a computer game, something to while away the time.

I used to think it would be nice to work as a game tester. Supposedly Nintendo has employees whose sole responsibility is to test out the new games made for the consoles or handheld devices. How cool a job is that? Get paid to play. After finishing the review of DTA! I don't think it is that cool anymore. When there's a condition to doing what you think is enjoyable, it's not fun any more. I suppose those Nintendo testers at some point would rather be pushing paper or finding values with VLookup() in Excel. Too much play can make Jack a dull boy, too. While I like DTA! a lot for being relatively easy to play, at times I HAD to play it just to gather enough info about it for the review. Unlike traditional magazine, online mag like ATPM doesn't have the constrain of space. As long as the review doesn't turn into an encyclopedia entry, one can write as much as applicable. I started testing the game using the Toon challenge level, in which one cannot die, just to advance as fast as possible through the various levels the game offer. But then I HAD to try out the other challenge levels to see the differences. Also, even though I already had the full version of the game, I HAD to install a demo on a different computer to learn about the demo's limitation. When one HAS to do things, the end result ceases to be enjoyable. While I strongly believe in the great work ATPM does and really want to help further its goal of disseminating Mac info to the world, I didn't have as much fun playing DTA! as I thought I would.

Now that the review is done with, I'll allow a few weeks of zero DTA! then go back to it. I'll play the Toon level again and this time will go all the way to the final level.