The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition

There's been a lot of Zelda stuff going on this year, being the 25 anniversary of the original game's release in Japan. The 3DS saw the release of a 3D remastering of Ocarina of Time, the first two games were included in the batch of free downloads that early adopters of the system got, and later this year we'll get to play the first new console game in the series since 2006. The most recent part of the celebration was the release of the (temporarily) free Four Swords Anniversary Edition for download on the DSi and 3DS stores, which takes the special multiplayer mode from the A Link to the Past port for Game Boy Advance, and adds a single player option and a bunch of new content.

The one player mode functions well enough, giving you control of two different Links (they are separated by the power of the mystical and stupidly named Four Sword) and letting you switch between them or have one follow the other with a button tap. It's not nearly as fun though as the multiplayer, which was how the game was supposed to be played. I had only one other person to play with, but the game (obviously) supports up to four, letting you link up multiple systems and work together to save Zelda from Vaati. The structure is pretty simple. There are three different dungeons you can tackle in any order, consisting of two floors full of puzzles, traps, monsters, and rupees, and third with a boss. If you clear all three floors and collect enough rupees, a great fairy will reward you with a key. If all the players have all three keys, they can take on the final dungeon and beat the game. You can then unlock harder passes through the game, and new to this version, there are additional dungeons, some of which are based on previous Zelda games and are interesting in their own right.

It's hard to stress how much more fun the game is with multiple players. Instead of worrying about two different things at once, you can just focus on yourself, and put your heads together to solve the simple puzzles and work together to get past some of the obstacles, such as carrying your friends over a platform only you can walk on or defeating an enemy that requires you to throw it at another Link so he can slash it in midair. The dungeons are randomized so it's still fun to visit them with different people and improve your score. It's pretty lean as far as Zelda games go, consisting only of a few dungeons that take maybe 15 minutes each to clear per pass. But it's a lot of fun to play repeatedly with friends, and it's especially worth checking out for free if you have the right system for it.

Mighty Flip Champs!

When I bought Shantae: Risky's Revenge from the DSi store, I put twenty bucks in my account, because the game cost twelve and the next smaller payable increment was ten. That left my balance at eight, money I didn't spend until recently, when I decided to get Mighty Flip Champs, the first DSi release by the same team that made Shantae. I didn't like it quite as much, but it still provided several hours of entertaining, mind-bending puzzles.

The game doesn't really have a story, beyond the very basic premise of a girl and her animal companions traveling through dimensions or something. It's just there to set up the puzzles, which place you in a room, where you have to gather all of the other animals and then get to the frog to win, and get to the next stage. The twist is that each stage has multiple layers to flip through, all with small differences that you need to exploit to get to the end. So one layer might have a dead end, but flipping to the next one might open up a hole that lets you through. It starts pretty simply, but the game ramps up the difficulty quickly, tossing in new elements and increasing the complexity until you get to some really tricky situations. You are timed on every stage and challenged to get the best time possible, and if you touch any spikes or accidentally flip your way into a wall, you have to start over.

There's a really nice balance between challenge and player friendliness, as I only got really frustrated a couple times. Usually the game requires you to think without stumping you too badly. The slow drip of new toys like color coded blocks that can be altered by switches and portals from one place to another keep things constantly fresh. And if a puzzle does annoy you, there's a good chance the next one will be a bit easier on you, or at least switch to a kind of challenge you're better suited for. There's a total of 41 stages, including five that have the level do the flipping for you on a timer, which plays to a slightly different skill set, and a final monster of a level that tests everything you've learned. It's a nice package, with certainly enough content and incentive to replay levels to be worth the eight dollars. It's got a nice look and some surprisingly catchy music too, so it's hard to find much fault with the game in any area. Definitely a pleasant way to use up a leftover balance.

Okamiden

I think Capcom would have been better off making a straight sequel to Okami. The concept of Okamiden as a handheld companion to the original game, taking place in many of the same areas but putting twists on them and telling a sort of tangential story is fine. But it took me over twenty hours to beat and has sections that can for many minutes without save points, which is sort of ridiculous for a handheld game. The game's reach exceeds the intended scope of a portable experience and if anything the game wears out its welcome faster than its notoriously long predecessor. The actual playing of the game and telling of the story is fine, but there are issues with the pace that bog down the experience a bit.

In Okamiden you play Chibiterasu, the young offspring of Amaterasu, the wolf goddess from the first game. Only nice months after evil was supposedly vanquished, it has returned, and you are called into service to find some friends and use the celestial brush to get rid of it once more. The brush is a natural match for the DS' touch screen and stylus, and the system definitely works more smoothly than it did on console. You don't start out with many techniques, but you quickly pick some familiar ones up, along with a few new skills, mostly associated with specific partners who ride on your back and can help you fight certain enemies or cross certain dangerous terrain. The game's look handles the transition to the DS hardware remarkably well, definitely with a blockier style than before but with the general aesthetic in place, and even a usable camera and only a few issues with slowdown. The game design is necessarily a little more narrow and boxed off, but it's hard to call the platform change anything other than a success.

So the game progresses as you revisit some of the locations from the original and discover new caves and dungeons to explore within them, while accompanied by various children who mostly happen to be related to or at least resemble existing characters. They replace Issun as your connection to other humans, and help in combat and puzzle solving. The story starts out nice and simple, feeling like a regular little adventure, though things get more dramatic later on when the villain is revealed, and eventually actually surprisingly touching towards the end. I would have really liked the game a lot of it actually wrapped up about fifteen or sixteen hours in like it felt like it was going to, but things kept repeatedly getting tacked on that I need to finish, including an entire additional flow-breaking dungeon to finish along with a new kid to worry about. Eventually it got back on track, but then a twist happens that essentially negates everything you did in the last couple hours, and then there's still another whole last section involving a pretty uninteresting set of challenges and a bunch of repetitive combat. The fighting is the thing that feels the most dumbed down from the PS2 game, and I mostly avoided it where I could, since the only reward was cash that I didn't really need to spend. So being forced to slog through a dozen battles without any of the nifty puzzles breaking it up was a disappointing way to wrap up the game.

And then after finishing the final boss fight, the last cut scene lasts for twenty five minutes before the credits start. Again, this is a game for a system that's most useful feature is it can be played on a bus. I feel like more games I've played in the last few years haven't known when to quit than they did before. It's not about how long the story lasts, as I said twenty hours is long for a DS game but not on its own that out of control. The issue is the pace. If the story has taken a turn and feels like it's racing towards a conclusion, then that conclusion should be brief in comparison to the preceding sections of the game. In the past I've lamented games where what is essentially the third act is over too quickly, but that was probably wrong. If something feels like it's the climax, it shouldn't have the same pace as the rising action. It's a feel thing, so I don't mind a little stretching here or there, but Okamiden definitely didn't know when to quit, and that soured my perception of the whole thing a bit. It's a cute, solid little action/adventure that works quite well on the hardware, but it does have some problems weighing it down.

Best Games of 2010

2010 was almost a lost year when it comes to these lists, because for about two thirds of it I didn't have much spending money to actually check out new stuff. I ended up with some lists I'm happy with though, even if I would have liked to have some more candidates available to get on. This list of games is pretty heavy on the first part of the year when I was actually getting paid, but it was a strong enough period that I'm comfortable saying these are all definitely worth playing.

Best of 2010

8. Shantae: Risky's Revenge (DSi)


The download-only sequel to the Game Boy Color cult hit seemed to get into a lot more hands, if only because it was on a system people were actually still using. The game's not perfect - I wish it had been just a tad meatier in terms of truly compelling stuff to do, but the dungeons that are there are fun, the platforming is solid, and the art and dialogue are completely charming. A fun, quick adventure.

7. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Multi)


I don't know if Call of Duty purists will ever allow Treyarch to think they made a game better than what Infinity Ward could do, but they managed their strongest effort to date with Black Ops. The campaign managed to avoid most of the series' traditional pitfalls and had an enjoyable if completely over the top story leading you from gun fight to gun fight. And judging by the fact that my brother is still playing the online almost nightly, I'd say they did a good job with that part as well.

6. Costume Quest (Multi)


Much like Shantae, Costume Quest is a game that could have probably used more content but was still pretty delightful while it lasted. The combat was simple but rewarding, and the adventure elements were clever without being obtuse. Add Double Fine's continuing excellence in the field of funny dialogue that actually amuses, and it's certainly worth a download.

5. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Multi)


If this year was any indication, DICE is going to have a hard time ever making a game that really surpasses Call of Duty's stranglehold on the hardcore modern shooter market. But those who played it liked it a lot, both for the multiplayer which nicely translates the grand experience from the PC to a slightly smaller scale, and the campaign, which while a bit sloppy, is also in some ways a lot more interesting than the chain of scripted events that has come to define the genre.

4. Heavy Rain (PS3)


Heavy Rain is a very polarizing game, and for good reasons. If you don't like quick time events you'll never get into it, and the plot really goes off the rails by the end. But it's also amazingly well presented, the kind of thing that designers with respect for actual story structure could do a lot with. Heavy Rain provided some of the most tense and thrilling sequences I played through all year, and I didn't have to kill hundreds of people to do it. If nothing else, it's a very interesting game.

3. Darksiders (Multi)


Darksiders is a game I wish we saw more of, something that came out of a true place of creative inspiration (even if it was a silly one) rather than a board room meeting trying to figure out what the kids are into these days, while still having the look and polish of a large budget title. The combat was imperfect but enjoyable, and the puzzle-filled dungeons were some of my favorites in a game in years. There, you see? You can write about Darksiders without mentioning Zelda.

2. God of War III (PS3)


I was surprised to see a number of people recently express disappointment at how this game turned out. God of War has always been about pairing bloody, over-the-top hack and slash action with light puzzle solving and platforming in a pretty game engine, and this game's PS3-backed visuals and new twists on the old ideas meant that it did them better than ever before. What were they expecting? God of War III is awesome.

1. Red Dead Redemption (Multi)


Grand Theft Auto IV was acclaimed upon its release but then seemed to leave a lot of bad will behind afterward, which is why it was impressive seeing how many people said that Red Dead made up for it. It has the best shooting in a Rockstar game to date, and the setting is one of their best realized as well. Add a truly likable protagonist at the center of maybe their best story, and Redemption has a real case as the company's best game ever. Add the best ending all year, and it's a heck of a product.

Notable Exception

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Multi)

I started playing this last week, and while it sort of feels like just more of the second game, that game was also sort of awesome, so I'm having a pretty good time. I haven't played nearly enough of it to put it on the list, but the campaign's potential along with how interesting the multiplayer looks makes me pretty sure it would have made it if I had. I just hope they don't keep pumping these out and make it tiring.

Rhythm Heaven

Rhythm Heaven is the sequel to a Game Boy Advance game that only came out in the DS, which makes some amount of sense because it is a pretty weird series, although putting it onto a touch-based platform is a perfect fit which definitely justifies bringing this one over. It plays out as a series of mini games where the player taps, rubs, and flicks the screen to achieve objectives based on various rhythm-based skills, periodically reaching a checkpoint where they have to put several of these skills together to move on to the next group of games. It's a fun and rewarding system, constantly dangling a carrot in front of you so you have something to work toward. Doing especially well on a game earns medals, which unlock other toys and things to mess with, and achieving a perfect score will grant access to further diversions. And while the games can get frustrating, the game will never lose you because you can opt to skip one if it's proving to be overly difficult. You get penalized a bit for resorting to this, but if you just want to play the other games it's no big deal.

Not including extra gadgets there are 25 different games, and they all feature their own music, specific play mechanic, and unique and often bizarrely humorous premise. You might be clapping in sync with a bunch of monkeys in the audience at a concert, matching a singing moai head's vocals, or flinging eggs into your mouth at a breakneck pace. When the game works it can be transcendent, especially when you get to the harder levels but have something down and can basically do it in your sleep. Unfortunately, not all the games are created equal, and some have a hard time being fun when they're either too demanding in an area your musical mind can't really handle or what they're doing just doesn't make sense for whatever reason. It's just a bit too hit or miss to be a truly great product. On the bright side though, you are free to mostly ignore the things you don't like, but if you're like me you won't want to do that. There's plenty of incentive to always try to improve on how you did last time, and while a lot of the music is pretty goofy, it tends to stick in your head long after you turn off the system. I typically prefer more traditional story-based games, but this was certainly a good time.

Kirby Super Star Ultra

Kirby Super Star Ultra is an upgrade of a Super Nintendo game with improved graphics and more content. The original was already loaded with stuff to do, so the kart is fairly packed to the brim with activities. It's really a collection of games, including a few touchscreen-based competitive modes but mostly focused on an interesting mix of takes on the normal Kirby gameplay. Kirby runs, jumps, floats around, and can absorb 19 different powers from various enemies that occupy the levels. There's a surprising amount of depth to these abilities, with most of them featuring several different attacks you can figure out, and when you add it all up Kirby's range of skills is quite impressive.Also, at any time you can turn one of those powers into a buddy to help you, which can be controlled by either the computer or a friend with a DS if you have one. They're usually pretty helpful, even if the computer has a tendency to be pretty bad at jumping puzzles.

Things starts out really easy in the first game, but as more unlock they get tougher, especially if you're interested in beating your high score. Some are standard platforming adventures, but others are races or scavenger hunts or have added time pressure. Eventually you get to the arenas, which are just making you face off against a series of bosses with no extra lives, and are definitely the toughest thing in the game. Some of the games are far less linear than others, making you figure out the right way, which makes getting to the end more interesting even if getting from place to place is generally pretty simple. My favorite mode is new to the DS game, letting you play as Meta Knight through most of Kirby's stages, and his skills and bonus powers are a lot of fun after Kirby's relative helplessness. There's some good bonus content too, like multiplayer in pretty much all of the games and galleries with all the movies and sounds you could want. It's just a good time for anyone who enjoys playing games starring that little pink ball, and surprisingly loaded with replayability.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

If nothing else, Rockstar Leeds should be commended for bringing the Grand Theft Auto experience to handheld systems while keeping the spirit totally intact. The regular gameplay translates in a playable fashion, and the new elements they introduce with the touch screen are actually some of the best ideas the series has had in a while. Holding down a couple buttons to blast everyone in sight isn't as interesting as a real combat system, but there's actually more variety in the mission design than there was in Grand Theft Auto IV, and the story seemed to last the right amount of time before wrapping up in the right over-the-top kind of way.

I think what makes the game work is that the touch stuff actually sells the whole being a criminal aspect of the series. You don't just jump in a car and watch a quick animation of Huang hotwiring it, you do so yourself with one of a number of methods based on how advanced the vehicle is. Bashing a lock or planting an explosive requires your active input. You can make your own molotov cocktails and manually turn over a stalling engine. It just adds to the verisimilitude of being a thug in Liberty City despite the extreme overhead camera angle. The driving is surprisingly decent, it's a bit easy to collide with stuff that you didn't see coming until too late, but the cars handle well enough to make your way around without too much trouble.

So you're Huang, and you arrive in Liberty in unceremonious fashion, left for dead and robbed of a valuable heirloom you were meant to deliver. What follows is standard GTA mission structure as you do the bidding of various scum around the city trying to track down who betrayed you. Liberty is recreated pretty accurately from its depiction in IV, with no shared characters but a recognizable layout and gang infrastructure. Those gangs are as important as they've ever been in this series, because they're key to the biggest addition to the gameplay - drug dealing. I'm surprised there was never any controversy around a game for this system providing a fleshed out mechanic for buying and selling coke, heroin, and other narcotics for profit. You will occasionally have to bring some drugs to a meet to continue the story or receive some as a reward, but you can spend all day tracking down leads and flipping goods if you want to. It's a surprisingly enjoyable distraction from the story, in addition to old standbys like rampages and checkpoint races.

The story doesn't really do anything the series hasn't before, but the writing is actually pretty good, to the point and often humorous, often breaking the fourth wall which is a new thing for them. One of the issues with Rockstar's open world games is that they often get too far from the main plot thread at a certain point, having you work for seemingly random people who hardly have anything to do with what the protagonist would actually care about. They do a good job of avoiding that here, tending to bounce you back and forth between the same superiors through the whole story, and even the more tangential characters have a reason to be talking to Huang. Obviously the tightness of the story is helped out by it being an acceptable for a GTA game's plot to only last six hours if it's on a portable system, but it still felt like a worthwhile experience. Not everything translates perfectly to the platform, but it really did work better than I expected, and deserved the Grand Theft Auto name.

Shantae: Risky's Revenge

I first heard of the Game Boy Color game Shantae from a video playthrough of it by a member of a message board I go to, and while I never played it personally, I wasn't alone in that respect (it's rare enough to go for over $150 used on Amazon), and I was still impressed by its charm and interesting game design. It was enough of a cult hit for the developer WayForward to work on a sequel, which they finally released for the DSi's download service last week. Risky's Revenge isn't quite as meaty as the first game, originally intended for multiple episodic releases, but it improves on its predecessor in almost every way.

I wouldn't usually call a handheld game gorgeous, but there are few other words that correctly describe the game's graphics. In recent years I've rediscovered an appreciation for 2D sprite art and animation that went dormant long ago when game consoles started pumping out 3D polygons, and the 16 bit-style visuals here are as impressive as they get. Bright, colorful, smoothly animated, it looks worlds better than the original while still retaining the style and charm it had in spades. It sounds nice too, with lots of tunes that strike a balance between nice orchestration and classic gaming sounds. The story is simple but enjoyable, peppered with funny characters and meta-humor that works more often than it doesn't.

The game itself is fun too. The Shantae style of gameplay is a bit of a hybrid, mixing Metroid-like exploration-friendly platforming with dungeons filled with enemies and puzzles that feel more like a side-scrolling The Legend of Zelda than anything else. I was disappointed that there were only two "real" dungeons in the game's quick five hour span, with other opportunities for such replaced with inferior alternatives; a tower with a time limit that requires you to battle your way through (combat not being the game's strong suit) and a tribute to classic scrolling shooters (interesting, but they don't end up doing enough with it). Still though, the standard flow of running, jumping, swatting enemies, transforming into animals, and searching every nook and cranny for special items to upgrade your equipment and skills is a lot of fun, and it all seems like the right amount of game for the price. Probably one of the few DSiWare items really worth seeking out.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

I've seen a fair amount of people call Spirit Tracks better than its DS predecessor from a couple years ago, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I finished that game a couple months ago, and while that may have caused the tiniest bit of fatigue, I don't think it was significantly inferior. Spirit Tracks does have more devious puzzles and more unique items in its assortment of equipment, though it has its share of faults as well, and I see them more as nice complements for each other in between the more significant console entries in the series instead of competitors.

The basic structure is pretty much the same. Instead of hiring a ship to bring you around the ocean, you're the newest official engineer in Hyrule, using a train to transport yourself around the world. At first I enjoyed the simple fun of conducting, choosing a path, blowing the whistle and keeping various monsters at bay. In time they managed to make it more of a slog than the boat, forcing you to return to places you just were, avoid increasingly irritating enemy trains, bring cargo from place to place, and escort various people who seem more concerned about obeying the rules of the rails than letting you get on with the game. It becomes stifling, making you wonder why you can't just hop off the train and walk somewhere that you can see instead of having to magically restore the tracks to that location with busywork. And continuing with the lack of rewarding side quests, the only solace is the dungeons. Like Hourglass, there is one central location you have to visit several times, and a bunch of more traditional dungeons you visit in between.

The central dungeon is better than the other game's, mostly because it isn't timed, plus it introduces a new kind of gameplay where Zelda can take control of a set of armor and help you get past certain obstacles. On occasion this will seem like more trouble than it's worth, though I liked the change of pace, and the way they introduce the basics of telling her where to go is one of the series' most elegant introductions in a while. I mentioned the appeal of more difficult puzzles in the dungeons, although the first three felt to me about as challenging as the ones in the first game, that is, not very much. The last couple get much more interesting, though I wouldn't say more esoteric puzzles are necessarily more ultimately satisfying, and there's only so much you can accomplish with the simplified interface of playing on a tiny screen from one angle with a touch interface. The boss fights are definitely harder and more entertaining, and while I'd probably take certain parts of this game's final area than the other's, there were bits that were frustrating too. I've seen complaints about the games explaining basic information way too much, but on the other hand it never bothers to mention certain mechanics that could end up being essential to finishing certain activities.

I felt like the story had similar appeal to Hourglass, jumping a hundred years into the future and continuing the series' current trend of actually maintaining continuity between games. The continued absence of Ganon was appreciated, and I liked that Zelda had a significant part to play for once instead of just being an erstwhile damsel in distress. For some reason these games have reminded me more of anime than others in the series, it's partly the art style but also just some elements of the plots. There's an enjoyable, simple arc to it, and it's occasionally funny as well. The game looks relatively nice, although I noticed more situations where the game would intentionally focus on something that looks wrong like a closeup of a bad texture, which was frankly odd. I liked the music quite a bit too, I had a few problems sometimes getting the sequences where you accompany someone with the flute to work, but for the most part the tunes were refreshingly unique. There were too many fixable issues with the game to say I really loved it, but I did like my time with it more often than not.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Phantom Hourglass isn't without its faults, but it's still a fun entry in the long-running series. Maybe if I had played it when it came out I would have had the same complaints about reusing the same items and general progression that Zelda games have had for such a long time, but since I haven't played a full game in the series since late in 2006, it was just the helping of adventuring I wanted.

It features what I believe is the fifth instance in the series of the same Link from a previous adventure being revisited, and does the plot that's typical of that sort of thing, transporting him to some other location that may or may not have existed while being vague about the specifics. This is the first time he's brought Zelda with him, though she still spends most of the game captured or in peril, and it's Link's job to explore the world and visit a series of dungeons to collect doodads that will allow him to blah blah blah save the world. I actually enjoyed the story for the most part, as the complete absence of Ganon was refreshing (though I saw some possible family resemblance with another character), and the backstory was somewhat interesting and presented well with pages from a storybook. The game also features possibly my favorite NPC of the series, the ship captain Linebeck who helps Link travel the seas.

The main change this game makes to the series is obviously the controls, as the whole thing can be played entirely with the stylus, though a few button shortcuts make things a bit easier. A fair bit of the puzzles while running around above ground focus on playing with the DS' features, like asking you to take notes and draw stuff on your map to figure out a pattern or using the microphone to get someone's attention. It's a bit gimmicky, but didn't seem obnoxious. There's a fair bit of dungeon exploring to do, with about seven you have to finish in addition to the Temple of the Ocean King, which proves to be the game's worst element. The regular temples are pretty fun to complete if altogether a bit easy, though I felt rewarded and interested in continuing the whole time I was in them. The boss fights tended to be easy, though they were generally at least fun to beat up.

That Ocean King temple though... it's rough. Basically, it's a timed stealth section that you have to return to repeatedly, and there's only one place in the whole thing where you can save your progress without having to repeat places you've been to. Return trips are always faster thanks to the new equipment you've gotten since last time, but it's still more of a chore than an interesting challenge. It really just doesn't seem like a well thought out idea. The game's successor revisits the same concept, so we'll see if they got it right. The game also didn't quite have the sense of reward to it I hope from in Zelda games, as there just isn't enough land mass to hide the right amount of secrets. All of the optional heart containers I knew about are hidden behind frustrating minigames, and the ship parts and extra time in the Ocean King temple felt like poor rewards for all the treasure maps I sought out. Also, locking out the fairy rewards until you collect enough doodads seemed lame. While not quite a classic, it was still a solid Zelda game, which makes it a pretty darn good one overall.

Game Update 13: DSiWare Round-Up

The last handheld system I owned was the Game Boy Color, but I recently reentered that arena when I bought a white DSi bundle (I wanted the blue one with a couple Mario games, but I couldn't find it). The "bundle" aspect meant it came with five DSiWare games and applications already installed in addition to the default ones, and here are some brief thoughts on them.

Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters

The Brain Age mini-games are neat little challenges, although I'm skeptical of their actual ability to measure how good your brain's feeling. The daily brain age check picks three of the games to test you on (including ones you haven't unlocked to play whenever you want), although it seems to hone in on ones you suck at. I'm pretty good at every game except for the one that asks you to memorize a list of 30 words, and the game seems to know this, throwing it at me every single day. Not being good at one thing shouldn't bring down my entire score as much as it does. Still, mostly brain exercises.

Brain Age Express: Math

I'm better at this one, mostly because the memorization one is easier to handle. I've always had a mathematical mind, though the game still thinks I could be doing a lot better.

Brain Age Express: Sudoku

I've never actually played Sudoku before, so this is a nice introduction. It's irritating that both of the times I've marked the wrong number, it's been because the controls failed me and not my thinking, especially when one mistake adds twenty minutes to your final time. Still, Sudoku is the kind of brain teaser I like, and they're pretty fun to solve.

Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics

A few card games, one of which is kind of boring, another is a variety of poker that no one plays anymore, and the other three basically variants of games I've only played in drinking contexts. They work well enough, but I can't imagine many people who would want to play cards without the human element.

Photo Clock

There's a clock you can use your photos with, and an alarm function. That's about it. I guess they didn't want to put too much free stuff you'd actually consider buying in the bundle.