Petz Horsez 2

Petz Horsez 2

First off, sorry for the lack of game reviews -- I haven't been feeling the best, with the heat and blood work and crap. So this review might not be what it could be. But now I'm doing a review for a beautiful game (for PC, there's also a Wii version, but I don't really like consoles), Petz Horsez 2. The name makes it sound like a really shitty game (something as shitty as Let's Ride! Corral Club) but it's actually very good. Developed by a little French company called Lexis Numerique, and published by Ubisoft.

Description (from Amazon):
Saddle up for fun in a game that combines your passion for horses with thrills and adventure! You'll be rewarded for raising horses, training champions, and saving the ranch in Petz Horsez 2.

On the back of the box, it says there's different ways the story can end. I've played it several times and only gotten two different endings, which is also confirmed by snooping around in the program folder.

Also, in the manual, here's an introduction:

Emma, a young Californian passionate about horse riding, has arrived in France for work experience with a famous Parisian vet before she finishes her studies. Stuck in Provence because her taxi broke down, Emma meets Flora and her nephew Raphaël, both of whom work in a superb stable not far from the picturesque village of Bélèou. However, dramatic events are simmering beneath the surface of the apparently idyllic stable. Marie, the stable’s owner, has mysteriously disappeared, and the Mayor of Bélèou has his eye on the stable...will you be able to solve the mystery and keep the wonderful stable in the hands of its rightful owner?

Not bad, pretty accurate, although the nephew is actually Oliver. I looked around in the game files again, and opened up some text files under the Asset\US\Database\Feature\Dialogs folder, which contain all the dialog, and found out that the character is actually listed under Raphael! (I guess that somehow it got changed over during the French-to-English translation and they didn't update the manual.)

I'm not going to give away any more of the plot, other than to say that the mayor is very creepy and looks ugly as hell.

Okay, now the game. Beautiful graphics, although it can be buggy in a few places (one example is if you're looking for a camera crew, it'll be nowhere to found -- until you go to talk to the priest and find out they're invisible! I'm not gonna give any more away, but you'll remember if you get to that point.) Nice gameplay -- you buy and sell horses, train and care for them, buy stuff on market days, talk to the villagers to find out their stories, and also try to solve the mystery. The game runs on "days", with about 1 second per day. You can only work with the horses from 8am to 8pm, rather realistic.

Here's the stud farm:


That's where the care and training of horses takes place. There's also the village, where a lot of the plot takes place. And of course, the countryside. (I'm not going to take screenshots of them, as there would be too many -- However, I will take some on request.)

It's a very well-made game, not many criticisms except for the invisible camera crew. I'd recommend buying it -- I got it for $20 and man it's a deal.

Talking about vintage video games...

Harvey Smith Showjumper

So I downloaded this Commodore 64 game called Harvey Smith Showjumper. It's....interesting. It would be a lot easier if I actually had a joystick but I'll survive. (I used WinVICE for my emulator. Not too bad.)

If you have no idea what the C64 is, check out this: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=98

No CDs -- they used cartridges, cassettes (yes, the same kind you play music on, except if you put it into a cassette player it'd sound like dial-up), and floppy disks. Couldn't find a description, really. But the game's from the 80s. So I started up the game and got this opening screen, which is nice considering it's 8-bit graphics.


I couldn't figure out how to get past it for a minute, it just said "Press Fire To Continue." Then I figured out to set up the numeric keypad as the joystick. Yay! So this is pretty simple enough:

I just hit P to play the course. I'm not quite sure how the course designer would work, I didn't get a chance to muck around in that. So I end up riding a prancing horse:

I have a habit of using the arrow keys so it took a bit to turn him around. And it's pretty hard to hit the print screen button at the same time, so the next screenshot, which is supposed to be the horse jumping, isn't so good:

So...an interesting game if you like 8-bit games. Or old computers. Or C64s. I like C64s, although I don't have one.

Want to try it yourself? Here's the game: http://www.c64.com/games/no-frame.php?showid=2160&searchfor=&searchfor_special=h&from=10&range=10

And an emulator: http://www.viceteam.org/

A video game that would make Cindy proud.

Let's Ride: Corral Club

My next game will be Let's Ride: Corral Club. There is no way to describe how TERRIBLE, how much of an ABOMINATION this game is!

Description (from Amazon):
Let's Ride: Corral Club lets you own and care for the horse of your dreams! Select a horse, choose a riding outfit and prepare for rodeo events. See if you can make it to the National Championship! Celebrate your accomplishments by viewing your high scores, ribbons and pictures of you and your horse. Save your memories in the Scrapbook and share photos of you & your horse with friends

First off.... this game refused to install on Vista. The Installshield would start up, go through the "preparing installation" thing then just disappear. I tried everything I could think of -- copying installation files to the HDD, patching InstallShield, editing INI files, compatibility mode, etc, etc. In the end, I didn't get it *properly* installed -- I just copied the program files from the disc. It worked fine by launching the executable.

Next - every time I tried to Alt+Tab to paste a screenshot into Paint then switched back, it'd just show a white box. Had to kill the process to get rid of it. Found a program that would take my screenshots (it's called ScreenStamp!) but it left an annoying date on the image. That's the price I pay for reviewing annoying games.

First off, the main menu:
That horrible shade of pink is enough to almost tear my eyes out. And the flowers make me want to yank out my hair at the same time.

So you start a new game and get a horse. And the default name of the horse is "Rainbow." Cindy, I wasn't aware you became a game developer, but you need to try a little bit harder. 'Cause this game SUCKS.
So you groom your horse. But it's not really grooming. 'Cause you don't have to do it -- all it is is running a brush over his coat. It doesn't make him any cleaner or any dirtier. And you can also feed him apples and carrots and of course he'll never colic.

So you can take your horse out to ride. You can choose between practice, competition, or the pasture. So I picked practice. I have no idea what happened here, but somehow the character turned invisible (stupid buggy games making the screenshots not work. DAMMIT. And stupid runaway horse called Rainbow, 'cause Rainbow is a dumb name for a horse, you hear me??)

If you happen to make a really tight turn around a barrel, the character screams "YEE-HAW!" or "VERY IMPRESSIVE!" or something equally annoying in her voice which hurts my ears. And if you ride in the competitions and win, this sugary high pitched voice says something which I can't make out because it's so high pitched and sugary and LOUD.... Damn, maybe it'll help if I turn down the speakers just a LITTLE BIT....

The pasture? Well, I thought it was going to be galloping through lush flowers and butterfly farts or something like that. But no, you get this flat field and you have to try to "beat" the time spinning around the barrels. At first they're simple, but then they get harder and harder until you get impossibly timed patterns.

My favourite thing to do in the pasture is to go around the starting line and kick the barrels around.
Basically.... this game is for 5-year-olds. The worst horse game I've ever played. And I tend to be generous when reviewing games.

Video Games: Round Two!

Championship Horse Trainer

I couldn't find a description for this through Google and I lost the box for it (the disc is in a plastic sleeve)....so oh well.

I got this for $3.99 or so at one of those "liquidation" stores. I'll say it was a pretty good deal. The graphics sometimes get buggered up, which occasionally lead to funny results -- for example, one time when the character was supposed to be galloping the horse in the little paddock, the horse was missing underneath her and she was just sliding along! Another time, I accidentally went through the fence surrounding the boarding farm and got stuck and had to reload.

First off, when you start a new game, you get to pick your character/game mode/difficulty/etc etc. Their eyes scare me!

You start out with about $9,500, and you can pick between two farms to buy your first horse from. After you pick out your first horse, you have three boarding farms -- however, only the first one is available until you win a few races.

When training or in races, it's a good idea to use your whip liberally (the right control key), which would seriously piss off the characters in Thoroughbred and have them whine to boycott the game's publisher.

(Note: this screen shot was taken from a game I had in progress already. So I'm on the fanciest boarding farm.)

However, if you whip your horse too much, he'll throw you. Strangely enough, he never throws you in the races. And after he tramples you, you just get right back up like nothing happened.

Another weird aspect that if you're not riding your horse and he's not resting or eating or anything, he's off loose....wearing a saddle and a bridle. Um, isn't that a bit dangerous?

To get good results in the races, you should train every day. Although the skills are incredibly slow to increase. Oh, and make sure your horse is happy. He can be an incredibly picky eater, and only like to rest in certain areas.

If you win enough races, the boarding farm manager may pay you money to breed to one of his mares. Keep an eye on the pregnancy in the barn -- and when the colt becomes available for sale, buy it! It's almost always better than the father.

When you're talking to various characters in the games (for tips and things), there's a bit of broken English. For example, the vet often says, "Oh! Look the time!" (or something along those lines) when she's leaving. And for some reason, when you're interacting with your horse, "Stroke" came out as "Stress." Which makes it sound not very nice.

It's also cute that when you interact with your horse and make it happy, he sometimes does a little dance:

Video games, anyone?

Let's Ride Silver Buckle Stables I got an e-mail recently asking me what I thought of reviewing horse-related games, and I thought, "Great! There's no way I'm doing that!" So here we have our first excited volunteer. Everyone meet Aimee. She's our video game and whatnot guest reviewer until she feels like not doing it anymore. And with no further ado... Okay, let's start -- I'm a bit of a gamer. I play Sid Meier's Civilization, SimCity, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and Railroad Tycoon. Mostly strategy or simulation games. But I also like horse games. I don't have a huge collection yet, but I'll do a few reviews of what I do have. First off -- Let's Ride! Silver Buckle Stables. This is one of my first horse games, so I may be a bit biased, but whatever. Description (from Amazon):

You're the owner of a new horse farm, Silver Buckle Stables! Choose your horse, pick out your riding outfits and even accessorize your horse with saddles, ribbons and more. The competitions are tough, but practice hard at the corral to perfect your riding technique and you'll make it to the Equestrian Center where you can show off your skills to win blue ribbons and buckles!

When you first start, you get to choose whether you're a girl or boy, then you get to customize your character. Then you get to choose your horse. One great thing about this game is that there are plenty of ways to customize it, unlike some other games where there's only about three or four different coats. The game is about Western riding and competitions -- and there's little irritation. When you're riding the horse, the character is holding the reins with both hands, as in English riding. There are lots of trails at first, but after a while it gets boring and makes you wish you could import your own maps. I will say now this game has pretty decent graphics for being a budget game. This is a pretty easy game. No plot, and if you want, you can just ride around the trails all day. Grooming and feeding is simplistic. A bit too simplistic, but at least you're not spending 5 minutes grooming after every ride (as some games make you do.) In the barn, you can also pick up treats -- when you feed them to your horse, their levels in the health meter (lower left hand corner) go up. Good idea to always carry a few. As you go through competitions and get "Silver Buckles", the horse's "hearts" increase. Which makes it "run" (huh?) faster and increases the effects of treats. As well, you get more customization options, and you get to pick out more horsies! Yay! In total you can have four horses. Once you're done all the competitions and exploring the trails and stuff, there's not much left to do. And it does get repetitive after a while. And if you like a challenge... this isn't for you. One last thought: It's fun to gallop through the streambeds trying to avoid the rocks!