Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest
Score: 85% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Majesco Developer: LightWeight Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Graphics & Sound: Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest is a cute strategy game very similar to Pikmin. You play as a big, orange, spiky creature named Dorian. With the help of some really cool looking creatures, and of course the creatures of the forest, you work to save all the trees from being cut down. You'll also be in charge of replanting trees to make the forest as green as it can possibly be. Graphically, the game looks very much like a child's cartoon show. The characters are all very simple, but they're also very cute. It is also very bright. By that, I mean that you'll notice it is comprised mostly of lively colors with very few dark colors. The bad guys, of course, are the dark colors. The "bad" air is also a very nice, dark purplish shade. The background music in Eco-Creatures is very soothing and calm. When you go into the levels, it does get much livelier. During the cut scenes, you hear details such as Dorian's footsteps and the rustling of leaves that show they paid attention to even the smallest of details.
Gameplay: You control where you go and what you're going to do next in Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest from your Mana House in Wood Square. I highly recommend that you start by tapping the guy with the beard to start the tutorials. When you first start the game, you'll only have a few tutorials to choose from. They will teach you the basic controls, all about trees and planting them, all about your magic and how to use it, about Mana, and about the creatures you control. The more tutorials you do and the more stages you complete in the game, the more tutorials that will be available. When you feel you're ready to take on the first levels, just tap the up arrow on the touch screen and it will take you out off Wood Square and show you a larger map. To launch any of the tasks, just tap them. After you've beaten the scenario, they'll still appear on the map for you to play again if you would like, but the icon will be changed to a star so you know you've beaten that one. You'll only start out with a few stages available, but after you beat them, it will unlock more. You will have to be careful with Dorian, especially at the beginning. He does not seem to have very many hit points at all, so you have to move him out of harm's way as quickly as you can. But when he dies, he is revived at the Mana Tree in the middle of the level, so you don't lose the level, you only lose the time it takes to bring him back. The only way you lose a level is when your Mana Tree is destroyed. There are many other things you can do from your Mana House. Try tapping on everything just to see what all is there. Or you can look it up in the manual if you don't want to explore on your own. You can choose to play online, either with the local ad-hoc connection to someone near you or to play against other people on the internet, after you unlock the multiplayer option.
Difficulty: As far as strategy goes, I found Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest to be about average in difficulty. The tutorials really do a good job of explaining how to play the game. They're a little longer than I expected, but they made it so much easier to figure out what I was doing and how to play the game. Controlling the character/creatures in Eco-Creatures is pretty easy to do too. Since you do almost everything with the touch screen, it's mostly just a matter of clicking where you want them to go. I did find scrolling around the screen difficult though. I really would have liked a feature to zoom out so I could see the whole area at once. Most of the time I basically just had to guess which direction to check for the bad guys, and I really don't like too much guessing, especially in a strategy game. The ability to upgrade your cute little helpers made the game a lot easier too. Learning which ones you wanted to upgrade and when to do so did take a little bit of trial and error though. Since you have three basic eco-helpers, Ecolis, Ecomon, and Ecoby, you'll need to use different ones to perform different tasks. I think you'll find that you tend to end up with a favorite and use that one type more than the others, so it's easy to decide which one to work on upgrading from there. Personally, I found the Ecomon to be the most useful. They can fly across things and carry objects, both of which are very helpful!
Game Mechanics: As I've said before, you do almost everything in b>Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest by using the touch screen. Most of the buttons do also have functions, though. Moving Dorian around the screen is vital to the mission, as he is the one who controls all the wood spirits. To move him, you use the D-pad. You can't control both Dorian and give commands to the wood spirits at the same time. To switch between their controls, tap the icon that is located in the bottom right corner. To tell the wood spirits what to do, tap on the one you want to give directions to and tap where you want it to go. They will automatically attack the enemies to protect the trees if they are anywhere near them. If you want to select a group of spirits, you can draw a circle around them. You can also press the (Y) button to automatically gather any of them that are near you. This is particularly helpful when you need to get them all to move quickly. If at any point during the game you need to pause, simply press the Start button to bring up the Pause Menu. It'll bring up the same menu that you see if you choose Options from the Mana House screen. You can change all sorts of game settings here. I found Eco-Creatures to be an interesting game to play. It's not very novel in concept, since it is very much like Pikmin, but it's still a decent Real-Time Strategy game. I would recommend renting it (if you can find it) or at least checking out the full gameplay before you buy it, just to make sure you like the style. If you liked Pikmin though, I'm quite sure you will enjoy Eco-Creatures.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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