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Of course, my favorite part of Halloween is all the costumes, the cuter the better! Between the flood of adorable trick-or-treaters in the MSN Games office on Friday, the roving groups of candy-hunters ringing doorbells on Saturday, and the photos my coworkers shared of their own costumed offspring (human and otherwise), I certainly got my share of “awwwww” moments this year. Here are some of the MSN Games kids in their Halloween finery!
    
Tooth versus claw
It’s so odd how things have changed for our favorite fantasy icons, over just a few short decades. Yesterday’s confident, strong-jawed superhero is today’s angst-ridden vigilante. And the scary, thrillingly evil monsters of my youth are suddenly… smoldering teenage heartthrobs? I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.
Nonetheless, we’ve tossed the garlic back in the pantry, locked up the silver bullets, and welcomed vampires and werewolves into our books and movies as romantic leads instead of creepy villains. If you’re a female over the age of 30, you probably have a secret “thing” for the vampire Lestat. In your 20’s? It’s Angel or Spike. And if you’re a teenage girl, there’s likely a poster of either Edward Cullen or Jacob Black in your bedroom.
But whether they’re good guys or bad guys, the same basic question still remains… who would win in a fight (or a popularity contest), vampires or werewolves? Find out for yourself in our own version of that particular cage match, Vampires Versus Werewolves Face-Off. Which do you remember best?
Who knew Dracula was a syllogomaniac?
Not that I need an excuse to dig into another hidden-object game, but Halloween seemed like a great time to try out The Dracula Files. I’d heard it was a really tough one, and I’m always up for a challenge. The fact that I’m also a fan of the classic movie monsters was just icing on the cake of decision.
The setup on this game is interesting: you play the twin grandchildren of Jonathan and Mina Harker, a pair of thoroughly modern American youths who don’t believe in any of this “blood-sucking monsters” hokum. Of course, there were those hints your parents dropped when you were younger… and the message they left when they “died” (not that bodies were ever found, mind you)… oh, and the card-matching game that taught you how to kill members of the undead. But you don’t really believe in it, anyway.
Then one of your best friends is captured during a tour of Draco Wineries, and the whole concept gets a lot more plausible. Soon, you’re sifting your way through cluttered rooms in Dracula’s castl… sorry, winery that just looks like a castle, and trying to save your friend before he becomes a nice keg of vampire cabernet.
The Dracula Files pulls gameplay tricks from other popular games in the hidden-object genre, mixing basic seek-and-find scenes with secret secondary locations, usable items, and of course the now-ubiquitous minigame puzzles. I found out quickly what “challenging” meant: this is the first time I’ve ever had to restart a game of this type and choose Untimed Mode. Yow! If you manage to solve this one on Timed, you’re a better player than I’ll ever be. On the upside, an item radar shows you basic outlines of any object you need to find; you can also use a hint button to locate a single random item in the scene.
In all honesty, the storyline is cheesy enough to remind me of the old Hammer Dracula films, but that’s actually a selling point for those of us who grew up on the silly things. At least Drac is a bad guy, and his minions are properly villainous, and that’s just how I like things to be!
Zombies and ghosts and people on a budget, oh my
Rounding out this week’s ghoulish game goodness is Mr. Jones’ Graveyard Shift, an unexpectedly fabulous graveyard-management sim. That’s “sim” as in Sim-City-style gameplay. After a steady diet of games that focus on time-management instead of planning and construction, this was a welcome, and surprising, slice of decadent dessert.
As the title character, curmudgeonly Mr. Jones, you’ve decided to turn an empty field into extravagant fortune by planting it with dead people. To that end, you buy some cheap headstones, sneezeworthy flowers, and shoddy decorations, and start taking reservations for the recently deceased. Each family has a specific budget for the funeral, as well as likes and dislikes for nearby ornamentation. Your job is to dig plots, build paths, decorate the area, and do your best to get as much money as possible for each burial.
The temptation is always there just to maximize density, and to dig each new plot right next to the previous one, so the effect of decoration is shared. But as with all good planning games, this is a trap. One family might love daisies (which means extra money for you), but the next one might hate them (knocking a whack out of what they’re willing to pay). It’s important to keep an eye on special requests for each funeral, and move a new plot down two or three spaces if necessary to keep everyone happy. You can always fill that area in later when you get a more compatible request.
Another temptation is to move decorations away from a finished area into a new one, since the families have already paid you for the old burials and technically the dead don’t need fountains and flowers. This is an even bigger trap. In this game at least, the dead aren’t inclined to just lie around if they don’t like their surroundings, which is to say that reducing the value of a grave plot = an imminent plague of zombies. So in the long run, it’s best not to cut corners by reusing décor!
After only a few hours of experimentation, I’ve already added this game to my list of all-time favorites (and gleefully restarted my graveyard twice after devising new strategies, whee!). Since the layout and all business decisions are completely up to you, this is a game with many, many hours of solid, enjoyable play.
If you’re anything like me, though, you’ll want to bury Mimi after the first time she whines about not getting any new presents.
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| Tech Talk
Hands up, everyone who already upgraded to Windows 7! I know my own hand is in the air, and I love all the new features. Just a reminder, though: upgrading anything on your system is a great time to do some basic maintenance, and that means updating your drivers. Think of it as an oil change for your computer. Just visit the manufacturers’ websites for your video and sound cards (and any unusual hardware your system may have, such as a trackball mouse or speech-to-text device), download the most recent drivers, and you should be good for another 10,000 miles. You can also run Windows Update (it’s in your Start menu) to get any important security or OS updates. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s free.
I’ll see you next time!
Ask Moxie!
Do you have a question or comment? I’d love to hear from you. Just email me at zmaster@microsoft.com and I’ll do my best to answer in one of these Coffee Breaks! Oh, please make sure to include your MSN Games nickname, so I know who to list here if I quote you!
(And if you have technical questions or problems with a game, we’ll cheerfully answer those as well. Just submit them through the support section of this site!)
More Moxie!
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