Category: Reviews

PHB Quickie, Survival Island

PHB Quickie: “Survival: Distress Signal” Overview

HPuterpop

Hi Gs,

Episode 3 came fairly quickly after episode 2 of Survival, but the release date was delayed by a day so they could fix bugs — this is the first time that had ever happened, too. So, did the extra day pay off, or was the episode a wreck? Let’s find out! You can check out the last two overviews for Survival here, or view the PHB’s full guide (with pictures) for Survival here.

s3Over

The most noteworthy thing about this episode is the environment, and everything that makes it up. The soundtrack surprised me, and even though I had already heard it, it really contributed to the environment. The sounds were also very nicely put together, and everything was brought to a new level of eerie this time around.

The layout of the island was quite different than the past episodes, and it was built to a grander scale. Everything was fine tuned, and attention to detail was a big factor in the island.

In my past overview, I mentioned the continuity between the episodes, and here it just shows even more, and perhaps a little more subtly. You find a manifest, which is a catalog for the cargo/passengers on a plane or ship. On the manifest is listed the various items that you have been collecting throughout the adventure — meaning that someone had passed through everywhere you had been!

I was surprised to find that when playing it I felt that it was pretty educational, more so than usual, and more obvious. To assemble the radio, you have to find zinc and copper, and while you find the zinc in an old box, the copper is found by searching through a collector coin bag. You may know that they stopped making pennies copper in 1982 — so you have to find the one from 1981 — genius!

As for the story, right around now does the story really pick up. We learn that a passenger of a Mews Airline plane, Max McGullicutty, has been stranded on the island. We don’t meet him, but on the manifest is a small note saying “Don’t trust MVB”. MVB stands for Myron Van Buren, and from our speculation about him, it seems like he’s going to be the antagonist of the adventure.

The Survival series seems to get better every episode — I rate this episode 5 out of 5 stars. 🙂

-HPuterpop

Contests, Reviews

CYDI winning entries: a personal review

Samwow5

Hey everyone! Now that the winner and top ten runner-ups of Poptropica’s CYDI (Create Your Own Dream Island) contest have been revealed, each with their own post on the Creators’ Blog as well as here on the PHB, I’d like to give my own personal review on each of the winning ideas.

CYDI review v2

In my opinion, there were some great island ideas, and some bad ones. Some I felt were too common or even plagiarized, but overall, I thought the ideas were pretty cool! So without further ado, here’s my list of the winning island ideas in order of (again, in my opinion) best to worst:

  1. House of Cards Island
  2. Symphony Island
  3. Space Bar Island
  4. Shakespeare Island
  5. Pharoah’s Fantasies Island
  6. Prehistoric Island
  7. Stormchaser Island
  8. Arabian Nights Island (winner of CYDI)
  9. Fashion Crisis Island
  10. Golden Mustache Island
  11. Bikers vs Boards Island

There’s my list, everyone! Now, I’m going to explain it in greater detail why I put them in that order, starting from the bottom…

CYDI review

#11: Bikers vs Boards Island: This island… was just plain plagiarized from Disney’s Teen Beach Movie. This was my least favorite island idea by FAR and I was actually mad the creators even considered this as the winner of the whole contest… and, well, I’m too mad to say any more. 😛

#10: Golden Mustache Island: I really don’t have anything against this island – I just thought the idea, plot, and name were very corny. I felt this island was way too childish for Poptropica. Before anyone gets mad at me for saying that, I know Poptropica is a kids’ game, but this island sounded like it was for 5 year olds – like, come on, Creators!

#9: Fashion Crisis Island: The idea here isn’t that bad! But being a sports guy, I’m just not really into fashion… I can’t really have fancy clothes or they will be torn when I play sports. xD

#8: Arabian Nights Island (WINNER): Now, this one… to tell the truth, I wanted to put this one 10th. This soon-to-be island sounds very lame; from the very little detail the Creators gave us about the island, it sounded like another Nabooti Island to me, and I wasn’t too fond of Nabooti. This should not have been the winner, in my opinion.

#7: Stormchaser Island: I was impressed by the quality of this idea, but I don’t know how Poptropica really could’ve made this into an island. It would’ve been a lot of work, and maybe confusing for younger players too.

#6: Prehistoric Island: When the Creators said “dinosaurs are coming into the 21st century. Poptropicans must reassemble the time portal and send them back” – I was hooked, but as I continued reading on, it sounded like any other entry about dinosaurs and their existence. So, I feel like the Creators shouldn’t have considered this as a winner because it doesn’t really stand out to me as a unique dinosaur story.

#5: Pharoah’s Fantasies Island: I have the same opinion of this island as the Prehistoric Island idea. When the Creators said “Poptropicans would enter the mind of King Tutankhaman, and defeat the gods of Egypt…” I was like, cool! But, like I said, many people must’ve sent in this kind of ancient Egypt/Pharoah idea…

#4: Shakespeare Island: It gets down to the tough ones – I could’ve easily put this second because this, I thought, was a great idea. (But Space Bar and Symphony were better – but let’s get back on topic.) The plot was that “Players help Shakespeare put on a Romeo and Juliet play. Players sign up to be an actor, backstage organizer, or costume designer. But during the show, another actor gets stage fright and players will have to dress up and sing the song.” When I read that, I immediately fell in love with this island idea. This was GOLD, I thought. If you didn’t know, I love poetry and Shakespeare so I would have loved to play this island. I wish I could pick my top 4 of these ideas to be made into islands, because I think this one was definitely one of the better ones.

#3: Space Bar Island: I loved this island from the start! A computer-based island would be so cool to play! The way Naomi used clever wordplay for the villain’s name (the Mother Board) blew me away! The plot was this: “On Space Bar Island, you’re trapped in the newest computer, the “Lap Life,” and you meet who’s really running the internet.” That sounded so cool to me! I would have loved to play this island too!

#2: Symphony Island: I love music, so this is probably why I love the island. 😛 In my opinion, the Creators saved the 2nd best island idea for last. I loved the plot: “Karl Notune hates music — and has an evil plan! It’s up to you to save the music before it’s too late!” Now, that sounds like a fun island idea! There’s more: “…be able to play many different instruments — including piano, saxophone, and drums — and gave us a funny villain in ‘Karl Notune’.” That’s a lot of the instruments I love! This island idea rocked! Great job, Erika!

#1: House of Cards Island: I don’t know where to start with this island idea! Before Joel sent me the in-depth look into his island idea that I published on the PHB (where Joel describes the suits and kingdoms), I already thought this island idea should’ve been first! The plot that the Creators showed us blew my mind so much that I had a dream about it. 😛 The in-depth look was just the icing on the cake for this island idea. Joel, I really appreciate that you sent me that in-depth look! This island should’ve won by far, in my opinion!

Anyway, that’s it everyone! I want to hear your opinion too and see your personal rankings of the CYDI contest winners! Comment below and let’s see if we agree or disagree on this! 🙂

~SW5~

 

PHB Quickie, Reviews, Survival Island

PHB Quickie: “Survival: Hook, Line, and Sinker” Overview

HPuterpop

Hi Gs,

Survival Episode 2: Hook, Line, & Sinker is now my favorite episode out of the two (3’s overview later :P). It has an awesome atmosphere, an interactive environment, and ominous story development that we’ll talk about later. You can check out the last overview for Survival here, or view the PHB’s Guide for both episode 1 and 2 of Survival!

s2Over

There’s definitely a difference between the two episodes, but the one thing I like best about this one is the correlation. It really makes the environment different from the last episode, yet seamless and politically correct. I know, you’re probably asking When has Poptropica ever been politically correct, but to my surprise, it’s being just that! The episode starts with you climbing down the same cliff that you could jump off of in the first episode. The log that you could push off the cliff in the first episode is awaiting you at the bottom.

There’s also a new layer of interactivity that has been sort of dying off over the years. When I say interactivity, I mean a clickable adventure, with animations when you click stuff. Compared to other recent islands, this one has a surprisingly higher amount. And by the way, this type of clickable idea was inspired by Humongous Entertainment, an old game making company which helped foster my love of Poptropica. In fact, Poptropica is sort of following in that company’s footsteps in a lot of ways.

As for the soundtrack, again, Jeff Heim is amazing, but other than that the tracks are sort of following in the episode’s footsteps. These episodes are entirely experimental, and I don’t expect too many of them to be released, or for islands to become extinct — remember Arabian Nights Island, scheduled to come out later this year?

The story isn’t revealed completely, it just teases the viewer — in the awesome outro scene for the island, a camera hidden in the trees zooms out, and a silhouetted figure is shown watching you and the rest of the island from a panel of screens. From here, we already know what the plot is, but I really like how unique the story telling in this island is — MA doesn’t have cut scenes, and Survival is one of the first to use them as a main part of the game play.

Anyway, that’s just my Bitcoin. 😉 I rate this episode 4.5 out of 5 — not only does it have an awesome story, but it also has continuity that surprised me.

-HPuterpop

Mission Atlantis Island, Reviews

PHB Quickie: “Mission Atlantis: Into the Deep” overview

HPuterpop

MA1OL

The recent episode of the new Mission Atlantis adventure (click here for the PHB’s walkthrough) is the simplest to finish out of the two episodes of episodic adventures that have been released. Still, I still consider it my favorite out of the two, mostly because of the tone. Survival: Episode 1 is really depressing, and the backgrounds do not improve the sad tone. It still is fun, but not as enjoyable to play. Mission Atlantis is a change in tone completely. Everything is happy, warm, and fun, even when the darker parts of the story kick in. Perhaps it has something to do with the blueness of everything (Poptropica’s main color is blue), but the island just feels right. It reminds me of classic Poptropica.

That being said, I’m not looking forward to the upcoming chapters of Mission Atlantis. From the looks of it, all you’ll be interacting with will be pipes and fish. No offence to fish, but I’d rather hang out with something that knows the difference between you and seaweed. The only island that could pull off being alone for the majority of the island is Steamworks, and you have a robot buddy for half of that. I’m not so sure that they’re going to even try to put a little mysticism or mythological properties into upcoming episodes of Mission Atlantis, which is sorta disappointing. And if I have to listen to Cam and his repetitive monologue for another 15 minutes, I don’t know what I’ll do.

The episode itself is quite enjoyable and clever, with a cliffhanger that isn’t as creepy as the last ending in Survival was. As I said before, the atmosphere is great, and everything contributes to that — the music, backgrounds, and characters all make the episode great. My peeves are few, although there are some notable ones:

  • The sound when you hit a rock is just unbearable, and when it glitches and repeatedly makes the noise, it scares the life out of anyone who is playing.
  • I never really got how you sorta kinda get in front of the pipes; they’re blowing air at you, so how do you clog them?? I can do it, but it just doesn’t make sense. 😛
  • Dem Sea Dragons move too fast. 😛

I rate this episode 4 stars out of 5, although I don’t have much hope for future episodes.

-HPuterpop

New Islands, PHB Quickie, Reviews, Survival Island

Survival Island: Episode 1 Overview

HPuterpop

(¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.-> Hi Gs, <-.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)

First off, the first thing you’re going to notice is the wind sound effect. It is stinking annoying. Second, the island is horrible if you’re writing a guide, because if you’re idle too long, your Poptropican freezes to death. But those are just my little pet peeves, let’s get on with the good stuff! 😆

episodeoneoverviewlogo

First, we are confronted with some new interface icons. There’s a thermometer and a flag on the bottom of the screen, and plus a fire symbol when you have enough materials to make a fire. The thermometer is to keep your temperature up, and the flag is to determine the wind direction and speed. The last time we had special icons like this was the cell phone on Night Watch Island.

The story, as of now, is pretty vague: build a fire. At the end of the island, there is a hint that someone else is on the island, but that doesn’t really make up for the lazy story that they made. Islands aren’t supposed to be like this.

I do have to say that after all the episodes have come out, this island is going to be colossal.

They tried something new here, and that is that they made it harder by deceiving you. There are multiple things that you could do, although there is only one real path to take. The Handbook suggests that you can cut some grass to burn, and you leave a wedge stuck inside a tree. Some suspicious rats sleep inside a tree, and the Wet Kindling is never used once in the island. Are these possibilities for future episodes? It seems unlikely, though possible.

Those are my thoughts on Episode 1 (Crash Landing) of Survival Island. What do you think about the island? Tell me in the comments. 😀

-HPuterpop