Review written by Corn Bread

Good deals are hard to come by, whether it be clothes, food, cars, etc. there’s always a trade-off in quality or quantity when we are buying “bundled” stuff. This also applies to software - how many times has a software developer bundled a great application with 3 crappy applications and labelled it as a sale? I’m happy to say that there are some exceptions to the rule; KSE Entertainment Pack 3 is one of these exceptions. 

KSE Solitary

• Objective: Clear the board of checker pieces by jumping over each checker piece using any piece that’s available.
  Options:

  • Changeable backgrounds/layouts

  • Can choose up to four different starting positions, Standard, Triangle, Square, and Cross

• Storage space required: 136 KB

• Program memory used: 10 KB

• Remarks: Good puzzle game, not only do you have to find a way to clear the board, but also to clear the board as fast as possible. Good sound effects.

KSE Snake

• Objective: Navigate the Snake safely through the various levels by avoiding dangerous obstacles and eating bonus items and "food" which causes the snake the grow in length making it more difficult to manoeuvre. When the Snake has eaten enough "food" an entrance to the next stage opens up.

• Options: Ability to customize the hardware buttons for better in game controls.

• Storage Space required: 559 KB

• Program Memory used: 14 KB

• Remarks: I enjoyed playing this; the graphics and sounds were really delightful. Lots of different kind of stages to keep you occupied, although I do wish that they had added more different kinds of power ups.

KSE Tetragon

• Objective: Form complete rows out of the falling puzzle pieces. The higher the level, the faster the puzzle pieces fall.

• Options:

  • Customizable hardware button controls

  • Complete pen control and optional "Virtual Keyboard" control method available.

• Storage Space required: 112 KB

• Program memory used: 10 KB

• Remarks: Another typical Tetris clone; nothing new here. My gripe with this Tetris version is that the blocks don’t start dropping at the top of the screen, but about 1/3 of screen making the height of the game screen short.

KSE The Mill

• Objective: Beat opposing player by removing all of the opposing player's checker pieces.

• Options:

  • Can be played with either Human player or computer player

  • Changeable board layout

  • Can set animation speed

  • Sound on/off toggle

  • Undo feature available

• Storage Space required: 162 KB

• Program memory used: 10 KB

• Remarks: Very challenging computer controlled opponent, although that can be a bad thing since it gets frustrating to be beaten by the computer round after round after round...

KSE Cruel

• Objective: A variation of Solitaire. Goal is to arrange the cards of the same suit from lowest to highest.

• Options:

  • Changeable board layout

  • Sound on/off toggle

  • Undo feature available

• Storage Space required: 146 KB

• Program memory used: 10KB

• Remarks: Like most Solitaire games, the premise of the game is very simple, but very addictive. I’m glad KSE decided to use this Solitaire variant since it is one of the better Solitaire games invented. A fast mind and a little bit of luck is required to play this game efficiently.

KSE Backgammon

• Objective: Race between two players to move all of their 15 checker pieces to their home base.

• Options:

  • Changeable board layout

  • Suggest move and autoplay feature available

  • Undo Feature available

  • Play with Computer controlled opponent or Human opponent via one Pocket PC or Infrared/remote connection

  • Adjustable animation speed

  • 3 levels of difficulty for Computer controlled opponent

• Storage Space required: 162 KB

• Program memory used: 10 KB

• Remarks: This is a good Backgammon game for the PPC. The computer controlled opponent is very challenging, plus having the ability to play with a human opponent is great.

KSE Poker

• Objective: Win the game by defeating the 3 computer controlled opponent.

• Options:

  • Changeable board layout

  • “Wild West” Theme

  • 2 modes of play, Deathmode and Scoremode

  • Choose between 4 or 8 play rounds

• Storage Space required: 289 KB

• Program memory used: 11 KB

• Remarks: Typical five card Poker game. You start the game with each player having $1,000, I wish there was an option to change the starting bet amount - the default starting bet is $5. Another solid game.

KSE Yachtzee

• Objective: A game that has Poker elements mixed with dice rolling. The player with the highest score wins.

• Options:

  • Changeable dice colors

  • Dice Shaking animation

  • Play with either computer controlled or human opponents

  • Select from 1 to 4 players

  • Undo feature included

• Storage Space required: 403 KB

• Program memory used: 10 KB

• Remarks: By far, this is my favorite game included in KSE Entertainment Pack 3. The sound effects are superb - Fred Flintstone will even give you a “Yabba Dabba Doo” when you have rolled a Yachtzee! The dice animation is very well done.

Pros:

• All eight games perform solidly - I have not experienced any crashes or bugs.

• All the games can be installed either on the device itself or on a storage card.

• All the games have good, clean graphics and layout.

• Only uses small amount of Program and Storage memory.

• Extensive and well-written help file included.

• All the games include a best score/time ranking.

• For the price of $29.90, its basically a steal. A very good deal.

Cons:

• Tetragon should have been replaced with another puzzle game since there are already a lot of Tetris clone for the PPC. If, however, you enjoy playing Tetris, this “Con” becomes a “Pro”.

Overall Score: 10/10

Many thanks to KSE Software for providing us with our review copy.

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