Fun and unique, but not very practical.
354830
I love this steering wheel cover. It's definitely not for everyone but my car stands out! I have gotten so many compliments on it going through drive-thrus. However, there are 2 problems with it.

1. It's kind of hard to see my speedometer, (I drive a Ford Escort wagon), but I got used to it.

2. I've had it for about 6 months and it's getting kind of flat and ratty-looking from holding the wheel so much.

If you're looking for something unique, and you don't mind replacing it after a few months, this is definitely for you.
50305
"House of the Dead: Overkill" is a cool concept, and a lot of fun, but just way too short for the cash.  For this price, I don't expect to go from ripping open the plastic to clearing the game in about three hours, which is exactly what happened.

Inspired mainly by the exploitation flick&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Planet-Terror/dp/B000UAE7O0/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Planet Terror</a>&nbsp;but with a healthy dose of other influences, "House of the Dead : Overkill" runs like an interactive movie.  Most of the "House of the Dead" series have a rough story framework, but "Overkill" has a full plot, dialog and characters.  The game actions take place between the movie scenes, but about equal weight is given to both.  In order to be more "adult", the blood is explosive and the language is harsh.

This approach was very creative, and fun to play, but also limits the game.  How long is your typical movie?  About two hours, which is the same for "Overkill".  There are two modes, the "story mode" which must be played first, and the unlockable "director's cut", which is identical to the story mode with the only difference is that it is a little bit more challenging, and you can skip over the film scenes.  Skipping over the film scenes cuts playtime in about half.  Three mini-games are included, but they are pretty boring and limited, roughly the same as the "training" sequences on other light-gun shooters.

There are a few customizable elements.  You get some cash with each adventure, which allows you to buy new weapons at the "gun shop". However, once you pick up some of these new weapons the game becomes far too easy.  The sub-machine gun, which is one of the cheapest weapons available, also takes much of the fun out of the game.  With that equipped, you just spray bullets without any challenge at all.  Bosses can be wiped out without a blink.

The other Wii game, "<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/House-of-the-Dead-2-3-Return/dp/B000WCQWR6/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return</a>", gave  you two full games for much less money.  If "Overkill" had been at the same price point, I would have been thrilled with it.  But when I am dropping this much cash, I don't expect to clear the game so quickly and easily.
2878506
Tri-Onimos is a novel concept and I was excited to try it with my family.  We love playing games and love conventional Dominoes, so this game had a natural appeal to us.

The product is well made and well packaged.  The Tri-ominos come in a metal tin and are sure to last for years and years of use.  Everything about the set is quality.

However, the gameplay left me desiring more.  While the concept seemed like a nice change of pace, it slows down the game and makes it overly complicated.  Rather than matching up your pieces with a single already-played number (as in old-fashioned Dominoes), you are now obligated to simultaneously match your pieces to at least 2 (sometimes 3) numbers that are already in play, and have them fit in the configuration in which they are laid on the board.  While I am not intimidated by the mental challenge of this, I found that the gameplay really gets slow based on the limited number of playable options.  This gets especially true when playing with 4 players, when the Tri-ominoes are divided 4 ways.  The game involved a lot of waiting for people to lay down a piece.

I don't hate it, but I would rather play with conventional Dominoes, honestly.  The original was hard to beat; rather than toiling to find a playable piece, I can focus on playing things that score the highest.

I'm giving Tri-ominos 3 stars for "It's okay."
1960355
I love the idea of these cars, since it involves bashing things together.  Unlike video games, there is a real tactile sensation that makes this relatively simple game work.  It is the type of game that kids (and adults) will pull out for short sessions for years.  The wheels are not great, so a smooth surface is ideal.  The design could also be more detailed.  In terms of durability, I will update the review, but the plastic seems tough and built for abuse.

The main concern I have is the controllers, which are not as well built and have soft buttons that will likely be the first thing to go.

Overall, while not the most rugged or well thought out toy, this set of bumper cars provides a good amount of entertainment for the price.
32500
While I wanted to like and support this game due to it being a niche product and something different from the norm, in the end it all comes down to how fun and well-crafted it is. And in the end, it isn't very much of either.

This game seemed to have a lot of potential, taking something from the Tycoon type games, where you have to create and sell a product, manage your funds, and so on, plus taking something from Harvest Moon type games where you add a more human element, talking to neighbors and trying to befriend people.

Where it falls down is how well these are implemented - in this case, poorly. While it's a bit interesting at the start to try to learn the ropes and manage your funds to keep from going bankrupt, and also a bit fun to find and unlock the various toy types, soon enough the game devolves into a boring grindfest of pressing the four directions on the D-Pad of the DS to try to make toys as quickly as possible, and pretty much nothing else. You can occasionally go out into the town to talk to people, but barring a very few, fairly obvious interactions where you get specific new toy blueprints, the people say the very same things day in, day out, and none of them are really interesting. The number of individual NPCs is very limited, and there's not really much to do in the end besides... make toys, in a very boring badly implemented mini-game.

So while I really wanted to enjoy this game a lot, and I think it had some potential and some grains of fun buried underneath, I wouldn't suggest it for everyone, or even most people. Maybe if they try to *really* polish it hard and release a sequel there can be something there worth playing, but for now, I'd give it a pass.
4080070
A friend and I pulled this out of the box when it arrived to see if we could find a way for adults to use it... I was thinking Fimo decorative beads, and while it will initially be fun and helpful, I don't see an adult using it for long when a small rolling pin can do almost the same thing.

That said, the novelty of it is really fun - both for us as Moms, and for kids, who will undoubtedly will have fun with this for a while.

Comes with findings to make some things once you create your beads, clay (air-dry), tools and the machine.
847318
The Good Stuff:  [...] for 18 powerful, beautiful, fun-to-handle, polished irregular hematite magnets alone is worth the money, and the actual idea behind the game is ingenious.

Downside: While the game is a great idea, and fun to learn and play around with, unfortunately the game simply lacks what game designers call "game balance."  Of the 18 stones to place, the first 9 or so offer no challenge whatsoever, the next 3 are nearly impossible, and the final 6 seem literally impossible.  Ergo, who wins is down exclusively to luck and who goes first.  It seemed at first as though sufficient practice might de-impossiblize the 2nd half of the game (for instance, we discovered that stones are less "jumpy" when placed exactly horizontal), but this is either impossible or well beyond the abilities of my game group.

Although the game itself ultimately lacks the game-balance necessary for longterm game-play value (think Tic-Tac-Toe), I am very pleased with 18 powerful, beautiful hematite magnets at this price.  And the *idea* of the game, while ultimately not playable, provided my social circle a few hours of laughter and pleasure.
2835510
We were gifted this item. I think it's a great (and portable) way for kids to use their imaginations. My daughter loved it immediately and has already played with it for hours. My issues with it are from a practical perspective. I had to peel the background of the clothing pages off, and cut it loose from the spiral binding - otherwise you have to put each piece back exactly where it came from, and if it's not perfectly lined up it won't stick and may fall off the page. We had difficulty with two pieces being so stuck to the backing that the paper pulled up, which was disappointing because we were taking our time and being very careful along the way. I wish there was a clear envelope around the book because it is easy for pieces to fall of the pages once the book is standing up on a bookshelf or goes into a backpack. I plan on taking ours on a trip, so I will be putting it in a giant ziploc bag so that I don't lose any clothes along the way. There is a pocket in the back to hold the dolls, but it doesn't close. The dolls will probably be fine in that pocket, but the stands could slip out easily. I also wish there was an extra stand, it's just a slip of cardboard but without it the dolls can't stand and that drops the fun pretty quickly. Overall I recommend this product, but I would love to see future editions be a little more travel/real-life friendly.
3669954
I wanted to love this game, it sounded like great whimsical fun.  As it was, our family enjoyed this game, but I wasn't as impressed with it as the other reviews led me to expect.  Granted, our son is an older teen, but he prefers games that are easy to learn and without much strategy, such as Life, Phase 10 and Guillotine.  Also, we have a good sense of whimsy at our house and I also felt this game was appealing that way.  After playing several rounds, it's a game we'll keep and play from time to time, but it's not a favorite.  The novelty is fun, but not enough to carry the game in and of itself.  As I expected, it took several references back to the rules to get through the first 2-3 games and we totally missed the fact that each character  has a special ability...that adds another element of fun to the game.  The 3-D trains is sturdy and stores easily in the box, but does not lend itself to fluid game play.  It can be awkward to move the pieces between various train cars, hard for adult hands to reach the pieces inside the cars sometimes.  The addition of 3-D cacti, tumbleweeds, etc is just wasteful absurdity.  I doubt anyone actually uses them, they add nothing to the game and are purely for show, taking up more space on the playing surface.

There is an element of strategy that adds to the game, but the randomness detracts from the fun.
203505
This is a fun game and very similar to the other Cryptozoic deck-building games that I've played before. The production values are high: the card images are well chosen and the names of the cards are all relevant quotes from the movies. My wife and I especially like this latter touch. All this said, I don't think this game is quite as well thought out as some other deck-building games, even ones form Cryptozoic. In particular, I feel that the Lord of the Ring series games are pretty badly unbalanced. By this I mean that it is very difficult to get back into the game if you're trailing behind, which can make the game pretty frustrating at times.
1390261
Interesting and unusual. Overall a very fun game.
2968633
Clever game idea and the game is kind of fun, but it's a bit hectic and I don't imagine anyone will really want to play this after a few months.  The uncertainty of how turns will unfold means there is little meaningful strategy that can be used.  Also, the game requires so many different cards that it can be dizzying to keep track of everything.  Not sure how something so complicated and lacking in any meaningful strategy could win a game of the year award. I can see us trying to sell this within a year.
2452050
Really fun and unique.  It stuck a lot at first and took a little WD40 and a lot of fiddling to get it to loosen up.
4616509
The idea is fun. I played with 6 people.
When you land on different spots on the board they'll have special 1 on 1 challenges. We eventually just ignored those, because there were too many of them and it's more fun when everyone gets to play.
The board itself is kind of daftly designed, because it's difficult to see the game pieces or the direction you're supposed to go.
The gameplay has a very odd kink where it's easy to cheat (if anyone were so inclined). None of my friends are going to cheat, but it's a poorly designed game where it's so easy to.
When we finished the regular game, we just ignored the board and rules and just started reading off the cards and singing songs. That was more fun.
Also, it was surprisingly difficult. We could rarely get more than 3 or 4 songs for a word.
Then sometimes you get a category instead of a word, and it's so broad that you can simply go forever.
Poorly designed game, but you can make it fun with your own rules. The rules for the final round are fun to just use on repeat.

The good thing about this game is that it's all inclusive and people can participate to whatever degree they like. You can just sit and watch if you want, and still feel like you're part of the game.

Fun concept, but poor game design.
4627631
Having almost all of the octonaut vehicles I consider myself somewhat of an expert. This has a cool concept, but it is difficult for a young child to play with in some ways. It is difficult to get the characters into the driving position as you have to stick your hand through the small opening from the front or back and place the character on the peg. Also the front windshield tends to pop off frequently and can be difficult for a small child to put back on. The discs that shoot are cool. Not my favorite vehicle (especially for the price) but it's cool to have if you have the other vehicles and you have an octonauts fan like I do. Probably not a starter octonauts toy.
279660
This is a creative toy. There are many, many pieces in the bag. There is also a leaflet with suggested designs to make. The toy has many "degrees of freedom," which means nearly infinite possibilities in constructing designs. Two things were disappointing. First, there were not equal numbers of pieces of each color. This means that some of the designs from the leaflet cannot, effectively, be created with just the pieces from one bag. For example, my set arrived with lots of blue and green pieces and very few pink and purple pieces. Second, the brown pieces did not look like ones in the picture in color; their color was dull and kind of disappointing.
1110428
This game is a great concept with many cool miniatures to play with and possibly paint.  It is a fun game, but the colors system uses six sided dice with one face for red hit, one for blue hit, one for green.  With equal chances to hit all three colors it could just as easily have used one face for "hit" and added more variety in what can be rolled.  Better yet going with eight sided dice would have allowed different odds to hit different colors.  As it is, the game is still fun, but falls short of its potential.