SAN FRANCISCO — Cradle of Rome. The title alone had me quivering with anticipation, even though I’d never heard of it before.
Amassing resources, constructing buildings — turn-based strategy games are almost always a good thing, especially on the Nintendo DS. And one based on ancient Rome? Hell, I love Civilization, so this should be good.
So it turns out that the game has absolutely nothing to do with showing the ancient world who’s boss. It’s actually a match-three puzzle game, in which players build the ancient city of Rome by matching tiles over the course of 100 difference puzzles.
Once a PC game, the casual title is seeking a new audience on DS — and it’s actually pretty fun.
The match-three genre isn’t exactly praised for its depth: Find three objects, and set them in a row — bright explosions are occasionally involved. Nevertheless, they’re usually fairly enjoyable, and Cradle of Rome is no exception.
It’s your standard Bejewled-style affair, with a few caveats. There are several types of tiles (you’ll see bits of meat, stone and gold), some of which are dark blue. To complete each level, you’ll need to break all the dark blue tiles by matching them with similar objects before running out of time. But to actually make progress in the game, you’ll also have to amass resources by matching the various extraneous tiles
Amassing resources, constructing buildings — turn-based strategy games are almost always a good thing, especially on the Nintendo DS. And one based on ancient Rome? Hell, I love Civilization, so this should be good.
So it turns out that the game has absolutely nothing to do with showing the ancient world who’s boss. It’s actually a match-three puzzle game, in which players build the ancient city of Rome by matching tiles over the course of 100 difference puzzles.
Once a PC game, the casual title is seeking a new audience on DS — and it’s actually pretty fun.
The match-three genre isn’t exactly praised for its depth: Find three objects, and set them in a row — bright explosions are occasionally involved. Nevertheless, they’re usually fairly enjoyable, and Cradle of Rome is no exception.
It’s your standard Bejewled-style affair, with a few caveats. There are several types of tiles (you’ll see bits of meat, stone and gold), some of which are dark blue. To complete each level, you’ll need to break all the dark blue tiles by matching them with similar objects before running out of time. But to actually make progress in the game, you’ll also have to amass resources by matching the various extraneous tiles
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