Dale Hardshovel Puzzle Game Review and Game Download
Game Review by Joe Chin
Game Rating = 1/5 Balls
Windows
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Mac
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Dale Hardshovel is not a character from a late-night film on cable. The game bearing his questionable name is the latest offering by Phime Studios. This archeologist is on a mission to collect the pieces of the Bloomstone, and to do that he needs to solve matching puzzles while contending with gravity at the same time. Borrowing heavily from Taito’s Puzznic (released in 1989), Dale Hardshovel offers nothing new except a stiff learning curve that only the most patient and easily-amused gamers will be willing to put up with.
Windows
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Buy The Game Now $19.95
Mac
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The premise is fairly simple. You grab artifacts with your disembodied gloved hand and drag them left or right to form sets of two or more. Once arranged, these sets instantly disappear. Clear all of the artifacts and you go on to the next level. If you leave any unmatched artifacts, you have to start the level over. All it takes is one mistake for the level to become unwinnable, and as the levels get more and more complex, restarting levels gets more and more frustrating. There’s no way of undoing a move, or seeing what moves you’ve made, or much of anything innovative about the game other than Mr. Hardshovel chiming in with nonsensical Australian slang.
Windows
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Buy The Game Now $19.95
Mac
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Buy The Game Now $19.95
The audio and visual aspects of Dale Hardshovel leave a lot to be desired as well. Other than a greenish burst of light, this game graphically has little going for it. The walls look okay and the backdrops are fine, but seeing the same backdrop recycled over and over for ten to twenty levels gets old in a hurry. There are no shadows, and the levels look like they’re just sort of thrown in front of a picture rather than giving any sort of impression that you’re supposed to be there. The music also suffers from overuse as the seven tracks in the game grate on the ears after only a few minutes. And whose bright idea was it to have Dale Hardshovel speak only in incomprehensible Australian slang? I don’t know what “chucking a sickie” is, but I sure don’t want to hear about it 23 times from a bespectacled rip-off of Indiana Jones.
Windows
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Buy The Game Now $19.95
Mac
Download Free Game Trial
Buy The Game Now $19.95
Dale Hardshovel is a lazy clone of a puzzle game that wasn’t all that great to begin with. To further insult its audience, Phime Studios introduces one of the most irritating characters since Jar-Jar Binks. Stay away from this game at all costs, and whatever you do, don’t let Dale Hardshovel speak. Otherwise, you’ll need an ambo after you find yourself in the bizzo somewhere back of Bourke. Dinky die, true blue - this game is terrible. A 1 out of 5.
Windows
Download Free Game Trial
Buy The Game Now $19.95
Mac
Download Free Game Trial
Buy The Game Now $19.95
System Requirements:
Windows:
Operating system : Windows 2000, XP, Vista
Cpu : Intel Pentium or AMD 1.0 GHz
Memory : 256 Mb
Disk space : 60Mb
Mac
Operating system : Mac OSX 10.4x , 10.5x
Cpu : PowerPC or Intel Mac
Universal binary
Memory : 256 Mb
Disk space : 60Mb
Phime Studios Created Dale Hardshovel.
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