'Sheep' Will Keep You Wide Awake

By AARON CURTISS

Jan. 11, 2001 12 AM PT

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Despite my lusty Scottish roots, I’m no big fan of sheep. Don’t eat them, don’t wear them and I most certainly don’t do anything else with them. But boy if I didn’t have a great time herding them in “Sheep,” an absolutely frustrating, addictive and wonderful game for the PC.

“Sheep” begins with a simple premise: Millions of years ago, a highly advanced alien race of sheep was sent from its home star system of Ovis Aries to observe the primitive creatures of Earth. But along the way, this group of scouts realized that, hey, Earth is kind of a nice place to kick back and get complacent and weak. Sort of like modern America, eh?

Now they are being recalled and the mother ship has abducted several Earth residents--from a hip shepherd/rock singer named Bo Peep to a burned-out sheep dog named Shep--to help round up the flock. Easy enough, but a bad guy is after the sheep so he can implant sheep genes into humans and take over Earth.

Got it?

It’s all simple enough, but “Sheep” gets incredibly hard incredibly fast. Players herd sheep just as they would in real life--they move toward the flock and the flock moves away. Getting one sheep to move the right way is tough enough. But imagine doing it with a flock of 10 or 20. Just rushing headlong into the middle of a flock sends it dispersing in multiple directions.

On a wide-open field that may be all right. But the levels of “Sheep” are riddled with all sorts of obstacles and hazards--from harvesters and shark-infested wheat fields to tractors and gun-toting cows. Sending a sheep the wrong way at the wrong time is as good as turning it into a mutton sandwich.

Worse still, all of the levels are timed so that players have to double-time it to hustle the sheep to safety.

Visually, “Sheep” presents a simple picture. But it’s more than enough to get the point across and not so overwhelming that the simplicity of the game gets bogged down in flowery graphics.

‘Hoyle Casino’

I’ve always believed that someone could make a killing developing nothing but grown-up titles for Game Boy. True, true, Game Boy is the trusty companion to the under-10 set. But there are plenty of adults like me--folks who travel a lot or have spurts of downtime during the day--who are rabidly loyal to games that don’t require shooting or jumping or driving.

“Hoyle Casino” is just that kind of game. It’s clearly not designed for kids. With blackjack, craps, poker, roulette and slots among the casino-style games it offers, most kids probably would turn up their noses at “Casino,” particularly because it’s lean on unnecessary graphics or other flourishes that might entice youngsters.

But on a recent round-trip to Colorado, I entertained myself wonderfully with “Casino.” After creating a user profile, the game starts players off with a pot of cash and sends them out to the casino floor. A nice feature: the cartridge’s built-in memory keeps track of winnings over time so that players can play a few hands of blackjack and save their status for another game.

All of the games in “Casino” play well. Despite Game Boy’s small screen, cards are easy to read. I particularly enjoyed blackjack, almost doubling my stake on the outbound flight. Coming home, though, I lost most of my winnings on the slots and at the poker table.

Players who like to gamble with friends can link two Game Boys together. It’s a cool touch, but unnecessary because the game provides computer opponents who are better gamblers than most of the humans I know.

As with real gambling, the house always wins in the end. But the difference with “Hoyle Casino” is that after spending the initial $30 to buy the game, any losses after that are just a bunch of binary bits.

‘Incredible Crisis’

Taneo Tanamatsuri is a simple man having a bad day. And that’s all there is behind “Incredible Crisis,” an extremely odd but strangely compelling title for Sony PlayStation. Over the course of this awful day, players guide Taneo as he dances at the office, flees a runaway boulder, walks a high wire and steers a hospital stretcher through traffic.

And that’s just the beginning. Players eventually catch up with the rest of Taneo’s family--all of whom are having similarly lousy days. Those not being shrunk down to insect size or abducted by a UFO are fighting off robbers or fleeing a giant, pink teddy bear.

In the end, “Incredible Crisis” boils down to a string of disconnected mini-games tied together by the Tanamatsuri family. I’m a big fan of compilations, but the problem with “Incredible Crisis” is that players can access a game only after they’ve beaten all the games before it.

So if a player has a problem with music games like “Parappa the Rapper,” which clearly inspired Taneo’s first mini-game, it can take a long time to move on to some of the other games. Granted, it’s fun to move through the story, but the plot isn’t so wonderful that it keeps frustrated players coming back.

Aaron Curtiss is editor of Tech Times.

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The Skinny

Title: “Sheep”

Genre: Puzzle

Price: $30

Platform: PC

System requirements: Pentium 200 with 32 MB of RAM

Publisher: Empire Interactive

ESRB* rating: Everyone

The good: Simple and addictive

The bad: Too many hints