{"id":13031,"date":"2015-01-21T00:01:31","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T00:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=13031"},"modified":"2015-01-12T01:01:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-12T01:01:10","slug":"area-777-ipad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/21\/area-777-ipad\/","title":{"rendered":"Area 777 (iPad)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AREA777_BOX\"<\/a>Aliens have invaded Las Vegas!\u00a0 Actually I went to Vegas for real a few years ago and I\u2019m pretty sure aliens have been there for a while!\u00a0 Ha ha!\u00a0 Anyway, in this free-to-play iOS game (reviewed on iPad here), play as Chazz Fabulous, a clueless, idiotic Vegas stage magician who receives sarcastic tips from his hapless assistant.\u00a0 The only way to defeat these aliens is by\u2026playing slots?!?\u00a0 Yup, but while this is your typical slot machine game, it certainly held my interest a bit more than most, so let\u2019s see why.<\/p>\n

The game may try and tote itself as a tower defense game, but it\u2019s just slots.\u00a0 But it\u2019s slots with a point.\u00a0 As you spin, aliens will creep up on the field, kind of like Plants vs. Zombies.\u00a0 To send them off the playfield, you\u2019ll need to make a match of three or more on the slots, and it has to be on the space that the alien is residing.\u00a0 Some aliens can hop two spaces, or take extra hits, and some are even disguised as Elvis impersonators or other humans.\u00a0 If the aliens reach you, you won\u2019t die, but they will take away some of your money when they attack you.\u00a0 You won\u2019t lose if you run out of money; you\u2019ll just have to wait a bit to get some more coins so you can continue playing.<\/p>\n

The game does a good job of gradually introducing you to the rules of the game.\u00a0 First you start out at three, then five rows of slots.\u00a0 As you make matches and destroy aliens, you\u2019ll fill up a meter.\u00a0 When it\u2019s full, you\u2019ll level up.\u00a0 Not only does levelling up earn you a big payout of coins, but it also usually unlocks a new symbol to match or token to use.\u00a0 Certain symbols can give you items when you tap them and matching others produces different effects.<\/p>\n

You can use tokens to give you an edge on your next spin.\u00a0 Drag a token to a spot on the playfield to use its effects.\u00a0 The Wild Card token allows you to make that next spin\u2019s space a wild card for easier matches.\u00a0 Other tokens will attack or trap nearby aliens, or give you items if you make a match over them.\u00a0 If you run out of tokens, you can always buy more with purple diamonds that you can earn by playing.\u00a0 You can also buy purple diamonds (and more coins) with real money, but the purple diamonds are pretty easy to get on their own.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s really all there is to it.\u00a0 As you reach certain levels, you can unlock new areas with more slots that make you bet higher but give you bigger payouts.\u00a0 As a free-to-play game, there are a few annoyances, though.\u00a0 The pop-up ads that appear every so often really interrupt the flow of gameplay, and there are in-game purchase things to click everywhere (to buy more coins and diamonds).\u00a0 But because of its silly humor and premise, this slot machine did hold my interest more than most.\u00a0 So fans of casino games may enjoy this one.\u00a0 I think it would even make a fun real life slot machine, too.<\/p>\n

\"AREA777_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reading skill is a must for the text, and of course there is simulated gambling involved.\u00a0 Parental supervision is recommended with all the pop-up ads and in-game purchases.\u00a0 There is some crude humor and cartoony violence as aliens can barf on the playfield, explode, or grab onto your face for an attack.\u00a0 But it\u2019s all very silly and cartoonish.\u00a0 I might be OK with kids playing this, with supervision of course, although I don\u2019t know if slot machines are the best types of games to be teaching kids to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aliens have invaded Las Vegas!\u00a0 Actually I went to Vegas for real a few years ago and I\u2019m pretty sure aliens have been there for a while!\u00a0 Ha ha!\u00a0 Anyway, in this free-to-play iOS game (reviewed on iPad here), play as Chazz Fabulous, a clueless, idiotic Vegas stage magician who receives sarcastic tips from his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13031"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13034,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13031\/revisions\/13034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}