Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero

To get a feel for today's game before you download it, please check out the following game play videos of Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. You can also other videos and walkthroughs in the ‘Other Reviews and Videos’ section below.

In Brief

Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero is a Time Management game. After playing it for about an hour I found it uninspiring and scored it a 5 out of 10 for game play and that was generous. :)

Installation:

Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero downloads to a 44.4 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set-up file and a read me). To install Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero click on the orange key file labelled set up and not the setup.gcd file. Those with multiple hard drives can save games on any drive they wish, just change the default installation path. The newly installed game is 46.9 MB in size. The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed by the user if you prefer:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Age of Adventure - Playing the Hero

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop, three of which can be safely deleted (Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game which vary each week). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you uncheck the box when the ''additional tasks'' window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window)

Introduction:

Travel back in time to an age of not only chivalry and heroes, but also deceit and no-good, dirty backstabbers in this deliriously fun time management romp! Capturing a traitor, restoring a kingdom and falling in love might sound like a tall order, but it's all in a day's work in the Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero!

• 45 levels
• Three settings
• 36 achievements to earn

Reference accessed HERE 1st September 2018

The Game:

The level-based time management game comes in many shapes and sizes, but one constant seems to remain true amongst them all: you’ll complete levels of increasing difficulty while manipulating resources to finish tasks. In Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero, that too is your overall goal, but the gameplay is so downright frustrating and simply not fun that there’s no reason anyone should try this one out.

From the amateurish graphics of the game’s initial cut scene to the unforgiving time limits on each time management stage, Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero starts poorly and does nothing to redeem itself. You’re an actor from Chicago that’s been mistakenly transported back in time to kill the ruler of the local Kingdom. Your transportation has consumed the crystals used to power the time machine, so upon learning that you can’t return to your own time, you’re expected to simply start repairing bridges, building homes and dealing with local townsfolk as though this is a completely normal situation.

Why isn’t my character panicking about being abruptly ripped from his home and transported back in time? Why do the citizens from the past not question this stranger from the future, who holds a movie prop gun as though it means something? Why am I told to disregard basically everything I’ve been told in the game’s intro and to simply start building homes and collecting money? The answers to all of these questions are up for debate, but the answers really don’t matter, as the game simply isn’t fun enough to encourage you to care.

Each level is timed, and while you can continue to play a level without worrying about the time limit until you’ve eventually completed all of your assigned tasks, the Gold and Silver trophies for each stage can only be earned by completing a stage within a matter of around 3 minutes (or less in some cases), which is far easier said than done.

As with most time management / strategy games, your time in Age of Adventure is spent balancing the use and collection of various resources, like energy orbs, coins and wood. Building additional houses on a stage gives you additional workers to complete tasks, but the speed of your workers’ progress is agonizingly slow. You’re heavily encouraged to speed up their actions by clicking on items as quickly as you can to help the progress bars fill faster, but this is a downright horrible demand. It’s not fun to click on the left mouse button as fast as you can in any gameplay situation, and that’s one of Age of Adventure‘s major focuses!

While you’re killing your fingers trying to speed up your workers, it’s all too easy to accidentally reassign a worker to a finished project because you were clicking so fast, and there’s no way to cancel an action to free up that worker. You’re then left to either rapidly click on the action again (collecting rent, chopping down trees, harvesting energy orbs, etc.) or simply accept the fact that you’ve lost access to that worker until he eventually finishes the task on his own.

That being said, the tasks you’re forced to complete aren’t that difficult, as you may need to collect a certain amount of coins or lumber to build new structures or repair broken ones, but the time limits put unnecessary strain on players. Above all else though, the requirement of rapidly clicking the mouse, as though this is some sort of enjoyable twist on the genre, is simply unforgivable.

Reference accessed HERE original review by Brandy Shaul on Oct 1, 2012; Edited and reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 1st Sept 2018.

Other Reviews and Videos of Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero:

You can see community reviews of Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero HERE,and if you want to see a more positive review of the game than the one I reposted above you’ll find one HERE, witten by Biogamergirl. You can also see more game play videos of Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Conclusion:

After playing Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero for an hour I couldn’t say it had any positive qualities that make it stand out from its many competitors. In fact, everything that makes the game unique also makes it suffer. The graphics are bland, the characters are lifeless, and the level time limits are very unforgiving. I had a sore hand from having to click far too frequently. Too be frankly honest I find it difficult, nay impossible to find any redeeming qualities within the game at all. Thankfully we are getting this free today. Diehard TM fanatics will find this awful, however, if you don’t play TM games often, maybe you should try it and see what you think. Personally, I’m not a fan of TM game; in fact of all the genres of games I know of, TM games come in at the bottom of the pile together with Anime picture book games. I play games for enjoyment, not to be stressed out by time limits and repetitive tasks.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it directly from Big Fish Games HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero with the toolbars etc. removed and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback about the game; for example, what you liked or disliked, or how improvements could be made to make it more enjoyable and perhaps change your mind about this game? If you don't like Hidden Object games at all, please explain why? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience. These comments will always be accessible for as long as this site is open and provide a valuable resource for game developers, thank you. To access the comments once the giveaway is over, open the game giveaway to its home page then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open up the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

I've updated the games section that used to be posted with the review. The thread is now called 'Weekly roundup of game deals', formerly the games section of the weekly reviews. You can find the new thread (which I've posted in the sticky section of the game discussion forums to make it easier to find if you are perusing the game discussion forums) HERE.

The rest of the information that used to be posted here can be found in the forums HERE. Also, check out Delenns thread over in the game discussion forums for details of other free games and offers HERE

Having problems installing today's game?

If you have a problem installing or activating or getting Age of Adventure: Playing the Hero to work please visit the problems section, which you can find in the FAQ's thread HERE. Also read through the community’s comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted. The main issue we have is with the giveaway wrapper, which uses a Themida based code to protect the games executable. Unfortunately, Themida is also used to hide malware; so, as a precaution, some security software may block the installation and sometimes even delete the executable file. Blocking or deletion is usually determined partly by the way your computer is set up. Usually you'll get a message saying ''the file is corrupted'', but, the files are okay. There are a couple of things you can do to overcome this issue. The first is to reboot in safe mode with networking, install the game then reboot, or secondly you can (at your own risk) temporarily turn off your security, install the game, then turn your security back on. A note of reassurance to those that choose the latter and quicker method. The game giveaway team have been giving away games for over a decade (Dec 2006 & prior to that, via the main site 2 or 3 times weekly from Oct 2006 to Dec 2006) and have 'NEVER' given away a game infected with malware; they always test every giveaway with several of the top anti-malware suites to ensure all games are free from malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, if you have a problem getting the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve or if you have a game to offer the community you can do so HERE