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• gamedeal user

  Feb 4, 2015

  This entire series of game is based on "The Incredible Machine" series from Sierra back in the 1990s. That said Crazy Machines Elements is not quite as good as Crazy Machines, Crazy Machines 1.5, and Crazy Machines 2 (and all related DLC) mostly because the puzzle applicability is "dumbed down" for the today's "short attention span" audience. There are too many "free clues" in the baseboards on each puzzle, and the place of pieces can sometimes be a little frustrating based on the applicability of the physics. Overall, if you buy the Crazy Machines Complete pack, I believe the cost will keep you entertained for some time. However, buying Crazy Machines itself is somewhat of a mixed bag, but I will give it a thumbs up due to the variety of different parts available to use in editor mode, the ability to set fire to most pieces to expand puzzle options, and the extra DLCs content available. Start solving those puzzles!
• gamedeal user

  Jun 7, 2015

  Crazy Machines Elements is a 2011 game from the Crazy Machines series, could be called "Crazy Machines 3". It's a game of Incredible Machines genre, where you have to solve the linear puzzles by placing lacking elements in the contraption. This game also came out for Xbox 360 and PS4. If I am not mistaking, those versions had leaderboards implented, while Steam version doesn't make use of any online features. Even achievements are done in game itself, no Steam ones. And presentation is really great here. The graphics are really amazing. Well, sure, maybe technical side lacks whatever graphics-crazy people are hyped over nowadays, but with more colrful and nice art style it gives us incredibly atmosphere. Each element appears more of toy-like, jolly for eyes. Thanks to that, you can tell away what contraption is about from the first look, unlike Crazy Machines 2 where you had to focus to tell away what is what. Well, game sure doesn't try to be too realistical, you suck UFOs into vaccum cleaner there after all. Music playes it safe. Nothing terribly original or memoriable. But it's great and doesn't repeat often, helping you to immerse yourself on thinking over the puzzle. The game takes place at outdoor placed, like Professor's backyard, where he screws gravity up with his inventions with no care for neighbours. Professor himself finally took care of his hair and rarely appears in the game itself, not even talking to you anymore. Actually, there isn't even hint on intro plot for puzzles anymore. Previous games had little instructions written for each puzzles, like "I need that basketball to 1v1 Einstein". But that's not something people will miss anyway. Outdoor enviroments not only give you gorgeous scenery, but you also can't place elements just in air. You can place them only on the walls, in whatever way they are placed. The layout of the wall can also give you visual clues to help you. And you will have to appericate that, as there is no hints system in this game. You will have to figure it out on your own and with visual clues. At least it doesn't have cheap puzzles with ridiculous solutions like Crazy Machines 1 does. Gameplay-wise it's somewhere closer to the first Crazy Machines. If you don't know, Crazy Machines 2 was more focused on building and connecting complex systems of gears and pipes and lasers. Elements reverts gear system back to simplicity of the first title. Completely removes steam pipes. Less things to do with laser. Perhaps it tries to focus more on physical puzzles, removing every other fluff and "time-wasting" parts. Even dominoes aren't in this game. It does add few more elements and focuses on Elements. Well, or more exactly electricity and fire. And how bolt of electricity can set things on fire. And wind messing your experiements up too. As said, think of Crazy Machines 1, with slightly different focus. At least I don't miss having to decide if I need small, medium or large gear in CM2. Oh, and now description of each elements shows you a bunch of icons too, that explains it's special properties, like "can be set on fire, can be tied to rope". If you get stuck, feel free to check each elements. Perhaps you will find out that some element is electricity conductor too. Oh, and bonus. Instead of providing bonus objective, there are now golden gears placed through the puzzle level. They have to be touched by elements to be picked up, and you should get them all to count puzzle as 100% complete in a proper way. It's developers way of making sure that those who want to fully beat the game have to fully find the most complete solution. But I have to say, in some puzzles I found some elements aren't needed to solve them. No idea. Didn't go without technical flaws though. While it's not as broken as Crazy Machines 2, it still got some small stuff. Mostly, rare cases of physics bugs. When placement of unrelated to chain reaction element may lead to change in behavior of another object. I also think that in rarely I encountered some slight placement-grid part, where element seemed slightly misplaced on the grid. Could be just me. But sometimes it may be good to restart the puzzle fully, just in case. The game has three modes to play: Puzzles - Your classic Crazy Machines puzzles where you have to place given elements to solve the contraption. There are 100 of them, plus 40 from DLCs. Challenge - Now that's something new to the series. For those who complained about linear puzzles. Instead you have simple goal and then given full list of elements, with some of them locked for sake of challenge. And you are given 2000 or so points that you spend by placing elements of different costs. Game also tracks the amount of elements and time it took you to beat the challenge. The less the better. There are around 20 challenges, plus 10 from DLCs. They are either easy, designed for sake of getting high score, or quite a tough nut to crack. Lost of placement tweaking around. I know that consoles has online leaderboard for this mode, so you could see all the creative ways that players solved challenges by. But in Steam version you will not challenge anybody, I am afraid. Just beat the stages. Not really fan of this mode myself. Editor - Your usual sandboxish editor that allows you to build contraptions. Some silly fun, I guess. You can build proper puzzles too. But there is no online feature to share your creations. I didn't even find the file where puzzles are saved. So, I am afraid, you may not have fun with community works and not going to awe online friends. Dissapointing. So, in conclusion, Crazy Machines Elements, while not being true continuation of Crazy Machines 2 ideas, still delivers. Combined with presenation, it's one of the best Incredible-genre games you will find on the Steam. Not to mentioning that it doesn't have technical problems of CM2, nor cheap ridiculous puzzles of CM1. So, all the fun.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 12, 2012

  Don't buy this. It's not finished, there's many flaws. Save your money and get Crazy Machines 2.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 27, 2017

  [h1]Crazy Machines Elements[/h1] ...is a physics-based puzzle game. Help a crazy inventor build wacky contraptions to cause a chain reaction in order to achieve specific goals. This review includes the [i]Collision Course & Mental Activity[/i] and the [i]Gadget Fun & Tricky Riddles[/i] DLCs. [h1]⚙ [u]Game Description & Mechanics[/u] ⚙[/h1] The [i]Crazy Machines[/i] franchise is the spiritual successor to [i]The Incredible Machines[/i] where, just like this one, you build devices à la Mouse Trap best explain with an example: Drop the ball which flips a lever, which turns on an engine, which activates a conveyor, which moves a box, which pushes a button, which turns on a toaster, which pops a toast, which hits a switch, which lights a torch, which ignites the rocket you've been trying to launch. You get the idea. You have a series of Puzzles you must solve by figuring where to put the missing parts in an incomplete contraption. There are also Challenges which gives you a base setting from which you build contraptions of your choosing to achieve the goal. Then, there is the Editor which is a sandbox free play you can assemble contraptions of your own design. [h1]☺ [u]What I enjoyed[/u] ☺[/h1] There's a large variety of parts to pick from when building your contraptions, each of which will react to multiple elements and can serve different purposes: a torch can ignite fuses, heat boilers, or even serve as a light source for solar panels, wood planks can serve as shelves or walls, can rotate on axles, or light up on fire, and so forth. This is in addition to the environmental effects such as wind, weather, and even gravity that will affect the results. Graphics are bright and colorful, each part being distinct and easy to recognize. The user interface is further simplified with quick access to any item description, just hover your mouse over it to get a quick description of the part and a list of elements (fire, electricity, rotation, light, etc.) it can interact with, making the game very accessible. [h1]☹ [u]What bothered me[/u] ☹[/h1] Developers probaly tried too hard to be original with the parts. I mean, objects such as flying saucers being attracted to planet-looking balloons, or weather machines that launch lightning-bolt-spitting clouds, are quite a departure from the traditional "home-made contraptions" the attraction for this game usually comes from. Even the aesthetics are items built on plywood sheets in a backyard or a brick wall, instead of the basement laboratory theme people have come to expect and love. Difficulty has been dropped from past games by a milestone. The 140 Puzzles are way too easy to figure out, you are given the exact amount of part you need to complete it, the background limits the locations you can place them, and there are floating cogs you must collect which serves as additional clues to show you exactly how you should solve it. While the Challenges give you more freedom to solve theme, there's only 30 of them. The reason people have always come back to such games was to design contraptions of your own, but here, you are limited in the quantity of parts you can put by an arbitrary currency and value-based parts. Furthermore, the goal of self-made contraptions is to design puzzles of your own, choosing which parts players can use to complete it, and what goals the puzzle has, yet there is no way to export and share them with other players, so what's the point? [h1][b]My Verdict[/b]: ★★★☆☆ - [i]"It's up to you."[/i][/h1] If you wish to recreate Pee-Wee's Breakfast Machine from [i]Pee-Wee's Big Adventure[/i], this isn't the best iteration for it. Still, there are plenty of puzzles to pick your brain to keep you occupied, at least for a time. Veterans might not find their fill, but it's an easy entry point for those who never played these games before, the target audience I am recommending it to. ————————————————————————— [i][b]This was just my opinion.[/b] If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/CJsOpinions/]reviews[/url].[/i]
• gamedeal user

  Sep 13, 2018

  The original Crazy Machines (and 1.5) are a lot better than this game. I do not recommend that anyone gets this game.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 3, 2013

  "Master the permeable craft"
• gamedeal user

  Jan 5, 2014

  This and the other Crazy Machines games are lots of fun for my 5-year-old daughter and I. She learns about simple physics, and we both like problem solving contraption games. Elements is probably my favorite of the bunch, with a decent interface and graphics, and the professor isn't making comments all the time about your progress like at least one of the other Crazy Machines games. The puzzles in this one aren't too tough so far, but we're not very far in yet. I really appreciate that some puzzles have a quick solution, but have a way to get a better bonus if you want to keep at it. This lets my daughter choose how much we work on each puzzle. Again, lots of fun.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 24, 2014

  As you can see by my playing time, I beat the whole game and in no case I would recommend this game. Don't get blended by the graphics and buy Crazy Machines 1, Crazy Machines 2, The Incredible Machine or if your kid is just 6 years old Crazy Machines 1.5. There are 3 terrible terrible mistakes in this game: 1) Inconsistent Physics: Imagine an object is flying on the left side of the screen. It always has the same trajectory, but if you place an element on the bottom right corner, which doesn't interfere with the other object, suddenly the trajectory changes and making it often impossible/very difficult to finish the task. 2) The grid on which you place your elements is way too big, causing a lot of unnecessary trouble. Imagine your idea/plan is absolutely correct, but you cannot execute it, because the laserbeam misses your mirror by 2 length-units, but you can move the mirror in the grid only by 10 length-units, causing the beam to miss your mirror again. This makes a lot of trial&error work necessary, even though it could have been easily avoided. In no other Crazy Machines game this was as annoying as here. 3) And that is the absolute deal-breaker here. You get punished if your solution is more intelligent than the default solution. The rewards are not task-based (the less you use, the better), but instead path-based. This means you have to place objects the way the game thought for you. Because if you don't, the trajectory of objects might be different and you won't be able to collect the cogs in the level. This is such a horrible design choice, I can't imagine why any sane developer would make this. There is also something other bothering me and that was the "help". By looking at the shape of the background you can instantly see what object has to be placed. For example mirrors belong onto circle-shaped wood and generators on square-shaped wood. This dumbs the game down and no, that's not suitable for very young children, because Crazy Machines 1.5 makes it right. In that game are easier tasks, and more puzzles in between, so the difficulty doesn't rise too fast, but it does not dumb the puzzles down. Stay away from this game and don't bother playing it. Get the other games I listed in the beginning of the review.
• stevesilva33

  Oct 4, 2023

  IT is sooo fun and challenging AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!!!!