Wake The Cat iOS Review

Originally posted on PixelBedlam

Who doesn't love kittens? If you’re saying “I don’t!” right now then I put it to you that, just like a fine wine, you just haven’t found the right one yet (of course, if you’re allergic you get a free pass here). Kittens are adorable little creatures. Well, they are when they're asleep anyway.

Wake The Cat is first project from new indie developer Halfpixel Games (published by Chillingo) and has the greatest element needed in mobile gaming, a simple premise. In this case, it’s chuck a ball of wool at the sleeping cat and wake the little blighter up. The mechanics of the game will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played a mini golf game before, press on the ball, drag your finger to indicate direction and strength then release to action the shot. If you hit the kitty, she wakes up and if you miss she purrs on and you have another go.

Cute is the name of the game here. Right from the off we are presented with a loading screen showing a little cartoon kitty that looks awfully happy to have been disturbed from its slumber. In the game actual, all the objects are designed to appear realistic with a slight over exaggeration in colour to appeal to your senses. Add to this a plucky soundtrack that isn't overly offensive.

What's interesting about this particular game is the range of obstacles and actions you have. In the beginning you have only a few objects in your path that require a few easy bounces to get your goal. After a few levels you are introduced to blue objects, all of which can be altered to some degree with a quick touch (trains can stopped, fans can be turned off, barriers can be lifted and so on) and red items that cannot be affected in anyway. Soon after getting the hang of these, slippers are introduced and act as a portal to a matching slipper. Before you know it, you'll be attempting to navigate each level in flurry of timed touches and well aimed shots.

Each level is scored on both time and shots taken, but you'll get a three star rating on a given level by waking up that lazy mog in one shot (a task not that hard as you can restart the level easily enough once you have the feel for it). So if you want to be in with a chance of being high up on the leaderboard, you not only have to be accurate, you have to be fast. Here's where the games replay factor kicks in, it's incredibly annoying when some chump is 10 points higher than you on GameCentre so you want to go back and attempt a few levels a bit quicker.

At the moment there are only 60 levels on offer and if this writers’ experience was average, most of you will be able to tackle all of them with three star ratings in a few sittings. I'm not saying it's too easy, but it's hardly headache material for the adult mind. Still, at present there is at least one more level set on the way so hopefully more will follow in due course. I for one love it when games are supported months after release with new updates.

It’s fairly difficult to find much fault with Wake The Cat. Saying it’s too short seems somewhat premature when updates will buff out the experience. It is true that none of it feels particularly innovative or original, but it is enjoyable enough for that to be forgotten.

Fury Of The Gods iOS Review

Originally posted on PixelBedlam

I can’t precisely remember which Tower Defense style game I played first but I can remember the one that sapped many hours out of my youth when flash based browser gaming was becoming huge. Bloons is that culprit. A time waster like no other, the possibilities for air filled carnage were endless and it was a constant battle to beat my friends scores. It’s fair to say that I will probably judge any game that classifies itself as tower defense squarely against the joy I once gleamed from the lost time of yester-year.

Enter Fury of the Gods on iOS platforms, from Chillingo and developed by Spectral Games. Billed as ‘tower defense on a godly scale’ I have to admit to being initially skeptical as my brain took me back to the days of paragraph one. But this is not subjectivegaming.com/badreviews, this is PixelBedlam so off comes the Shroud of Nostalgia and on goes the Objective Cowl of Truth +1 lightning damage.

The opening video shows a series of events that lead to the gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hades all pissing off their subjects. The humans have had enough of the gods bullshit and decided to do something about it, namely tearing down the temple of their respective deity. Obviously, the all-powerful immortals aren't going sit back and watch this insolence take place, which means its up to you to use a decent array of divine powers to smite any hapless peasants who deem their lives unfair.

The gameplay takes place in level form around the temple of whichever god you are playing. Each level has several paths by which creepers can get to your temple and start the destruction. Whilst the camera angle is isometric, the entire level can be navigated with ease with a standard pinch zoom that almost everyone is familiar with by now. In traditional TD games, the player would place towers of differing abilities around a set course and either have a wave countdown or a start wave button. Fury takes a more arcade route to gameplay, whereby you don't actually place many units at all. Most of the peasant smiting is done by either your default attack (the Almighty Finger, where you deal damage just by touching enemies) or the several unlockable special attacks (which range from lightning bolts to meteors and even whirlwinds). As you progress through each level, you can spend acquired points to buy some special creatures, like the cyclops, to stand in a particular spot and deal damage to any folk dumb enough to wander into its path. This can be a bit of a pain due to the multiple paths creepers can take, but I guess that’s part of the replay value. When not in play, there are several options to spend your silver on including upgrades to your finger as well as several god-specific powers that require leveling up separately.

Graphically, Fury performs well enough. Everything is in decent 3D and movements are smooth to prevent any issues with gameplay, though it is impossible to say it’s top notch when compared with the graphical prowess of Real Racing 3 for instance. Each god has his own themed stages with the relevant effects you might expect from their mythologies. Sound wise, it’s all what you might expect from a game based around Greek gods with dramatic title music and suitable noises to go with your powers in game.

My only real issue with the game was how you play. The nature of the game requires you have one hand free for tapping at all times. I tried several different ways to interface with the game. The most preferable of which was placing my iPad on a table to free up both hands, but that isn't always possible. Holding the device with one hand and tapping with the other soon game some wrist ache. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, but Fury’s constant action in the later stages requires several minutes of concentration at a time. This problem is somewhat alleviated by the iPhone edition, though in that case the smaller screen poses problems of its own.

Score 7/10

Gameplay

+ Fun, fast action

- Uncomfortable after prolonged play

Graphics

+ Smooth 3D effect stages

+ Good element effects

Sound

+ Apt music and sound

Zooniverse iOS Review

*Originally posted on PixelBedlam

Freemium [free-mee-uh m] noun. A sales strategy, especially on the Internet, in which the basic product or service is free, but customers are charged for additional features and content. That’s the dictionary definition for an ever prevalent format in current gaming. Zooniverse is latest offering of the genre, brought to us by the mobile giant Chillingo.

The concept of freemium has been around for a few years now. You get the main software for free and if you want the best features, or to speed things up a bit, you can pay a sum of money and get what you want. The issues are always the same. It is possible to spend £70 in app to unlock a tonne of in game currency, but the key point is you don’t have to. Or do you?

The premise of Zooniverse is simple. Create a zoo, fill it with animals and attract visitors. Animals generate XP (used to level up and gain access to more habitats, animals and shops) and shops give you cash (which you use to buy said items). So far so simple. Then you factor in the many hybrid versions of the cutesy animals and the need to ‘assign’ guests to shops to begin generating money and what you get is a rather confusing mess of on screen happenings. The hybrids themselves aid the monotony of placing ‘normal’ animals everywhere, even if some are downright ridiculous (here’s looking at you ‘Nue’, a mixture of a Siberian Tiger, Boa Constrictor and Japanese Macaque).

Graphically, there is very little wrong with Zooniverse. It’s all very colourful and aesthetically pleasing. The animals themselves are well drawn, with a slight pang of anime to them and there has been obvious effort to make the hybrid animals look at least a little bit feasible. I would have preferred a little more on-screen real estate to make it less cramped and the edges get a bit fuzzy if you zoom in or out.

The trouble with Zooniverse is it does absolutely nothing new. It makes a slight attempt at doing something interesting with the hybrids feature, but in the end it’s just a way to make you wait for something else and hopefully buy some coins. I think my biggest gripe with Zooniverse is some of the missions cannot be completed unless you spend money on the game (it is theoretically possible to earn access for free, but the given time needed is unfathomable) and that really is committing the #1 sin of freemium. For me, freemium games should be completely free and if I enjoy it, I should feel like want to give the devs some money and not that I have to.

All that said, the game is free. So try it out, your kids will probably love it (if you’re one of these insane people who let infants go wild on an iPad) but for [enter relevant deity here]’s sake PLEASE don’t tell them your apple password so they can’t spend the aforementioned £70 on in-game rubbish. You have to help yourselves folks.

Score 6/10 Gameplay

+ Fairly familiar to Freemium veterans

- Overly complicated for the target audience

-Too many paid for elements

Graphics

+ Cute art style

- Cramped

- Zoom in/out at your peril

Sound

+Fits the theme well

-Repetitive enough to get in your head

NFL Flick Quarterback & NFL Kicker iOS5 Review*

*Originally posted on 7bitarcade.com

British people are an odd bunch. Our sense of humour rarely translates beyond our borders. Our inability to adapt to weather patterns leads us to be perceived as a bunch of moaners – and lord help anyone who tries to use one of our words incorrectly.

The latter point there, amongst others, is the chief cause of American Football’s failure to penetrate our sport loving nation. “It’s not football if you use your hands” we cry, along with “blast”, “crickey” and “cup of cha old chap?”

That is until Superbowl time. All of a sudden its okay to show an interest in this great American tradition of taking your enemies territory by force, one yard at a time. Piggy backing on the boom of interest in NFL is Full Fat Games, developer of such hits as Flick Golf!, and Flick Soccer!

NFL Flick Quarterback and NFL Kicker! are essentially physics based mini games themed around each of the player positions in the team. Absolutely no knowledge of the sport is required on either front. Plus one point already. If you are looking for reasonable comparison, look no further than Paper Toss.

Where these games differ from the aforementioned paper throwing simulator is the variation of mini games and simple XP system. For example, Flick QB has you throwing balls into buckets at increasing yardage, whilst ramping up wind speed. On a similar note, Kicker! has a great mode where the aim is to actually hit the upright bars at the field goal. XP builds after each game is completed and each rank unlocks a new mini game to get your teeth into.

Control wise, flicking is the action of the day. Flick to throw/kick, then flick again to affect the after-touch, all the while compensating for the severity of wind. The simplicity lends itself greatly to Kicker! as power isn’t much of an issue. I did find it hamper Flick QB on several occasions where a millimetre or so extra flick-age can result in throw so far away from your team mate you’ll wonder if Superman chucked it.

The only real shame of these games is they could have quite easily banded them together under one package for 99p instead of two separate games for 69p each. Out of the two, I most enjoyed NFL Kicker! as I felt it penalised you much less for a slightly inaccurate initial flick and with a decent spread of mini games, it is slightly more entertaining overall. But they both score the same in the big picture. Well worth a look.

Civiballs iOS Review*

*Originally posted on 7bitarcade.com

Civiballs HD is the latest in a long line of iPhone remakes of classic browser flash games. The premise of this particular app is to cut chains in sequence to drop coloured balls into their respective pots with an increasing amount of obstacles in your way. If it sounds a little familiar it’s because it plays quite similarly to another Chillingo title (*cough* Cut The Rope *cough*). In addition to getting the balls in the right place, there are also two stars per level to collect to add some replay value.

As the title may (not) suggest, the game takes place in four themed level collections based on different civilisations. These backgrounds serve to keep things fresh but with only 20 levels in each setting I hardly found myself getting bored with the back drop and gasping for more.

The gameplay is definitely a distinctive update from the old web-based version. It runs smoothly and looks slightly better, but calling ‘HD’ is a bit far fetched. The only real complaint is the same with many of these games, as its often wearisome to see the specific chain you are trying to cut underneath your opaque fingers.

All in all, it’s difficult to bark at 69p for an evenings entertainment but that is exactly what you get for your pennies. Even the more taxing levels can be solved in a few minutes of trial and error. Once you’re done there is very little to keep you coming back for more. As such it’s not easy to recommend next to all the other apps available at the same price. Perhaps the most Herculean aspect of reviewing this game was avoiding puns about the rather unfortunate, slightly too literal, title.