There are a lot of games converting over free to play at the moment. Asphalt 8 and AVP Evolution are taking the microtransaction route, whilst Mecho Wars has just become free to play.
Asphalt 8 [iOS, Android]
Asphalt 8 was a dollar to play for a short time, with plenty of pay for extras options and now it is a free to play, pay for extras game, confused? Good. The game offers a bunch of control modes with the worst being the on screen controls, meaning that tilt is the only real option. If this was a serious racer that would be a big problem but as it's an arcade, crash your way to the top title, it's not such a big deal. The crashes are completely ridiculous with minor taps sending cars flying and scoring you points. Sometimes cars will ram into me and this will count as me destroying them, granting me extra turbo bonuses. It's totally silly but that's half the fun.
The menu is atrocious with everything smashed onto one screen and the most useful item, the settings button, is reduced to a tiny blip in the corner. Otherwise the presentation of the rest of the game is quite good. The graphics are top notch and it features music from some great musicians including my favourite Go with the Flow by Queens of the Stone Age. Some people are bound to love this game and if you want an over the top silly racer this is for you. For me though, I don't think racing titles will move into the "great" category on phones until titles are released with universal controller support, which, incidentally isn't too far away 7.2/10.
My first impressions of this game were bad. It's full of typos, the story is horrendous, the graphics are an odd mix and the tutorial goes on for far too long. Basically I wished it was Advance Wars, the game on which it is clearly based. Yet, I kept playing and eventually I was hooked. It may lack the complex tactics of more advance turn based strategies but there is still some substance here. Once you learn which unit does what (and trust me the bizarre art style does not help this) the game begins to make sense. What it does lack though, are clear indicators of defensive bonuses, easy to find attack radiuses and just any useful information in general. The most outstanding feature is probably the music which apparently was nominated for a bunch of awards. I quite enjoyed it though I am suspicious that one of the songs is actually from Star Wars!
If I was playing this game on a Gameboy Advance or a PC, I think I would laugh at it till it ran off into a corner never to be seen again. But phones have such few options when it comes to turn based strategy that this ends up okay 7.3/10.
AVP Evolution [iOS, paid on Android]
It's cool because it's Aliens Vs Predators and those creatures are just cool. Unfortunately the game knows this and it doesn't really try hard at all to do anything with it. The original two games on PC will always be the classics, looked back upon for inspiration despite the fact they were hardly groundbreaking at the time. However they did incorporate a lot of classic moments from the movies in a relatively seamless and fun way. Now every game after them has to try to do this and it just isn't fresh anymore. You have to burst out of a chest and walk around as a stupid snake that can't do anything. There is no real jump in the game and the snake thing just jumps when necessary. You can't climb as the alien except where it wants you to and those sequences are just painful. Despite all of this I thought I chose to play as the Predator but I spend more time as the alien.
As far as I can tell the gameplay is about fighting with the camera and then bashing to death anything that isn't you. I could say more but what's the point? This is for fans only 5.9/10.
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