One Sentence Reviews

Tiny Island [iOS] This game teaches you that the result of hard work is diminishing returns; no doubt like in this game some overseer is taking a part of your pay and never doling out the shells you so desperately need 5/10.

Robo Gun [iOS] Like all robots from the future you will spin around firing your gun but never question why, when you do question it you will probably stop and do something a little more fun 6/10.

Zen Pinball [iOS] It seems likes a great idea, pinball on your phone but somehow it doesn't work, the screen is too small and some general unresponsiveness make this game merely okay 7/10.

Limbo (Mac OSX)

Limbo has finally found it's way to the Mac after being released on nearly every other platform imaginable. It was originally released on the Xbox 360 in July 2010. Limbo is a puzzle platformer that sees you playing as a boy in a very dark world.

The gameplay is reminiscent of classic puzzle platformers like Another World or the Oddworld series and like those classic games Limbo has a punishing difficulty. Miss that jump by a fraction of an inch or miss-time your run and you could be impaled, crushed or end up the dinner of something big and nasty. Watching your poor character die a thousand deaths is part of the fun of the game but it does get quite frustrating when you are stuck in the same place, seeing him die in the same way. The game sort of counts on the fact that you will get stuck in places because it is very short. Sure it has things to collect and acheivements to unlock but it is over far too quick.

Graphically the game is entirely in black and white which adds to it's overall dark tone. It's really quite creepy; your character is animated in a cute cartoon like fashion but the rest of the world is quite sinister and hostile. The spiders are some of the most terrifying things in the game and when you see one of these coming for you, you will definitely run! The animations of your character dying are also quite brutal; without a doubt this is not a game for children.

The game ran smoothly and I had no problems with bugs under Lion. However the game would constantly crash in Snow Leopard when tabbing out of the game. Overall it is a good game with plenty of strange mechanics (such as brain worms) and a creepy world that does really suck you in but it is far too short to be a premium title 7.5/10.

Cover Orange [iOS]

Cover Orange has been described as Angry Birds in reverse and it is quite a fitting description. Instead of knocking down walls and objects, you build them to protect your oranges. The game has it's origins as a flash game which is still available to play for free online, so if you don't have an iOS device you don't have to miss out.

The aim of the game is to stop the evil cloud from raining upon your oranges. The game features a huge number of levels and for the most part you are smashing through these levels quite easily. Every now and then a level comes a long that is a bit trickier and keeps you on your toes. At first this difficulty spike seemed a little arbitrary but I quite liked it as you felt like you were getting a lot accomplished without feeling like you weren't challenged. The level designs can be quite elaborate though at times you can simply bypass what you are meant to do and just stick a couple of blocks on top of your orange and away you go.

Artistically the game is fairly terrible. It has some of the worst sounds and music in any game I have ever played. The graphics are rudimentary but get the job done. I suppose some of these things can be overlooked because it is aimed at children who either don't care, or perhaps even like the terrible sounds etc. in the game.

It's all about the gameplay for this game and I think you'll agree once you've played through your first 50 levels you'll wonder if you can ever put this game down 9/10.

One Sentence Reviews

Theme Park [iOS] The classic original reimagined by EA, i.e. soulless, money-grubbing and without the fun 4/10.

Triple Town [iOS] This game is great, however it is labeled as free when really it costs $4.49, which is what kills it 7/10.

Hero Academy [iOS] It's a cool game idea but it's really not worth waiting this long to take a turn 6/10.

Tiny Wings [iOS]

There has not been a game so obsessed with curves since Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, however, in this case it is in a completely innocent way. You play as a bird with, you guessed it, tiny wings and you must use hills as ramps to launch you into the air. All you have to do is touch the screen when you want the bird to stop flapping its wings and basically become heavy so you can slide down a hill, then when you are going up you release your finger and let the bird start flapping again. It is quite simple but it requires a lot of concentration and the game keeps you sucked in by the nest mechanic. The higher level nest you have the more points you earn but in order to to get a new nest you have to complete a set of objectives. Some objectives are as simple as fly to a certain number island, which is something you are doing anyway but they can be more complicated such as achieve fever mode five times in a run and they are made all the more difficult by the fact that you are in a race against night time. As soon as night hits your bird falls asleep and you must start all over again, flying particularly fast however lets you push back the night and enables you to keep going.

The game's style is very cutesy and if you don't like cute games this is not the game for you. Part of the charm is the cute noises the bird makes and the unrealistic (but cute) size of its wings. The cute style hides the addictive nature of the gameplay which will have you playing for hours. The game could have been made more addictive if the coins you collected did more than just add points to your score. An upgrade store would have been very cool.

It's not without it's problems though. The game gets a bit of slowdown when you cross over an island which seems very odd for such a graphically and physically simple game. When game centre boots up it will cause slowdown as well and sometimes you will swear you did a perfect slide on a hill and it will punish you, other times you will mess it up and be rewarded. Some of these have received work in patches but it never really completely resolved them.

All in all it is a great game and one that is worth challenging your friends to. It does have some problems but they are not game breaking and the simple fun that you get from it is well worth it 9/10.

Ninja Fishing [iOS]

If you haven't already seen my review of Radical Fishin' you should take a look here as these two games are very similar. The difference is that in Ninja Fishing you slice the fish with your sword instead of shoot them.

The basics are you fling down your hook and try and dodge the fish getting your hook as deep as it can go. Then you catch the most expensive fish you can find. Once you have caught a bunch of fish they are flung into the air for you to slice with your sword. Every now and then some dynamite is added to the mix and you must avoid slicing it or the minigame will end. It is an incredibly annoying addition to the gameplay this stick of dynamite. Sometimes it will be thrown up so as to cover that new fish you had worked so hard to collect and as the sword arcs are quite wide it can make it virtually impossible to get. Radical Fishin' handles it in a much better way, instead of dynamite you pull up jellyfish which deduct money from you. This mechanic works well as when you are tight for money early on it is best to avoid them but as you progress the amount deducted is so little compared to the amount you are making per fish that it doesn't matter. In fact the makers of Ninja Fishing acknowledge that this is such an annoying mechanic that they even included a sword that removes the dynamite without penalty, however you have to pay $AU2.99 for the privilege.

Most of your time is spent dreaming of the next item and there is a lot of things to unlock to help you get better fish. The menus are clean and the game has a nice graphical style, bright and cheerful with a lot of colour. It certainly trumps Radical Fishin' in this respect. Fish explode here and there as you slice them apart and it is exciting to see what the next fish type will be. However the creators have tried to squash every internet meme into the game in a vain attempt to make it funny yet it is just comes across as shallow and lame.

Hilarious

At the end of the day I would rather play Radical Fishin' but this is a good portable version of it. It's clean and there is plenty to unlock however crashes plague the game and it it really misses the point when it comes to humour. What could be funnier than fishing for fish with a gun? Nothing, 6/10.

One Sentence Reviews

Super Jump World [iOS] Shameless rip-off of the Mario games that lacks the finesse of the original series 4/10.

Sword & Sworcery EP [iOS] One of the most overrated games in history, if you are looking for a good album, I recommend Making Mirrors by Gotye 6/10.

Restaurant Story [iOS] If Stalin were alive today he would erase the creators of this game from history 2/10.

Temple Run

Run away from monkeys! You've stolen their idol! Presumably. That sums up Temple Run pretty well. In this game you'll be swiping left and right, up and down, all whilst using those annoying tilt controls.

The controls aren't that bad although the whole tilt mechanic will always remain a bad choice. Do you want to get comfortable whilst playing a game? Well no, you can't, coz now your phone is tilted. In general the controls are actually quite responsive and they even give you a little bit of room for error, at least early on. One thing that did bug me though was there were a number of times where I went to swipe to the right and the game thought I was trying to jump to my doom. Which I promptly did.

The game features a store and here you can get all sorts of upgrades using the coins you collected in game (or purchased of course). This is truly the hook of the game, sure what you are doing is repetitive but you are doing it for a goal. To upgrade that magnet that you stuck to your arse! Or to go invisible which lets you pass through things (someone should really explain the concept of invisibility to these guys) and so on. As well as a store, Temple Run has objectives, which increase your bonus multiplier as well as act as achievements.

The graphics are really quite good for a game of this genre. No 2D stuff here, it is all chunky 3D polygons which are nicely textured and certainly good enough for a game that happens at high speed.

Although it is quite a simple game, it has a lot of addictive qualities and the simplicity coupled with the more complex elements of the store and objectives make this game something worth playing 8/10.

Gaming Accessories

Sometimes I come across an article on gaming that is so great that I just have to share it. Some people may even believe it is better than my own work. Those people would be right. Check out this article on gaming accessories here. I'll give you a quick excerpt to whet your appetite, "After three bottles of Game Fuel, I did notice a marked improvement in my ability to eat ghosts and get high scores. I also noticed the sensation of my heart feeling cold and slowing down while my skin went numb all over".

Blood in the Badlands

Blood in the Badlands is a book laying out rules and ideas for you and your friends to start a campaign. It includes rules for seasons, siege warfare and battles, as well as a lot of battle reports and fluff like stuff. Like a lot of GW (Games Workshop) stuff these days it is a limited run release, however there are still plenty of copies available.

When I began flicking through this book I was pretty excited but then I noticed all the typos, this is something you expect from a seedy blog you found on the web, not a book that retails at $55. GW thought it would be a good idea to have a bunch of guys do a campaign and lazily create a book about it. Unfortunately that is exactly the feel it gives off. The errors in the book also make some of the rules ambiguous so look forward to adding that FAQ to your book. Stupid errors are a common feature in GW stuff and I was hoping after the high quality Tamurkhan release from their Forgeworld brand that maybe they had learnt their lesson but no this is not the case.

It is not all bad news though as there are some really cool rules included. The best of them being the siege rules. Now you can destroy your rivals castle using not only your army but also siege weaponry like battering rams and siege towers. The defenders get cool stuff too like boiling oil and upgrades to their towers. The game of course runs you through the basics of running your own campaign and adds a lot of special rules. Obviously this is not aimed at the beginner as you will need experience to run the campaign and play the battles. That is why it is a little confusing that the book is not aimed at a slightly more literate, older crowd.

Also included is the story of the campaign run by the GW staffers, which I found very hard to follow. It reads something like this, Simon fought a battle with Matt, whilst Warlord Fawsqueek was attacking Steve, whilst the Warlord Headchopper was out chopping heads. I don't care about Steve or Matt and it just confuses me when you refer to them by name, then by their general, then by their last name!

In general the book is very inspirational for running your own campaigns and includes a lot of high quality photography and art, to get you in the gaming mood. This is exactly the aim of the book but it just feels a little amateurish, especially at this price. I think there is enough content to warrant the purchase of this book especially if you are buying it with friends but it could have been a lot better 7/10.