The freemium model is a bit of a curious fit for an official Olympics game. It doesn’t quite give the right message, does it? If you want to succeed, you need to build on your natural talent through plenty of good solid practice. Or just bung us a few pennies and we’ll sort you out. …
Last month Google unveiled their entry into the tablet market, with the Google Nexus 7, the budget-priced 7†Android tablet that aims to surpass the Kindle Fire and potentially Apple’s iPad. The Nexus 7 finally started shipping last week and I was lucky enough to take delivery of one on Wednesday. I opted for the …
You know an RPG series has hit the big league when minor characters start to appear in their own spin-offs. The Chocobos from Final Fantasy have departed the main series many times to star in the likes of Chocobo Racing and Chocobo’s Dungeon, while the blue blobs from Dragon Quest appeared in Rocket Slime on …
When we first caught wind that a game called Professor Pym and the Secret of Steam was arriving on the App Store our collective minds mustered up images of some sort of Professor Layton clone. Alas, this isn’t the case – it’s a vertical platformer similar to Doodle Jump and more recently Circus Atari. Don’t …
Tiny Wings was Apple’s 2011 game of the year in Europe, and deservedly so: it’s lovely. A delightful teaser trailer for Tiny Wings 2 surfaced last week, with a release date of 12th July 2012. Collective conclusions were leapt to, but we should have been looking more closely at developer Andreas Illiger’s Twitter stream: There …
Peter Molyneux said he’d learnt his lesson a couple of years ago. He even reiterated it just before 22 Cans announced their first project: Must remember not to give to much away about 22Cans next project, don’t get too excited, don’t over promise, ahhhhh it’s going to get messy — peter molyneux (@pmolyneux) June 4, …
How do you choose a game from the baffling variety on offer on the App Store? When it’s only 69p at stake, the name is as good a reason as any to splash the pennies. Let’s Eat Sweets! – that’s Temporal Games’ exclamation mark, but I like it – definitely falls into the ‘good name, …
How times have changed. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s most new releases were little more than shameless clones of Atari’s then ground-breaking arcade titles. Even Nintendo was guilty of this, releasing their own version of Breakout. Skip forward nearly four decades – Pong is 40 this year, would you believe? – and Atari are …
I’ve been playing Don’t Run With A Plasma Sword recently. It’s been hard to put my finger on why it’s not entirely satisfactory, but I’ve got there: it’s a packet of Party Rings. It’s unarguably a great name for a game. The sense of humour is carried through to the loading screens, where you’re given …
I can’t imagine why I’ve never been asked to contribute to Thought For The Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. I’d totally base one around iPhone game Crow. It’s got moral choices, you see. Really unsophisticated ones, which do little but switch the game into hard mode if you try to be good. I …
I imagine that, after playing Square-Enix’s 774 Deaths, most people would be comfortably able to describe it in one word. Not necessarily the same word, mind. In my case, that word is BRUTAL. The difficulty is brutal. Each death, usually on a blood-splattered blade, is brutal. The graphics and sound are brutally retro – though …
They say that there are five stages of grief. Well, in my experience, there are three stages of Angry Birds Space. 1. Anticipation Fuelled by the NASA association, endless tie-ins and ceaseless media attention, the impression that this is a Big Deal built and built. With it came an assumption that it must be a …
It’s hard to predict what’s going to make something stand out on the App Store. In the case of Gluddle, it was the screenshot above faintly recalling some Lemon Jelly album artwork. It’s quite the stylish game, to my eye. It’s more physics-based fun, in this case launching bouncy balls (‘Gluddle’) to knock into targets …
Beat Hazard Ultra looks fantastic, with its neon explosions and swirling backgrounds, and sounds – well, it sounds as good as your iTunes library. Which in my case is excellent, I’ll have you know. Here’s the twist: the soundtrack you choose is used to generate the on-screen action. More going on aurally means more going …