A Gaming Diary
Archive for August, 2009
Draw Race (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
Finished getting gold trophies for all the levels at the weekend. This unlocks them for multiplayer and allows me to play against my own best time, rather than against a preset opponent.
In the grand tradition of Peggle, I should feel like this is where the game really starts, not where it ends. I have, in fact, been back a few times to try and beat myself and move up the online rankings. It’s just that now everything’s unlocked and I’ve got those trophies next to every track I don’t have forward momentum pushing me on and it all feels a bit empty to me. I’d love a few dozen more levels to play, maybe even just all the tracks again in reverse, or something.
I think the problem I have with just playing old tracks and trying to beat my own times is that the game doesn’t have the precision it needs. I can’t draw exactly where I want, nor at exactly the speed I want, so it all feels a bit random. I’m sure the game’s code is precise enough, don’t get me wrong, but my big, fat finger just doesn’t offer the necessary level of control.
Still, I don’t hesitate to recommend it for 59p. It’s interesting, more than anything else, and I’ve got a couple of hours of play out of it so far. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see it pulling me back again and again, despite how I feel right now. We’ll see.
My Brute (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
I’m still playing this. I even made two new brutes to fill up my three character slots. (As I’ve mentioned before, there are nine character slots, but only three are open unless you recruit new pupils.)
Also, I got a small bear. He’s a bit rubbish, but he does his best.
I have such a love/hate relationship with this thing. I very much enjoy watching the fights and, especially, seeing what new goodies I get for leveling up, but I loathe the need to recruit other players in order to get the most out of the game. Some people might see that as just a type of social gaming, I see a pyramid scheme designed to sell as many copies of the game as possible.
Rope’n'Fly (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
Shall I explain the mechanics? I’m not sure that I have before. Okay, your little chap is falling to his doom. Press your finger on a building and he throws out a rope to that spot and starts swinging. Press again and the rope disappears, hopefully throwing your guy through the air. Press again before he hits the ground to throw out another rope. Try to get as far as you can before you die.
Death don’t often come from falling without a rope – normally you’ll make the rope too long and the guy will swing face-first into the ground. Or, at least, that’s how I normally die.
Even by the standards of small, casual iPhone games, this is very simple, with a bare-bones art style and, last I checked, no sound at all. It works well, though, as an enjoyable little snack when you’ve got a few seconds to kill. It’s not a simple idea polished to perfection, it’s a good idea done well enough.
Zombies & Me (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
What can I say?
It’s a simple little game I’ve written about several times before. I could mention that the fact I keep playing it means it must genuinely have something going for it, I suppose. That’s the thing about this blog, I think it says more about a game’s real qualities than if I simply made it a review site. I’d review games and base my rating on how much I thought I’d play them – and I’d invariably be completely wrong. This way, you can see some games come up again and again, while other games I loved for a day disappear off into obscurity.
Bookworm (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
Hardly touched this, but I wanted to draw your attention to a neat feature I don’t remember from the Flash version on the web site.
It keeps tracks of statistics, which you can view by turning the phone on its side. Magic, I think. Now, being a giant nerd – I keep a blog about which video games I play – I like statistics a lot. So this pleases me. Now I can see how rubbish I am any time I want.
There’s also a “gotta catch ‘em all” aspect, where certain words add to collections. For example, if you make YELLOW, that will be added to your Colours collection. A neat little feature.
Both of these things may have been in the full PC version, but I’ve only played the ad-supported web game. Anyway, they’re nice, but given the lack of time I put into this game over the weekend, not enough on their own to make me play.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
I played this a lot over the weekend. A few wins, a few losses, lots of games still ongoing.
I was pleased to be allowed PUNNY, though there were many words I tried that it didn’t like. CUNTY, for example, is not a valid word. Ah well.
