A Gaming Diary
Archive for August, 2009
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Aug 21st
In bed last night I played some turns. In bed this morning I played the turns that had come in overnight.
I grumbled about rubbish letters in some of my games, as I do, but didn’t have to change my letters in any of them.
Sentinel: Mars Defence (iPhone)
Aug 20th
I just spent over an hour playing this and was very pleased when I won the level. (It’s level two of four, for the record. Winning unlocks the next level and Endurance mode for the level you just completed.)
I can’t in all honestly say that was the most exciting or interesting hour of gaming I’ve done on my iPhone, but I didn’t seem to be able to stop playing until I won.
So, no, Sentinel may not be inspired, but it certainly does the job. I honestly can’t decide whether I’m being a bit harsh or whether I’m playing it more than it deserves.
Deadshot Free (iPhone)
Aug 20th
Nothing much to this one. You’re frozen to the spot in a snowy wasteland. You can turn around by swiping the screen, but not move. You have three guns – a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle. Nicely-animated zombies approach. You tap them to shoot them – and sometimes you think you’ve tapped them but the game says you haven’t, which I’m happy to put down to my having rubbish fingers, rather than it being a problem with the game. Sometimes extra ammo appears. You tap it to pick it up.
That, dear readers, is all that happens.
Well, okay, sometimes you get told you’ve finished a level and then you start again, with more zombies approaching more quickly.
But that’s really all that happens.
This demo consists of five levels – which, unfortunately, seems to be about when it starts getting properly frantic.
It’s incredibly simple. It’s refreshingly unpretentious. It, like at least 73% of iPhone games, has zombies in it. I enjoyed my brief time with it. I don’t think I’ll buy the full version, but you never know. It’s just got a certain low-rent charm that appeals to me, even though you can imagine proper games with their monocles and top hats and little terrier dogs being very sniffy about the whole thing.
Sentinel: Mars Defence (iPhone)
Aug 20th
I would have thought the game would be called “Sentinel: Mars Defense”, rather than “Sentinel: Mars Defence”, but iTunes is showing the latter. Doing some auto-translation thing, maybe? I don’t mind either way, being quite happy with UK and US English and happy to write this blog in either, or both.
Anyway, that’s not important. Sentinel is a fixed-path tower defense game… or a tower defence game.
Aargh!
I think I’ll stick with the “s” spelling for now, for the genre name, even though it’ll probably cause spluttering from fellow Brits who now think I’m some sort of traitor. In my defence… oh, forget it.
Sentinel is a TD game. I bought it ages ago, but didn’t play it until last night.
First impressions were that it was a solid, uninspiring TD game without anything to recommend it over other games of its type.
Further play cemented those impressions. I mean, it works. It looks quite nice. It’s got a couple of its own ideas – barriers with health, rather than a certain number of lives, and repair droids that can repair those barriers or go off mining resources for you – but that’s about it.
It’s certainly quite addictive, simply because tower defense is an addictive genre and Sentinel doesn’t muck it up. It’s just that the tower selection is utterly bog standard, the upgrades for towers are deeply uninspiring and the enemies are equally standard, for the most part.
If you want a fixed-path TD game, by all means go and spend 59p on this. You’ll get your money’s worth, no question. I might even play it again. I might even find myself playing it a lot. I don’t know yet. It’s a decent game. It’s just that after a couple of hours of play I find it perfectly functional but completely uninspiring.
Str8ts (iPhone)
Aug 20th
And talking of games I don’t have much to write about…
At least now I can say, “Look, after not being able to do a puzzle due to brain issues, now I’m back at full strength.”
And prove it with a screen shot.
I did a couple of levels yesterday, both in less than ten minutes.
I suppose I could once again mention that this is by far my favourite puzzle game on the iPhone, just in case anyone sees this post before any of my others.
I’d be less worried about all this, if it wasn’t taking Blogger ages to upload and generate code for screen shots at the moment. Last week, it was uploading, but didn’t realise it, so never generated the code. Now, if I leave it long enough, it generates the code for me. It might be quicker to cut and paste from earlier entries and go to my site to look for the filenames of the images Blogger’s generated, but that’s such a hassle.
Oh, right, here we go. Now just to move it from the top of the post to where I want it… and we’re done!
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Aug 20th
No, seriously.
I have no idea what to write about this game.
Last night, I played some moves in a game very like Scrabble. This morning, I made some more.
I may even have won or lost a game, but I tend not to remember, as it’s the playing that’s important to me, not the result. (Though I do try to win, obviously.)
The only point to these continuing entries to say “Hey, look, I’m still playing this game!”, because if this blog is any way useful to anyone, it’s to show which games are quick burners and which have legs. Otherwise, I might as well just label some posts as “first impressions” and others as “review” and be done with it.
Real Racing (iPhone)
Aug 19th
Whoa! Whoa! Hang on a minute!
This game is fantastic! Why don’t I play it more often?
I mean, I knew it was great. I’ve played it before, I’m quite happy to recommend it everyone and anyone, but I haven’t actually been playing it.
But why? I’ve just had a few lunchtime races and it’s absolutely brilliant. It controls perfectly, it looks gorgeous, it’s always tense, always exciting, there’s a great sense of speed – everything you need in a racing game.
So why has it been weeks since I last had a go?
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Aug 19th
Too much information, Rocco. Too much information.
