A Gaming Diary
Archive for October, 2009
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Oct 22nd
I managed to get rid of all seven of my letters last night – and make quite a rude word with them to boot. Very satisfying.
Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, the game had an update. That’s not usually a bad thing and this adds push notifications and ways to spam social networking sites with adverts for the game (or something), but it’s also has given the game a new icon. Now, it might look fine sitting with all the other icons on one of your Home screen, but I’ve got the game in the dock and it looks horrible.
Yuck. I think I may write to my MP about this outrage.
Minigore (iPhone)
Oct 21st
Another day, another Minigore update. This one’s mainly to fix the terrible bugs in the last version, but also adds some extended music and adds power-ups to the radar.
You see that picture? I risked life and limb to take that. You see the little icon on the right of the screen there? The one with the yellow circle around it? It shows that there’s a crate over in that direction.
So, nothing very new then, but Minigore remains a fantastic piece of shooting action that should probably come preinstalled on every iPhone to prove to people that virtual controls can work.
iDrop Dead: Flower Edition (iPhone)
Oct 21st
Was a little bit grumbly with this game at lunchtime, being convinced that the target times for some of the goals had been tightened up since the last version, making the game much harder.
So I went back to the old version and checked. Nope, the times are exactly the same. The game’s just harder than I remember it. Fair enough. That just means it’ll last me longer. Hooray!
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Oct 21st
I see this screen a lot. Come on people, make your moves! (Says the man who often doesn’t check for new moves for five hours or more, even during the day.)
Wheelman (360)
Oct 21st
Only had about twenty minutes to play this last night, but managed to get in one brilliantly fun mission. I had to escape from a pursuing car, then turn around and destroy two other cars before they reached a casino. I’m not quite sure why, something to do with finding someone called Paulo, or something. I think I might want a job from him, but I’m not sure.
Anyway, I only managed the one mission, then just had time to discover that Vin Diesel likes standing in fountains and can duck, but cannot jump. Then it was time for Stargate Universe, so I had to stop playing.
iDrop Dead: Flower Edition (iPhone)
Oct 21st
Effectively, this is the latest version of iDrop Dead. However, the latest update to that game got rejected by Apple for being too gory. The earlier versions were fine, the new version with extra levels and characters was rejected. This may be down to having a more sensitive app reviewer, or might be because the new characters are more human-like than the teddy bears and worms that were in the earlier versions. Whatever the reason, the app was rejected.
So the developer decided to leave iDrop Dead alone, for people who still want blood, bones and brains, but make a new version of the game, with the extra content, but with flowers and candy canes instead of gore. Got that?
So that people who’d already bought iDrop Dead didn’t have to pay for the new version, it was put up for free, which was a nice gesture. (At the time of writing it’s still free, but may cost 59p by the time you read this.)
This all also means that I’ve had to start the game again from the beginning to get to the new content. This is not a problem. In fact, it feels exciting. I get to play it all again with a clean slate – hooray!
You see, iDrop Dead is an excellent game and a graphical makeover doesn’t change that simple fact. It’s a brilliant physics-based puzzle game in any incarnation and I’ll always choose to play the version with the most content. Go get it.
Cocoto Kart Online (iPhone)
Oct 21st
I’ve played this some more, to try and decide whether or not I like it and I have come to a decision.
I don’t like it.
It’s just too hard and I don’t understand what the golden apples are for and turning off “shake to jump” just seems to stop you being able to jump at all and I just can’t get my head round it. If the game had eased me in, with helpful prompts and an easy level that’s actually easy, then I’m sure I’d be able to into it, but I just can’t. It feels like it’s testing me, to see if I deserve the game, and it looks like I don’t.
It’s a real shame, as I’m sure there’s a good game here somewhere, but I can’t find it.
Twilight Golf Lite (iPhone)
Oct 21st
Important Fact 1: This has nothing to do with sparkling vampires. Important Fact 2: It doesn’t have much to do with golf, either.
You’ve got a ball (or disc). You send it flying around the level until it hits the other ball (or disc). That’s the gist of it, anyway.
Of course, there are a lot of obstacles in the way. Doors that need opening, falling blocks, that sort of thing. And there are puzzles, which unfortunately include my second least favourite type of puzzle (after sliding block puzzles).
It’s a “hit the switches in the correct order” puzzle. Where the switches reset if you get one wrong. The very worst kind of trial and error and something that completely coloured my view of the rest of the game, which I was enjoying to a reasonable level, though I wasn’t finding it very inspiring.
Also, the Lite version has seven levels, which took less than ten minutes to get through, while the full version has thirty. Doesn’t seem like great value for money, though if you take to the game – and plenty of people do seem to love it, so you can probably ignore me – then getting gold medals on every level should prove a stiff challenge.
I’ll say one good thing, though – the lighting is absolutely gorgeous. It might be worth downloading the Lite just to have a look at it. And, hey, maybe you’ll like the game more than I did.
Minigore (iPhone)
Oct 20th
It’s been a few days since I played Minigore, which is a few days too long. Played it at lunchtime, though. Good news, too. I got a new high score.
Witness.
Best by quite a long way, but still a fair way off unlocking Insane mode. (You need 6,000 points for that one.) And I like the way the high score table hides my blushes/horribly broken corpse.
I’m glad I’m not Amish.
What comedy show had a sketch about a new religion that didn’t use technology invented after 1981 (or so) and had people having to play on an old Atari console and, I dunno, use a rotary phone or something? That was very funny at the time, which was probably around 1990 or thereabouts. Anyone?
Crazy Snowboard (iPhone)
Oct 20th
Hammered through some of the missions, none of which presented any problem, such are my skills. Fear me.
Actually, no, don’t. That would be very silly indeed. The fact is, Crazy Snowboard is not, so far, a very difficult game at all if you just want bronze medals. Some of the gold medals will no doubt prove trickier, though some I’m getting first time.
As I said before, though, I spend as much time just boarding down the slope in free ride mode as I do actually treating it as a game with goals. Medals, progression, unlockables – they’re nothing compared to the simple joy of the core snowboarding experience, which has been nailed here, albeit in a very simple way. It’s no Amped – oh, but I loved Amped! – but it doesn’t need to be.
