A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Slay (iPhone)
Oct 20th
This game is dangerous. It’s near impossible to put down during a game. I think I’m just going to play for a turn a two and before I know it my legs have lost all feeling and my wife’s knocking on the bathroom door asking if everything’s okay.
And at the moment, the answer is always yes, because I’m still on the very easy levels, where trees are more dangerous than my actual enemies. Seriously they’re brain dead at this level. If they ever manage to disrupt my plans, it’s only ever by sheer fluke. I don’t have to be careful with positioning or worry about defending my territory, I just grow and expand however I like and eventually they surrender. The only challenge comes from trying to beat the levels in as few moves as possible.
It’s a very good way to get back into the game, but I’m starting to want a little bit more in the way of competition.
Hook Champ (iPhone)
Oct 20th
Here is a picture of me about to shoot a monster in the face.
I hate that guy. You shoot him with your shotgun and it just stuns him for a little while. You can never kill him. He’s always there, either just behind you or chewing you up and spitting out your bones. (And hat.) No matter how far you run, he’s there. If you can’t see him, you might catch glimpse of his stinking gaseous breath coming from just off screen. He’s terrifying, unstoppable and impossible avoid, until you reach the end of the level and are pulled to happy, shiny freedom.
And you know, that’s a bit like Jesus. Or Richard Dawkins. One of those guys.
I bet that monster couldn’t kill Richard Dawkins. I reckon if anyone tried to kill Richard Dawkins he would just state that their weapons were illogical and unscientific. Any bullets, knives, bombs or rabid bats would simply melt away as they approached his big smug face.
The man married a Time Lord, for pity’s sake, he’s obviously not a normal human.
And what’s the betting he borrows Romana’s TARDIS to go back in time and check his theories? That’s probably why he’s so sure of himself. Well, that or the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. One of the two.
I wonder if he’s met any Daleks? I had a Dalek when I was three. It was the morning of my mum and dad’s wedding, so my grandpa – who was the very nicest man to have ever lived, by the way – took me out to the toy shop and bought me a Dalek while everyone was busy with preparations. I was happily playing with it while the adults did wedding stuff when it suddenly broke. Stopped moving around on its wheels, stopped making noises. I was devasted and ran into the tent where the speeches were being made, screaming and crying like only a small child can. There are pictures from the wedding of my dad giving his speech while my uncle holds me, my face a scrunched up mess of grief. I kept the Dalek for a long time in the bottom of my toy box, even though I wanted to cry every time I saw it.
Now, though, my house is full of Daleks. An analogue clock Dalek hanging on the wall. A digital clock Dalek I found in a charity shop. Lots of toy Daleks of various sizes scattered about the house. So I guess I got the last laugh. Again, like Jesus. Or Richard Dawkins.
Note to Radio 4: am available for Thought for the Day any time you want.
You know what, though? I lied to you up above when I said I was about to shoot the monster in the face. Taking the screen shot took too long, so before I could hit the shotgun button, I was dead. That’s not like Jesus or Richard Dawkins. That’s just life.
Canabalt (iPhone)
Oct 20th
Canabalt got updated in the early hours of this morning. No new features, the description just said it was a bunch of bug fixes. The only bug I’d noticed was related to Twitter. When updating my Twitter account, the game still posted to my old account. With this update, it’s posting to my new account.
Now I’ve just got to get a score worthy of posting on Twitter. My test score was a little over 1,000m, which is rubbish. I got nearly six thousand metres last night before the update, so anything over that will be worth tweeting, I think. If you want to see my scores and achievements from iPhone games, you can follow my @thatrevgames account.
Also, talking of Twitter, if you want to see new blog posts from this site in your Twitter feed (maybe you’re scared of RSS or something, I don’t know), you can follow the @invert_y account and links to new blog posts will appear in your timeline. Don’t forget the underscore, @inverty was already taken.
MAGICAL TOWER DEFENSE LITE (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Don’t blame me for the capital letters, blame the developers. You might wonder why I bothered downloading another tower defense game. Don’t I have enough of them already? Well, yes, the App Store’s full of them, but not many of them have such a charming description.
This game is only one of TOWER DEFENSE’S games, but characters are more cute than others games.
Only the hardest heart could read that and not immediately press the download button. Or, in my case, read that, search for the free demo version, then press the download version. It may be charming, but I’m not stupid.
Anyway, it successfully are my entire lunch hour, which was meant to be filled with Hook Champ, Slay, etc.
It’s just another fixed-path tower defense game but, yes, the characters are definitely more cute than others games. Well, all apart from Crystal Defenders, which this game resembles on a very superficial level. There’s a good selection of units, each described in perfectly readable Engrish, a decent control system and by killing units you can fill a power bar, enabling you to unleash a very handy fire storm.
It seemed like very good stuff, especially as I was having a lot of trouble working out a good combination of units to finish off the fifty waves of enemies the game was throwing at me. All the units seemed to be useful, apart from the cheap archery units who seemed completely useless – so useless that I couldn’t quite believe they were as bad as I thought they were. I therefore decided to try the level only using those units and my special power to see how quickly I’d die… and I promptly beat all fifty waves with the loss of just two lives.
Hmm. That’s put me off a bit. In this type of game, only using one type of unit shouldn’t work. Still, the congratulatory message at the end of the level did promise me that levels in the full version of the game are much more interesting.
So, in conclusion, it’s definitely cute and easy to play, but the balance might not be quite there. I’m still going to put the full version on my watch list, though.
Hook Champ (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Straight out of… nowhere. I love games like this on the iPhone. Something you’ve never heard of, with no hype or, indeed, much marketing of any kind appears on the App Store, someone tries it, likes it, lets the Internet know and soon enough there’s a front page article on Touch Arcade and lots of people like me rush to download it at the launch price of 59p. (I think it’s going to be £1.79 at some point but – spoiler alert! – it’ll be worth that price, too.)
Think Indiana Jones meets Bionic Commando in a stylish pixel art setting. You can run left and right through the side-scrolling levels, but most of the time you’ll be using your whip/grappling hook to swing across the levels, collecting coins and trying to reach the exit before the nasty monster chomps you into little bits.
It’s a bit tricky at first – and I still can’t get on with the Pro control scheme – but the controls soon become familiar. That doesn’t make the game easy, though. You’re left with a tough challenge, estimating angles – the whip always shoots at forty-five degrees – and working out the best time to let go of one swing and start on another.
It’s hard, satisfying, has global and local leaderboards for every level and a shop to buy upgrades and new abilities with the coins you collect.
It’s a great arcade challenge, with each death spurring you on and each impossible section forcing you to come back and work out new techniques. Less immediately thrilling and more frustrating than Canabalt, but more structured, with a proper difficulty curve and nearly as satisfying.
Crazy Snowboard (iPhone)
Oct 19th
I have to admit, the name put me off. As a general rule, anything that describes itself as “crazy” is something to be avoided. If it had been “Wacky Snowboard” or “Zany Snowboard” then I’d probably have been unable to even download the Lite version.
But I did download the Lite version of Crazy Snowboard. I’ve been wanting a snowboarding game and this seemed to fit the bill. There’s no racing yet, but I like the mission structure. Some levels ask you to perform tricks, some to slalom through gates, some to jump through rings. That sort of thing.
The Lite version was fairly good fun, but a bit too slow. Good enough for a 59p purchase, but not the £1.79 they were actually charging.
That was Friday. The very next day the price of Crazy Snowboard dropped to 59p. It’s like fate, or something. Except, you know, not really. The reason I’d heard of Crazy Snowboard is that it got a big Halloween update on Friday and the price drop was to promote this.
The Halloween update added a new board and skeleton-costumed rider and some new missions set on a spooky slope filled with gravestones and zombies. I’ve only done one of the missions on the spooky slope so far, which required me to run down fifteen zombies. Nice.
I’ve actually spent far longer in free ride mode than doing missions. It’s just a joy to ride down the slope, especially as the full version of the game is significantly faster than the Lite version.
Highly recommended at 59p – I moved it to my first page of games on Sunday, which is the highest form of praise.
Slay (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Nobody told me that Slay was out for the iPhone!
Well, not until Saturday, at least.
Slay is an old PC game I remember playing years ago. It’s at least fourteen years old, maybe more. It’s a simple but stragetically interesting hex-based game of conquest. It was great on the PC, but looked rubbish. Fifteen years later, it’s on the iPhone, still great, still looking rubbish. I does look better than the PC version did back in the day, but that’s the very definition of faint praise.
You shouldn’t run away, though. The graphics are clear and let you see what’s going on at a glance, which is far more important than any fancy stuff. The game’s completely unchanged, with mechanics it would be pointless to describe in detail. In short, though, you create men to capture territory, castles to guard it and upgrade your soldiers when you can afford to.
The game’s survived because it’s a masterpiece of design and the iPhone version works exactly as it should, even down to having an undo button just in case you click the wrong hex. (Which you will.)
I also like the structure of this version. Instead of choosing a map and then a difficulty level, there’s just a list of over four hundred levels arranged in ascending order of difficulty. Excellent.
I urge you to try this game if you’ve not done so already. It takes a few minutes to learn the rules – remember to make sure you can afford a new unit before creating it – but once you have, you never forget them. I managed to leap right in even though I’ve not played for many years.
There’s a Lite version to try, but it seems to be an older version of the game than the current one. Still, the core gameplay is exactly the same, so it’s a good way to learn the ropes.
Racer (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Racer got a big update over weekend. Two new game modes and unlockable cars.
To be fair, mind, the two new game modes are pretty much the same. Career mode has you collecting stars while avoiding traffic. Get enough stars and you move on to the next level, sometimes unlocking a new car. Slalom mode has you collecting stars, but isn’t split into levels. Like the existing modes, it simply gradually gets harder the longer you play.
There are some complaints from people about the starting car being made less responsive to make the unlockable cars more appealing, but I can’t say I noticed any difference. (It’s been quite a while since I last played the game.)
It’s still sweet little gaming treat – it sits happily in a coveted position on my first page of games – and I like the extra modes.
(Especially as the scoreboards got reset when the game got updated, so I managed a fairly respectable position on one of them.)
Soosiz (iPhone)
Oct 19th
If you can remember back to last week – an age when it comes to iPhone gaming – you might remember that I was very worried about the second boss level. You see, the first boss level was a fairly long and dangerous level, with the boss at the end and no checkpointing.
Well, I’m pleased to announce that the second boss level is only that – a level with a boss fight. No preamble, no long trek to get to the boss, no need for checkpoints. This would make multiple retries a lot easier to bear, but the boss was actually so easy I killed him first time. That might be disappointing for some, but it was a giant relief for me.
And so from the mushroom-filled second world I headed off to world three.
It’s in space. I have a space helmet and everything.
This game is glorious.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Yep, I got BURRITOed. Excellently, though, I then managed to make WIZ on a triple word square for many lovely points.
Other than that, it was a pretty unsuccessful weekend, the nadir of which came when I swapped six vowels and got six back. I said, “Oh bother!” or words to that effect.
