A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Soosiz (iPhone)
Oct 13th
I’ve got no idea where the title’s from. It may be the main character, or the world or something, but I didn’t pay an awful lot of attention to the opening text screens. Something to do with a happy place being taken over by an ancient evil, leaving me the only little round chap capable of saving the world. That sort of thing.
The story’s not especially important.
When it comes to the game, though, you’ve basically got a Super Mario Galaxy-inspired 2D platformer. Lots of little planetoids floating in space, all with their own gravity. Up becomes down, down becomes up. It’s all very confusing at first, but it becomes second nature surprisingly quickly, helped by a difficulty curve that appears to be close to perfection. I’m on the second world now and the game has been getting harder ever so gradually. You don’t really notice until you go back to one of the first levels and scoff at its simplicity.
It’s really very lovely. It looks great, with a Rolando/Loco Roco vibe and the controls are perfect, though getting used to the exact placement of the left and right buttons took five or ten minutes to get down. It doesn’t save your progress within a level if you quit out for any reason, but levels are short enough for that not to be an issue.
Overall, it’s a great game and one of the App Store highlights… but there’s a fly in the ointment.
The game commits one of the worst sins possible, something no game should ever do in the twenty-first century. Something that had me growling and almost giving up.
It has boss fights at the end of certain levels… without a checkpoint before the boss. So if the boss kills you, then you have to go back and do the whole level again. This was irritating the first time it happened, but later in the game when the difficulty of both the boss and the preceding level is higher, I think it might be fatal. I hope not, but I’m very worried.
geoDefense Swarm (iPhone)
Oct 13th
I beat the first Medium level! Yeah!
Of course, now the second level is beating me down over and over again. The lack of laser towers and the high cost of all but the standard green towers is presenting an interesting challenge.
Incidentally, I don’t tend to completely change my tactics very often in this game. I normally settle on a rough layout within two or three goes and then the rest of my attempts are spent tweaking it, slightly changing a path, shifting the balance between upgrading existing towers versus building new towers, etc.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Oct 13th
Harumph, grump and botheration.
It seems that BODGE isn’t an acceptable word in Words With Friends, despite it being a perfectly cromulent word.
Made BUNTED in the end, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying.
Meteor Blitz (iPhone)
Oct 12th
One way to make your game attractive: release a Lite version and then put the full game on sale.
I downloaded the Lite version of Meteor Blitz, thoroughly enjoyed myself, saw the full version was on sale for a mere 59p and bought it. I don’t regret my decision for a second.
(I made three purchases on my iPhone at the weekend. Meteor Blitz, Tweetie 2 and Shakira’s She Wolf video. They’re all great – and Tweetie 2 is exceptional.)
Meteor Blitz is yet another twin stick shooter. Yeah, I know. But this one is very similar to Super Stardust and is suited to longer sessions than Minigore. (Though the game does save whenever you quit, so you can play in short bursts.)
The controls work just as well as Minigore, but it’s slightly slower paced (so far, at least) and it’s got a little more to it, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on your mood at the time. Six worlds to unlock, five levels in each world, bombs, power ups, weapon switching, etc.
It also pauses the game whenever you stop touching the screen. which is a great feature… when you’re not trying to take screenshots for your blog.
Car Jack Streets (iPhone)
Oct 12th
Most games are easy enough to write about. A quick description, followed by something that amounts to a “yes/no/maybe” and I’m done. I try not to waffle on too often, partly out of laziness and partly because I think most people reading this prefer quick impressions over longer pieces of writing.
(I’m willing to bet that most of my longer blog entries get skipped over by the majority of people who subscribe to the RSS feed, which seems to be how most people read this site.)
Anyway, I’m a bit stuck when it comes to Car Jack Streets. I tried the Lite version a while back and wasn’t at all impressed, but the full version of the game was free over the weekend, so I decided to give it another chance.
First things first: I’m enjoying the full version a lot more than the Lite. Oddly, though, that’s mainly because I can drive the cars now, when I couldn’t before. The controls haven’t changed, as far as I can tell, I just seem to be fine with them now when I wasn’t last time I tried. Small adjustments and u-turns in tight spaces can still throw me, but general driving around isn’t a problem.
I can also appreciate better the things the game does well.
There are a lot of weapons around the map, meaning you’re never defenseless for long.
You never have to go hunting for missions as you get contacted all the time.
There’s a clever real time thing going on – when the game says you need to earn $50,000 in a week it means a week. There’s no game clock, the day and time are the real day and time.
And it’s got a powerful flamethrower, which is never a bad thing.
All in all it’s a more playable and interesting game than I thought it was.
It’s without annoyances, though. In the heat of the moment I keep getting lost and failing missions because I’m not sure what I’m doing. Now and again I fail a mission without any real feedback as to why, even though I think I know what’s going on. Sometimes missions come through that start in fifteen minutes, which is longer than most of my play sessions. And, most of all, having to go back to a safe house to save is deeply irritating. Fail to save at a safe house and when you next start the game you’ll have lost your car and all your weapons. Nasty.
geoDefense Swarm (iPhone)
Oct 12th
Spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to complete the first level of Medium difficulty.
I failed.
I got up to wave 19 a few times and might have made it if my towers had decided to shoot at the enemies right by the exit, instead of ones only half-way round the maze.
Irritating, but not a fatal flaw. I just have to come up with a better plan.
Minigore (iPhone)
Oct 12th
Now I’ve unlocked Expert mode, this is just brilliant for a quick fix. The controls are spot on, it’s fast, furious and full of personality. I adore this game, it’s just a shame that I had to jump through hopes so I could enjoy it the way I wanted.
After praising the game’s use of OpenFeint in a previous post, though, I’ve discovered a problem. I still don’t have the achievement for unlocking Expert mode, despite getting it days ago. D’oh.
Incidentally, my wife saw me playing and asked if I’d customised the main character to look like me. I had to tell her that, no, it’s just a coincidence that John Gore is large-headed beardy chap. All he needs is long hair and a black cowboy hat.
Sky Burger (iPhone)
Oct 12th
Another free Nimblebit game, takes the basic gameplay of Scoops, but replaces all the foods with burger ingredients. You’re given a recipe – for example, six burgers, three blocks of cheese and twelve tomatoes – and have to grab the foods you need while avoiding the ones you don’t and then finish it off with the top of a bun.
Just a simple twist like that makes all the difference and while Scoops was incredibly dull, I’ve found myself playing this a lot more than I thought I would. It’s not brilliant or anything, but I’m keeping it on my iPhone for now.
Scoops – Ice Cream Fun For Everyone (iPhone)
Oct 12th
Another Nimblebit game.
Tilt left and right to move your teetering stack of ice cream scoops across the screen. Catch scoops, avoid non-ice cream foodstuffs.
While I agree with the game’s message, it’s really not very interesting and I deleted it after my first go.
Textropolis (iPhone)
Oct 12th
In an act of stunning generosity and/or a desperate attempt to seek publicity, Nimblebit made all their iPhone games free over the weekend. This is one of them.
I like the idea of this game. There’s a list of city names and you have to make as many words as possible from the letters in that name. As you make words, you get more people and buildings appearing and definitions of the words you make fly across the screen.
It’s spoiled by a couple of things. Firstly, by allowing plurals, verb forms, etc. it makes many words into chores as you have to keep submitting all the variations. Secondly, it’s a strict American dictionary so a lot of common British words aren’t allowed, which gets surprisingly annoying.
I’ve not deleted it off my iPhone yet, but it might not last much longer.
