InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Star Hogs Lite (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
The full title is “Star Hogs Lite: Online & Campaign Battles”, but I’m not putting all that in the title. That’s just silly. Anyway, they should just call it “Star Hogs Lite: Like Worms, But In Space”. Except, for all I know, this is a remake of a game that came before Worms. Possibly.
Whatever. It’s like Worms, but it’s in space. And it includes customisation features for your little space ships. And it’s online, unlike the current version of Worms. (Except, though, that when I tried to play online I couldn’t find a game. And tried quite a few times at different times of day.)
It’s really quite good, as far as it goes. You get attached to your ships, as you’ve added parts and painted them up and chosen their weapons and named them and everything. The control system is very well thought out and works well, though the pinching and zooming goes a bit funny sometime. A lot of levels are set in 360 degrees around a planet, so you really have to think about gravity.
It’s also only 59p right now, compared to the £2.99 cost of Worms.
So, a slam dunk for Star Hogs, then? Well, no. It only loses out to Worms in one area – and bear in mind I’m talking about the whole Worms series, not the iPhone version as I’ve not tried that yet – and that area is charm. Worms is a charming game, full of personality and funny. Star Hogs has graphics and presentation that are functional at best. It shouldn’t matter when everything else works so well (apart from the online, as mentioned) but, for me at least, it makes a world of difference.
Playing this Lite version didn’t really make me want to buy the full version of the game – though if the online had worked, I probably would have – but it did make me want to play Worms again. Worms is £2.99, though. Decisions, decisions.
Resident Evil 4 (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
I didn’t play this at all on Saturday, but last night I went back and decided to earn some money playing the Sniper’s Hand mission I blogged about in a previous post.
(You do realise you can click the labels at the bottom of each post to get all the posts for that label, right? So if you click “resident evil” you’ll get all my posts about Resident Evil games I’ve played since I started using labels on my posts.)
Things didn’t go to plan, though. It turns out that even a single day away from the game made me lose all my skills. I tried several times before I managed to complete the mission again. Which should have been frustrating, but it really wasn’t. Every attempt was great fun, even when – especially when – things went horribly wrong and I found myself surrounded.
And the yelp of satisfaction and relief I let out when I finally completed it was loud enough to be heard three villages over. So if you were in Cranbrook or Headcorn yesterday and you wondered what the noise was, that was me.
I also tried the sixth mission in the story, which is where Ashley comes into the story. Yep, it’s escort mission time! I haven’t completed it quite yet, but I’ve only made a couple of attempts. It’s a lot more compact than previous missions, so I’m going to have to upgrade my shotgun as my rifle is a bit useless up close.
Minigore (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
Expert is the only way to play. It’s still not really fast enough, though. I long for a game mode that gets you into the thick of things even faster.
My high score is still one I got when I was playing Normal mode, but I’ve got reasonably close to it a few times and Expert is just more fun. This is a lovely little game that has stayed surprisingly fresh, given its simplicity, but I do hope the developer keeps adding new features.
Harbour Master (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
I made my decision.
This is definitely, actually, without a doubt, better than Flight Control.
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.
