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A Gaming Diary
Trucker’s Delight: Episode One (iPhone)
May 19th
A bit of a departure for Mobigame, Trucker’s Delight is a bizarre, faintly troubling and fantastically entertaining mix of Chase HQ and MotherHEAT. (Look, when an Xbox indie game becomes a reference, it must be good – go download MotorHEAT right now.)
The more you hit the sports car, the more points you get.
So, right, you’re a trucker and you espy a lovely young lady in a sports car. So you decide, as you do, to chase her down the road and ram into her car as much as possible… which somehow earns you money. You tilt to steer your truck down the undulating landscape and use bizarre power ups, trying to ram the sports car, disable pesky bikers and police cars and get to the next checkpoint before your time runs out.
The Mr. Slurp power-up has you use your tongue to lick the clothes off young ladies.
The pixel art style of the game is absolutely lovely, it runs at a fair old clip and it’s very, very moreish.
There are some very, very minor niggles – it can be hard to see ahead of you going uphill, power-ups always come in the same order, very occasionally there doesn’t seem to be a way to avoid a collision – but I don’t hesitate to recommend it at the current price of £1.79. And if you find the boobs distasteful then, well, I’m sure Apple will demand their removal sooner or later.
FIFA World Cup (iPhone)
May 19th
This is actually a decent little football game. The arrows showing where your passes will go are a very nice touch, the buttons being labelled with actual words are good, the analogue stick appearing where you put your thumb help the controls… it just feels like someone sat down and actually thought about the game and didn’t just shove a World Cup skin on a standard football game template.
The replay viewer has more features than you might expect in a mobile game.
There are issues, of course. Player switching can be painful and there’s a distinct lack of teams compared to FIFA 10, obviously enough. I’m not even sure how well it would stand up to huge amounts of play. But for me, wanting just to play a quick game of footie now and again, this is just about right.
Of course, there’s X2 Football 2010 out now, which everyone’s raving about. I’ve not tried that (yet) and it might be a better game than FIFA, but unless I’m missing some horrendous bugs or exploits (perfectly possible given my limited time with the game) I can’t see anyone feeling too ripped off if they buy this.
Perfect Balance: Harmony (iPhone)
May 19th
It's a crazy plan...
I’m getting through this at a fair old lick, up to level sixty-something at the moment. It’s a bit of a tricky one, but I’m sure I’ll suddenly be all “AHA!” about it soon enough. And if not, well, you can skip up to three levels on your way through the game. Nice little touch, that.
Skate 2 (360)
May 17th
Absolutely brilliant. I’m so glad I finally gave Skate a chance. I went for the second game as it was far cheaper to download it directly to the 360 than to buy a disc copy of the third game. I spent hours with this over the weekend, even when I didn’t mean to. I’m pretty rubbish at it, but the satisfaction gained from nailing a line after ninety minutes of trying can’t be beaten. Here’s a couple of things I did that don’t look impressive, but which made me very happy.
I’ve really got to thank my brother-in-law. If I hadn’t watched him playing Skate I’d never have bothered checking it out again after my pretty disastrous time with the demo of the first game. So Curt, thanks very much!
Pinch (iPhone)
May 17th
Another lovely puzzle game on a platform full of them. You’ve got coloured circles – norbs, the game calls them – and you have to split them and combine them into different sizes and colours to get them to the exit.
The controls are a bit finicking at first, but you soon get used to them. The only real trouble after the first few levels comes when trying to split orbs near one-way and limited-use gates – sometimes a stray finger will push the norb into a no-win situation and you’ll have to start over. Not a major problem when the levels are so short, but annoying.
It may not look like much graphically, but it's always very clear what's going on, which is the important part.
The levels, though small, are all well-designed – the only real problem is that there aren’t enough of them. It doesn’t help that the game’s so incredibly addictive. It’s one of those games where you can’t let go until you’ve finished a level… and then when you get past it and see the next one you have to give it a quick go, just to try it out… which meant that the game flew by. It wasn’t long until I’d polished off all the forty-eight levels and was left wanting more. Luckily, the developers say that more are coming. They bloody well better.
Still, for 59p, it’s difficult to really complain.
(Oh, and in the current version there’s a bug with the OpenFeint achievements, but don’t let that put you off. Those achievements will become meaningless once Apple’s own system is released later this year, anyway.)
Perfect Balance: Harmony (iPhone)
May 17th
Lovely little puzzle game. It’s been long enough since I played the Flash version that it feels new. Was free when I downloaded, which makes it a huge bargain.
This is not a winning solution.
If you’ve not played it, you simply have to put the shapes into the level without them falling off. Easy to understand, good controls, lots of content.
Minigore (iPhone)
May 17th
Just started it up to see the new enemy.
The red guy's new. He explodes.
That done, I stopped playing. It really didn’t grab me at all. Is my love affair with Minigore over? Stayed tuned!
Chevy Baseball (iPhone)
May 17th
I like the batting, even though I'm terrible at it.
Well, it’s free. That’s a good thing. The mechanics for batting and, to a lesser extent, pitching are quite nice. I only have one real complaint, but it’s a big one. It’s the fielding. Way, way too often balls run along the ground past fielders who just stand there and do nothing. It’s probably just that the game has decided that they won’t get to the ball, so doesn’t animate them, but it’s completely infuriating to watch it happen. I won’t be deleting the game from my iPhone yet, but I’m not going to upgrade to the full, unsponsored version, even now it’s on sale for 59p.
New Super Mario Bros (Wii)
May 17th
Wow. My Wii still works after all this time. A fabulous friend of my wife’s gave her this game on an extended loan, so on Saturday morning I checked the Wii, put the controllers on to charge, did the system update, etc. Then in the afternoon we played the game together.
I was Mario, she was a blue Toad. We certainly had a lot of fun with it, but I’m just slightly worried that it might be a bit to difficult for us. It seems to be easier when there’s only one of you playing, which seems wrong. Still, that’s only a minor worry for now and we didn’t stop playing until it was time for Doctor Who.
It’s really nice to have another game where we can both play cooperatively at the same time, too. We don’t do enough of that. Competitive games don’t work too well in our house.
Indie Games Roundup (360)
May 17th
I played a lot of games over the weekend, so I’m going to lump the indie games I played on the 360 into one post.
MotorHEAT
Definitely the pick of the bunch. I paid my 240 points for unlimited gameplay and online high scores and don’t regret it for a second. The risk/reward system is absolutely spot on, leading to many deaths in search of better scores. (I did better before I’d worked it all out, which is a sign that it’s working properly.) My only problem is that none of my friends seem have bought it, but that’s hardly the game’s fault. Top stuff.
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1
It’s funny for a while, but games go on too long. Nevertheless, I paid the eighty points for the full version just to reward the developer for creating something amusing, slightly insane and that doesn’t completely forget gameplay in pursuit of the lulz.
Groov
I bought this a long time ago, but hadn’t played it for ages. The way the music and gameplay interact is pure, genuine brilliance and lifts a fairly standard twin-stick shooter up into the realms of the truly special. If you didn’t check it out when it was new, do so now.
Breath of Death VII: The Beginning Demo
Knowing, gently amusing NES-style RPG. I didn’t buy it, because I doubt I’ll ever put much time into it, but I’m tempted to spend eighty points just as a small message of thanks to the developer for putting a smile on my face for ten minutes or so.
Beat Hazard
This twin-stick shooter supposedly creates levels based on the music you choose. It looks very impressive and plays fluidly enough, but I didn’t notice much connection between the gameplay and the songs. It’s also a bit stingy, not even allowing you to finish a song in the demo. Along with the indie-high price tag of 400 points, that meant that I didn’t buy it. Worth a download, though, just to check it out.
