Downloaded the Lite version of this after someone recommended it to me. It’s a Breakout game, but you rotate the paddle around a circle, with the block arranges inside that circle. A picture should help you visualise it.


It actually works in a similar way to Vortex, which comes pre-installed on some iPod Nanos. Radial 50 looks better, is faster and is generally the better the game… except when it comes to controls. The Nano’s click wheel is perfect to control a game like this, as you can just move you thumb around in a circle along with the bat. In contrast, Radial 50 uses an up/down slider on the right of the screen. It would probably work fine for most people, but I can’t get my head around it. When I need to react quickly I often can’t work out whether my thumb needs to move up or down and I die.

It’s rather like the problem I have in top-down racers where left and right are relative to the car, not the screen, so when the car’s moving down the screen I get flustered and confused and move the wrong way.

So Radial 50 is probably a decent game for most people, but it’s just not for me.