Polarbit have delivered another HD game into the Ovi Store, and Fuzzies is going to appeal to the smartphone holding puzzle lover, and especially those who prize quick reactions and planning under pressure. Can you capture the red flags and not kill any of the Fuzzies as they explore each level under your guidance?
Let’s make one thing clear from the very start of this review. This is not a Super Mario Bros clone. I know you have a character running around collecting coins from a scrolling landscape, I know you have lots of jumps that require timing and accuracy, and I know that you have to jump on the head of the enemy beasts to defeat them. That still doesn’t make Pixeline a Mario clone. Honestly.
Now this is fun. This is addictive. And I can see myself losing a lot of time to this game in the future. Coming from Marko Brockman, who gave us a little email pointing out his new game, he describes it as a “strategy game of capturing and surrounding enemy territory.” Motti may be a Finnish military tactic, but is it a great tactial smartphone game? You can count on it.
They might be a touch late to the party, but Zombies are still cool enough to feature in their own games. The reanimated corpses of the dead are attacking once more under cover of night in Breakdesign's 10pm, and it’s your job to keep them contained in one area. Let too many escape and it’s game over. But there’s a twist. Just like Zombies in real life (err...) these inferni only come out at night.
Back in May last year, I looked at Gameloft’s version of the family card game Uno. It impressed me then and even though it was coded in Java, it was solidly recommended. Now it has been upgraded to “HD”, is it still as loved. No. I love it even more!
They say that games can transport you to another world. Which is a bit of a problem, because the latest HD game for Symbian^3, H.A.W.X. HD, seems to have lifted me not into the cockpit of an advanced fighter jet, but to the seat in front of Tom Clancy’s typewriter. Which is no place to write a serious game review... is it?
Bounce It! is an interesting title. Coming from Hyperkani Games, it’s one of the new breed of games that relies on advertising to make the developers some money. That makes it free and initially appealing to people browsing the Ovi Store. And while the game itself, while not an out and out success, is nicely diverting, you’re going to get frustrated with the adverts long before you finish the game (or you could switch to the paid version).
I know that Cubix has elements from a bundle of other games. I know that I can spot the callback to the minor arcade classic Plotting in this title. I know that there are elements of Dr Mario in here. And I know that the structure of having a collection of levels acting as a mission is lifted from the how to extend your game guidebook. But there’s no need to forgive developers Herocraft for this approach, because all those ingredients have been mixed together and work really well! Here's my illustrated review.
To be honest, the N-Gage had a lot going for it just before it was retired. The game catalogue was pretty impressive (Rifts, Mile High Pinball, and Pathway to Glory’s Ikusa Islands spring to mind), but the standout title for me was the first mobile version of Catan. This German boardgame has continued to live on in electronic form as well as continuing to gather fans in its physical form. Rather selfishly, it’s one of the few N-Gage games that I’ve been hoping would make the jump to the next-gen platform (which it didn’t). Licences Exozet have done the next best thing though, with a J2ME version. And it's rather good.
Gameloft have put a lot of adjectives in the title of their latest Symbian^3 game, and for once, it’s well deserved. Not because Gameloft have done something new and innovative (this is yet another 3d-esque beat-em-up, with the same UI mechanics as Hero of Sparta and Assassins Creed), and not because the graphics look like they’ve been worked especially for this screen resolution (even though that’s true). It's deserved as there seems to be a bit more love and attention paid to this Spiderman incarnation than any of the other current crop of games.
