Review: Chain Reaction
Score:
68%
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
Anyone remember the Psion Revo's Cascade game? Also known in some parts of the Internet as SameGame, and with versions for every other computing platform - and usually free to boot.
Yes, Chain Reaction (no relation to the original Psion game of the same name, but very similar to Cascade - confused yet?) is the classic game of 'tap on the blocks of more than once touching balls to remove them'. The aim being to remove as many as possible in one go and thus score more points, eventually clearing the grid altogether - if you're really lucky and really, really good.
Although the initial placement of balls is random, of course, from there on in it's pure skill and strategy and surprisingly addictive, which is why SameGame itself is something of a classic. Pixaltation's version is done in Java (J2ME) and as a result is somewhat RAM-hungry, but it's fast enough when running.
The interface is simple, of course, simply move the cursor and press in the navigator on each move. When there are no more possible moves (i.e. no blocks of two or more balls) the game is over and your high score compared to the built-in table. In addition to the traditional game, there's also 'Time Attack', in which you try to clear as much and amass as many points as possible. This is a novel twist but the timer runs out so fast that there's precious little time for thinking and you'll have to be a SameGame expert, using raw intuition.
With most Java games being simplistic, to say the least, it's common for them to be free or at least trivially cheap. Chain Reaction follows the trend, at £3 (US$6) and there's nothing to stop you, once bought, loading it onto your other family smartphones, ready for those long journeys together. Although SameGame has limited appeal for me, I showed it to my wife (fond of the similar game found on borrowed Windows Mobile devices) and was met with 'Hey, cool!' - so that at least would be £3 well spent!
Curiously, given Java's 'Write once, run anywhere' philosophy, the developer supplies different versions for each of the main S60 smartphone groups, according to screen resolution. A generic version that auto-scales to different screen layouts would apparently be too slow, but the use of separate .jar files for each screen size still seems more than a little klunky.
This reservation aside, Chain Reaction is a pleasing and functional implementation of a computer puzzle classic. If you're after such a puzzle to help you while away long waits then the small purchase price isn't worth thinking about - just go for it!
Here are the AAS info/buy links for each version:
- N80/E70 (etc) 352 by 416 pixel version
- N93/E50/N75/N95 (etc) 240 by 320 pixel version
- S60 2nd Edition 176 by 208 pixel version
Steve Litchfield, 6th Jan 2007
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at