Review By Drew Bower at 19:59 on 06/02/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: G5 Entertainment, Orchid Games, Room Escape, Hidden Object, Casual
When the latest press release from G5 Entertainment dropped into my inbox and declared the imminent arrival of their latest hidden object game, I have to admit, a small part of me died inside. It’s not that I don’t enjoy hidden object games, but there have been rather a lot of them released recently and they can be quite samey.
However! When I began to play Royal Trouble: Hidden Adventures I was delighted to discover that the hidden object description was doing the title a great disservice: It’s actually a nice blend of the room escape and point and click genres.
Royal Trouble begins when Princess Loreen and Prince Nathaniel find themselves locked in a dungeon without any idea of how they got there. One could suggest something about the general intelligence levels of royals, but we won’t go there... Despite an instant dislike for one another, the pair must work out how to escape and discover just what the heck is going on.
To do this, you must poke at standout objects in the hope that they might assist you in some way. If an item is of use, it gets added to your inventory along the bottom of the screen. Here you can combine objects to create new ones, or use them on your surroundings. Once you have escaped from one room, you invariably find yourself trapped in another and thus the process begins again.
Each new part of the story is portrayed in Disney-esque colourful screens with a friendly American accented narrator. The rooms and areas you find yourself in are very nicely detailed and remain sharp when zoomed in. Most areas are fairly small and generally only fill up a single screen but this does help to avoid needlessly tapping dozens of objects in the hope they are useful.
Most of the time your main objective in a room will be obvious enough and you can look for useful items accordingly. If you get stuck there is a full hints system in place that offers suggestions in stages so as to avoid giving the whole solution.
Occasionally you will come across locked doors or cupboards that ask you to solve a logic puzzle to open. These are mostly fairly simple slider/switch pressing puzzles that shouldn’t stump you for too long. Other puzzles include working out a maths equation and weighing out ingredients for some medication. Should any puzzle prove too difficult, you can happily skip them entirely once a certain amount of time has passed.
Royal Trouble offers a nice gently paced experience with witty banter and dry humour that will keep you interested right until the end. The 22 colourful locations are all kind on the eye with nice lighting effects and the occasional puzzle helps break up the repeated gameplay. It won’t take too long to complete, but for something not massively strenuous to keep you occupied for a few hours Royal Trouble is well worth a download.
Niko – iOS Review
Review By Drew Bower at 11:17 on 05/02/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: Sulake, Habbo Hotel, Fabrication Games, Platformer, iPhone
What do you get if you combine Sonic and Angry Birds? Sulake, the parent company of Habbo Hotel, the world's largest social game and online community for teenagers with 10 million monthly unique users, hope the answer is Niko, their latest game to hit the App Store.
Niko, a silver monkey-like creature finds himself stranded in a strange land with some of his buddies kidnapped by a mechanical worm and in need of rescue. Using simple left and right arrows in the lower left hand side of the screen and a slingshot jump button in the lower right, controls are blissfully simple. All that Angry Birds catapult training comes in handy as the principle in Niko is very similar: drag the cursor in the opposite direction and release to sling Niko through the air. Niko can also grab onto walls, walk underneath ceilings and up/down curved earth areas.
The similarities to the Sonic series come with the clever level designs that feature bright, colourful graphics. There are other nods towards the blue hedgehog with lots of fast, speedy sections where springs and other devices will fling you across large areas of the level in super quick time. At the end of each level you are scored on a variety of accomplishments – time taken, coins collected and health remaining with up to three stars awarded accordingly. There are also three gold cards cunningly placed on each level that don’t count towards your overall rating but require collecting for a special reward to use in Habbo Hotel. This gives you the choice of exploring the hidden areas to collect cards, or bombing through the stage as quickly as possible to achieve a three star rating. This also means there is plenty of scope to replay each stage and try for the cards or stars you are missing.
There are three worlds each containing ten levels with the tenth stage being a boss fight. The levels themselves are not particularly long, but they have plenty of areas to discover when looking for the gold cards. There is enough of a challenge to be had (again, more so when trying to find the gold cards) but I actually found the whole experience to be quite relaxing and highly suited to using a touch screen device. It feels a little strange not having any baddies running around, but they are made up for with mean looking stone boulders always looking to squash poor Niko into a pancake. Boss fights consist of taking on the dastardly mechanical worm responsible for kidnapping your friends. A large and rather obvious red button atop his head provides the weak spot you need to bash four times to take him down.
The temptation to make Niko a fully blown advert for Habbo Hotel must have been very strong for Sulake to resist. Thankfully, they wisely chose to simply offer rewards to unlock a number of items with redeemable codes in Habbo.
Niko is available as a free download with the first six levels open to play. If you find yourself enjoying the game (and I highly suspect most of you will), the full game can be unlocked for £1.49. The simple controls and fairly relaxed gameplay combine to deliver one of the nicest platform games that I have seen on iOS for quite some time. My only real complaint is that the 30 levels are over all too quickly. The replay value is there of course, but it would be nice to have perhaps one more world to play.
A ch-ch-chilly Chillingo Thursday with Space Pirates and MahJong
News By Phil May at 16:05 on 02/02/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: Spice Invaders, 1001 Ultimate MahJong, Chillingo, iOS, Chilly Willy
We're with Indigo Pearl on this one, it's flippin' FREEZING out there and if it wasn't for the fact that I have my Mac Mini tucked down the front of my trousers, I'd be looking for a welder about now.
Warm the cockles of your heart with this week's Chillingo Thursday round-up with a couple of new games for iOS.
Spice Invaders is the first of the new releases, a piratical Tower Defense game with an absolute truckload of units for you to stick down on your scurvy pirate map. You're in charge of the invading army of space-faring buccaneers so it's up to you to use your units to overwhelm the enemy and steal their precious, precious spice.
Totally unrelated but I once brushed past Geri Halliwell in Selfridges in London. A not altogether unpleasant experience, I must say.
Spice Invaders (Universal, on iTunes, Free!)
From girl power, er I mean pirate power to the ancient game of Mah Jong. Enjoyed for centuries by wise chinese scribes on their iPads, now you can enjoy 1001 variants of the classic game on your favourite iOS device for a bargain price.
1001 Ultimate MahJong (Universal, on iTunes, 69p)
Tune in next week when Dr Dawg will be asking Nurse Piggy whether it's better to use a cold stethoscope or a warm spatula during a medical examination.
Pinball FX2 Epic Quest Looks Epic
News By Chris OToole at 15:41 on 02/02/2012 - 1 comment
Tags: Pinball, Pinball FX2, Zen Pinball, Xbox 360, PS3
Zen Studios, pinball wizards extroadinaire, today announced Epic Quest, a brand new, original pinball experience for Pinball FX2 on Xbox LIVE Arcade and Zen Pinball on PlayStation Network, Android Marketplace and the Apple App Store. The table will be available for download sometime in February 2012.
In this table you will play Max a knight whose enthusiasm for combat is surpassed only by his love of rare and valuable loot. You will join Max as he battles the hordes of evil (or just evil-looking) monsters, rescues a wealthy princess, and accumulates the loot and XP that makes every good game worth playing. If you happen to suffer a defeat and lose all your balls, never fear! You'll start your next game with all of Max's hard-won loot and experience levels intact.
“It is our quest to deliver the most entertaining and original pinball tables, and Epic Quest delivers on both fronts,” said Mel Kirk, Zen Studios Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations. “With a wink and a nudge towards classic RPG tropes, Epic Quest blends frantic pinball action, obsessive character building, and liberally applied tongue-in-cheek humor."
It's all sounding a bit incredible if you ask us, and it can't come at a better time with Skyrim and Kingdoms of Alamur doing a great job of ressurecting interest in the fantasy genre.
Reckless Racing 2 screeches onto iTunes
News By Phil May at 12:16 on 02/02/2012 - 3 comments
Tags: Reckless Racing 2, Polarbit, iOS, Top Down, Racing
Reckless Racing 2, from developers PolarBit, has hit the iTunes store for the perfectly reasonable sum of £2.99.
Featuring more vehicles, mini tracks and top-down tyre-screeching action than the original game, Reckless Racing 2 has a brace of control options and some very peachy visuals.
You'll need a fairly new iOS device to have a go at it though (boo hiss!) but it does look rather sexy. Check out the footage below:
Reckless Racing 2 on iTunes (3GS or better, £2.99)
Minecraft in malicious racist slur scandal
News By Richard Horne at 22:37 on 31/01/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: Minecraft, Racist Slur, Afrikaans, Mojang
Minecraft is a staggering cultural phenomenon and has made its developer Mojang vast sums of money since it became the darling of PC gaming for pretty much the entirety of 2010 and 2011.
And so it came as a huge surprise to hear that the developer out-sourced the translation of its in-game text from English to Afrikaans to the game's community. And as a result, with the internet being, well, the internet, the news that a malicious user submitted the phrase "YOU ARE A NIGGER" as a translation for the word Singleplayer should come as no surprise.
The news that, for a brief few moments at least, there was a version of the game with this slur as one of the title options, means that for once, the publicity surrounding the game was of the worst type possible.
Of course Mojang quickly correct this mistake, banned the offending user and covered its track, with company representative Jens Bergensten later apologising via twitter.
Phoenix Wright 1-3 coming to iOS
News By Richard Horne at 21:59 on 31/01/2012 - 1 comment
Tags: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, iOS, Capcom, OBJECTION!
Capcom has confirmed that it's developing HD versions (no, not that type of HD) of the first three Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games.
In celebration of the series' 10th year - has it really been that long? - it also confirmed the existence of an as-yet-untitled 5th game but neglected to mention a price, release date or platform.
The observant among you will recall that an episodic version of the first game already exists on iOS devices, but Capcom is promising improved graphics and re-drawn sprites making these the definitive versions. Maybe.
More as we get it.
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land drops onto iOS
News By Phil May at 08:58 on 31/01/2012 - 2 comments
Tags: Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, Red Wasp Design, iPhone, iPad, Deep Ones
Ever wondered what it'd be like to touch a deep one via the screen of your favourite Apple device? No, me neither but when I hear the word "Cthulhu" I sit up and take notice. So a new Call of Cthulhu game on iOS has my rapt attention at the moment (alright, not rapt, I'm also looking at the world's tastiest Americano which I'm gulping down like a Japanese Hentai mistress gulps down spoof).
So the game? It looks all tactical, squad based, and with some pretty neat looking WW1 era / steampunkerlicious visuals. Character levelling, classes and all the usual RPG-lite goodies are in order.
Currently available in iPhone flavour for £2.99 or iPad Flavour for a slightly more reasonable £2.99
Go get your tentacle freak on!
Spirit of Wandering: The Legend – iOS Review
Review By Drew Bower at 19:49 on 26/01/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: G5 Entertainment, Playrix Entertainment, Hidden Object, Casual, Pirates
We’re almost at a point where G5 Entertainment could create a hidden object game using their vast array of titles in the genre as the hidden objects. The latest to join the ever growing list is Spirit of Wandering: The Legend, a game originally developed for PC by Playrix Entertainment.
Spirit of Wandering – The Legend follows the tale of a female pirate captain who loses her crew – including Jack, the love of her life – during an attack by the infamous ghost ship the Flying Dutchman. The crew isn't dead, but imprisoned in the spirit world. The captain must use her compass and Jack's magic orb to get them back.
To do this, you must of course find many objects hidden amongst the scenery. In a slight twist to the norm items are shown in silhouette form as opposed to the traditional text list. Whilst this does add a little more challenge it can be rather frustrating when presented with a blank square or circle. A square could be a picture, box, table or pretty much anything especially as the silhouette is often a rotated view of how the object is actually hidden. Still, it does eliminate any language problems that can arise in other HOG’s and would perhaps make it easier for a younger player to enjoy.
In another deviation from the traditional way of handling things, the item lists are split into five smaller groups of five or so objects each. Finding the mini-list leads you on to finding ‘cherished items’. These can only be found with the use of Jack’s magic orb and is activated by touching the icon in the lower left corner. This displays the orb on screen which you must move around like a cursor to find the cherished object. The orb’s outline will glow with flames the closer you are to the object until you can see your target slowly flashing. Once you’ve found the cherished item, another set of regular objects appear and the routine starts again.
If you get stuck looking for an object, you can whip out your trusty compass to help locate it. However, use of the compass costs a hefty 50 pieces of gold each time you call upon it. I like this system because it encourages you to avoid using a hint rather than simply waiting for ‘free’ hints to replenish over short periods of time. Thankfully your gold supplies can be restocked via bonus levels at the end of each chapter. Here you are let loose in a room chockfull of shiny gold coins and treasures with 90 seconds to grab as much as you can. It's a bit like one of those money booths, only with less wind and more clutter.
Graphically, Spirit of Wandering is perfectly acceptable with some nice water effects however some areas do seem a little bland. This isn’t helped by the fact that someone at Playrix must have a pot fetish – there are loads of them – and also make things very confusing when trying to work out which handle or spout variation equates to the current silhouette. I also encountered a couple of situations where seemingly identical objects existed on the same scene but of course only the specific one the game is coded to accept will do. One final gripe on the graphical side of things concerns the bold Spirit of Wandering banner that is constantly overlaid at the top of the screen. It really shouldn’t be taking up such valuable real estate on a small iPhone screen! On the plus side, the background music is very atmospheric and really adds to the experience.
Spirit of Wandering is an above average HOG although it was just missing that certain something to help push it into full recommendation territory. Fans will lap it up and casual observers won’t be disappointed but it probably won’t entice many new admirers to the genre.
Chillingo Thursday sees stunt hamsters vying with zombies and nazis for your attention
News By Phil May at 13:36 on 26/01/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: Hank Hazard Stunt Hamster, One Epic Game, iOS, Chillingo, Hobo Humping Slobo Babes
Move over Joe Danger, there's a new stunt sherrif in town with this week's Chillingo Thursday and a couple of neato releases for your iPhone. It will probably help if you read this article in the dulcet tones of Dave Lamb. Or it may not. It's entirely up to you but here goes.
So Stunt Hamsters you say? Step forward Hank Hazard. He's small, dewy eyed, furry and the star of Red Rocket Games' clever little puzzle-come-race game. Swiftly blast through each of the levels in your hamster ball, stopping from time to time to shout "Armageddon!" at the top of your voice.
Hank Hazard: Stunt Hamster (on iTunes, Universal, 69p)
What do you get if you cross Zombies with Nazis and Aliens? No, the answer is not "the average collection of stars for a Hollywood Red Carpet Event", the real answer is One Epic Game from developers Grip Digital. Complete with a slightly saucy script, retro graphics to die for, and plenty of action arcade style stuff, One Epic Game looks...well, epic!
One Epic Game (on iTunes, Universal, 69p)
Tune in next week when you'll see our intrepid heroes brave the queue of the local Greggs armed with slimfast milkshakes and bars of soap.
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