1st Impressions

Toki Tori, for those of you unfamiliar with the title, is a  platform puzzle game that exists on the Game Boy, the Wii, and other platforms.  Not only is it now available on the iPhone, but for a limited time, it is on sale for $0.99.  That is 80% off the normal price, and a bargain too good to pass up.  A lite version if available for free, but don’t bother.  Grab this while it is on sale…or later wish you had.

The game plays on the iPhone remarkably similar to the Wii.  I’m glad.  This title is a huge hit on the new Wii in our household and being able to play it on the iPhone while the kids fight over the Wii remotes is the next best thing to multi-player!  Game play is simple.  Navigate your little yellow chick around to locate all the eggs on each level.  As the 80 ever-challenging levels progress, you learn new tricks and pick up abilities that you can use.  These include things like ability to build bridges, teleport, shoot, and so forth.  The additional abilities become more an more important because additional levels also introduce enemies that have to be avoided.  Getting though all of the levels will offer many hours of play for a very nice sale price.  Even without the sale though, this game makes it to my “Must Have” list.  It just seems like the controls of the iPhone were made for this kind of game.  With it being on sale now, it gets a huge thumbs-up.

As with other Chillingo releases that I’ve reviewed, everything about this game seems to be top-notch.  No product is perfect though.  In my eyes, both the iPhone and Wii ports of this game lack one huge thing…ability for multiple players.  Because of the length of game play promised in this title, it would be really nice if I could track my own progress separate from that of another player.  This is key because as you gain new abilities in subsequent levels, they are explained and you are told how to use them on the level that they are introduced.  Jumping in on a level when someone has played several levels past where you were means that you not only have missed some of the levels, but may not know what you need to in order to successfully proceed.

If I were going to rate this game on a scale of one to ten, it probably would get a eight or nine due to the single-player nature of the setup.  At this price point though, it’s definitely a ten.  So pick it up while it is on sale.  You won’t be disappointed.  If the review has not convinced you, check out the YouTube trailer.

I’m playing with a preview copy of Chillingo’s soon to be released game, Minigore.  It’s a pretty slick arcade shooter.  The blue and red dots on the screen act like thumb-pads.  The blue controls your movement direction, while the red controls direction of fire.  Both can be turned off once you get used to where to put your fingers.  The object is to both avoid and shoot the little black, boxy creatures that are out to get you.  Think of this as a cross between a cartoonish, boxy zombie killer game and attack of the killer tribbles.

The graphics, music, and sound effects were, as is usually the case with Chillingo releases, of the highest calibre.  I found the game to be very responsive.  But it is definitely geared to the Nintendo/Sega generation that is cooridinated enough to play with two hands.  That’s not me. I’m an old guy and don’t think fast enough or react fast enough to succed at anything but becoming a gore-snack for the boxy little guys out to get you. LOL  With that in mind, my one suggestion would be to have some difficulty levels so that it could be enjoyed by different levels of experience with this type of game.  I like zombie shooters as much as the next guy, but I also like to stand a fighting change against them!

While the title has “gore” in it, the violence depicted is cartoonish in nature and should be fine for any age.  I’ve seen worse on Saturday morning cartoons.  I’m not sure what the price point will be when the game is finally approved and released (hopefully this week or next), but if you are into acade shooters, this looks like another quality game and worthy of checking out.

Pocket Gold is a nice little timed arcade style game.  You have a TNT stick that is lit that you are playing against.  When the fuse runs out, your play for that level is over.  Luckly though, game play is simple.  You have a table with gold, coal, and diamonds (?) on it.  Your goal is to drag them to the appropriate colored cups.  Gold to the gold ringed cup, and so forth.  The graphics are nice.  The sound effects are nice.  Game play is easy and enjoyable.  An all around winner that is very aptly called a “casual” game.  And at $0.99, it isn’t going to set you back a whole lot for the “hundreds” of levels.

My one suggestion would be with the help screens.  The first one points from the different colored objects to the different colored cups.  Not too hard to follow.  The second screen was not quite so obvious.  It would be nice if you could tap on the clock, the dude in the hat, and so forth to see exactly what it is.

Ragdoll Blaster is a fun little game.  You shoot little “rag dolls” (although I prefer to think of them as little liberals LOL) over and through blocks to hit a target.  The target is sometimes stationary and sometimes moving.  Your control over the cannon is simple.  The distance from the cannon that you touch controls the force of the shot.  The location on the screen that you touch is direction that the cannon aims.  This $1.99 game is a unique concept in the iTunes store.  It’s a great way to work out some frustrations to “blast” some little folks into a wall.  It’s simple enough that even small kids can enjoy it, yet the seventy increasingly difficult levels offer a challenge for the most accomplished gamer.  It is at a good price point for the level of entertainment it offers, but had it been at $0.99 it would have made my Must Have list.

WordsWorth, currently on sale for $0.99 in the iTunes Store, is another release by the folks at 99games, the same folks that do Wordopolous.  Not only does WordsWorth come in different languages, but you can also play with different master word lists.  I had to look up these lists to see what they were, but some of them are HUGE and are the official lists used in things like Scrabble tournements.  Anyway, this is one of those games where you try to create words out of adjacent letters.  The longer the words and more uncommon the letter, the more points you get from it.  As you create a word an “submit” it againt the word list with the little check button, the letters disappear and the points are added to your total

I’ve played a similar game on my iPhone, but enjoyed this one better.  That other game required sliding your finger from one letter to the next.  My fat fingers kept hitting the wrong letters and I’d have to start over.  But this implementation is better.  You “tap” the letters you want.  It doesn’t sound like a major difference, but it sure makes the game less frustrating for big fingers.  The game offers both a timed mode and a more relaxing “classic” mode with variable minimum word size as well as size of the letter grid.  And, as you play, you can get “reward tiles” that will do things like randomize the letters for you or give you a wild card.

This is a nice implementation of this type game.  If you like word games, I recommend it.  I’ll go as far as to say that between this and Wordopolous, I enjoy this one better.

Wordulous is a nice implementation of a familiar game.  Given a set of random letters, how many words can you make with it?  This game type has been popular on many PDA platforms.  What sets this version apart from earlier versions that I have played is that not only is there a timed mode for those that like the pressure, but there is an option where you can challenge someone to play against you from either your email contacts on the game’s server or your Facebook friends.  While I could not find anyone to play against, and while I didn’t play in the timed mode, I enjoyed the relaxed “practice” mode.

While I find this $0.99 game entertaining in solo play, my one recommendation is that it allow an option to challenge a random user in competitive mode.  It would be cool to compare your scores to others looking for someone to challenge and match up challengers of similar skill levels.  It would solve the issue that I had where a game with an online play component could not be fully appreciated becasuse no online competitor could be found.  Marking which of your friends already had the app and could play against you would be a nice touch as well.

Overall though, this game is worth a buck for anyone that enjoys word games.  It will be one that stays around on my iPhone for a while.

When I started this review site, I promised short reviews.  So in short, WOW! This game is incredible!  It is the Must-Have new Fieldrunners.  If I were going to give stars out, I’d give it six out of five.  Yeah, that’s right.  As much as I was looking forward to this game, it exceeded all expectations.  I will go so far as to say if you are only going to have one tower defense game on your iPhone, make it this one.

Defender Chronicles is another is a string of quality releases by Chillingo.  It takes tower defense type games (like Fieldrunners and others of that type) to a whole new, and much better, level.  The first thing that strikes you as you launch the game is that it is not the typical top down perspective.   It is a 2D side view.  This alone makes it fresh.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Besides the numerous types of attackers and defenders and the different levels at different skill levels (about five of each), the game offers classic, campaign, and endless modes.  And, just for the added twist, it throws in a twist of a role-playing game.  You can not only use gold earned by killing attackers for purchase or upgrades of different types of defenders, but can also use it to customize your hero/leader so that you can concentrate on different character attributes, skills, armor strengths, and so forth.  By changing these attributes and difficulty levels, this game offers endless play at a very low $2.99 price point.

I took a load of screenshots as I played through this game.  Picking the right one to post that would give an accurate representation of the game was impossible though.  None really do the smooth graphics and soundtrack justice.  So here is a link to a video of the game in action.  If you haven’t watched this yet, and my recommendation above doesn’t have you clicking that purchase button yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out.  The game is every bit as impressive as the video makes it appear.

As great as the game is, I do have some suggestions.  First, I’d love for there to be different player profiles.  My son is going to love this when he sees it and I know I’d like to keep my progress and such separate from his – if I can get my iPhone back from him.  Being able to save a particular place in the game and come back to it with a different hero configuration would be cool as well.  Second, while I enjoyed the accent of the voice-overs, some of the text in the tips and help need just a tad bit of polish.  The grammar makes it appear (in a couple of cases) that English was/is not the first language of the folks doing it.  I hate that an application of such quality in every other way suffers in the grammar department.  Third, while the sound effects are great, I’d love some kind of sound effect as each attacker died.  If you are zoomed in to a particular part of the screen (and yes, you can zoom and scroll around), you can still see deaths indicated in change to your gold, but an auditory indication would be nice as well.  I’d also love an auditory “ding” or something to let me know when I have an archer or other defender selected and achieve enough gold for an upgrade.  And speaking of sound, I’d also like volume sliders for the music versus other sounds as opposed to just on/off.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this game.  I can’t wait to see what the future holds for it.  There is already a community forum devoted to the game, and version 1.1 is waiting for Apple’s approval with improved memory requirements, a new “novice” level, and “additional bug fixes”.  I haven’t come across any bugs myself, but I’m sure a game with this level of complexity must have had something slip through.  The fact that it is quickly being addressed is a huge plus.

Zooloretto is a new release from the Chillingo Ltd collection of games.  As with their other titles, the graphics and sound are top quality.  If you are familiar with the Zooloretto board game, you know what this is.  If not, and you are expecting something like Zoo Tycoon, this isn’t it.  Zooloretto is a turn-based and card-based zoo building game.  The goal is to fill your zoo and gain more visitors than your opponants.  A game has between three and five players.  At least one, yourself, has to be human.  The others can be either human or computer.  Game play allows for the picking of a card containing an animal, vending machines, or money to be spent.  Animals are loaded on trucks and, if you choose to select one of the trucks instead of a card, you can unload it’s content of up to three items in your zoo.  The more animals you have in an enclosure, the more visitors you draw.

While there is a bit of strategy to be employed here, it is a simple enough game that kids should be able to master it to play against each other and/or a parent.  I am not sure that it will hold the attention of an adult for a long period of time though as a solo entertainment option.  As such, it is something I’d recommend for the iPhone user with children, but not as something to challenge your IQ.  Hopefully they can release a lite version to try it and see before spending $4.99 on it though.

As a retro style arcade game, this one ports perfectly to the iPhone. I typically find adventure and puzzle type games more my style, but this was not as fast paced and frenzied as I expected and had more of a puzzle nature to it than I expected as well. The game consists of 16 caves, each with 5 different difficulty levels. This, in effect, gives you 80 levels to play through and promises tons of play time. That is important at this $4.99 price point. The goal is to collect gems and dig your way to the exit without having the boulders fall on you as you dig under them. It’s not easy. Overall, this game was a nice surprise. Another quality release from the folks at Chillingo Ltd.

This game impressed me. The graphics anyway. I didn’t find the game play itself up to the same level. Let me explain. This is a card based game. Each turn, you can select different actions or items from the available cards. The problem for me is that I didn’t really know what I was purchasing, and could not really see much change in the screen graphics once the purchase was complete. Based on the level of the other graphics, I really expected more. Not sure exactly what, but those are my honest first impressions. But, since I am new to this type of game, I am more than willing to chalk up any disconnect to user error as opposed to design flaw.