Podgamer » Features

Touchin’ Roulette: It’s only a model

J Nash — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:30:55 +0000

The exciting mystery match where a plucky contestant chooses a theme and tries to pick six consecutive decent games in that vein without landing on something fatally unendurable. Today's theme: snipers.

PG Tips II

J Nash — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:31:19 +0000

Our Iron Cross-winning playing guide section returns.

Today: Galaxy On Fire 2.

Buried treasure

RevStu — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 12:33:35 +0000

This weekend, in the absence of anything very exciting new to play, I’ve spent a lot of time with one of my very first iPod favourites. Pole Position Remix (£1.79/€2,39/$2.99) is a game riddled with flaws, and in the light of some of the stuff we’re about to discuss its current price point is extremely optimistic. It does get frequently discounted down to 59p/€0,79/99¢, though, and IF you’re prepared to put in a couple of hours of gruelling unlocking work – which we’re by no means saying you should – you’ll find something rather splendid hidden away idiotically at the end of it. (Continued...)

The biggest show on Earth

RevStu — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:28:17 +0000

It’s generally accepted by most sane people that if you want to make money out of something – particularly if it’s something that costs almost nothing to physically produce - you sell it cheap. The mainstream videogames industry is almost alone in continuing to resist this reality. Despite comparable businesses like music and film having slashed the unit price of their products by something like 50% over the last decade (I still remember when new-release music CDs fetched £13.99 or more, and new movies on DVD went for £20-25), the price of games has edged steadily upwards since the advent of disc-based media, with £45 the normal RRP for new Xbox 360 or PS3 games. Some premium titles push that already-horrendous sum up by as much as another £10, plus there are numerous comedy “Special Editions” aimed at the super-gullible, charging as much as £30 or £40 more for discs or books full of screenshots, or little plastic toys. Now, of course, there’s another way. (Continued...)

Thieves operate in this area

RevStu — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:21:22 +0000

Although buying games in the App Store represents the best value for money in the entire history of the commercial videogames industry, it’s a bit like drinking in Glasgow on a Saturday night – there’s a lot of fun to be had, but you still better keep your wits about you if you don’t want to get mugged. There are several ways in which unscrupulous (“Business entrepreneurs” – The Government) will try to rip off the unwary iOS gamer, so let’s take a cautionary look at a few of them. (Continued...)

Survival Mode – Obligatory Halloween Edition

Nathan Grayson — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 12:59:58 +0000

Free candy. Free reign to dress up like a total jackass and act like even more of one. Enough free booze to ensure you’ll have forgotten it all by the next morning. And best of all: not a single awkward/annoying family get-together in sight. Yep, Halloween’s pretty hard to screw up. It’s the island of carefree holiday fun in the center of an ocean of obligation, guilt, stress, and more obligation. So, what’s the catch? Surely there’s a catch. These horrible, horrible, horrible (did I mention horrible?) games are the catch. See, here’s how it works: the iTunes App Store is allegedly a bountiful land of riches and opportunity, but that’s an outright lie. It’s really a bombed-out crater of chaos, desolation, and desperation. (Continued...)

Podghouler’s SpOOOky Hallowe’en Tales

Podghouler — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 12:00:18 +0000

Good EEKvening, KILLEDies! It’s your old chum Uncle Podghouler here with another collection of SPOOOKY HALLOWE’EN TALES. It’s All Hallows’ Eve and the staff of Podgamer are heading home after a hard day of slightly rewriting press releases and copying reviews out of old issues of N-Gage Magazine. Will something horrible befall them? Of CORPSE it will. Hargle har har! Nestle down in front of your crackling fireplace and read… PODGHOULER’S SPOOOKY HALLOWE’EN TALES. If you dARGHre! (Continued...)

When (paying) less is more

RevStu — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:54:16 +0000

An odd phenomenon of the App Store is when sometimes the Lite version of a game will contain modes or levels not found in the full version. The magnificent Drop7, for example, used to have a Lite version – since deleted – which contained a rather fun short mode limited to 100 drops, ideal for when you didn’t have time for a longer session (as a good game of Drop7 can go on for quite a while). Weirdly, though, anyone coughing up the £1.79/€2,39/$2.99 to upgrade to the full game would find Countdown mode inexplicably removed (sticking to playing it in the Lite version was unsatisfying due to the absence of leaderboards), an irritating downgrade that’s never been corrected. I stumbled across something similar this week while playing Dawn Of The Dead – a Lite version that not only contains things not found in the full game, but which is arguably just a better game full stop. (Continued...)

PG Tips

J Nash — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:59:21 +0000

We've ignored the warning from history and started a playing guide section.

Today: Envirobear.

Cut The Rope & The Magic-er Equation

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:16:10 +0000

It’s occurred to me that we’ve written nothing about current App Store God-Emperor Cut The Rope on this adorable, cooing baby slice of the Internet we’ve carved a bloody hole in the center of and called home. (If any readers are affected by issues relating to Comrade Nathan’s quirky across-the-pond spelling conventions, contact Podgamer Trauma Support at the usual address – Ed) And that’s a damn shame, because it’s an absolutely fantastic game. Also, we’re missing out on so much Google search traffic. Like, you don’t even know. Make no mistake, however; that’s not the reason I’m writing this article. On a totally unrelated note: Cut The Rope, Cut The Rope tips, Cut The Rope Justin Bieber, Cut The Rope XXX underage porn sluts. So, what’s the deal with all this “magic” nonsense? Well, you might remember an incident starring our very own Comrade Fuhrer Stuart and some particularly peeved birds. See, Herr Stu saw a flock of people fawning over that flock of avian sensations, and he just didn’t get what all the fuss was about. So, of course, he went to developer Rovio for a precise, scientific answer. “Magic,” they replied. Er, right. However, after kneeling before the alter of the tiny god that is Cut The Rope and offering a rather generous sacrifice of my time and social life, I think I’ve found the answer. Cut The Rope, as it turns out, is Angry Birds’ formula perfected. It’s an Angry Birds clone not in form, but in philosophy. But what is that formula? Why can normal, semi-rational human beings derive all of their happiness from helping a tiny green monster gorge himself on candy? Well, in explaining why Cut The Rope is worlds better than Angry Birds’ cluttered, bird feces-ridden mess, I’m going to lay it all out for you. COMPARE-O-VISION, ENGAGE! (Continued...)

Touchin’ Roulette: Wicky Wicky

J Nash — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:16:52 +0000

VS Mode: Bullet Heck

RevStu — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 02:03:37 +0000

For this writer, absolutely THE most exciting aspect of the rise of the iOS machines as a gaming platform has been the fact that they’re becoming the go-to format for “bullet hell” shooting games like Espgaluda 2 (£5.49/$8.99) and Dodonpachi Resurrection (also £5.49/$8.99). The downside is that Cave’s brace of classics are restricted to 3GS hardware and above, leaving millions of iGamers unable to enjoy them. But it’s not all bad news – there are alternatives available for more primitively-equipped death-blossom lovers, so let’s take a look at a couple. Techno Trancer and Shoot The Magic take radically different approaches to the genre, but they’ve both got their merits and drawbacks and you can currently try them both out for free (Techno Trancer via its Lite version and Shoot The Magic via a limited-time promo giveaway.) Which makes the idea of reviewing them slightly redundant, of course. Bugger. Oh well, we’ve started now. (Continued...)

Puzzle Quest vs Power Gems vs AAARGHH

J Nash — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:51:19 +0000

I’ve never liked these match-three games because they’re so rigid and random; unlike the fun, jostly fluidity of the Puyo Puyo approach where you’re strictly in control, know which pieces are coming next and can plan miles ahead while clearing yourself breathing space in an emergency, in match-three games you’re always slogging away in the present. Connecting three, or a line, or a huge chunk of screen is no reward because another pile of random blocks crashes down to exactly fill the space and your tactics reset. It’s a genre I always feel the host machine would be happier playing by itself, slightly resenting the bothersome human getting in the way quite slowly. Puzzle Quest, a match-three game lavishly disguised as an action RPG, adds the exciting twist of terrible controls. By chance it was one of the first iThing games I tried, and I’m still acclimatising to the fact these things can be shoddily written (probably because the iThing looks to me like a console, where games tend at least to function), so naturally I blamed all the crazy interface problems on the hardware. (Obviously it couldn’t be my fault because I have the pretty fingers of a strangling pianist, specially imported in a handsome valise.) (Continued...)

Getting it right

RevStu — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 12:57:53 +0000

The punchily-titled You Cruise by Mazda MX-5 is a great little racing game that reminds me a lot of the early Colin McRae Rally titles on the first Playstation. It’s pretty limited (no other cars, just time trials on eight tracks with online leaderboards), but that’s okay because it’s free, and what it does it does really well. The odd thing, though, is the fact that despite being free, in at least one incredibly important way it’s had more care and thought and love put into it than any other traditional-style racing game in the App Store. (Continued...)

Angry Birds & The Magic Equation

RevStu — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:12:03 +0000

As someone occasionally mystified by the rubbish that people buy on “grown-up” consoles, I find the App Store a much more rational place. I can account logically for the success of almost every big hit in the Top 50 – Fruit Ninja and Flight Control and Flick Kick Football are brilliant games, FIFA and Tiger Woods enormous franchises with 20-year histories, Peggle and The Secret Of Monkey Island are excellent conversions of classic titles sold for a tiny fraction of what they cost on other platforms, and so on. Even Doodle Jump can be explained away (despite the presence of numerous near-identical but superior games) by a combination of fortuitous timing and commendably-frequent and substantial updates bolstering an unspectacular but still pretty enjoyable game. But as for the 10-month chokehold exerted on the top of the charts by Angry Birds, I just don’t get it. (Continued...)