Podgamer » Reviews

Gunstar Heroes: Gunstar Zeroes

Craig Grannell — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:00:27 +0000

Hmmm. Argh. (Continued...)

Rat On A Skateboard: Gnawly, dude!

Craig Grannell — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:56:40 +0000

The Rat is back. After being On The Run (innovative, demanding one-thumb platforming jump-o-game with several modes) and On A Scooter (cute one-thumb jump-o-game with several modes), he’s now trying to be all cool, On A Skateboard (you guessed it: one-thumb jump-o-game with several modes). So: gameplay. The imaginatively named Ratty has been glued to a skateboard and shoved into scary and demanding courses. The only way to help him escape from the skateboard is to ‘collide’ with helpful obstacles, whereupon he’s liberated from his shackles, flying out of the screen to his freedom/doom (depending on what he lands on). It’s a tough life being a rat. If you want to play the game properly, though, you’ll have to ensure Ratty survives until the end of each of the 30 challenge courses, or, in the case of Power Stunts and Banana Harbour, forever, since they’re randomly generated and infinitely long. (Continued...)

Paperboy: Special Delivery (Doesn’t deliver)

Craig Grannell — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:25:12 +0000

Can there be a more thankless task than getting up at the crack of dawn to scribble addresses on loads of newspapers for delivery to ungrateful sods who moan if their daily collection of bile is a nanosecond late? If your answer is “Why, how about playing Paperboy on your iThing?” that would be pretty harsh—but not by much. Paperboy is in fact the second version of the game to appear on the App Store, after the first was mysteriously kidnapped by a ninja disguised as Rupert Murdoch, wearing an Atari hat. Glu’s remake is somewhat faithful to the original—which means you’ll get dunked in a swimming pool of nostalgia jam, before realising that one of the ingredients of nostalgia jam is rotten entrails. (Continued...)

Edge: Brick Dangerous

J Nash — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 09:33:54 +0000

I’ve been gathering a slow education about famous iThing games in order to avoid too many howlers born of ignorance. It’s a heck of a task that’s taking ages, because according to official figures there are fifty million thousand hundred pop culture titles and at least 12 good ones. Today: Edge. And the problem with Edge is that it’s too inventive. (Continued...)

Rhythm Spirit: Ninja tunes

Craig Grannell — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:00:13 +0000

Most rhythm action games lack a threat. In Guitar Hero, the baying crowd might boo a bit if you miss a note. Think how much better you’d be if missing a note meant getting STABBED REPEATEDLY IN THE FACE. This, as far as I can tell, is the premise behind Rhythm Spirit. (Continued...)

Seaweed: Fathomable

J Nash — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:32:59 +0000

One of the acest things about iThing players is that we’ll try anything. There’s a brave indie contingent on, say, the Xbox, but you can’t imagine the general Xbox ownership queuing in their thousands at midnight to shoot each other over mishandled copies of Squid Yes! Not So Octopus. The iThing, on the other hand, has no artifice: the charts are equally as likely to be topped by heavily promoted big name rubbish like Assassin’s Creed as out of nowhere surprise zeitgeist rubbish like Angry Birds. We are cosmopolitan idiots. We’re also pretty and charming, unlike PC owners (fat), Xbox owners (drunk) and nobody could find any PS3 owners to determine what was wrong with them, and anyway Seaweed. (Continued...)

Monster Trucks Nitro: Trucker’s Edge

Craig Grannell — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:00:50 +0000

Vrrrmmmmm! MONSTER TRUCKS! Actually, I’m not Am-er-i-can, and since US import Grayson isn’t within earshot, I cannot ask what the appeal of BIG TRUCKS is, bar when you’re a kid and use them to run over next door’s cat. (That never happened, by the way, if you’re reading, Mr Griffiths of number 5. TIDDLES RAN AWAY.) What I can say is that they make for a pretty fun game, at least when they’re part of Monster Trucks Nitro. VRRRRRRMMMMMM! (Continued...)

101 Games: Room 102

J Nash — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 10:01:12 +0000

Good morning, P Gamer chums. What's this 01 Games you want me to look at then? It sounds f

UNCUFF ME FROM THIS ESCRITOIRE I HAVE KILLED BEFORE.

Tiltstorm: Tipping point

J Nash — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:53:31 +0000

In today’s modern convenient videogame shorthand, Tiltstorm would be Tempest Without Webs. (Actually, in today’s modern convenient videogame shorthand, Tiltstorm would be Not a WW2 Cover Shooter, WRY SATIRES.) The thing is, there’s a reason Tempest has webs. (Continued...)

Linkoidz: Magical alien balls drop

Craig Grannell — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:23:25 +0000

Magical Drop is great. Magical Drop for iOS is a pile of steaming shit. As a huge Magical Drop fan, the combination of the previous two statements has resulted in HULK SMASH anger for me since iOS gaming took hold; but now Linkoidz is here to save the day, providing similar dynamics to Data East’s title, but without controls that make you want to take a baseball bat to your device. (Continued...)

Little Red Sled: Snow drift

J Nash — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 09:33:34 +0000

J NASH, YOU BLOCKHEAD.

Assassin’s Creed

J Nash — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:00:09 +0000

Man, these things really drive home how tremendous Sands of Time is. Ever since Ubisoft nailed the third-person platformer with the revamped Prince of Persia (then banged that nail into a big coffin with Warrior Within for which I blame you, YES YOU PERSONALLY, the idiot non-Sands of Time buying public) everyone’s been copying the copy of a copy. Including Ubi themselves: Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles is currently on sale for 59p/€0,79/99¢ and has triumphantly forgotten nearly every single lesson established by its venerated ageparent. (Continued...)

pacman&level: Total and utter cack, man

Craig Grannell — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:48:17 +0000

There are brazen, awful incompetent clones on the App Store. There are rip-offs and garbage aplenty. And then there is pacman&level, one of the most astonishingly dreadful Pac-Man games in existence—one that makes versions for the Atari 2600 and VIC-20 look like shining examples of great videogame programming. (Continued...)

Tap of the Dead: Bored of this now

J Nash — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:40:31 +0000

Let’s make this super-fast, I have a bus to catch. Tap of the Dead is rubbish. (Continued...)

Zombie Crisis 3D: House Of The (Wish It Was) Dead

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:03:13 +0000

Remember those House Of The Dead arcade machines from back in the day? You know, the ones with the big plastic guns that indirectly ate your first car in change? Weren’t they great? Well, Zombie Crisis 3D‘s a lot like that – only replace “great” with the most negative adjective you can think of. Horrendabysmal. Terribawfulstrosity. Dane Cook. Something along those lines. How so? Oh, let me count the ways. First off, the basics: You’re a person. You have a gun. You shoot zombies. And that is – quite literally – all. Your movement is, of course, on-rails, so your eyes, legs, and head – everything aside from your itchy trigger finger – are the game’s to control. No big deal, though, right? Highly scripted, gore-spattered thrill rides are what this genre’s all about, after all. Problem is, Zombie Crisis doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. (Continued...)