Podgamer Recommended
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Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (November 5th, 2010 at 3:03 am)
This is a public-information message to our more sensitive readers: if you find Podgamer a little shoutier than your usual iGaming sites, it’s only because we want to make the world a better place, and sometimes you can’t achieve that goal with hugs alone. A case in point is World War 2, and another, perhaps slightly more pertinent, one is Time Geeks (59p/€0,79/99¢).
When this cute little scrolly object-spotting game with lovely eBoy-style graphics came out around a month ago, all the other websites showered kisses and puppies and lollipops on its pretty head. We, on the other hand, took a slightly different view, issuing barely-veiled threats of actual physical violence at the developer on account of the way almost all of the game was hatefully locked, and thereby ruined.
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Review Podgamer Recommended
by J Nash (November 4th, 2010 at 11:08 pm)
I’ve just played Quell through from beginning to end, in about two hours, discounting having to start again when I bought the full version. (As a general point, is there some technical reason why iThing authors can’t make the demo save carry over? FUME.)
You should buy Quell. Okay! I’m off to spend my huge Podgamer cheque. See you next time. Somebody put my space helicopter’s space petrol on expenses. Continue reading this post…
Review Podgamer Recommended
by Craig Grannell (November 4th, 2010 at 3:30 pm)
As you may have read, our own RevStu thinks Angry Birds should be shot in the head. But not everyone in the tranquil surrounds of Podgamer Village agrees. I quite like the game, but the somewhat imprecise nature of aiming often makes me want to smash my face off with a broken bird table.
Castle Smasher, by the ever-reliable Donut Games, is a similar sort of game, but its gameplay is such that I never feel the need to smash my face off with a castle. Because that would be stupid. And also because Castle Smasher is a lot more fun than Rovio’s game.
In Castle Smasher, you battle intergalactic aliens. Only kidding. You in fact smash castles.
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News Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (November 3rd, 2010 at 11:05 am)
Speaking as someone who’s tried pretty much all of them, World Series Of Poker Hold’Em Legend is the best poker game on the App Store* by roughly the width of the Atlantic. It plays a very decent game of poker, with an excellent career mode and some terrific local and internet multiplayer, but the real standout feature is the speed. You can skip past almost anything with a quick tap of the screen, so if you’ve folded your hand you can be playing the next one inside three seconds, rather than sitting around forever waiting for the CPU players to finish it. (You can, of course, watch the hand play out in full if you want to.)
You can take down an entire tournament this way in about eight minutes, making it the perfect portable poker pal. The only way it could be MORE perfect, in fact, is if it was free. Which, by fortunate chance, it currently (and temporarily) is. You know what to do with an open door, don’t you?
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Review Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (November 1st, 2010 at 2:00 am)
It’s not the first time we’ve asked the question, but do you love the look of Espgaluda 2 and Dodonpachi Resurrection, only to lack the appropriate hardware/funds/time to play them? (Since both games need a 3GS CPU or better, come in at a stiff £5.49/€6,99/$8.99 price point and require a minimum play session of 20 minutes or so for a single game.)
Well, this time we’ve got you something that’s not just a decent substitute for people with older hardware, but is in at least one important respect better than either of Cave’s bullet-hell masterpieces. Come over here by the kitchen for a minute. We’d like you to meet Phoenix.
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Review Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (October 30th, 2010 at 7:46 pm)
Here’s a cutie. Skullpogo is a perfect example of an iPod game – it’s short, shallow and sweet, it’s designed to take advantage of the characteristics of the format, and it’s endlessly replayable. And just for a little while, it’s going free.
You’re a skeleton on a pogo stick, and your job is to bounce on zombies, monsters and farmyard animals. Like, duh. There are five stages, each of which you have to complete before your time runs out (obviously), and you get combos for bouncing on lots of enemies one after the other without touching the ground or your combo timer expiring, which can happen if you’re using a springy stick and you try to bounce from a very high flying enemy to one walking along the ground.
(At any point in the game you can switch to a high, medium or low bounce height. Higher gives you more height – honest! – and therefore more time to accurately target enemies, but low is faster and offers better scoring opportunities if there are lots of ground baddies.)
There are a handful of powerups which you can use to maximise your scoring (of course), although tragically also including a control-reversing one (grnk). Speaking of controls, there are three options – tilt, directional buttons or swiping – all of which work well. The graphics are very pretty pixel art, and there’s funky music.
Limiting the game to five stages is the stroke of genius here. It keeps any individual game short, but there’s so much opportunity within each stage to get better scores, so many achievements to, um, achieve, and the core gameplay so pleasing in and of itself, that you’ll boot it up again and again to while away a few idle minutes. There are even three slightly different modes to provide a degree of variety.
All in all, Skullpogo is an absolutely lovely little game, and right now all it’s asking you to do is click on its name. That’s not too much effort for you, is it?
Universal Review Podgamer Recommended
by Craig Grannell (October 22nd, 2010 at 6:02 pm)
I never could get excited by golf. As a kid, the thought of hitting a ball with a stick and then wandering slowly around a rather dull rich-person’s lawn never caught my imagination. Oddly, though, from C64 classic Leaderboard onwards, I’ve always been partial to golf games. I am contradictory—don’t judge me.
There are loads of golf games for iOS devices, but Stick Golf has become my firm favourite; and, oddly enough, it wouldn’t have looked out of place on an 8-bit micro.
Brian was happy with the shot, but then realised he had no idea how to get down to the green.
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Review Podgamer Recommended
by J Nash (October 14th, 2010 at 4:44 pm)
If Stickbloke Maze were any more minimalist, it’d evaporate when you clicked Play. There’s nothing at all to it except the stickbloke and some mazes. (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Openfeint leaderboard said, “You won,” or, “You did not win.”) They don’t even bother writing the name in full — it’s just “Maze!” with a neutrally posed stickbloke.
I have now been playing Stickbloke Maze for a tragically consecutive number of hours. Continue reading this post…
Universal News Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (October 13th, 2010 at 2:24 pm)
(You’re thinking of skittles, not pinball, you idiot. And even then, not the right kind of skittles. Still, I suppose at least we should be grateful it wasn’t a Tommy line, like everyone else who’s ever reviewed any kind of pinball-related game at any time in the last 20 years. I mean, do they think it’s THE FIRST TIME ANYONE’S EVER THOUGHT OF IT or something? Jesus. – Ed)
Bargain-alert time, chums. The fantastic Pinball HD is one of the App Store’s top three pinball games, offering as it does three top pinball games. Or at least, one top pinball game* and two pretty okay ones. But anyway. This used to be three separate pinball games played in uncomfortable portrait mode, until the advent of the iPad and then the iPhone 4′s retina display made it possible for it to be all pretty in landscape mode and for developers Gameprom to put all three games into one app. Which would probably have been possible before too if they’d really wanted to, but anyway.
The point we’re trying to make is, Pinball HD is really good, and is now on sale for a ridiculously low 59p (99c) for either the iPad or iPhone 4 versions, which are normally £1.79 ($2.99) and £1.19 ($1.99) respectively. Even though they’re the same game.
Although now that the newest iPod Touches have Retina screens too, we’d imagine it’ll work on those as well. And although there are two separate versions, we’re not sure what happens if you run the iPhone one on the iPad. But we do know that the iPad one definitely WON’T run on the iPhone, so don’t buy that one. Unless you have an iPad, obviously. Unless you have an iPad AND an iPhone, in which case you might as well get the one that’ll run on both. If it will. And definitely DEFINITELY don’t buy the three individual games, which are inexplicably still on sale for 59p each. Man, this got complicated.
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Review Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (October 11th, 2010 at 12:03 pm)
In all the many months I’ve been writing about iPod and iPhone games, I’m not sure I’ve ever got round to saying anything about this one, and now seems like a good time to put it right. Electronic Arts is currently having one of their frequent sales, and in focus on this occasion are some of the publisher’s classic-boardgame properties. The likes of Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and Battleship can all currently be had for 59p each (the first two in particular being very worthwhile purchases), but my personal favourite is the exemplary take on Connect 4.
Historically, “family” board games have had a terrible time on consoles, typically being the victims of awful, point-missing conversions clogged with useless bells and whistles that served no purpose other than the slow the game to a snail’s pace of cutscenes and over-complex interfaces. (Connect 4 itself suffered such a fate at the hands of an atrocious port to the Gameboy Advance.) But as part of the company’s general reinvention over the last few years as one that sort of vaguely knows something about games, EA has got it spectacularly right this time.
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