Is Hell Feezing Over? Sonic Dash Is Pretty Fun

Well I heard Sonic: Generations was pretty good but I've not played that so whatever...

Anyway! Sonic Dash was a game I downloaded on my iPod Touch in a moment of boredom simply because it was a free application and it had a character I recognised.  What I was expecting was another shitty Sonic game, just because he gets a game on mobile systems doesn't mean that will save him from shittyness.

What I got was something that was actually pretty fun to swipe away for short bursts while doing things like taking a dump or waiting for the bus, so it was a pleasant surprise.  It's not like this games success is all its own though, since it's basically a rip off of the massively popular Temple Run app but it does a couple things differently enough to differentiate itself.

Basically you swipe the screen to move, collect rings for upgrades and just try to build a high score.  You can then share your scores with your friends, most of which probably don't care, but the option is there in case you have a group of sonic lovers in your facebook friends list.

There are plenty of games on the app store that go around ripping off Temple Run but that game is pretty fun so I'll take a Sonic themed version of that over most of the garbage Sonic games that get released for big proper consoles.

Sonic fans can rejoice as Sonic Dash marks the second recent Sonic game that doesn't make people want to throw up and smash things in a fit of rage, but as fun as this is, mobile gaming is still a load of absolute bollocks so it's not like Sonic Dash will be remembered after a year or two.

Castle Master

There is a lot of absolute shite on the Apple App Store.  It's very hard to find something that's actually worth playing so I tend to get very surprised when I do find something good.

The game that took me by surprise this time was Castle Master, a strategy game where you must re-take all your castles that have been overrun with monsters.  It's an incredibly simple game but if you're looking for something to kill for free then this is a good choice.

So, as far as I can figure out this game originally comes from Korea, since there is a Korean language mode in the options menu and there is some very strange translations going on.

I mean there is even a crossed out W on a typed story scroll.  I find it impossible to get annoyed at something THIS blitheringly stupid.

Anyway, the game itself is simple, you have a big map and you have to take all 45 castles.  Everything is in real time and you have a 3D fighting mode for when attacking or defending.  It controls pretty well too with skills being easy to pull off and targeting working rather well.

Once you take a castle you have to defend it, recruit troops and build it up so that you can earn money and take the next one.  When you're not on the map or in combat, you can go into this 3D town exploration thing where you can buy items, upgrade skills and take on quests.

The game play reminds me somewhat of a real time version of Heroes of Might and Magic with the interface and how troop recruitment and buildings work.

So what you're playing is essentially a dumbed down version of those games, but considering its an iPhone app and it's free, you could do a lot worse.  Combat all goes down in real time with up to 300 vs 300 battles and while it's happening you get to get stuck in and help out your army as well.

So if you needed something free to kill some time with while your on a train or waiting for something/someone, give this a spin.  Good free games in the app store are few and far between, so jump on this one.

Free Game...Saturday: 100 Floors

Well, another late Free Game Friday post due to a busy and tiring Friday evening, but here we are!  This week I'll let you know about another little free gem on the app store called 100 Floors!

The idea is simple, there are 100 floors and each floor has a puzzle, solve the puzzle to move to the next level.  The game makes a point of using as many of the iPod/iPhone features as possible so some of the puzzles end up being pretty cool.

The game is also updated pretty frequently with new content at no extra cost (or none that I've seen so far), so if you get a kick out of this kind of game you will have enough to do for a while.

Not much else to say really, its just puzzles, so download it and give that brain a workout!

Tiny Troopers

Whenever I flick through the app store on my iPod touch looking for games, I never actually expecting to find anything good, or even halfway decent, but every now and again I come across something actually pretty fun to play.

This is Tiny Troopers, a game that they were just giving away for free a while ago but now it has a price tag.  I don't know how much it costs in the UK or America but in Japan it's 85 Yen, which is basically nothing so it can't be that expensive.

Now I don't even need to review this game, because you know what this is?

That's right folks, it's fucking Cannon Fodder for the iPhone!  It doesn't feel exactly like this old Amiga gem but it's essentially the same damn thing.  If you don't know what Cannon Fodder is, then go youtube it, or get it on an emulator or something, it's fucking fantastic!

For those that can't be arsed (shame on you) Tiny Troopers tasks you with taking a couple of dudes around a map, gunning down enemy soldiers and fulfilling objectives.  If your troops survive the mission they get stronger and if they die, they are replaced by a new soldier. 

The game also has this "command points" thing, where you can call in extra equipment or hire an extra soldier for that level, it's the games way of trying to make you spend more money, but they give you a load of command points daily and I've never needed any extra.  Also as a nice little bonus feature, the game has a zombie mode, where you play for points until you die.  Shit has leader boards too so if that's your thing rather than mission based gameplay, then there's something for you too!

So check it out, if your looking for something that's actually pretty good for your iPod or iPhone or whatever, this is well worth buying.  For those that don't own an iPod or iPhone or iPhucknuts or whatever, it's also avaliable on Steam!

Zenonia post game thoughts

I'm going to stop planning to record the Saturn videos on a Monday, it's a hard day and I just don't feel like being all chirpy down a microphone after having to deal with that.

So now I've got that out the way, let's talk about a game I beat today! Zenonia!......and it can go fuck itself!

If you remember a long long time ago, back when this blog was still fairly new, I did a Free Game Friday feature on this little iPhone RPG, and I think I said some good things about it.  Well after getting through the last section of this game, I can say that most of what I said was complete and utter bullshit.  There are good points to this game, it is fun, but the last two dungeons suck so much fun out of everything that the whole thing feels like a slog. 

The second to last dungeon is this stupid fog of war cave where you can't see shit and getting blindsided by some asshole monster is fairly commonplace.  It was at this point that no matter how long, boring or delayed my trips to work became, I didn't want to touch this damn thing.  So today I just thought "fuck it" and blasted my way through the final part of the game.  I would die constantly getting to the end, but for a mere 3000 gold you can revive with no penalty, and when you do get to the boss, it can't even fucking touch you.

The final dungeon and the build up to the final battle is even worse.  It's a huge fire cave filled with crap, copy pasted enemies and hard to spot floor traps.  It's not a difficult dungeon but good lord is it dull.  After slogging your way though the mobs, you get some piss easy block pushing puzzles, and then you fight the final boss, who I killed using nothing but my overpowered AoE and simply mashing the "hit it with my sword" button.

The sad part of the whole thing is, everything BEFORE these two areas was actually pretty good, I was having a blast with this thing until then.  It just dropped the ball so hard right at the end that even for a free iPod game it's difficult not to be a little bit pissed off.  Oh, and I won't spoil it but the ending sucks too.

So you know what? Even though I told you a long time ago to give Zenonia a go, don't fucking do it.  Despite having not played them, I'm sure Zenonia 2-4 are better games, so don't make the mistake I did and try to play through the series in order unless your some kind of masochist for video game bullshit.

The World Ends With You for iPhone and iPad

So if you are into anything like video games, movies, comic books and stuff like that, chances are you are a jaded, bitter, angry individual because all companies seem to want to do is take stuff that you love and take a massive steaming shit all over it.  This is what has happened with the new The World Ends With You announcement.

Now I tend not to pay too much attention to hype trains, I like to play a game with a clear head and form my own opinion on it, but about a week ago I was linked to this website

www.square-enix.co.jp/subaseka  

All this website was the time I first viewed it was a countdown timer and some remixed songs from the original World Ends With You soundtrack.  I got pretty excited for what was going to come at the end of this countdown, I was under the impression that if you hype something with a timer, then the thing at the end of the timer is going to be good, right?

FUCKING! WRONG!

All we got was this piece of shit, a fucking port for iPhone and iPad.  First of all, the iPhone is not a good system for gaming, it just isn't.  Sure, shit like Angry Birds works really well on this system, but big meaty RPGs like this aren't going to attract your average iPhone gamer.  Most importantly however, the thing that made TWEWY such a good, interesting game on the DS was it's amazing battle system that utilised both screens.  So way to go and fucking ruin that with your piece of shit one screen combat.  The idea of having combat on one screen just basically ruins some of the interesting and challenging battles as a few of the fights would revolve around the dual screen mechanics (E.g. Taboo Noise, for those that know what that is)

It also fucks the game right up from a story perspective too.  The reason the combat was on 2 screens story wise was that despite the 2 characters being linked, they had to fight the big nasties alone.  If they killed the enemy, it would die for their partner too, but if they took damage, the partner would suffer as well.  It was a cool concept that made the idea of combat slightly frightening from a story perspective, but now all that has been thrown out the window since they can just fight together now on one fucking screen.

There are lots of other things I could talk about that make the game seem shit, but I have to remember that despite all my ranting and raving, I haven't played it yet, so my opinion is generally not worth shit on this matter, but it just seems like a bit of a betrayal here.  It might be pretty good, but I won't know for a long time because if square thinks I'm dropping 20 bucks on a fucking shitty iPhone port of a 2008 DS game, they have another thing coming.

Here is the trailer, people panned this shit so hard they removed comments and ratings.

Free Game Friday: Ninjump

Well this has not been a good week for experimenting with some freeware.  I've been busy with work and some other stuff that I've not really had a chance to break into anything new, so I'm going to tell you about something on my iPod I use to make the train journeys less boring.

Ninjump is a free game on the iPod app store and the Android marketplace, so don't feel left out if you don't own something apple related to try this out on.  The game has no real goal other than getting a high score, but as a light hearted time killer this is fine.

The gameplay is simple, you have a ninja and you tap the screen to make him jump.  Collect powerups to fly up the screen faster and don't get hit by anything or your dead.  It's a simple yet surprisingly addictive game and some really smooth visuals, so it's pretty good if your stuck with no real games to play.

That's basically all there is to it, so go give it a download! I will warn the Android users though, if you're playing this on an HTC Wildfire, it's going to run like ass.

Free Game Friday......On Saturday! Zenonia

First of all, apologies for free game friday being a day late, I ended up in a karaoke booth all night and by the time I got home I was too drunk and tired to even consider making a blog post, anyway, I'm now well rested and ready to bring you more free entertainment!

So, break out your smart phones and iPods because this weeks free game is a mobile game called Zenonia.  I find it strange that I'm finding games like this on the app store for my iPod Touch, usually I associate the mobile games market with casual stuff, you know, stuff for people to kill 20 minutes on a subway train, not proper gamers stuff.

Anyway, Zenonia is a Hack n' Slash RPG where you play as a young lad called Regret (Fucking stupid name by the way) as he is on a quest to avenge his dead father.  On the way you have to deal with the ongoing war between some holy knights and some clan of evil dragon people.  Basically the story is kind of dumb and the names of all the characters are pretty shitty too.

While I'm thinking about it the combat is a little bit shitty too.  It's basically one button combat and you just wail on an enemy until his life bar dissapears in most cases, that said though I still enjoy playing this game quite a bit.

First of all, you can pick one of three classes at the beginning, a Paladin (magic user), a Assassin (sneaky man for the dirty player) or a Barbarian (2 handed tough guy).  There is a chance that one of the reasons I find the combat so dull is I chose the Barbarian class so my guys whole deal is just wailing on enemys with a 2 hander anyway.  I'm still part way through my first playthrough so there is a chance that the other classes may make the combat a bit more compelling.

While I'm at it there is A LOT to this game, and I do mean A LOT.  The gameplay basically boils down to a single player MMO which would usually turn me off in most cases but as a time killer for the subway? yeah it's pretty good to grind out a few quests on my way to work.  Anyway, the world is pretty big, filled with dungeons and plains, snowfields and the like.  It does limit you to where you can go for each bit of the story, but it's OK because leaving the designated quest areas would mean getting your ass kicked anyway.

There is also shittons of items and stuff to pick up and collect and you have to keep all your junk in good shape if you want to stand a chance against what lies ahead.  Also there are skill trees, because every fucking game has to have a skill tree now and whenever you level up you get points to put into your stats and skills so you can really customise your guy to suit your own play style.

There is in fact quite a lot of depth here in preparing for combat and managing your quests and abilities, more depth that I would ever expect out of a goddamn iPod game.

So put that Angry Birds down and play a real game!  Maybe for those of you who class yourselves as "casual" gamers, you'll find that "core" gaming isn't as scary as it's all made out to be.