Tentacles: Enter the dolphin is a crazy new platformer with very original controls and a bizarre title.  The game makes about as much sense as the company associated with the development of Tentacles, Microsoft.

Gameplay

You play as a…well, I’m not entirely sure what you play as.  An anomaly of nature, named Lemmy.  Lemmy has three tentacles and a claw used to eat eyeballs.  Lemmy adventures through the body of a professor, after getting there by a crazy accident in the first place. Tentacles, is difficult, very difficult.  The control scheme is one that is very easy to use, but also very hard to master.  You tap the screen once to send out one tentacle to where you tapped, again for the second and once again for the third tentacle.  The movement is very fluid and precise.

There are dozens of death traps just waiting for you to come along as well.  These obstacles are very annoying  and in order to avoid them you must tap in the exact spot you want Lemmy to move to, a centimeter in the wrong direction could mean certain death.  Part of the time I found myself just tapping three times rapidly to send Lemmy flying towards the wall or corridor I was trying to survive. In this aspect, Tentacles can be an extremely frustrating game,  I was already cursing it before I reached level 12.  On the other hand, after level 20 or so, I began to feel pretty comfortable with maneuvering Lemmy through the nightmarish hellscape of the professor’s body.

Each level has three objectives, get all the pickups, complete a challenge, and get to the end without dying (yeah right).  The challenge one I find to be the most fun, there are two different types of challenges found in the different areas, speed challenge and damage challenge.  The speed challenge requires you to blast through a section within a time limit, which is tons of fun.  The damage challenge asks you to survive an area without getting hurt even once.  This one is a bit tougher.  Speaking of tough, the bosses in Tentacles are quite difficult as well, they are well designed and made to make you suffer.

Seriously, I hate this guy.

As the levels progress, the difficulty does not steepen as much as I anticipated, while this could be considered a good thing, I found that the later levels were actually quite a bit easier than the mid 20 – 30 levels.

Graphics

The graphics are gorgeous, even if they are gross. The colors are vivid and the backgrounds are very detailed.  If you thought Lemmy was ugly, check out some of the creatures he has to face.  Some of the creatures are just eyes,  in order to defeat them, Lemmy grabs their eye with his claw and eats it.  Some pretty grotesque stuff.

Overall

Pros

• Fantastic fluid controls
• Good level design
• Plenty of gameplay to justify a one dollar price

Cons

• More difficult early on rather than towards the end
• No storyline really
• Repetitive

Tentacles is a very enjoyable adventure through a fictional body and well worth the 99 cents. Download Tentacles from iTunes.

The post Game Review: Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Fieldrunners 2 is leagues ahead of other tower defense games currently out, and is even better than the previous Fieldrunners game.  More towers, more enemies, more levels, better graphics and even more achievements.  Everything the original did fantastically, the sequel does even better.  The amount of content here is fantastic.

 Gameplay

Fieldrunners plays like most tower defense games.  Waves of runners come and you build towers to destroy them. Many levels are completely open,  where the player must build the path the runners follow out of towers.  Putting towers to block a path and using the set up to give certain towers various advantages.  There are a multitude of towers included, each with 2 upgrades.  There are different towers and many of them are unlocked by beating enough levels.

Each level, the player is allowed to take 6 different towers with them into battle.    Every tower has its own unique uses, Tesla towers take out big fieldrunners, pyro towers are made for crowd control.  There are different types of slowing towers,  missile towers, and machine gun towers.  Towers that poison, towers that do splash damage and towers that shoot in four directions too.

There are a huge array of Fieldrunners as well.  Fieldrunners in cars, tanks, planes, blimps and everything in between.  Every field runner can be dealt with differently which adds to the strategic element of the game.  Fieldrunners in fast planes have to be slowed to be killed or else they will zip right through a player’s defenses.

Every level is completely different from the last. There are multiple game modes, Survival mode is just a standard tower defense where the player has a set amount of life and one is taken down each time a runner passes through.  Time trial is a mode where the player cannot die,  there is an allotted amount of time and the player must take out a certain number of runners before time is up. Puzzle mode has the player try to force the runners to go through laser gates.

This is done by placing towers strategically on the board in order to force the runner to go around the towers and into the gates. There is an endless mode and lastly a Sudden death mode,  the player has 3 life and there are hundreds of runners that come on like a storm.  The goal is to kill a certain number of them before you die.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Fieldrunners are great.  They are very vivid and colorful,  especially on the iPad.  The best thing about Fieldrunners 2 HD is probably the fact that IS on the iPad,  each level runs a bit long,  some up to 30 or 40 minutes.  Each level is bright and crisp looking,  and the background of the levels changes as the game progresses and the player reaches new areas.

The music,  while very repetitive,  is almost a parody of a march and fits the style of Fieldrunners well.

Pros

• Large amount of towers
• A ton of replay value
• Great visuals and gameplay

Cons:

• The price, at $7.99 it’s higher than most games
• Difficulty ramps up FAST
• Could be challenging for people new to tower defense games

 Overall

In the end,  Fieldrunners 2 HD is one of the best tower defense games to be released thus far.  The new towers and enemies are great and this game has enough to it to play it for weeks on end.

Find Fieldrunners 2 HD here at the App store.

The post Fieldrunners 2 HD Review appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Wonderputt is a very quirky minigolf game where all 18 holes are on the screen at once, it’s brought to us by the developers at Damp Gnat.  The visuals are inventive and very interesting to watch.  After the 8th playthrough, I was still not tired of watching everything fit together.  Sadly, Wonderputt only works for the iPad 2 and newer.

Gameplay

The way each one works is very well put together.  The mechanics remind me of the old Grow flash games.  The player hits the golf ball into the hole and the scenery morphs.  Each hole is progressively more difficult than the last.  This is not saying much, because each hole is also quite simple to beat. I got an albatross on every single hole. It’s a very casual game, and it’s quick.  One of the achievements is to beat all 18 holes within 3 minutes.

To hit the ball, you pull back on the ball to adjust power and aim, release to launch.  I never encountered a hiccup from the controls.  They are smooth and simple and don’t need to be any more than they are.  The gameplay does require some skill if your goal is to get on the high score lists.   After the player beats the game once, there is a collectible mode where the objective is to collect all of the rainbow pieces scattered about on the course.  While not difficult, it does add some depth to the game and give reason to continue playing, if you aren’t playing just for the surreal experience.

Graphics

The graphics are quite beautiful in Wonderputt.  Each addition to the already awesome looking course was inventive and interesting to watch as it unfolded.  For example, after I finished a round where cows were abducted by aliens, snow fell on the field where the cows previously were and it was turned into a ski slope.

The animations are completely smooth and work great.  Attention to detail here really is quite something.  It’s no wonder this game was not ported to the iPhone and iPod, all the little details would not have been easy to see.  Wonderputt has more of an artsy feel to it, like a morphing painting with a relative amount of interactivity.

Overall

Although it does seem a bit too simple at times, which may be the games only downfall.  It would be awesome for the developers to get some more courses made for it as well.  The one course is great, but I would be very excited to see what new ideas may come.

Pros

• Great artistic style
• Simple yet effective gameplay
• enough replay value even if it is just a single course

Cons

• More of these gorgeous courses
• Far too easy

Find Wonderputt in the app store.

The post App Review: Wonderputt for iPad appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Vote!!!, is Epic Games’s hilarious presidential candidate version of Infinity Blade.  The game play is very similar,  the difference between Vote!!! and Infinity Blade is that, rather than playing as a knight, you play as either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama.  What is more satisfying than watching Obama in a super hero costume beating up on someone with a Rubber Chicken?  Rhetorical question,  nothing is.

Gameplay

The controls follow the same formula as infinity blade, slash the screen in any direction to attack.  There are two dodge buttons in the lower left and right corners and a block button in the middle.  Hold block to continue blocking, press dodge to either dodge left or right.  In the top left corner there is a star with a multiplier inside of it, this multiplier builds up every time you perform a successful attack, rebuttal, block, or dodge.  The multiplier resets when you get attacked.

Every attack landed gives points and the object of the game is to earn as much points as possible within the time limit.  A rebuttal is performed by attacking the weapon the opponent is using to parry it in the other direction.  Vote!!! has a system where every time you unlock a new achievement,  your multiplier increases by 1 at the beginning of each game for each achievement unlocked.  Some of them were quite difficult to get, such as the don’t get hit a single time in a match.  Others were easy, like getting ten rebuttals in one match.  There are enough of them to keep you playing the game for quite a while and there are even extra items and perks to be unlocked as well.

Thanks to Vote!!! now you can.  Items in Vote!!! are ridiculous as well, weapons ranging from a rubber chicken, to the constitution to a liberty Saber.  There is a multitude of hats and outfits as well.  Super President Obama is hilarious. Perks are included as well, Health Care, Super Pac and Filibuster are all there.  Each one of these makes it easier for you to score higher each debate.

Graphics and Audio

Vote!!! runs on the Unreal Engine 3, so you know the graphics will be nice and smooth.  They are simple, but the little details are nice.  Sparks and red white and blue stripes and stars fly out of your weapon when you attack and there are four different stages where the candidates may debate.  Although I don’t think I have ever witnessed a debate on the White House lawn before.

The patriotic music in the background is quite fun to listen to and each candidate has silly things they say.  Such as Obama’s “I’m going to beat you with change”

Overall

Vote!!! is a hilarious game with tons of replay value great unlockables and enough challenge to keep you going until the real election. Just like Infinity Blade I can’t think of anything really that wrong or bad with this game.  Did I mention it is free? Pick up Vote!!!  in the app store 

The post App Review: Vote!!! for iOS appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Years ago I used to play a game called Osu; a very popular music game where the player clicked bubbles to the music as directed by the game.  Cytus, is very much like Osu in that it has much of the same music genres and an almost identical gameplay.  Cytus also sports a very simplistic design and a wonderful soundtrack, which is what got me interested.

Gameplay and Controls

Cytus is played by tapping colorful bubbles in rhythm with the music playing.  There are bubbles the player must simply tap, bubbles that have to be held down, and bubbles that have to be dragged a certain direction on the screen.  A black bar moves up and down the screen and goes through the bubbles. When the bar hits the center of the bubble, the player is supposed to tap that bubble.  Most of the hits that gave me a “perfect”  were spot on,  but the difference between perfect and good is quite large as well as the difference between good and bad.  A miss, is where the player misses the bubble entirely.  This rarely happened to me since I had honed my skills previously with Osu.

Game play gets progressively difficult through the twenty eight levels.  Each level has an easy mode and a hard mode,  of course easy mode is very easy in the beginning.  On the other hand some of the later songs on hard mode are carpal tunnel inducing.  The game play is very simple and fun and it works well.

Graphics

Cytus has extremely simplistic graphics along with the gameplay.  There is beauty in the simplicity though,  everything works together with no lag or outstanding problems.  The backgrounds could use some work though.  Thy are very faint and simply show a picture rather than a moving animation, like those of Dance Dance Revolution.

Extras

I knew Cytus was going to have me playing for a while when I tapped on the main menu screen; the music was fantastic.  And this is where Cytus outshines other rhythm based games. The variety is excellent.  There is a multitude of genres packed into the game:  J-pop, J rock, synth pop, Techno and Trance are all heard in this audio feast.  Each song sounds completely different from the others.  The selection is nice too,  28 different songs, which is far more than most music games in the app store.

Each song took me multiple tries to beat it with a good score.  Cytus has quite a bit of replayability.  The developers at Rayark have promised to release a new pack of ten songs with every 100,000 downloads as well, meaning Cytus could potentially have over one hundred songs in good time.

Overall

Pros

• simple yet excellent game play
• responsive controls
• fantastic music selection

Cons

• Graphics and interface could be enhanced
• Backgrounds are not especially detailed, a bit bland

Cytus is an excellent music and rhythm game,  it is easily in my top five for music games found in the app store.  The variety of music genres and super simple gameplay really make this an excellent buy.  While the graphics are not the best, the game play and song selection more than make up for it.  Cytus is a fantastic music game despite its minor flaws.

Download Cytus here from iTunes.

The post App Review: Cytus for iOS appeared first on Mobile Magazine.