Candy Crush Saga

King.com

Getting off my lazy duff to punch out a few more of these reviews, why the heck not, it's fun to come up with some quips and jokes at the expense of a hard working developer trying to make some money off of peoples obsession of smart phone addictions. That reminds me, go ahead and click on one of the ads on the page while you're here, I might as well get my sliver of a share of the pot of gold.

Excuses for taking a sabbatical aside, Have you heard of this game called Candy Crush Saga? IT appears to be stuck in that 50 to 100 MILLION download hump that it can't quite get over, not unlike how Warren Buffett can't seem to earn more then a gazillion dollars in one lifetime. I would normally pass on a game that everyone and their mothers have already played since what can I share with you in this blog that you wouldn't already know, but what can I say, I'm addicted. I've tossed my phone down at least a dozen times declaring this game too hard and too frustrating to continue only to pick it up 10 minutes later after a Facebook friend sends me another life.

And what's not to love? puzzle game is too easy and you get board, but this game is just popular enough to give you some true bragging rights that getting to level 147, that's right, I'm stuck on 147? Where are you at?


Recommendation: Join the collective, then let me know what you and your friends refer to the cluster candies as.

Sniper

sniper forces

Having just read Mark Owen's "The Hardest Day" and thinking I was downloading a first person shooter, I was all excited to act out my fantasy of being a member of Navy Seal Team 6. boy, was I ever disappointed!  The game instead is a median for trying to get you to download another app that wants to run ads on your phone 24-7. You can get through the half dozen prompts safely and begin to enjoy this game that turns out to be <drum roll> a puzzle game!

Yes, the brave men and woman of the US armed services have accidentally been shuffled into a frenzy that would put Dick Cheney to shame and need your assistance to reassemble their various vehicles and cool action shots of marines with big guns in order to defeat America's enemies. Are you up for the challenge?

I went ahead and played a few rounds, fun enough game, but not what I was expecting and not anything that I would wake up in the middle of the night and write home about, especially because in that scenario I see myself already in bed. Perhaps instead I am in a commandos tent in the middle of Afghanistan and the President has personally selected me for the critically important mission of rearranging tiles such that an image is made of a sniper kneeling on a sand dune... DANG IT!

Recommendation: Read the book "No Easy Day" Get the app only if you are really bored and are confident you won't install a bunch of Adware apps on your phone by doing so. That is the real challenge of this game.

Castle TD

Elite Games

The fusion of a chess move and a football score is actually not a horrible analogy for this game. You place arrange your pieces about the board and try and prevent the other team from running over your goal line. Not unlike one of Elite Games other products, Lair Defense.

In this variation you build what appear to be tiki huts and water fountains in order to stop your enemies from going all Al-Qaeda on your castle and blowing themselves up at your door. One big advancement from similar games is determining if your aptitude is as a wizard, paladin or barbarian as your avatar that dictates what style of play you can use (special skills, healing, or blunt force, respectively). This choice doesn't appear to determine what is available in the game so much as how effective each unit you place will be.

They try to cram a lot into the screen for each level, so I would recommend a decent sized tablet if you want to appreciate the detail work put into the graphics that seem to set Elite Games apart from some simpler strategy games. Game play is similar to other games from this developer as they try and get you hooked on the strategy but then crank it up dramatically at a few points to try and lure you into spending a few bucks on level ups to get you over the humps. Hmmm... That's not quit a limerick, better luck next time.

Recommendation: Give it a spin, but don't let it break up your attention on mastering your previously downloaded strategy games.

Nun Attack

Frima Studio Inc.

Ain't no Whoopi in this story about nuns kicking butt and taking names. Get out your gat and pray with your pistol cause it's about to get downright sacrilegious in this tongue and check shoot 'em up game from Frima. 

This first thing you need to be aware of is that this is a pure flash game with a very high resolution, which in today's world means that the download file is huge, almost 200MB. So be sure that you are on a WAN of WiFi before you go out and grab it. It also means don't skip out on some of the extras of this game. The voice over'ed intro is much more then you see in your standard game, but as far as game play goes, I could take it or leave it. 

Once the humor of being a nun shooting up dam'ned demons subsides the game is actually pretty slow paced as far as unlocking new aspects of the game and equipment. Sure, you get a new nun, they have some quirk that makes them a little different, but in the end it's still shoot all the baddies as they come up. Plus, the task of managing multiple nuns on the screen at once can prove to be difficult. You begin to realize after a while that the strategies imposed from one level to the next aren't that dynamically different.

Recommendation: Don't let the pretty pictures trick you into changing your faith, just like Catholic sermon, you'll get bored with it after a while.

Rocket Fox

Namco Networks

Not since the commercials for the ground breaking FX micro chipped game Star Fox have I been so impressed with the 3D rendering of a game as was with Rocket Fox. It's a puzzle meets piloting meets pixie dust game that has more razzle dazzle then the late night showing on the Vegas strip.

To start off with, I didn't know that you could cram that much rendering into a smartphone app, so don;t be surprised if that smartphone that is almost due for an upgrade struggles with this game a little bit. For those among us that shelled out way too much money and are trying to blog back their investment before the wife finds out, just see what the android platform has to offer with this game. 

You are a cute woodland creature that is strapped to a North Korean rocket trying to launch a full strike against the China Sea islands, well, almost, you are strapped to rocket that very much relies on the gravity defying powers of colorful flowers to hop and bounce your way about the islands until all of these rare and exotic flora are exterminated, paving the way for fancy beach front property that will, in turn, make you one rich fox!

Ok, once again I may be stretching the story line out a little bit, but this game does offer some pretty great graphics in a 3D environment.

Recommendation: Get the game and just watch in awe. 

Tic Tac Toe

Appzlist

Shall we play a game? Those words helped to immortalize one of the most basic strategy games ever conceived by mankind, the great epic duel that is Tic Tac Toe. Not since Rock Paper Scissors has a game so perfectly encapsulated the most simple, raw, fundamentals of the human psyche. 

If you need me to review what the game play is like, then give you smartphone or tablet device back to your mother and get back to fingerprinting class right now because it does not get any more elementary then this. The X's, longing for freedom from the tyrannical O's battle it out among the nine separate yet equal territories of the 2D realm. One shall stand, the other shall fall, though you usually have to play it about 50 times for someone to finally get tired to the point of making a mistake that decides this duel of the fates.

In this rendition, plying the AI on easy pretty much just gives you random moves, medium will play an obvious move that may not necessarily prevent you from winning, but hard will return you to the days of challenging your 2nd grade peer in the hopes of discovering some long lost strategy that will make you a Triple T master. 

Recommendation, just grab a pen and a notepad and try and master it in your own time.

Fox Dash

Kobaj

An interesting story line of a lonesome fox in some post apocalyptic ruin of a city where the only companion is the large swarm of darkness that is trying to devour your soul! I may be embellishing here, but only a little bit. The real story is that you are a fox that likes to jump from building to building, from rock to rock, so on and so on, depending on the level.

The first thing that you notice when you launch this game is a menu option that you don't see that often. The option of a map maker, which allows you to place platforms and set the scenery for any adventure you can concoct. It takes a little bit of effort to figure this aspect of the game out, but it defiantly offers a new aspect to this relatively simple game that few others out there can boast. 

In the real game, well, it leaves a little bit to be desired. Jump here, jump there, don't jump there, jump there, but only at such and such time. Collect some stars for reasons that I have yet to fully understand, get stuck on the very last jump of a level and find yourself frustratingly sent back to the very beginning of the zone where you have to prove your jumping ability all over again. Just like the original Mario games, but without all the pesky entertainment value.

Recommendation: Get the game for its' map maker feature and just have fun with that.