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.

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. 

Mega Flux

SoFresh Games

Pipe Dream meets The Matrix meets a horrible accident at a chinese fireworks emporium. MegaFlux offers a great new twist on a classic puzzle game. The crazy symbols representing blondes, redheads, and brunettes float through a grid like tapestry of connections and intersections as you try and make sense of this crazy futuristic world you live in.

The objective is to attach the part of your screen this is spewing out this futuristic code to the color coordinated receptacle. You have to use up all the spaces, and some interesting things can happen if you cross the streams.

I vaguely remember the year when PipeDream came out for the original GameBoy, I believe I lost about 27 hours over a period of a weekend getting lost in that game, I think this is a winning game idea as an evolution to that games concept jacked up with more stimulants then the Yankees starting lineup. It may not be for everyone since, as I said, it is a fairly simple puzzle game at it's heart, but the execution for what this game tried to accomplish came out great.

Recommendation: If you are like me and loved the old school pipe dreams, give this one a try.

Words 'n' Blox

Greenlit Games AS

Are you a fan of doing crosswords and word finds, well, get ready for a game that has almost nothing in common with those other then the english language with Words 'n' Blox. The irony of a word game that refuses to use proper spelling in it's title is not lost on me.

Using the basic physics of sliding scrabble pieces, Words 'n' Blox makes you move lettered tiles around a colorfully plotted garden until you adjoin it with it's brethren to form a correctly formed word. There are some stipulations, they are looking for a particular word, not just any proper word that you can spell, this is usually intuitive based on the placement of the tiles at the beginning of each level (i.e. C-A-T is CAT, not ACT). The swiping action does seem prone to the accidental ad tap as well.

In the end you have a fairly simple word game that doesn't take a long time to master, throw in the simplicity of the words, and you have a game that will bore you one level, then frustrate the crap out of you the next. Scoring is based on the number of moves you need to complete them, though the specifics of the star system elude me as it appears that you can make only 3 out of 4 stars when you make what appears to be a minimalist number of moves.

Recommendation: Don't bother, the landscapes in the game will remind you too much of the old Legend of Zelda games and you'll never keep your attention on the game long enough.

Pudding Monsters

Zeptolab

A Puzzle game with characters that have a familiar resemblance to our friends in the game 'Cut the Rope'. The graphics straddle a line of fruitcake that is passed over at the company Christmas party and one of the characters you would see in the 'Lilo and Stitch' cartoon. The bright and colorful play action and avatars will keep you giddy while the general grotesque nature of the concept will make you wince, resulting in a very comical expression.

Gameplay is pretty basic, and the game is pretty good at giving you a quick tutorial each time a new rule or piece is introduced, though you may find yourself flubbing a move once or twice as you learn to interpreted said clips

Recommendation: Try not to flick your finger on one of the ads on the screen, otherwise let yourself smirk and remember this game is about the funny little images first, and puzzle solving second.

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Ichi

Stolen Couch Games

When you download a game from a company that calls themselves 'Stolen Couch' and a game called 'Ichi' the first word that would come to my mind is 'Fumigate'. Luckily, this game has almost nothing to do with what the implied connotation. 

Though origin of it's name may be a mystery, the concept behind the game play takes me back to my junior high drafting class in a world that exists on a grid pattern and observes the basic principles of angle of entry equals angle of reflection. This statement ironically taking me back to junior high math class. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it takes the intelligence of an eighth grader to master this puzzle game. The kicker with my analogy is that you actually receive a letter grade for each level based on completion and number of taps that allow you to reorient the deflecting triangles on each stage.

Few of the levels are terribly tricky, though you may find yourself frustrated at both getting an 'A' grade and the speed at which you may have to turn a piece to prevent your little slamming ball from colliding with one of the squiggly lines that spell your doom. Heh, spelling, another part of my educational upbringing I don't miss much.

Recommendation: A nice puzzle game that allows you to stick it to your junior high math teacher that kept giving you C's because you couldn't remember the difference between sine and cosine. 

Classic Crocodile Dentist

Devel Apps

I present a challenge to you the reader, I'm guessing you can find, download, install and master this app faster then it would take you to read this review and draw a conclusion if it is worth your time to find, download, install and master this app.

You start the game, there are no intro graphics, you start a new game that reviews a cuddly 8-bit graphic of the classic crocodile dentist game, tap on the teeth using absolutely no scientific method whatsoever, and then the screen goes red and the phone shakes when you pick the one tooth that is tied to the nerve that causes an involuntary reaction of the croc to snap your hand off. This was a 'board' game once upon a time, though it was probably taken off the market after kids where scared out of the field of dental hygiene. Perhaps that's why dentist bills are so much?

So did you get the app installed for yourself yet? it's 655K and I'm not sure what the other 400K is used for cause this is about as simple as it gets when it comes to gaming.

Recommendation: unless you have a friend who wants to huddle around your phone/tablet with you to play, this is kind of an exercise in futility, and good oral hygiene.

Brain Age Game

Best Addictive Brain Games
 
Hopefully some of those reading this review are old to remember that band Blink 182 and their hit song "What's My Age Again." which is the objective of this app, considered a game by some and a training session by others, these simple set of challenges are meant to keep your brain sharper for longer.

Anyone who has owned a Nintendo hand held system from GameBoy on are familiar enough with the concept. Jump through a few hoops and then be told what group of people you should be able to match wits with. Though this game appears to lack a large variety of methedology and falls very short in much of any explenation as to what your results mean. I ran through the test the first time and was told my age was just a smidge over 20. "Great." I think, "Is that good or bad?" I ran through the test a second time and it dropped a whole half of a year. So is 19.5 years old better or worse then 20? it seems that younger would be better, but surely there is a tipping point somewhere, who wants to be told you have the brain of a 4 year old?

As time goes on I'm sure we'll look more closely at other trainer/puzzle games offered by Best Addictive Brain Games, but something tells me that they can do better then this game.

Recommendation - Go buy a Nintendo 3DS and grab one of the Brain Age games.