Nine Over Ten 9/10

I noted that in my first playthrough of Alice in Wonderland that if you take Castlevania, throw out the enemies, leave the graphics alone and ramp up the puzzle elements, you’ll essentially get the game and that it wouldn’t be a bad thing. In fact, Alice in Wonderland is probably one of the best 2D platform puzzle (as opposed to 2D platform action) games on the iPhone/iPod touch.

The full game was released recently and I had first dibs before it was publicly available on App Store. The game features more of everything from the earlier released demo, including a full complement of levels and a whole bunch of stuff to collect.

More importantly, the subsequent levels show a gradual increase in difficulty and the puzzles more and more intricate with plenty of interaction with the environment surrounding Alice, the player character. Helping her out are new team mates and the first new team mate after your encounter with the White Rabbit would be the Cheshire Cat.

The Cat has the ability to make stuff disappear and thankfully the game marks out items that can be affected by the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat.

It’s really suprising to see a platformer that treats entire levels like big puzzles and while there are no enemies, there are death traps like pools of waters and moving pillars and platforms of thorns. It’s a wise design decision to have the ability to zoom in and out on a level to get an idea where to make your next move, making strategy a part of this platform puzzler as well.

I highly recommend Alice in Wonderland for the iPhone. The game is now available on App Store for just USD 4.99, click here to download.

It would seem that the Batman: Gotham Knight animated anthology spawned a spiritual successor in the form of Halo Legends. The similarities are hard to deny, a bunch of animated shorts done by the best in the business and the stories revolve around a central theme, and this time it’s the Master Chief and the Halo universe.

Halo Legends has 7 animated shorts, compared to 6 in Gotham Knight,  and my favourite one would be the Toei Studio creation (and Dragonball Z inspired)  Odd One Out. It’s a pretty crazy/funny mess, which fortunately unlike  the rest of the shorts, is non-canon.

My second favourite would be the last short “The Package”. Done fully in CGI by Casio Entertainment, it wouldn’t give Advent Children a run for its money, but it’s still a pretty sight with an all-action plot. The Japanese water colour inspired “The Duel” can be a pretty tedious affair to those not accustomed to animation being a higher medium of art.

The other stories are pretty good themselves. Halo  fans who  are interested in the Forerunner backstory would be delighted with the “Origins” short, while Homecoming is a recollection of a Spartan’s training program, her escape, and her subsequent return with the knowledge that the program IS home.

Overall, Halo Legends is a keeper, and it does for Halo what Gotham Knight did for the Dark Knight. I highly recommend this anthology. Halo Legends will be going on sale on Play-Asia on the 26th of February. Click here for the Blu-ray version, or here for the DVD version.

Do you know what the movies “It” and “Zombieland” have in common? They give clowns a bad name. Knife Toss, for the iPhone/iPod touch, will do the same too, as it won’t take long for you to mutter “Hold still you damn clown”.

But it’s not entirely the clown’s fault, as he is strapped down on a rotating, clown-sized dart board along with a bunch of balloons and you are supposed to toss knifes at the board to pop ‘em balloons, not the clown, just like in the circus act.

To do so, Knife Toss makes good use of the iPhone’s accelerator; you tilt the device in order to move the crosshairs and tap on the screen to throw the knife. Hitting the balloons net you points, but if you hit the clown, let’s just say he has a health bar.

Do note that you can’t take your own sweet time popping out the balloons as you also have to beat the clock, so things do get hairy (in a good way) in later levels. Score and achievement freaks would be glad to know that there’s OpenFeint included in the game.

Here  are my pointers on how  to be successful at Knife Toss:

• Be stationary. Don’t play the game in a moving vehicle.
• Cut the glare. Play somewhere where light doesn’t bounce of your iPhone’s screen when tilting the device.
• Clean screen. Having a clean screen (you know how oily the screen can get pressing it against your face while on the phone) is better especially when you are tilting the phone a lot.

Knife Toss is a pretty fun game to play, and while it’s just a game, it would be good to remind kids that tossing knives at real clowns would a really bad thing to do . Knife Toss is now available on the App Store for just 99 cents, click here to download.

Man, this is hard work. Outrun is basically a road trip across America but you’ve got a clock to beat. So in order to reach either one of the five goals, you’ve to perfect your driving.

This means not doing the following: hitting traffic, sliding off road, brushing against guardrails, bumping rival cars or crashing. Perfecting your drive also means drifting (powersliding) at appropriate turns, slipstreaming, pick the right car and most importantly, know the course you are driving on.

So far, I’ve managed to reach goals A, B, C and D in that particular order, with the last one after copious amounts of wine and three tries. Goal E remains rather elusive; I guess I really need to trim down my mistakes on Canyon and Jungle to buy me more time for the final course to reach Goal E

Here’s a tip, Heart Attack Mode is a pretty good way to learn about the many courses in Outrun. You tend to drive more carefully in that particular gameplay mode and you’ll definitely have more time to spare.

Anyone of you out there playing Outrun Online Arcade on the PS3?

Now this is interesting. Not everyday one gets to preview a movie tie-in video game on the iPhone, and more so, one that doesn’t suck. At first glance Alice in Wonderland looks like one of those 2D Castlevania games on the DS, which I might say, makes it look pretty darn cool.

The demo plays like Castlevania but eschews combat  for puzzle elements. You get to recruit team members to your party, the first being the White Rabbit who can control time but is immobile when you select him.You can use him to freeze or unfreeze moving platforms and obstacles.

One of the cooler features of the game happens when you get stuck at a particular part of the level where you can’t pass. Look out for mirrors that will transport you to the mirror world, a reflection of the level and going through them would mean you successfully negotiated the obstacle. Think of them as the sewer pipes in Mario, but with a twist.

The demo for Alice in Wonderland comes with the first two levels from the full game, several unlockables (scattered on the levels) and a trailer from the movie. I can’t think of a better idea to promote a movie than a really good video game tie-in such as this. Kudos to Disney for coming up with the game in the first place.

You can download the demo over here, be sure to check it out.

From dishing out pizzas for a zombie clientele to sinking pirate ships, there are plenty of reflex/timing-based games on the iPhone. The latter is a new addition to my review list, aptly titled iPirate.

iPirate takes the concept of an on-rails shooter and mixes it up with a little bit of strategy and tactics. Enemy ships prowl the horizon while players load cannons to fire at them. Titling the iPhone will cause cannon shots to swerve right or left (you really should use this to your advantage), while tapping and holding onto a cannon will cause the resulting shot to cause more damage.

Complications arise when enemies start firing back. There’s a bit of a suspension of disbelief when enemy shots can be deflected by just tapping on them. Personally, I wouldn’t want this feature to be in considering that you can repair your ship on the fly during the heat of battle.  There is however, a caveat. Repairing on the fly consumes repair points,  without which you cannot carry out repairs. This finite resource can be replenished in between levels.

The levels have a progressive day and night cycle which is pretty cool. The night battles aren’t too dark to the point you can’t see but the darkness makes it more challenging to see how many ships are out there based on the silhouettes.

Sinking enemy ships nets gold and players have the benefit of spending it on new cannons, ammunition and ship upgrades and repairs in-between levels. Don’t forget that your cannons can take damage too and you’ll need to repair damaged ones before they can dish out maximum damage.

The later levels of iPirate turn out to be very frantic and exciting affairs, with the constant juggling of between using the right kind of ammo, what ship to shoot at first and when to hit the repair button. The multi-touch screen allows for more than one cannon to be tapped at the same time, so I couldn’t help but have my own “Master and Commander” moments while playing the game (always a plus point).

The guys at GoGames did a bang-up job with iPirate and I wholeheartedly recommend it. The game is now priced at USD 1.99 (click here to download), with a Lite version available as well (click here to download)

This guy must be a genius. I’m talking about Charles McGinnis, creator of several iPhone games. When he first approached me to review his first game,  Battle Trivia, I came away thinking that the amount of effort put into the game was tremendous and the fact that he was doing it part time was just, astounding.

Charles is back, and this time his latest game is a totally different kettle of fish.  Eschewing trivia for playing cards, his latest game is titled Poker Tower. Now, I’m pretty sure that most people are familiar with the game Solitaire, thanks mostly to Microsoft bundling the game with Windows.

Poker Tower has a similar concept, but instead of arranging cards in a sequence, you are supposed to arrange the cards into poker hands!

Different poker hands net you different amount of points. A straight flush is worth 10 points while having two pairs in a sequence of 5 cards nets you a single point. Each level has a target score to reach before the entire deck is consumed. Reaching the target score allows you to carry forward your score to the next level to reach the next target score.

With three lanes, players can form three different hands at a time. It really boils down to strategy and luck on which lane you want to shunt an open card to. I’m not sure whether the tactic of counting cards would work here, but hey, if it does, do tell.

The game conveniently shows the type of hands and the number of points they are worth on the left hand side of the screen. At the bottom of the screen, you get to see the remaining cards available (that are not yet opened).

The concept of using poker hands instead of the plain old Solitaire-style sequence of cards is a pretty smart one. I’m not much of a poker player, but the game allows me to reacquaint myself with the different poker hands in time for Chinese New Year.

Poker Tower also measures statistics but this feature can be switched off from the main menu. The only thing I find missing here is OpenFeint or some other form of global leaderboard.

At 99 cents, you can’t go wrong with Poker Tower;  click here to download it. And someone please give Charles an award.

I’m on a losing streak on Air Hockey for the iPhone having downloaded it earlier today when it was available for free (it’s back to 99 cents). After several lunch time games against my colleague, I found myself very impressed with the game but at the same time had a sheer look of horror at my scorelines.

The game is actually quite tough when you are playing against a AI-controlled opponent. What makes the AI-challenge even more worthwhile (aside from the practice) would be the OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards.

Having said that, I find the 2 player multiplayer games are even more fun and they tend to attract a crowd. I can’t believe the number of times I shouted in disbelief when shots miraculously went into the goal. I got pwned even more when I decided to play with 2 pucks instead.

While Air Hockey’s graphics, controls and physics are top-notched,  I felt that the board was a little small, causing games to end too fast. This is despite the game using up the entire display real estate provided by the iPhone. Perhaps the game would have been a better fit on phones with extra long screens like the LG BL40 (check it out below):

Wouldn’t it be cool if zombies were to munch on pizzas instead? But then again, there wouldn’t be anything appealing to them, accept for the tomato paste that looks like blood.

But what if the toppings consisted of brains, eyes, guts…you know, stuff that zombies like? It sounds gross doesn’t it, but Zombie Pizza for the iPhone/iPod touch lets you serves up these gross morsels to your zombie clientele.

The game has a simple backstory, involving you, the player, training to take over the reins of the Zombie Pizza parlour. In order to satiate the hordes of undead pounding on your door, you have to dish out pizzas as fast as you can, following a set of recipes.

The recipes involve dragging certain body parts (like the ones mentioned in the 2nd paragraph) from the conveyor belt on to the pizza, before flicking the pizza towards the door. For example, the Roadkill pizza requires one each of any kind of topping, while the Gut Buster requires four toppings of the same kind.

As the levels progress, you’ll find taboo toppings on the conveyor belt, basically stuff that you SHOULDN’T add to the pizza. An example of this would be broccoli, and feeding zombies with this type of topping will just make them mad. Making them wait for their pizza makes them mad too, and if they are mad enough, they’ll storm the parlour and eat you and it’s game over.

You get saved by the bell whenever it hits daybreak and its onto the next level. Perform well enough to earn the prerequisite cash and you’ll be awarded with medals at the end of every level,  or even that rare promotion!

I’m currently having a blast with the Story Mode, and would be trying the Survival Mode next. The game CAN be scary to some since you get to see some ugly mugs staring at you from the door window. The ingredients can be  gross as well, but at least these are the cartoon renditions.

Online leaderboards are provided by OpenFeint, which is pretty common nowadays on iPhone games and it serves its purpose for bragging rights among your OpenFeint friends.

Zombie Pizza is now available on Apple’s App Store for USD 1.99, click here to download.

Ice Climber, meet Tetris. Tetris, Ice Climber. I found myself saying that when I was playing one of the better games I’ve seen on the iPhone, titled Flood. Flood combines the gameplay from both retro classics to create well, something that works really well, and an addictive on at that.

Presented in 2D, gamers control a kid running around a level collecting seeds that coming falling down from the top of the screen. These seeds can be than sowed, and they cause bricks to sprout out of the ground, either vertically, or horizontally, allowing the kid to jump up higher ground in order to escape the flood that is coming up from the bottom of the screen.

To confound things a little bit are enemies coming down along with the seeds, and you’ve got like three ways to deal with them (actually it’s more than enough): jump on ‘em, throw seeds at ‘em or block ‘em off with bricks.

There are also other obstacles, like cannon fire, which can be conveniently blocked off with bricks. But the ones that I hate most are overhanging brick structures, which require you to lay your bricks properly so that you can jump through the small, non-enemy infested openings. One mis-lay and you’ll almost certainly be trapped.

Plenty of strategy for such a cute game, Flood has that ability to keep you occupied but I hope that you have a data plan, since it constantly gets on the Internet once you hit the game over screen in order to place your score on a global leaderboard (it even tells you what placing you got).

Flood is still available for free on the App Store; click here to get the game.