Aurora Feint ||: Tower Puzzles -- Review

Category: Puzzle
Price: 0.99
App Store Link: [Full] / No Lite Version

Review: Love It
Recommendation: An innovative puzzle game that uses both the touch screen and motion controls effectively.
Replay Value: Medium

Aurora Feint II: Tower Puzzles is a great puzzle game. The basic premise is that you are scaling a tower trying to make it to the top. In order to achieve this feat you need to solve the puzzle on each floor. To solve each puzzle you must move the balls to match at least 3 other balls of the same color, at which point the balls will disappear. When moving the balls you have two options, first you can move one ball at a time with your finger or you can move all the balls at once by rotating your device. Of course if you had unlimited moves the game would be way to easy, so each level has a limited number of moves that you can perform before you lose.

Graphically Tower Puzzles looks beautiful. The background is great and not distracting. The motion is fluid. The colors are vibrant. It's just beautiful. The music is also very pleasing to the ear.

As far as replayability goes there are two ways to look at it. You'll probably only get one play through out of it so that would lead to very low replayability. The other way to look at it is that there are 37 puzzles to solve and you will get stuck on at least one of them (I've gotten stuck on 3 so far that I had to look for a solution for.) It's one of those games that, until you've beaten all 37 levels you'll play for a while, get frustrated, leave, come back later with a fresh head (or a solution), and move on.

The only real problem that I found with it was when they introduced the mechanic of performing two moves quickly together (i.e. moving the ball so it falls but then rotating the screen so it doesn't reach the bottom) as this is not explained and you may not have run into this mechanism earlier in the game.

Overall I can recommend a buy for this game if you like puzzle games because you will get at least a buck's worth of play out of it.


- John

Black Shades -- Review

Category: Games
Price: 0.99
App Store Link: [Full] / No Lite Version

Review: Impartial
Recommendation: Wait and see on update.
Replay Value: It does keep track of a high score so you can go back to try and beat previous scores.

The basic concept of this game is that you have been charged with protecting a very important person (VIP) from the forces of evil. To help you in this quest you have been given several weapons as well as a few psychic abilities. The first is an intent guage which will tell you when a person intends to shoot your VIP, the unfortunate thing is you can't tell when someone is going to make a melee attack on your VIP, such as trying to choke him to death. The other power given to you is the ability to slow time giving you the time to aim your shot.

Graphics are a little blocky and generic, but didn't really affect gameplay. Obviously if a version with better graphics came around it couldn't hurt.

The controls are probably the best and worst part of this game. To move forward you tilt the iPhone forward, to move backwards you tilt back, to strafe left or right just tilt the iPhone in that direction. You use your finger to aim up, down, left, or right. Moving around is quite easy however the aiming can be quite touchy at times ending up with you looking at the sky or at your feet. Which, to tell you the truth, other than when I was crouching, I only found the up and down motion to be inconvenient as I found no enemies hiding above or below me.

Gameplay went smooth until I actually had to shoot something. Even when I would slow down time and be right in front of the person, it would still miss a lot of the time. The instructions off the main menu were great as they let you know what you're supposed to do in general, but the in game instructions were horrible. While the general rule of protect the VIP always applied, a lot of times I couldn't even find the VIP unless he started next to me. Also there were several times when I wouldn't find the VIP but would still complete the level.

Another problem with the gameplay is the transitioning between levels, or lack thereof. For the first five levels I actually thought I was on the first level and just failing it until I restarted and saw that five levels were complete. I later learned that when the screen flashed green before the reset it indicated success while a flash of red meant failure.

Overall, this game has a very good concept and once you get the controls down is fun to play. Hopefully in the future it will address some of the problems listed above, at which point it would be a definite buy.

Here are some sample images:

Developer Video

~John

iDracula - Quick Review

Catagory: games action adventure shooter survival vampires zombies
Price: $0.99 introductory; $2.99 regularly
App Store Link: [Full]

Rating: Love it
Recommendation: Buy it
Replay Value: High

stay alive--but it's harder than it sounds. The goal seems to be to stay alive long enouChillingo's iDracula delivers intense high-stakes fun. As a vampire hunter turned prey, players struggle to move around, kill monsters, collect items, earn special abilities (perks), and justgh to collect omens (items dropped by vampires) to improve your score rank, which persists through death.

Gameplay currently consists of multiple monsters, 6 weapons, tons of power-ups (perks), 2 gamplay modes, a a developer promise of more on the way.

The look of the game is Diablo-esque, and the unique & original control style works very well and is easy to master. In fact, overall, the look, feel, and control style of this game are some of the best on the touch platform. If you're a fan of any part of this genre, this is a must buy.

Developer Video:

-- Posted From My iPhone

Zombieville USA - Flash Review

Catagory: games survial action adventure zombie
Price $2.99
App Store Link: [Full]

Review: Love it
Recommendation: Buy it
Replay Value: Medium-high

Awesome zombie-slaughtering, gore-gushing, sidescrolling survival game. The app offers great graphics, 15 weapons, lots of zombies and a decent challenge. While there are no national leaderboards to compete on, you can try to beat your personal best and 'splode some zombies in the process. The game, though sometimes repetitive, is easy to pick up and play and offers fairly high replay value. A full review to come.

Gameplay Video:

-- Posted From My iPhone