Currently Playing: March Mobile-5
PLANTS VS ZOMBIES: HEROES
It seems as though with every iteration, Platnts Vs Zombies gets further and further away from the core concepts that made it good to start with. PvZ:H is cluttered, confusing and overwhelming but the huge number of rave reviews indicate that it's not objective bad, I'm just getting old and crotchety and nostalgic. The "everything and the kitchen sink" approach, with characters and mechanics and comics and power-ups and enemies constantly hurled at the player is not bad, but it lacks confidence and style. PvZ has lost it's cool.
GOOD DOGS!
A game from possibly my favourite Twitter account of all time? Say it isn't so! And yet, I find myself wishing it wasn't so. Good Dogs isn't quite the disaster that Kotaku AUS would have you believe, but it's not great either. If I had to guess, I'd say it was unfinished. The colours/sizes/labels/icons scheme is not coherent, the controls are not consistent and as you move your finger around to guide your hound, you eventually end up off the end of the physical screen, or with your arm over it. It just doesn't really work.
HOPPENHELM
Hoppenhelm straddles a number of genres. It's a twitchy, pixel-art, retro, endless platformer. It's got three buttons: one to hop forward one move, one to block, and one to attack. You bound your way through an eerie dungeon, avoiding traps, pitfalls and enemies, collecting loot and seeking the bonus areas behind the thick wooden dungeon doors. The interface doesn't quite translate onto the iPad, but on an iPhone screen, its a compelling little game with a lot of heart.
STORMBOUND I think I rather like Stormbound. It makes a very confident first impression; it's stylish, and it knows it. Card based games are often quite conservative, and rarely stray too far from traditional fantasy art and designs, but Stormbound isn't afraid to be a bit more modern and cool. It contrasts very strongly with Plants Vs Zombies: Heroes in that regard. But it's not just a pretty face. It's an excellent deck-building game/board game hybrid, combining strategic turn-based play with reactive animations to bring it all to life. I can see myself spending more time with this one. Its got layers.
TOPPLUVA
I'm a little bit perturbed by the noticeable recent up-tick in the number of really simple games on the App Store. The proliferation of Ketchapp and Voodoo titles seems (nee-naw, snobby opinion incoming) like a massive dumbing down compared to what iOS games can be. Toppluva is very nice, very competent, but very shallow. Ski down the hill, don’t hit the flags. That’s it. It's nicely done, and games like this definitely have their place, but Infinity Blade II it is not. Which is fine, but as part of an overall trend, it bothers me a little.
