Line Up Pro - Same Great Game, Different Name

Anyone who's ever played the Bubble game on Windows Mobile knows it's a great and fun time waster and probably has the feeling they played it on some other platform a long time ago - really enjoying it then too. Line Up Pro (and its Free version) are basically the same sort of a reverse Tetris that comes one row of blocks at a time. It's fun and engaging and probably the best new/old game you can take with you to the bathroom or to lunch alone. A few curves add some complexity to the game that some other clones lacked, which is part of the reason I bought the Pro version.

Gameplay
The object of the game is to keep a column of blocks from getting so tall that it can reach the top. A row of blocks is built across the bottom one by one on the bottom and once it gets to the end, it pushes the entire stack up. The player can remove blocks by finding a set of three or more contiguous blocks of the same color and tapping on them to make them disappear. Three blocks at a time is six points, five blocks or more is 2x and ten blocks is 3x. That's sounds EASY you say, but wait, here's the curve: You have a limited number of taps to clear 1000 points and slow the game down. If you miss a block, it counts as a tap. If you merely tap every three block combination, you will run out of taps before you hit your 1000 points. Oh, and all the time you're scoring, it's speeding up the game. The speed and your time are displayed in the same bar at the top, so you'll always know right when the game is going to start kicking your ass. Once you reach 1000 points, the game slows down - not all the way - but enough. You're also awarded 100 extra taps at the slowdown, so it pays to conserve. On the other hand, the game is constantly getting faster whether you're scoring or not, so it pays to be very strategic. One way to do this is to intentionally let several rows of blocks stack on the bottom. "Wait, what?", you ask! Read on.

Since the game shows you the row that's coming a block at a time, you can determine if you're going to get another block to connect to blocks you already have. In the early stages, you can really afford to wait until you have 2-3 block levels that aren't working together before you start culling the field. As things get faster, the luxury of letting it build goes away almost completely. One benefit the Pro version has over the free version is the handy pause button that lets you pause the game without closing it. There's a bug in the version I have where if you pause the game, then close the app and come back, the game starts again behind the transparent pause window so you really have to get back into it immediately.

Design
For those of you who aren't a fan of the squares, the Pro version has a settings screen that lets you change them to bubbles. My daughter likes this version better so I'm constantly going in and switching it back. You'll be right at home if you really miss the Windows mobile game with this view. The sound design of the game is actually pretty good. The sound for when you remove a few bricks is sufficiently science-fictiony to my taste and the bonus bells aren't bad either. The colors are clean and smooth, but overall if you've seen one of these games, you've seen them all.

Love? Hate?
Fish and Visitors.
It's the ex-girlfriend who visits and reminds you why you went out, but later you remember why you stopped.

The game is fun enough that I bought the Pro version after beating the free version, but it's nothing ground breaking. If you play it every other weekend, it's entertaining enough to keep you interested, but soon your mind is wandering back to the App store for something a little more original. You'll still like Line Up. You'll still play it late at night or in the bathroom, but it's probably not going to make you stop looking for other things to do. I just played it for a half an hour and had a great time, but probably won't need to hit that again for a couple weeks. Sorry baby, I'm jut not ready to be exclusive....again.

Finger Physics - I've fallen for you

One of the more impressive features of some of my iPhone games (including recently reviewed iPhyzzle2) is the built in is the physics engine that treats objects in the game as if they were acted upon by real world forces like gravity, inertia and buoyancy. For you kids that aren't familiar with the terms, Gravity is the force that keeps us down here on earth and makes apples fall down, not up. Inertia is the force that keeps things moving in the same direction even after force isn't being applied to it anymore - like when you stop peddling on a bike and the bike keeps going. Buoyancy is the force that makes lighter matter like air float to the top of heavier matter like water - or helium balloons and air - or your mom and - nevermind.

This game is all about that and how gravity, inertia, and buoyancy interact.

Gameplay
There are four basic puzzle types in this game: Egg Mode, Lunar Mode, Lawn Mode and Underwater Mode. Depending on the level, you are awarded a large or small gold or silver star medal based on how well you do with time, stacking height, or both. After each stage, you can go back and try to improve your medal or move on to the next challenge. There are nine screens of nine puzzles in all, but these 81 puzzles go surprisingly quickly, despite some of them being extremely challenging.

Egg Mode positions an egg atop a set of blocks and directs you to get the egg into a basket. Your medal is based on the amount of time it takes to pull it off. Some of the blocks in these stages are shatterable and you can move the egg by strategically shattering certain blocks. Some of these puzzles REALLY rely on timing to make them work at all. There's one level that's a sort of catapult that you have to time perfectly or your egg will be launched off the screen every time. Another has you shattering blocks in a specific order and time in order to make the egg roll off a tilted board into the basket. Too slow and the egg doesn't roll off. Too fast and the board rolls off and blocks the egg.

Lunar Mode places blocks at the top of the screen that you drag down and place on stationary blocks or pegs. The idea of this mode is usually a timed balancing act where you're trying to stack the blocks up quicky, but often times there are pegs or blocks in the way that add to the challenge. Your medal is determined by your time and also by how high you're able to stack the blocks. Sometimes you can re-position longer blocks vertically to get more height, but this takes time and also skill at making your blocks fall in a controlled way. The level usually ends with balancing a Star on top of your structure for 5 seconds so if it's barely balancing before, you might just topple it with the last piece.

Lawn Mode is somewhat like Lunar mode, but is usally more about balancing several structures of odd shapes together than height. If you can make them all stick together for five seconds, you're set. Lawn Mode also features blocks with special powers like magnetic polarity where magnets of the same color repel one another and of different colors attract. Another special power is the explosive blocks. These sometimes, but not always must be stacked in interesting ways in order to complete the puzzle, though on some occasions I was able to intentionally force an explosion and keep things together, which may or may not have been part of the challenge.

Underwater Mode is also similar to Lawn Mode in that medals are earned by stacking things quickly on a timer, but in this case, some items float and can offset the weight of non-floating blocks. There's that buoyancy I was talking about.

Design
I really liked the overall design of this game. It was modern and cute with well rendered background, but not so cluttered as to interfere with gameplay. Grigory Kireev at Press OK Entertainment really put some love into it.

Love? Hate?
Love!

I really enjoyed playing this game. The only complaints I have are that some of the levels from the free version are repeated in the paid version, which makes the paid version feel a lot shorter. Because it feels shorter, and I know this is going to sound ridiculous, eighty-one levels just doesn't feel like enough. I finished the game in about two days, but I keep going back to perfect the levels I didn't get the big gold star on - still I hunger for more of this game - it's incredibly fun and addictive. Great job Press OK! Now let's have some level updates! :)

Blower: It Certainly Blows

What can you say about an app that claims to actually blow air out of your phone's speaker? It sounded too good to be true but when I showed it to my lady friend, she insisted I download it. It's not a free app, so I was paying for my curiosity.

Was it worth it?
While technically this application did what it claimed (there was a BARELY detectable stream of air coming from my iPhone), it is hardly worth the deafening whine that the speaker requires to create it. The video demo shows on the application's website blowing out candles, but I highly doubt this would work without serious burn damage to your phone.

Love? Hate?
Loathe.
I'm tempted to make a video where I use the app to deafen its creators and then show them that it can also be used as a projectile weapon. Do NOT buy.

iPhyzzle2 - Scream cute bears, scream!

This is one of those games that is addictive for all the wrong reasons. I originally downloaded the free versions because I saw the cute little faces on a screen shot, but they really don't do it justice - until you play.

Gameplay
The way to play is simple: launch tiny animal heads at other animal heads. If you get three of the same color or the same shape together, they explode. You can control how hard you launch them by how long you hold your finger down before you launch. Aiming is the most simple of almost any game I've played in that you just put your finger where you want it to shoot. If you're unable to knock any off, the head you shoot sticks to close by heads and swings around using a decent physics and collision engine. As you make mistakes, or time runs out, the bottom of the screen encroaches on the remaining heads. If you don't knock them all down before the bottom touches one of the heads, you lose. Clearing them all before that will take you to the next level. Subsequent levels change the goal a little as the bottom rises, or you shoot from the side. I haven't beaten the game yet, but it's definitely entertaining. The "matching" game aspect of shooting at the same color, or shape, makes it ideal for younger children. My four and a half year old daughter can clear out the first few levels without much difficulty after playing for only an hour or two.

Unexpected Schadenfreude
One of the really unexpected features of this game is that once you start launching the little heads, the others at the top begin to show a variety of fearful expressions. When you knock off a few of them they don't just fall, but scream all the way down. The screaming is kind of cute, and the expressions on their face are so pitiful, it becomes impossible not to laugh and feel a little guilty at the same time. This really adds dark humor and fun to the game that I didn't expect.
The sounds are so innocent and cute, my daughter is able to play without me worrying about her feeling sad or afraid. It's only when you look into their little eyes can you see the fear. Hopefully she doesn't end up being one of those magnifying glass to ant kids like I was (hey, it was all in the name of science!)

Love? Hate?

First base.

It's not my absolute favorite game, but it's definitely one I'll return to over and over. I liked it enough to buy the full version and it keeps my daughter happy for .99 cents, which is UTTERLY worth the price of admission.

Fling - The Art of thinking ahead.

When I first encountered this game, it vaguely reminded me of those laser games from the early 90's where you had to decide which path the laser would take among several mirrors to get to the destination. Fling takes that notion up a notch and creates a game where thinking ahead pays off.

Gameplay
The idea of the game is simple: Small puffballs are aligned on a grid. You can "fling" them across the board in any direction where they will connect with another puffball. When a puffball connects with another, it stops in the preceding square from the one it impacts, driving the impacted one off in that direction. The most important idea in the game is the order in which things are done. It may be possible to hit a puffball in more than one direction, but often where you stop is as important as what you hit. Each hit and stop gets you in the position for the next, and sometimes, you're forced to change which puffball you're running the board with in order to complete things. The game ends with only one puffball remaining, and starts anew on the next level. There's a time limit to keep you honest, but you can undo your "flings" all the way back to the beginning. The time limit you're left with will help or hurt you in the next round, so reaction time is a factor.

Strategy
For me, there are two ways to play this game. The first is playing it by ear. Find the quickest way to start and figure out what to do when you get there. This is pretty much the way I approached my life until my late 20s. It can be a lot faster paced and if your brain is working right, you can save yourself some time. If your brain isn't working right, on the higher levels, you'll go down ten other paths before you get to where you want to go and spend most of your time backing out of bad decisions (also like my 20's). The other way to play this game is to go through all the possibilities in your head before you make the first move. This can be harder and takes some concentration, but if you can train your brain to do it, you'll be preparing yourself not only for better times overall, but also for your 30's when things get complicated and there are a lot of balls in the air in your real life :)

Love, Hate?

Love.

What I really enjoyed about this game (and continue to enjoy) is that it has more than enough build and challenge to keep me interested. The game also plays with your mind by giving you easy to finish scenarios, then tricks you by giving you similar, but different scenarios on the next level; which your brain will want to solve in the same way, but must be solved in another more convoluted way. This really forces you to engage in each puzzle with an open mind and not fall back on strategies that worked for you last time. I'm secretly encouraging my 4 year old daughter to play, hoping that it will help her learn to think with innovation, planning and open mindedness. Predictably, she is getting more into iPhyzzle2, which I'll review next.

Upgrades: Unlikely

Dear iPhone application developers,

Starting last week, if you have a free application, I will not update it. This decision might end up biting me in the ass, but frankly, I don't care. More often than not these days, a really cool game or app will come out. I'll love it and think about buying the full version but before I get around to it, an update will come out and add all kinds of deblilitating ads to it or force me to create a login to play the game.

These 'undocumented features' were not mentioned in the update information, but when the application opens, I might not get to play the game unless I sign up for some "community" or sit through an ad.

I call out the application "Sheep Launcher" as the most grotesque example of "ad siege" only because they combined it with a new game feature that made the game so unplayable, you had to see the ad more than the game. Originally, the game was cute and simple. You press the button and the sheep gets launched into the sky, you tap the sheet whenever it looks like he's about to fly off the bottom of the screen to keep him bouncing ever upward. After the "update" the gameplay included an ad screen after every death that lasted something like 10 second, and a "feature" that made tilting the phone only slightly force the sheep to shift in mid-flight, making it almost impossible to tell where he would come down.
this guaranteed the game wouldn't last more than 30 seconds ago and then you'd have to sit through an equally painful ad. I did this for about 3 minutes until I finally gave up. I told my girlfriend not to upgrade and had to play on her phone because - oh no - you can't roll back updates on an iphone app. We immediately wrote new reviews of the update and waited for the next update. When it came, Kronos, the game's creators, had listened. They took out SOME of the ads and allowed you to scale down the tilt effects so that the game was playable. To add to that, they actually added some Christmas customizations that are kind of cute. For this, I applaud them, but the mistake caused me to not buy their game (yet), write a negative review, and apparently caused it to PLUMMET out of the top 25.

But that was only the first update problem. The second came from simple game Mazefinger, by NGMoco, who updated their game with a community feature that couldn't be circumvented. Again I was forced to play the older version on my girlfriend's phone, but it definitely prevented me from buying the game.

Shortly thereafter, I started re-reading all game reviews before I upgraded and sure enough, developers were grudge-fucking the players of their free games, hoping that they would force an upgrade. To make it more ludicrous, games that would NEVER need an upgrade were coming out with them just for the purposes of adding ads to my pleasant experience. What possible upgrade could "bubble-wrap" provide other than ads? Then stakes are low enough that if my bubble wrap application ever froze or broke (it didn't), I would probably not shed any tears over it.

Finally, I reached a point where I was tired of digging into every upgrade to see if there were any reviews saying how much the new unannounced ad experience was. The ONLY upgrade notice that included a warning about new Ads that I could find was "iDoodle2" and the disclosure nearly caused me to shell out for the full version. I decided I was probably not going to upgrade any applications (despite the ugly 16 notifications to do so on my home screen) for the foreseeable future. Exceptions would be made, but generally for the most egregious cases, or apps that I paid for with no fear of experience damage.

In case you think I'm just some complaining freeloader, I DO buy apps I like, but not those who screw me after a few uses with an ad solution that basically cripples the user experiences.

Recent purchases include Air Mouse, Spongebob, Fling, Physics, Lineup Pro, Voices, T-Pain, Red Laser, Food Scanner, Speakeasy (right before iPhone 3.0) and iPhyzzle2. I'll be reviewing those and other free games too, but if the free games screw the user with an upgrade, I'm going to write a new review to replace the old one.