When it comes to mobile games, I firmly believe that the mark of a successful title is whether it can be played in short bursts or at least be able to save anywhere for continuation at a later date. It’s got to be addictive, with simple controls and you must be able to follow what’s happening on screen, even with the sound turned off.
In this new feature we are taking a look at four of the latest downloadable mobile games from Telecom’s XT TWorld Games service each month. Most are priced at $6.90 and are around 300-500KB in size. Our test phone was a Sony Ericsson W508.
Hasbro Battleship/Connect 4 (8/10)
With the recent release of Hasbro Family Game Night on larger consoles, Electronic Arts have released two of the individual games from this series that are ideal for the mobile platform. Connect 4 has you playing against the ‘computer’ AI, or against a friend by passing the phone back and forth. There are two modes of play: Classic – I’m pretty sure I don’t need to describe how to play Connect 4 to anyone, do I? And Power Chips, a score-based game in which you have a time limit and several types of chips to drop that will change rows to your colour, explode lines or block your opponent for example. I find myself coming back to this mode quite often due to the added excitement of the time factor.
Battleship plays out exactly like the board game. Place your ships on your board, or use the auto placement feature (which does use some conservative placements), then take turns with the AI or a friend to take shots at coordinates chosen by moving the cursor around. Hits and misses are marked by a small animation and then a red or white peg respectively. If playing against another human, then a screen comes up telling you to pass it to the other player, so that neither player can see each others’ ship placement. Play modes are: Classic, Fire & Reload (in which you get to fire off a small salvo) and Fire Again on Hit (score a hit and fire again until you miss). This is a great little time waster as the games are short, but still long enough to keep it interesting.
The Sims 3 (5/10)
While I’m admittedly not a huge Sims fan myself, mainly due to the fact I don’t have the spare time to invest in the game to do it any real justice. So I was curious as to how the Sims format would fit into my ideal definition of a mobile game. The answer is – not that well. Obviously the range of options are cut down dramatically to incorporate the format, which is perfectly understandable. But I found being unable to flick between menus to keep up to play with all the important issues going on behind the scenes (which are what Sims games are all about) a nightmare. Several times my Sim died of starvation when I had eaten fairly recently and also lost her job due to it being hard to keep track of time. All things that are easier to track on a bigger screen and with a mouse/cursor. Asking whether I wanted to Save the game upon entry to any buildings soon became annoying too.
Dedicated fans might enjoy it, if purely to get a “fix” when away from their PC, but this mobile version of the highly successful series just didn’t win me over.
The Price is Right (2/10)
I know a couple of people who are absolutely hooked on The Price is Right game show, but even they would struggle to find any value whatsoever in this silly and pointless mobile version of the famous TV show.
You are presented with several rounds of gameplay, which vary as you progress. It can all be over in the first round if you don’t guess the closest price to match the item presented – and straight away we hit the first fatal hurdle. The item might be a 50” LCD Television – no brand – it could be a Transonic worth $1800 or the latest Sony Bravia worth $5000. How are we to guess with any accuracy? Not only that, but are we guessing in Australian dollars or NZ? This is an underlying fatal flaw throughout the game.
Even if you do manage to fluke it through to the end, the feeling of success is a hollow one due to the fact that you’ve not won anything, but instead blown $6.90 on a load of rubbish.
Bejewelled Twist (9/10)
Bejewelled is exactly the genre of game that suits the mobile platform. Addictive, challenging, time-dependant and void of any need for complicated controls or graphics. In Bejewelled you are given a screen full of coloured gems, by moving the cursor and pressing the action button you can rotate any square of four gems in a clockwise direction with the aim of lining three or more up – at which point they disappear and more drop down. The more points you score, the faster your meter rises and you can move onto the next level.
There are several types of special gems, usually helpful but also deadly like the bomb gem which you need to dispatch quickly before it counts down to zero.
Aside from the highly addictive Classic mode above, you can play Zen mode - which just goes on forever with no stress whatsoever, Challenge mode – basically a puzzle mode which assigns various goals, and Blitz mode – in which you aim for the highest score possible in a time limit.
All in all, Bejewelled Twist epitomises everything that you’d want in a mobile game and is $6.90 well spent.
Facebook Comments