iBomber Defense iPhone Review

If you have ever played iBomber you will know you take the role of flying a plane with a birds eye view of the ground below which you bomb. Now in iBomber Defense you play the reversed role whereby you place the turrets and anti air units on the terrains to blast the planes, vehicles and boats into non existence. Essentially this is a tower defense game.

The main campaign consists of 22 levels with waves consisting from 20-40 in each which take place across North Africa, Russia and Europe. Levels all take place on different terrains which makes you really think strategically. Some levels take place on very high ground, some on very low and then there is the variety of enemies which will be presented in each wave to take into account which makes you completely rethink your strategy each time. So plotting your towers and defences really needs a hard think about. All this keeps the game fresh and interesting.

Enemies from planes, to ground units and boats will attack your defences which means the money you earn from destroying the enemy will have to go into repairing your towers ect otherwise they'll come crumbling down. Of course just like all tower defense games you can upgrade all of your defense with money as well. All this is pointless if you let too many enemies into your base because it's game over however it's not always game over. iBomber Defense has a very cool feature dubbed as 'rewind' giving you the ability to essentially go back in time within the game which then allows you to tighten up your defense before doing those waves again. This is a feature that has seriously helped me out when I thought I was on the brink of doom.

The controls are very simple. To build a defense you just tap on it with your finger at the bottom of the screen and drag it out onto the terrain and place where ever you want. The defenses available aren't as many as we have seen in some tower defense games but none the less they are all very tightly done. Such as Machine gun towers, Cannons, AOE, anti-vehicle, AA launch (anti air), Sabotage towers etc... To upgrade you again tap on a tower and you have the ability to upgrade it if you have enough cash. The controls are very simple allowing the game to played at ease.

The graphics are very brightly cartoony like with all iBomber titles. I love the bright block colors it gives the game a really fun feel to it. Terrains are very different in appearance depending on the destination such as Russia and Europe whereby some terrains featured in levels will be dessert based and some will be based upon the sea meaning a more planes and boats. Enemies are very well designed and the physics are the best we've seen in any tower defense game for the iPhone and iPad.

In terms of sound quality weapons all sound very rich and same goes for the explosions ect of the enemies. The iBomber sound track is also here which is always a good thing but there really isn't much with sound you can do in a tower defense game.

Overall iBomber Defense is our favourite tower defense game on the iPhone and iPad. With 22 action packed levels, easy controls, crisp graphics and some serious strategic thinking it's a great addictive game to play this holiday.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 iPhone Review

Battlefield Bad Company 2 was a hit on the PS3 and Xbox 360 so seeing it being brought into a portable game should be interesting.

With the launch of N.O.V.A. 2 on the same day of it's release Battlefield Bad Company 2 had some serious competition where FPS's are concerned. The main campaign packs 14 short missions in 5 different battle zones from desert and snow environments to the jungle.

With a decent selection of weapons and explosives from pistols to machine guns to bombs keeping the campaign fresh is a real relief for this title. You can drive tanks around and fire out of helicopters also. Missions are quite varied with different tasks being spread out in each. Some missions you are ordered to meet the enemies with all guns blazing but in others you are told to sneak up on them in stealth. A combat system implemented helps you out by basically just hiding you behind obstacles.

The controls outright suck. There are few different controls setups to choose from but all didn't work that well and defiantly didn't feel natural. I used the control setup which had an onscreen fire button but didn't have an onscreen joy stick because again it sucked. Instead I just swiped the left hand side of the screen right, left, up and down which worked awfully and sometimes didn't respond at all. The precision of movement wasn't that great with aiming of the gun either. Especially when looking through the iron sight, it just felt sluggish. Then there's the vehicles which you can drive like the tank being controlled like in Brother and Arms 1. Having bad controls really lets down the whole game.

The graphics look pretty decent but textures up close are not that detailed which is unexpected for an FPS at this time on the iPhone. The environments look good but some have had more work put into them visually than others which is a huge shame. Guns look well polished and the physics put into shooting etc. is pulled of well. Vehicles look good and enemies die and react mildly realistically. But it feels as if there could have been way more polish put into the overall graphics.

The sound is just dire. Now I'm not sure if this is an iPhone 4 problem but in the cut scenes voice acting is so quiet. And this goes right across the game with explosions and guns shots all seeming lifeless, it's as if a tin can is over the top on all sound effects.

The multiplayer is unreviewable due to us all being kicked off the servers which never allowed us to try the different modes which were on offer and this is defiantly a universal problem.

Overall Battlefield Bad Company 2 is a really weak game. The campaign has some really nice elements but bad controls, not polished enough graphics, awful audio and multiplayer which doesn't work makes a this game not recommendable.

Angry Birds Review

                                 

At its heart, Angry Birds is a 2D, physics-based puzzle game which features no end of personality and fun.  Although there are plenty of competitors in this genre, this entry stands out from the pack in a lot of great ways which I’ll detail later.  But first, the “tl;dr” version of the review:  This is a must-own game if you like lateral thinking and knocking stuff over.

Over the course of this review, I will discuss not only the game itself but some of the depth that I discovered during many hours of play.  In that sense, the article will serve as a hybrid between a review and an Angry Birds guide of sorts, helping the new player understand why this is such an appealing piece of software.  If you enjoy the article, you might also want to check out my other reviews as well.  Enough of that, Let’s dig in!

Premise and Gameplay

The premise of Angry Birds is simple:  Birds hate pigs so much that they choose to take their own lives in dive-bombing operations against their enemies.  Through a series of increasingly complex scenarios, the player is tasked with launching the birds out of a slingshot and into the protective structures that stand between the pigs and certain death.  The pigs are destroyed when they are hit by either birds or structural debris, and you complete the level when all the pigs are dead.  There is a “story” here which is told through some amusing still-frames, providing justification for the game world and acting as a palette cleanser between level sets.

For instance, the most basic unit is the red bird, an over-glorified rock which simply launches into obstacles and causes damage.  You will later unlock units like the yellow bird, a unit that allows you to tap the screen a second time after its initial launch, causing it to shoot linearly toward whatever part of the screen it is pointing at.  When you combine special unit abilities with the physics engine, new strategies and variants open up to the creative player.To begin with, the player controls only one type of bird and there is only one structural material to break through.  Things get more complex once the player is comfortable with using the slingshot, breaking through walls, and killing pigs: New unit types enter the equation, each sporting a different ability that can be employed against the pig fortress.

As an example, I often found myself launching the yellow birds up high rather than directly at the pigs – this allowed me to precisely dive-bomb weakened structures from above rather than attempting to break through the front walls.  Additionally, you’ll realize pretty early on that certain structures are weaker to specific units.  For instance, I found that using the bluebird unit’s splitting ability like a concentrated shotgun blast worked nicely on glass barriers.  This is the real beauty of the game:  Each person will adopt their own Angry Birds play style and strategies.

The real star of the show, the glue that makes all of these elements work, is the physics engine.  I’m a total sucker for throwing something at an in-game object and then sitting back, cackling while the results of my decision play out.  Any given structure in Angry Birds is essentially a house of cards, precariously perched on cliff-sides under tumbling debris and made even more dangerous by shaky foundations.  The physics calculations involved here are impressive to say the least, allowing these buildings to come crumbling down with (mostly) realistic consequences.  If you enjoy this sort of thing, check out Boom Blox on the Wii and Red Faction: Guerillaon the 360/PS3/PC for more physics-based chaos.

So what system should you be playing this game on?  In my opinion, a touch interface is the ideal way to interact with the game.  Using your finger to determine how much and at what angle the slingshot is pulled back is a tactile way to get the player involved with tweaking his approach.  For my money, the muscle memory involved with the iPad’s touch screen is just more satisfying than using a mouse.  That being said, Angry Birds for PC is available and is definitely worth your money if you don’t have access to the touch version.As you might have already gathered, the real depth in theAngry Birds app emerges from actions which seem fairly basic when considered in isolation, but expose their true potential in unison with other game elements.  Change the angle at which you shoot the slingshot, and now you can take advantage of the features inherent in the physics engine, including bouncing, rolling, etc.; engage your bird’s special ability at a different point along its flight path and take note of how the result differs from previous attempts; use a weakened structure to kill a pig rather than brute forcing it with waves of angry birds; the possibilities are many and varied.

Graphics and Sound

I’m lumping graphics and sound together because even if they are more than competent, they’re clearly not the main focus.  The sounds range from satisfying breaks and falls to hilarious emotes from the birds as they fly enraged toward their victims.  The graphics are totally appropriate, rendering the animals as lovable (if not psychologically unhinged) caricatures of their real-life counterparts.  There’s not much more to say here; the aesthetics do a great job of establishing the scene and then stepping aside to let the player focus on the real meat of the game.

Overall

My overall impression of the Angry Birds game is obviously very positive, and yet there’s so much more that I haven’t detailed in this review.  There’s a ton of replay value here thanks to the sheer number of levels that you can access as well as the availability of unlockables.  Additionally, the player is scored based on how many birds are left in the arsenal upon level completion so there’s always the drive to go back and improve your strategy in order to waste fewer birds and get higher scores.

The game is very approachable, adhering to the “easy to learn but hard to master” gold standard of game design which I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the site.  It’s appropriate for anyone that’s old enough to use the device it’s being played on, so the appeal is wide-reaching.  This game’s audience will consist mainly of people who like to size up situations and experiment with physical reactions.  Put another way:  Who doesn’t enjoy the opportunity to make a huge mess without real world consequences?

Plants Vs Zombies : Happy Birthday!

When Plants vs. Zombies was originally announced on April 1st two years ago, PC gamers everywhere (myself included) were unsure if Popcap's newly revealed game was part of an elaborate April Fool's Day hoax or not. A little more than a month later, the game was released and not only saw universal acclaim from the gaming media resulting in an 88 on Metacritic, but also earned the title of Popcap's fastest selling game of all time.

In Plants vs. Zombies, Popcap takes the standard tower defense formula and greatly simplifies it. Instead of a path to build towers along, you drop seeds in your yard which then grow in to plants that have various offensive or defensive capabilities. The yard is organized in a grid, and zombies move straight across the row they spawn on, munching (or in some cases jumping or flying over) anything that they come in contact with.

A gauge on the top of the screen shows how close you are to the end of the level, with flags indicating when big waves of zombies are going to come. When you clear a stage, you're often awarded with the seeds of one more of the nearly 50 included plants. This seemingly constant progression does a great job of keeping you interested, as it always seems like you have a new toy to play with. To shake things up even more, mini game levels are mixed in, including a bowling game of sorts, a whack-a-mole game with zombies, and others.

Originally designed to be played with a mouse, Popcap did an excellent job of porting Plants vs. Zombies to the iPhone. The resource required to build your defenses is sunlight, and in the PC version feverishly moving your mouse around to click on the small suns falling from the top of the screen got tiring (especially when playing on a laptop with a touchpad). On the iPhone, the sunlight mechanic is also in place, but seems to work so much better when you only have to tap the falling suns to collect them.

Interface elements have been made smaller to dedicate more screen space to your yard, and some things have been moved around. Your available seeds have been moved from the top of the screen to the left, and to plant one all you need to do is tap it then tap the grid square of your lawn where you want it placed. Alternatively, you can tap the seed icon then drag your finger around your lawn. This causes both the X and Y axis of the square you're currently selecting to light up which effectively put an end to me accidentally placing seeds in squares I didn't mean to.

Plants vs. Zombies is absolutely loaded with high quality animations, excellent cartoonish zombies, and silly dialog between your neighbor/shopkeeper Crazy Dave and even notes from the zombies themselves. Throughout the game you'll defend your front lawn during the day, at night, then defend your back yard which introduces water plants that can only be planted in your pool.

As you advance through levels you will come across many more zombies than just the standard run of the mill mindless brain-muncher. There's a Michael Jackson zombie that causes others to rise from gravestones following a Thriller-like dance. There's also zombies that have armored themselves with screen doors, traffic cones, buckets, football pads, and other equally ridiculous equipment. 25 different zombies in all are included, and one end-boss. Each zombie even has their own profile inside the in-game almanac, and they're really worth a look once you unlock it.

Plants vs. Zombies performs well on both my iPhone 3G and 3GS. I did experience some slowdown when there were tons of zombies and projectiles on screen, but overall this didn't cause a problem playing through the game as the only time there was enough things happening on-screen to cause slowdown was at the very end of some levels where you already have your yard fully covered and are just waiting for the last wave of zombies to die.

On the iPhone, Plants vs. Zombies only includes the main story and a quick play mode that is unlocked once you've beaten the game that will allow you to play a few different scenarios and the various mini games you came across in story mode. The endless survival mode from the PC version is nowhere to be found, which is very disappointing, especially since I imagine quite a few people excited about Popcap porting the game to the iPhone have already completed the story mode on the PC.

There is only one difficulty level, and if you're a veteran of tower defense games, Plants vs. Zombies will likely be very easy for you. Personally, I love the tower defense genre, and being able to make it all the way through Plants vs. Zombies without much difficulty at all hasn't stopped me from playing through the game multiple times on my computer, and I'm enjoying the iPhone version just as much. I'm not sure what it is about Popcap games, but similar to Peggle and Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies never seems to get old.

The 88 Metacritic score of the original Plants vs. Zombies (complete with 100's from multiple sources) just goes to show how great this game is. The iPhone port is absolutely phenomenal, and even though it's lacking a few game modes, there's always hope for them to be implemented in the future either via an update or a DLC add-on. There isn't a lite version, but there is a free Flash demo that I highly recommend trying if this is the first you've heard of Plants vs. Zombies.

Top Free iPhone Games

The Apple iPhone was a revolutionary device when it was released in June of 2007, and it is still arguably the best phone on the market today. One aspect of the iPhone which is surprising to many people is the robustness of its portable gaming capabilities. With its full multi-touch display, its "accelerometer" which can detect which way the device is being held and moved, and 3D graphics, the iPhone has proven itself to be a major competitor to both Sony and Nintendo in the portable gaming market.

There are tens of thousands of free games in Apple's App Store, but most of them are either really bad, or they are merely "demo" games of a higher priced paid version. However, there are definitely some real gems if you are willing to mine for them. Here are some of the top free iPhone games to help get you started.

1. Tap Tap Revenge II

If you've ever watched someone play Guitar Hero, then you know the basic concept of this game. Instead of a guitar, you "tap" on the screen to the beat of your favorite music. You can rack up a high score by tapping many notes in a row without missing any.

2. Sol Free Solitaire

This is a simple solitaire game like you might find on your Windows PC. Actually, there are many solitaire games like this one on the iPhone, but Sol Free Solitaire stands head and shoulders above the rest. The graphics are clear and crisp, and the cards are extremely responsive to the touch of your finger as you drag them from pile to pile.

3. Real Racing GTi

Real Racing GTi is a full-fledged arcade racing game which several years ago could only be found in a mall arcade or on a home console. The graphics are top-notch and realistic, and the smooth controls lets you feel like you are really in a race car. There are three game modes: quick race, time trial, and cup championship. This is undoubtedly the best arcade racer on the iPhone.

4. Chess with Friends / Words with Friends

These are two games from a company called NewToy. What makes these games unique is that they can be played over any length of time. Chess with Friends is (obviously) a chess game, and Words with Friends is a variant of Scrabble. After you make your move, you can turn the game off and go about your daily business. When your friend has made their move - hours or days later - you can open the game and make your next move. Simple gameplay, elegant graphics, and their inherent social nature have made these games extremely popular.

5. TapDefense

This is a popular game in the "tower defense" game genre. Tower defense games have become popular as simple online games. A swarm of enemies come out of an entrance and head in a line toward an exit which you must defend by constructing a series of towers to defend the exit. Although there are a multitude of games like this in the App Store, TapDefense is unique because it is not only top-notch, but also free.

6. iBowl

This is another social game. If you've ever played bowling on the Nintendo Wii with your friends, then you might be able to imagine what this game is all about. You throw your bowling ball by literally swinging your arm, and the iPhone tracks your arm's movement. Your friend across town (or across the world) can watch your ball roll down the lane, and then they can take their turn. It's a fun and competitive game for people who like to play games without pushing a lot of buttons.