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Quick Review: Emilly in Darkness – Dive into an Eerie Adventure
I’m not scared of the dark. I mostly sleep with the lights turned off. Horror stories, on the other hand, give me creeps. Good thing, Emilly in Darkness is not a horror story. This Android game is an old-school, top-down action-adventure title in which you control a female character named Emilly. The story starts when she wakes up in a shady forest and was mysteriously shot by an unknown killer. Luckily, she’s still alive. She finds herself in a purgatory-type of environment where she faces demons, ghosts, skeletons, etc. Your goal is to help Emilly find the answer by navigating her dark world – literally – as you only have a cone of light as your guide. Find keys and get out of the labyrinth!
The Dark Knight Rises: This One Should Have Stayed in its Cave.
Back in the heyday of gaming (and by that I really mean my heyday) there were two seemingly universal rules to gaming. One was that if you couldn’t beat anyone else in a game, you could still beat your dad. The second was that licensed games always suck; but like Moore’s law, there has been increasing evidence that both of these rules no longer hold water. Gamers are getting older and for the past decade or so there have been an increasingly large number of quality games based off of beloved franchises. Batman games in particular have been a bright spot for gaming and it hasn’t hurt that this Renaissance has coincided with a string of Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight Rises for Android, however, is a good first attempt but doesn’t quite live up to the level of its inspiration.
Built ostensibly as an open-world adventure, The Dark Knight Rises is frustratingly linear. There simply isn’t enough for the Caped Crusader to do besides progress the main story by dutifully obeying the commands of Commissioner Gordon and Lucius Fox in pursuit of Bane, the dastardly villain of both the game and movie. This issue is further magnified by a battle system that sacrifices depth for accessibility and a story line that does little to make the player want to keep playing. That isn’t to say that there aren’t positives to The Dark Knight, there is a solid base to an entertaining game here, it just needed to ramp everything up one more level.
Blitz Brigade – Locked and Loaded Multiplayer FPS Action
Gameloft is no stranger to First-Person Shooter (FPS) games. I’m sure you are familiar with Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance (N.O.V.A.) 3 and Modern Combat series. This time, you have to choose sides, either Axis or Allied forces, in their new Android game, Blitz Brigade, an ultimate multiplayer FPS face-off that seems to pay homage to Team Fortress.
Before diving in the action immediately, it is best advised to work on your skills in Training Missions. It has 120 action-packed missions which allow you to master different skills. You could also navigate a helicopter and fire off enemies on the ground. Further, you could even control a tank and flatten your opponents.
Quick Review: Boggle – Accurate to the Real Life Game, Driving Me Insane!
Boggle was always one of those games I played growing up that drove me nuts. Unlike Scrabble, where a player has quite a while to conceive words out of the letters in front of them, you’re staring at a cluster fudge of letters, completely unarrangable by your hand, and a evil maniacal timer judges you, making you feel dumb for not noticing the most obvious of words. This aneurysm enduing but beloved game from my childhood has made its way onto Android devices thanks to the efforts of the folks at EA.
Quick Review: Daddy Was a Thief – Big Daddy Robs Banks Then Your Time
After being fired from work, Daddy planned to rob a bank to provide for his family. Help him navigate down the building to escape by smashing various obstacles like floors, walls, TVs, refrigerators, washing machine and other furniture. This Android game is an arcade, high-score chaser that you could just pick-up-and-play with tons of achievements to earn. Your goal is to gain as much coins as you can without getting caught as the police are just waiting below. Some has baton while certain forces have guns. Look out for the old lady, bullet-firing turret which turns you to the size of your baby and the missiles darting from either side. If the missile hit you, the game is over as well.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – The Worst Way to Play a Great Game
You don’t need me to tell you What Grand Theft Auto is like. Vice City has been out for nearly a decade, so there’s a wealth of information out there about gameplay, missions, story, secrets, and anything else you might want to know about what the game is. Since Rockstar has ported the game to Android for the series’s ten year anniversary, I’ll give you a rundown purely about how this works on the new platform. While the entire experience seems to have remained whole in the transfer, I’m not sure any fan or newcomer would be best served by playing this version of GTA.
Quick Review: Fighting Tiger Liberal – Proof Google Could Stand To Use a Review Process
I was commenting with a colleague the other day about the lack of fighting games on the Google Play store. I spent some time perusing the various titles that came up under that search parameter; Fighting Tiger – Liberal being one of them. This game isn’t a fighter per se in the sense of your Mortal Kombat or Tekken, this is more of a 3D version of Streets of Rage or your traditional brawler. That confused me a bit that it would come up under fighters, but what the heck, why not give it a whirl, I thought.
Super Monsters Ate My Condo – Happy Monster Match Destroy Fun Time Smile
As I’m sure anyone who is aware of their existence knows, the people at Adult Swim are a little off their rocker. Their zany rapport shines through in the games they pump out as well. GameWoof reviewed their title Robot Unicorn Attack recently, but this title, Super Monsters Ate My Condo, may not only be even weirder than Robot Unicorn Attack, but so insanely fun, you’ll find yourself a glutton for it.
Super Monsters Ate My Condo is a sequel game to the Adult Swim game Monsters Ate My Condo, which is also available on Google Play for 99 cents. The joint effort by game studio Pik Pok and Adult Swim is a merciless fast paced match 3 style game where different colored condos and other assorted objects fall from the sky in a Condo Tower while two lovable looking but menacing mutants approach from each side hungering for their color of condo. Players have a set amount of time to score a bajillion points (or complete whatever goals for that level) before the building completely implodes and quite literally, the fat lady sings. No, for real, at the end of the level, a voluptuous women in full Viking gear sings her best opera ballad. Joining her is your game’s “MC”, a rather manly looking finger done up in Geisha make up. Because, you know, that’s a thing…
Quick Review: Punch Quest – Packs a Knockout Punch
Punch Quest, an Android game brought by Noodlecake Studios in the Play Store, is hands-down one of the better fighting games you could find. It is technically an endless runner / brawler which feature fairly easy and responsive controls. Tap on your left thumb on the bottom left corner for the uppercut button and tap on your right thumb on the opposite side for the dash punch button. Throw straight punches or haymakers to conquer the dungeons filled with monsters like skeletons, ghosts, ogres, Cyclops and other little bosses which are more difficult to take down than the usual enemies.
Paper Toss 2.0 – So Tossing Crumpled Paper IS Fun
After being a corporate slave for almost six years, I always believed in a quote from Maya Angelou which goes nothing will work unless you do. I wish, however, I could just procrastinate and still get paid. I could just browse my phone to read some articles or play a game. What could be more fun to waste time than to throw crumpled pieces of paper in a trash bin? What’s even better is you don’t have to call the janitor to clean up the mess. That’s when Paper Toss 2.0 comes into play.
This Android game from Backflip Studios is the sequel to the 2009 hit Paper Toss which has been installed over 100 million times. Paper Toss 2.0 will fight your boredom away with its extremely entertaining and madly addicting gameplay. Though it is simple, it is challenging in a way. The objective of the game is the same as its predecessor – to flick scrunched up paper into the office trash can. The catch is there a fan on your side which blows varying breeze of air. Score consecutively by being on target and it will increase your multiplier to get more paper points (in-game currency).
