Third Person Shooter
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 Look: Fangz – Beat ‘em Up Shooter Bites Deep
Move over Zombies. Vampires are back.
Fangz is not your ordinary side-scrolling beat ‘em up shooter. It has depth with its story of how a regular Joe named Frank is set to solve the world economic crisis and save his family at the same time. The opening scene of the game presents Frank’s family having fun with their picnic when all of a sudden blood-sucking vampires show up to crash their get-together. The family was then taken away. Now, your goal is to rescue Frank’s family from their bloody hands. This Android game also features superb graphics with its amazing 2D art and exceptionally gruesome details with heads exploding and blood spattering.
Bladeslinger: Worth the Wait, Just Wish There Wasn’t One
After much finagling and whining I’ve finally managed to get my mitts on an early copy of Bladeslinger. Outside of some missing item descriptions — and no ability to take screencaps, unfortunately — I’ve been told what I have is pretty much a finished product. After spending four-plus hours in a car with my nose buried in the game, I’ve come to one final, resounding conclusion:
It rules. Hard.
Seriously. And that’s before a trip to Indianapolis, then after a trip to Indianapolis, the only two things guaranteed to put me in a terrible mood anyway. It’s like the ultimate acid test: If I’m going to Indy and I still like it, it’s probably pretty good. If I’m coming back and I still enjoy it, you know it is.
Review: Duncan and Katy Short but Definitely Not Sweet
Once in a while a game comes along that goes beyond being “just” bad. When a game’s flaws are deeper than just a lack of execution, and a complete lack of pride, professionalism and artistic vision combine to make a truly horrendous game, it actually gives you the feeling of being swindled out of your hard earned cash. “Duncan and Katy” is such a game. That it manages to make you feel 
so ripped off, despite the game’s 99cent price point, is in some twisted way its greatest achievement. The game’s best feature, and I’m not being factitious for effect here, is that it is incredibly short. So short in fact that I would have felt even more ripped off when it ended if it were not for the joyful release I felt knowing that finishing the game meant I could do something else, anything else, other than play that god forsaken game for a second longer. There are no redeeming features that can be pointed to, even its best feature, the game’s graphics, are mediocre at best and are constricted to extremely small levels. Its boss battles, the only moment of variety, wouldn’t have been out of place as a mini boss in a mediocre Nintendo 64 platformer. There is simply no reason to purchase this game.
Temple Run 2 – Just Run-Of-The-Mill
Though the supply of endless runners in the Google Play store seems only slightly less infinite than the action the genre promises, I often find myself excited over the discovery of a new game in this category nonetheless. I’m not really into bragging about high scores or honing my skills for near-perfect timing, but I have been intrigued enough by the high speed fun of some of these games to spend hours and hours using all manner of vehicle to traverse a variety of randomly generated terrain. Temple Run 2, the follow-up to one of the most popular on-rails platformers, is filled with fire, zip-lines, minecarts, crumbling architecture and a very angry monkey creature, but it doesn’t do anything that hooks me in, despite the quality of the iteration.
I should explain that, unlike many mobile gamers, I don’t have any fond feelings for the original Temple Run; when it became popular, I had a few other runners in my repertoire already and the visual style didn’t help it stand out at all. While the graphics are much more impressive this time around, the aesthetic is very reminiscent of the prior trip to the temple, sort of an off-brand Indiana Jones vibe. This game looks a lot cleaner and more realistic, but just as forgettable as the first.
