Multiplayer
Leviathan Warships: Take A Good Hard Look at this MotherF@!*ing Boat!
War drives innovation. For all the hardship, blood, and horrors of war, the silver lining for humanity has been the innovation and the progress it has, for better or worse, provided technologically. So what happens when you take thousands of gamers across four platforms, give them tools to innovate and then set them loose on each other in turn based naval warfare? Leviathan: Warships is what happens.
Strategy games are a dime a dozen on the Android platform. Everything from real time strategy games to reverse tower defense games to RPGs have been done seemingly hundreds of times on the mobile platform. That is why it is a pleasure to find a strategy game on Android that is as refreshingly unique, deep and balanced as Leviathan: Warships is.
It has been a while since I have been as obsessed with a game as I became with Leviathan: Warships over the past few weeks. While it does include a short single player campaign, the real fun in Leviathan comes from jumping online and battling friends or strangers. The amount of shit talking that has been going on between me and my friends these past few days has hit a level I haven’t seen since the long nights of Starcraft and Battle.net.
Creating a completely Interactive and then jumping online with it and either winning or losing would cause me either great shame or pride that few games can match. Its not just that I won or lost, its my creation, the thing I spent hours perfecting, beating or getting beat by something someone else spent hours perfecting themselves. When someone out flanked me and destroyed my flagship before I even got a chance to implement my strategy, I felt as dumb as Alonso Perez Guzman in 1588 (look it up kids!). When things went according to plan, on the other hand, I felt like Chester Nimitz after the battle of Midway. custom fleet using the very robust tools provided by developer Paradox
Quick Review: Rivals at War – Deals from the Bottom of the Deck
Browsing through the Google Play store I came across this game and was intrigued. The trailer looked liked like a third person tactical shooter–a mix of Counter Strike and Company of Heroes. I figured it would be a welcome change of pace from all the disappointing deck building time sinks I had been plowing through. I was intrigued just how they were going to implement a free to play structure around such a skill based game.Naively, I started up Rivals at War and was presented with a deck of cards all with various troops classes and weapons, and I thought, that’s a novel way of selecting your team for a tactical shooter, lets play through the tutorial and see where this goes.
Quick Review: Uno – It’s Uno alright.
Uno is one of those kiddie type card games that I’ve always loved as unlike Crazy 8′s or War, there’s actually a fair amount of skill and cunning involved to succeed at it. In a way, it’s Poker for people who don’t like to wear sunglasses indoors or lose considerable amounts of money. In any case, it’s the kind of game that obviously needs to be on mobile devices as it’s simple and loved by many of all ages, and Gameloft brought us Uno, with a couple of neat little variations.
N.O.V.A.3: A Console FPS-lite on your Android
I slowly snuck my head around the corner, I could see at least a dozen of the damned Volterites waiting in the next room, I knew that once I started more would be on their way. I aimed down the scopes of my sniper rifle, formulating my plan as I did, and picked a Volterite on a catwalk hanging from the ceiling. “No reason to leave them the higher ground” I thought as I moved the scopes to his head and slowly let my finger touch the trigger.
Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet – Everything You Loved On Steam Perfectly Transitioned to Your Tablet
On Gamewoof, lots of ports of PC and console games have been reviewed and discussed for Android devices. Most of them however, either even out with or fall short from their non touch screen counterparts. Few, if any, have matched and surpassed the original. Then there is Paradox Interactive’s Magicka game. Magicka is one of those games that gets lots of love from those who’ve played it; a fantastic little adventure game that does a lot with less. Magicka boasts more DLC than a Capcom game, yet it hasn’t achieved super commercial success. But then, you probably haven’t played released Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet for Android yet.
The controls for the initial version of Magicka are pretty simplistic; it’s nothing more than a user casting 8 different elemental spells to combat against monsters. These elemental spells can be combined to create bucketloads of different spells and effects. It’s a simple concept that opens the door to being a rich and full experience, challenging players to think quick and smart in order to deal with the various monsters and creatures your wizard will combat. That mechanic is translated onto the tablet as seven different spells the users has to work with that are selected by touch and then released upon whomever one wishes, even yourself if you so chose in certain situations. The speed and smarts demand on the player are increased due to the touch screen controls as it allows the game to make the enemies come at you a little quicker.
Super Stickman Golf 2 – Not Your Grandfather’s Game
I hate golf. I really really do. I have enjoyed a game of the miniaturized version here and there, but the sport itself bores me to tears. It should be surprising, then, that Noodlecake Studios was able to turn something so tame into a game even I can love, but the makers of Zombie Road Trip seem to have a knack for catching me off guard. Super Stickman Golf 2 is a 2D take on the the age old sport that keeps all the technicality, but adds in a bunch of insane stuff, doubles down on that, and then cranks it up to eleven.
Worms 2: Armageddon – Murder, Death, Kill (of Worms) On Your Tablet
I like to think of Ben Paddon of PortsCenter as my soul brother from a different mother, mainly because of our shared interests, such as a strong liking of Dr. Who and our excitement for one little series put out by Team 17 called Worms. Naturally, when Team 17 announced on their Twitter feed the other day that Worms 2: Armageddon was out for Android, I jumped out of bed and downloaded it for my tablet like it was Christmas morning! Trust me, when you get to my age, you have weird things that excite you, such as one of your favorite game series’ of all time coming to your tablet or phone.
If you’ve been living under a gaming rock and aren’t familiar with the Worms series at all, it is essentially Scorched Earth but with worms instead of tanks. Teams of worms take turns destroying one another with a plentiful arsenal of weaponry and devices at their disposal. Battling physics, wind, randomly generated terrain and other Worms, you must battle through thick and thin with your 4 worms to achieve ultimate Worm superiority.
Crazy Fairies Beta – Not an Early Bird, Hard to Catch Worms
It is a challenge to review a game that’s still under beta. Though the gameplay is primed and ready, developers may change a thing or two depending on the results (or bugs) that the beta testers may have learned or discovered. Nevertheless, the final build will be more or less the same.
The beta version of Crazy Fairies may contain bugs, might crash regularly and will probably misbehave on some devices according to its developer, Spicy Horse. It is now available, however, on the Play Store for free with the intention of giving gamers the chance to find aspects of the game that needs polishing.
Slingshot Racing — Skidding, Crashing, Cursing Fun
The 45 minutes I’ve spent trying to write an effective lede for Slingshot Racing serve as a pretty good indicator of my feelings for the game: I should be writing. I know I should be writing. Nothing would please me more than to be a productive adult, putting words on a screen instead of guiding a tiny sled around a vicious, iced-over racetrack in pursuit of imaginary points.
Yet here I am, more than 21 years old, sitting at my desk in pajamas at two in the afternoon, shouting obscenities at a mobile phone. It’s a shameful state of affairs. Frankly, I’m not sure if it’s more surprising that I found a wife to begin with or that she hasn’t taken off on me yet.
But whatever. The game isn’t going to review itself. It’s too busy making me feel like a complete and utter failure. How? There’s absolutely no reason a title that employs one button — one single stinking button — as a control scheme should be this rewarding. Or fun. Or frustrating. It’s still very much all three of those things.
NBA JAM — Boomshakalaka! He’s Lukewarm!
It’s hard to review a game like the Android port of NBA Jam without some serious mental gymnastics. There are so many factors to consider: the rosters, the gameplay, the new features, the old staples. The exact placement of Rasheed Wallace’s weird bald spot on his in-game avatar.
To the first several questions, I offer a resounding blergh. To the final consideration… Sheed, as far as I can tell, isn’t in the game.
It’s a shame, too, because if any game could get the real-life Rasheed Wallace experience down personality-wise it’d be this one. It’s as loud and brash as my favorite ex-Jailblazer, anyway.
