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  • Drive on Moscow Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Drive on Moscow Review

    By

    Shenandoah Studios burst onto the scene last year with Battle of the Bulge, a title that set a new standard for strategy games on the iPad. The follow up, Drive on Moscow, is now out, and the big question is whether it can live up to the billing of its illustrious predecessor.It runs on the same mechanical lines as its antecedent, but the scenario is different. This covers the German attempts to take the Russian capital in late 1941; a pivotal action that some historians believe determined the outcome of the conflict on the eastern front."The interface is grandly styled but easy to use. The map is divided into adjoining areas, and you move units by tapping them and selecting a destination. If the target area contains enemy troops, you're given battle odds and if you commit, the fight plays out. But you'll often do better to try and isolate the enemy by cutting their supply routes.But the apparent simplicity of getting into the game belies a deep pool of strategic depth beneath. There are always too many things to do, too many options to consider in terms of picking off weak enemy positions, outflanking stronger ones, and claiming victory hexes.
  • Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition Review

    By

    The overhaul of Baldur's Gate by Overhaul Games scooped up many deserved plaudits for bringing a true classic to a new generation of gamers. But while it was a reminder of how great old games can be, it also demonstrated how much things had improved in terms of graphics and user interfaces.I was expecting a similar experience from this enhanced and extended version of the sequel, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. It is after all, a similar package: the original game with its expansion, plus some new characters and their plotlines and an arena mode focussing on the battle engine."So I was pretty shocked to end up comparing it to much more modern RPGs like The Witcher series. The graphics might not be directly comparable, but the original game looked stunning on release, and a little spit and polish has left it looking perfectly respectable today. And this is a much more party-based affair than the modern fashion for single-character focus.But in most respects Baldur's Gate II can stand toe-to-toe with its antecedents and come off proud. Vast amounts of content are crammed into the three gigabytes of download: horrible villains, lich-haunted libraries, and vibrant cityscapes.
  • Tiny Games Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Tiny Games Review

    By

    What do you expect from a mobile game? Something that can be played in bite-sized chunks, I imagine. Probably you're thinking about the quality of graphics and sound, about your favourite genres, about becoming absorbed into the minuscule world on the screen, if only for a little while.Whatever your expectations were, Tiny Games will confound them all.Tiny Games is not really a game. It's an enabler of play. And I mean play in the loosest sense: whoever you are, wherever you are, whoever you're with, there will probably be something here that entertains and delights you, and probably several things that will irritate and embarrass you, too."The app starts by asking you where you are. The free version only allows you to choose "Home," but options like "Road," "Pub," and "Work" can be unlocked individually or as a bundle, even if the price to do so looks a little high by App Store standards.Then it'll query for more information. Which room are you in, and how many people you're with who want to play. Then a couple of multi-choice mood questions like a favorite shape or desired level of violence. I'm not sure these have any impact on what happens next, but the app usually gives you a pleasantly cheeky response to your selection.
  • Toca Mini Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Toca Mini Review

    By

    Toca Boca is rightly revered as one of the best app developers for children around. Their games are distinctive, easy to play, cheap, educational, and contain no advertising or in-app purchases. Most of their games are aimed at pre-school or a little older, but some of their more recent apps are better suited for slightly older kids; and their latest, Toca Mini, falls into that category.Each time you play, you're given a blank white doll. But this isn't just any old doll. It's a doll that moves around, stretching, scratching, and even pulling bodybuilding poses. It's on a rotating pedestal so you can see it from any angle you like. Spin it, and it mimes ballet moves. Spin it too fast and it'll get dizzy and roll around."But the App Store is full of interactive figurines for little ones. What Toca Mini does is allow you to style your creation as you please. Tapping on the head, legs, torso, or each arm zooms in and offers you a color palette to choose from, and you spread your chosen hue just by pulling it up and down the selected body part, allowing you to block in color or make stripes as you please.As well as color, there's a variety of shapes and patterns you can color in and then stick onto your doll. Delightfully these resize and wrap around the body depending on where you put them, so a smiling spider will be small and sit flat on a sleeve, but loom large across and bend around a belly.
  • Pandemic Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Pandemic Review

    By

    Pandemic is the original co-operative board game that launched a thousand sickly imitators. It's winning combination of being easy to learn, difficult to beat, and lacking competition made it brilliant family fare; a hobby title that's bled into the mainstream. But of course co-operative games also work well played solo, and now you can play it both ways on your iPad.The players control a team of specialists trying to cure four lethal diseases before the game triggers one of a terrifyingly broad range of fail conditions. Each player has a hand of cards, corresponding to a color and a city on the board. You can move slowly from city to city, maybe spending precious actions to remove disease cubes as you go, or play a card to fly directly to the matching city. If you're lucky enough to accumulate five cards in the same color and can get to a research station, you can cure the disease of that colour."What makes the game special, and absolutely terrifying, is its simple yet brilliant infection mechanics. After a player takes a go, city cards are drawn from a different deck and disease cubes are added to those locations. But if one already has three cubes, an outbreak occurs: a chain reaction which also infects all neighbouring cities. If one of them has three cubes, it sets off another outbreak. This means the situation can go from calm control to complete chaos in the blink of an eye.
  • Dice+ Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    Dice+ Review

    By

    The first game I ever played on an iPad was a free version of Liar's Dice where you shook the device to roll the bones. At first, it was novel. After three goes, it was annoying beyond belief. This demonstrates two things: firstly there's a good reason why most board games stick to digital dice; but second, that there's still an aching desire to physically interact with something when you play a board game. Enter Dice+.It's a little rubbery cube which communicates with a range of mobile devices, including those running iOS and Android via Bluetooth, and takes the place of a physical dice. You roll it, and the number flashes on the uppermost face and is communicated to the game. It's slightly bigger than an average dice, but still rolls comfortably from the hand with a pleasingly tactile and weighty feel.It seems to work a distance from the mobile, so your numbers come up even when Dice+ rolls under the table. However, some anti-cheating technology built into the device means a small proportion of rolls don't register. Annoying, but a small price to pay to stop fraudsters from finding the six face and repeatedly dropping it directly on the table. It's charged via a port revealed when you slide up the one face, and a full charge lasts ages: about 20 rolling hours. 
  • Chainsaw Warrior Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    • PC
    Chainsaw Warrior Review

    By

    Back in 1987, Games Workshop released a solitaire board game called Chainsaw Warrior. It was an impressive innovation back then, before co-operative games or solo variants became common and it got bought and played for its novelty. Now it's been updated for the digital age, even though the intervening years have not been kind on the reputation of its cardboard parent.To play, you create a solider by rolling stats like hand-to-hand skill and reflexes on some dice and picking some equipment. Then you send your intrepid character into a skyscraper where an inter-dimensional rift has opened up, filling the building with zombies, rats, slime, and worse. Your journey proceeds by turning over cards and resolving the monsters and traps thereon, until you die, run up against the very strict turn limit, or meet and defeat the game's central villain for a victory."The original was cumbersome and time-consuming to set up and play, and gave you relatively little reward for all that effort. Mechanically, it communicated little sense of its action-packed premise and had virtually no strategy or decision-making, with almost everything being resolved by a dice roll. An app version obviously takes away the administrative overhead, which is a boon. And I was hoping it would follow up with slick presentation to get its sci-fi horror theme across.
  • Toca Cars Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Toca Cars Review

    By

    Toca Boca has become a byword for quality in children's apps. Their games encourage exploration and experimentation, yet come without any hidden in-app purchases or other hidden nasties. Recently they've boldly started branching out into apps for slightly older kids, starting with Toca Builders and now moving to the racetrack with Toca Cars.Like all their other games, it's incredibly simple to pick up and play. You choose a racer and then start steering them around a virtual environment simply by touching the screen in the direction you want to move. As you drive and skid around, you'll encounter houses, traffic lights, trees, and other bits of scenery you can bulldoze over and push around. Wreak too much havoc and there's a simple button press to reset everything again.But you're not limited to just knocking things over: many of the things you'll encounter are interactive. Most obvious are various ramps that allow your little racer to pull off different kinds of spins and jumps. There are puddles of paint to drive through and color the world with tire tracks. Best of all are the other characters, an irate robot that pushes you away, a shy bird that flees and hides, and an enthusiastic dog who follows you about.