My Fear and I is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer about the existential travails of Sebastian, a seven-year-old lad who is very literally plagued by Fear: a large, oafish, and perpetually whiny creature that bears something of a passing resemblance to Sulley of Monsters Inc. fame. It's an interesting idea, but it ultimately falls well short of its potential thanks to a wonky control scheme that renders the game far more frustrating than fun.Young Sebastian is confused and frightened by the world around him, and clearly finds no comfort in his parents. But he's also tired of living in fear, and so one night, ignoring the dire warnings of his Fear, he steels his resolve, grabs his trusty plunger/grapple gun, leaves his bedroom and embarks upon an adventure into the unknown.The 2D world through which he and his Fear travel is dark and bizarre, with a sort of Tim Burton ambiance to it; but it's also almost entirely static and non-interactive. There are a few pictures hanging from the walls that can be looked at, but the vast majority of the environments are pure window dressing - a disappointment given the promise of dark secrets and manifest neuroses hidden in the many nooks, crannies, and shadows.
Here's a timely lesson straight from the just-ended holiday season: empty calories can taste really, really good. Sure, you might regret that extra helping of stuffing or second desert, but not while you're eating it. Glu Mobile's Eternity Warriors 3 is something like that, a gluttonous serving of free-to-play action-RPG carnage that provides little nutritional value but tempts you to keep coming back for more.At the risk of stretching that opening analogy to the breaking point, one of the ingredients in the Eternity Warriors 3 recipe is a story. That is, there's a reason you're taking your Warrior or Monk and pitting them against hordes of enemies in Diablo-esque fashion. It's just not that important. Consider it a garnish, there for presentation purposes only."The real meat is in hacking and slashing your way through dungeons, and the game gets you into the action quickly, teaching what you need to know along the way. The controls are simple, and despite my general disdain for virtual thumbsticks, this one is responsive enough to deal with the fast-paced combat. A large button handles basic attacks with smaller ones for skills, which draw down your mana and also have cooldown timers.There's nothing subtle about what you're asked to do in each level, which is eliminate undead, demons, wolves, and other monsters in the shortest possible time - and you're actually graded on how fast you can clear them all out. Mini-bosses in the final zone of most levels are a little tougher, and the actual bosses of the three kingdoms provide nice challenges. Mostly though, it's quantity over quality, putting your reflexes to the test against waves of enemies.
Why does Sonic need a car to race? One must wonder if it's this inevitable, always-inane question that helped inspire the developers at Sumo Digital to create a game in which moving along the ground at high speeds is not always the key to victory. In Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, you'll not only need to master the fine art of automobile racing, but you'll also need to display dominance in soaring through the sky and riding the waves in order to succeed and capture the checkered flag.Of course, if you've managed to play the game on the PC or one of its many handheld and high-definition console releases from just over a year ago, then you already knew this. With that experience, you might think you know just what to expect from the new mobile release. And to a certain extent, you would be correct."At its very core, the mobile release of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is the same as its previously-released brethren: You choose from one of a cast of SEGA (and other) characters and motor around various courses inspired by SEGA games from throughout the company's ages, using a multitude of zany Mario Kart-esque weapons to offset your opponents and take the lead over land, sea, and air. However, it's much of the framework around that core that differs in this version of the title.
Sometimes it's smart just to recognize you've got a good thing going. Hothead Games has done that by expanding its Big Win series of sports games to all the major stick-and-ball sports. But just when it appeared there were no more ways to expand the brand, along comes Big Win Racing. It's the tried and true formula of light sports sim plus collectible card elements applied to stock car racing, and it adds up to something pretty good.Your climb to the top of this particular racing world starts out in humble fashion. A pack of starter cards gives your team a foundation, though it's not one you want to rely on for very long. Where the other Big Win titles revolve around building the best possible team of athletes, you obviously only have the driver and the car here (and some people don't consider drivers athletes, but that's a subject for another forum).Big Win Racing handles this dilemma smartly by taking both the pit crew and the parts that make up your race car into account. So while you want the best driver you can get, you also need steering, transmission, an engine and tires for your ride, along with six crew members (two tire carriers, two tire changers, a jackman and a gas man) to service it in the pits.
Ratchet and Clank is a popular action game property that's exclusive to Sony and the PlayStation, so it's only natural to do a double-take at Ratchet and Clank: Before the Nexus for mobile.Before the Nexus isn't actually a full-fledged Ratchet and Clanktitle, however, nor does it contain the depth of any of the series' mainstream entries. In fact, Before the Nexus is a 3D endless running game that plays much like any other runner slumming around on the App Store or Google Play. It looks great and it should keep you busy for an hour or two, but the game obviously exists just to whet your appetite for the latest Ratchet and Clank title, Into the Nexus for the PlayStation 3.As its name implies, Before the Nexus takes place before the events that unfurl in Into the Nexus. Vendra Prog and her brother, Neftin Prog, are making trouble. And, like most villains in endless running games, they're making a beeline for the horizon. Ratchet gears up to stop them. Luckily, Lombaxes are fleet of foot.
The final paragraphs of the gamebook Island of the Lizard King contain a scene I can still remember clearly today, nearly thirty years after I first read it. It stamped itself on my ten-year old brain because it seemed so hideous at the time. I'm made of sterner stuff today, and was positively anticipating re-living those climatic moments on my iPad.As a digital gamebook, you'll spend most of the time reading paragraphs of text and then being presented with a series of possible choices at the end. In this way, you work your own chosen path through a work of fiction. Occasionally you'll be called on to fight creatures or test one of your three statistics, all mediated by dice rolls with a slick and satisfying system.As the title suggests, the plot of this tale sees you travelling to a tropical island to search for, and hopefully dispatch, a deranged lizardman who's been terrorizing local populations with slave raids.
Waking on the shore of a strange island, your first realization is that your friends are missing. Your second realization is that it's time to get to work! Much like CityVille and The Tribez, Cat Story puts you in control of creating a functional town one building at a time. Harvest food, gather resources, and build bungalows as you find your friends and expand the village to take over the island!It starts with simple strawberry farms and fisheries, the most fundamental things necessary to keep your village alive. You'll grow basic food products so you can refine them into more marketable items, slowly increasing your pot of gold with each sale.Once an item is ready to collect, tap the building to take its resources, then tap it again to set the workers on a new task. Quests appear on the side of the screen to guide you forward, instructing you in the ways of wheat production and sawmill construction as well as pushing the story forward with new events and challenges to complete.
By many people's reckoning, Disney's Frozen might be one of the best animated films they've done in a while; even so, there's nothing that says the movie's ancillary products are up to snuff. Disney's team knows how to market with things like dolls, toys, and clothing, and these days they're reinforcing their cinematic brands with mobile games. Sadly, interactive entertainment is not their forte, as evidenced by the mediocre free-to-play match-three game Frozen Free Fall.It's no surprise that Free Fall tells more or less the same story as the film and banks on the film's appeal. Starting with sisters Elsa and Anna, it sets you to removing the snow and frost slowly taking over the kingdom of Arendelle. There's nothing earth (or ice)-shattering here; like a thousand other match-three games, you're asked to achieve a set score or clear the board by matching three or more same-colored crystals. Also like other games in the genre, power-ups like Icebergs are created when you match four or five crystals; other power-ups cause entire vertical or horizontal rows, or rectangular groups of nine crystals, to explode."Disney tries to connect the game with the movie by including some of its imagery in the game's backdrops, as well as its music. It also connects the two through the inclusion of various minor characters who appear here in the form of helpers. It tries to add some Frozen flavor by offering purchasable tools like Ice Picks that can remove a single tile, by scoring each level from one to three snowflakes, and by making you buy snowballs (which are used to add five additional moves if you come within a hair's breadth of winning a certain level). The problem is all of this is window-dressing.