iPhone Roundup

iPhone gaming en masse…

iPhone review

Jennifer Allen takes a look at some recent portable offerings for the iPhone.

Connect The Dots Extreme

Price: £0.59
In a world that offers the likes of extreme ironing, it’s perhaps not the strangest thing possible that we now see Connect the Dots Extreme. It is, however, rather unfortunate that there’s nothing very extreme about this tedious iPhone version of Connect the Dots. The ever hopeful side of me was expecting some sort of danger element, or maybe some form of line-based stunt system. Instead, Connect the Dots Extreme is just a slightly faster version of the regular Connect the Dots, and just as dull.

The gimmick of Connect the Dots Extreme is that a line constantly moves across the screen, forcing you to navigate it across predefined dots to create the required picture. It’s fun. For about 30 seconds, after which you realise that’s all the game has to offer.

While it’s modestly priced at 59p, there really isn’t much point to Connect the Dots Extreme, and it certainly doesn’t live up to its title.  2/10

Cubehead

Price: £0.59
Cubehead has been seen a thousand times before, especially on the App Store. It’s a match-three title with more than a passing resemblance to Bejewelled 2, Zoo Keeper, and so many other games of that ilk. To its credit, it’s a very cheerful game. The music plods along while you move coloured smiley shapes around in order to clear the board and defeat King Cubehead.

It’s extraordinarily simple, with the only real point to it being to achieve a high score. Like other match-three games, though, it draws you in and before you know it you’ve spent 30 minutes or more with this basic but mildly entertaining 59p game.  5/10

Hive

Price: £1.19
Hive is based on a draughts-esque tabletop game that admittedly I’d never heard of before. The concept is intriguing, though, even if it did take some practice to be competent at. It’s a two player game whereby each player is provided with eleven black or white pieces that depict insects. Each of the insect types can move in a different manner, with the object of the game being to surround the opponent’s queen piece while also protecting your own queen. It feels quite abstract to begin with, especially without the confines of a board, but it becomes quite compelling after a time.

The iPhone version offers one and two player modes, as well as a peer-to-peer mode that I didn’t have much success with. It’s a game that takes some adjusting to, but fortunately there’s a tutorial that does a decent job of teaching the basics. It’s also a game in which the more you play, the more it makes sense, and will especially appeal to those who enjoy more cerebral challenges.

It is, however, a pity that the hardest difficulty level isn’t actually as hard as you might anticipat, so while it’s a challenge early on, it does get rather easier the more you play it. That’s a shame, as I found myself playing it quite frequently before the AI player peaked and became a little too predictable to defeat.  6/10

Stranded Without a Phone

Price: £1.19
Right from the start, Stranded Without a Phone is a unique experience on the iPhone. Its premise is also my idea of hell. You play the survivor of a spaceship crash and must survive on a desert island until somebody comes to rescue you. It’s an RPG at heart, and requires quite a lot of repetitive grinding to achieve much, which could be off-putting. Still, with a nicely original plot, it’s quite alluring.

As you’d expect if you were stranded by yourself on an island, you’ll spend an awful lot of time just trying to survive. With over 70 different items to collect, ranging from coconuts to logs, there’s a lot that can be combined to give you a chance of survival, although often it’s easier to use the same few combinations over and over again. This has the counter effect of making things tedious at times: find coconut, drink and eat, build fire, set boar traps, repeat. It’s still a great idea, though, and features such as the different weather events and the huge amount of item combinations available make it that bit more interesting than simple farming.

In a perverse sort of way, Stranded Without a Phone is a little like The Sims. It’s ultimately pointless, but you’ll still find yourself avidly playing it in short bursts and ultimately returning again and again.  7/10