Karate Monkey

Thats enough karate chopping for my arm, I’m bloomin’ knackered!

So, Karate Monkey. Plot = Monkey learns Karate. Why not. 59p for a nice simple game. You either chop up, down, left or right. Now to be honest I actually thought there was a bit more to this game but that was human error on my part. I enter the main menu and I see two options: ‘Training’ or ‘Black Belt Challenge’. Well I don’t know about you but I’ve never been one for the training mode, I prefer to jump right in.

“Patience is a virtue young Sensei…”

Quiet you! To my dismay I was not allowed to jump straight in and did indeed have to surpass the training first. Thus it begins and I begin to chop, flicking at the touch screen left right and centre to keep up with Sensei. Inevitably by impatience kicks in and I end up making a few mistakes and assassinating Sensei. Game Over. Restart the training. A fair few attempts later I find myself getting a little frustrated, I can’t tell how many rounds I have to go with Sensei and I really want to skip all this and get to the main game.

“Patience is a…”

Shhhhhhh! A few more goes later and my arm is bloody tired and it finally clicks how many rounds I have to do. The monkey’s belt is changing colour! When it hits black then the Black Belt Challenge shall be unlocked! Finally realising my target, a renewed sense of determination pushes me past the training stage. Yeah take that Sensei I didn’t hit you once! Here it comes… the Black Belt Challenge… which is…….. an infinite version of the training level.

Damn.

Well in all fairness if I’d bothered to look at the screenshots and description I would of realised that the initial bout with Sensei was essentially the game. Looking at it from that point of view its a nice little game to pass the time, though too much time will leave you with a rather sore arm. The graphics are most notable, with a nice mix of the 3D background and hand drawn characters. I think the progression of belts in the training stage perhaps needs to be clearer, it didn’t twig straight anyway exactly what I was working towards.

Overall its an aesthetically pleasing, addictive but very small game. I think you’ll find 59p games that give you a bit more for your money but the game is decent. So its a respectable 3 Susan Boyles out of 5 from me.

Christmas Capture

Oh my Susan Boyle.

“Hark!” cried the Angel(a) that appeared to me in a dream last night. “You must travel to the great Apple in the sky to the mystical city of App Store and search for the games of lowly developer stature! Unworthy of the front page but worth of a review by you!”

Wow Angela.. err I mean Angel! Thats a top notch idea you got there, might just have to use that! So here’s a festive one to start us o

Christmas Capture

With the arrival of the fat man comes the arrival of a tonne of Christmas related iPhone games. So I boycotted the front page and searched for… Santa! Eeny meeny miny mo! Christmas Capture is a puzzle game by ‘PlayScreen’. You place presents on the screen to try and surround Santa, capture him. Why not eh, that old man has broken into more houses than you can shake a candy cane at. All to feed that filthy cookie and milk addiction. The shame of it all.

As you put presents down, Santa legs it towards the edge of the screen. If he makes it off the edge its game over and this is where I find flaw with the game. I’ve had a fair few stabs at this game but can’t seem to make it past level 3 and as soon as Santa escapes once you’re a goner. Back to the start. This wouldn’t be a problem if I understood the progression in difficulty from one level to the next. I fail just as often on level 3 as I do on level 1.

Its a shame because first impressions of the game were it could be quite an addictive little puzzler. The graphics are nice and can’t fault the audio either. The scoring system makes sense, more presents used the less the score with a high scores table and a save game option too. If the good people at ‘PlayScreen’ feel like doing a quick update on this one I’d recommend a three life system and then we’d have a nice little Christmas puzzler on our hands with a reasonable price tag of 59p.

Rating on this one on the Boyle-ometer… 2.5!

iPhone Game Reviews

I’ve discovered first hand the pure frustration of trying to get my iPhone game noticed in Apple’s App store. That place is more congested than ever before and full of hidden gems. So dagnabbit I’m gonna hunt those gems down and give them the reviewage they need. Requests are welcome, find out more here.