Mobile Monday – Breakout, Ski Jump 2012, Woody Woodpecker, Zombie Wonderland 2: Outta Time

Another Monday afternoon and another list of games to play from us at GodisaGeek.com. We’re not the kind of people to let you down. This week we’ve got a classic game from Atari in the form of Breakout. I’m sure you all remember playing this game in one incarnation or another and now you can do it all over again! Next there’s Ski Jump 2012, a crazy little game that will make you addicted to getting that extra few feet in the air. I know I did! Woody Woodpecker should need no introduction at all but it’s a game based on the crazy cartoon character in a very similar vein to Tiny Wings. Lastly we’ve got Zombie Wonderland 2: Outta Time, a game which tasks the player with keeping those pesky zombies away from the building you’re protecting.

That should be enough games to keep you going until next week, I’ll see you then with four more games!

Have a week!

Titles are available on iPhone and iPad unless specifically stated otherwise. If you like what you read, click the small black “App Store” button to load iTunes up and purchase the title!

BREAKOUT:

Over the past year or so there seems to have been a number of games that I – and a lot of people – remember fondly from my childhood. Back in the mid-80s games were basic, often consisting of a single game mechanic that was repeated over and over again with the sole reason play was so often continuous being purely to beat the previous high score, whether that was your own, a friend’s or some random guy in the arcade; that guy whose initials seems to be AAA. Breakout, developed by SixHourSoft is another one of those games from my childhood that is getting a recent resurgence thanks to the iDevices but is it a version of the game that was well worth the wait or should it have remained in the annals of history?

If you’ve never played Breakout before, first of all, I don’t believe you, secondly, the gameplay revolves around the player attempting to break all of the bricks within a level by bouncing a little ball off of a paddle that the player has control of at the bottom of the screen. Just as with most of the classic games there is a single game mechanic in Breakout and that’s it; break all the bricks to progress. In order to help you on your way towards level completion there are many power-ups contained within the bricks that, when caught, will give the player help in the form of a bigger paddle and more halls, among other things.

If you start to find things a little bit too easy then there’s a way to make things tougher on yourself built right into the game. On the left of the screen is a small slider which controls the speed at which the ball moves, move this slider down and then ball slows down and you’ll get fewer points for breaking each brick. Speed it up however, and the opposite happens; the ball gets quicker, you get more points and that high score just keeps on getting bigger. The addition of this slider bar essentially allows the player to tailor the game to suit their gaming needs perfectly. Often we just get “Easy”, “Normal” or “Hard” but with Breakout we’re given a sliding scale of difficulty allowing us to make it as hard or as easy as we want.

The controls are easy enough to grasp too, simply place your finger on the little area underneath the paddle and swipe your finger left and right across the screen in order to move it. This control method works quite well and is very intuitive, but I found myself wishing that the touchable area was a little bigger as my finger seemed to obscure my view of the paddle a lot of the time making the game much more difficult than I had intended, as I had to almost guess where the ball would bounce from.

If you’re a fan of Breakout, or one of the many versions of the game that have existed over the many years, then this new version for the iOS is going to be right up your street. Everything is here that you expect, allowing old gamers as well as new to just jump in and start playing as soon as they fire it up. The gameplay gets a little repetitive at times but that’s to be expected from these classic games with their single game mechanic. If you’re looking for a game to waste 30 minutes with while your travelling to work then Breakout is the game for you. I assure you that you’re going to keep coming back for more.

SKI JUMP 2012:

Most of the iOS App Store is filled with puzzle games, and those that aren’t puzzle games are usually some form of adventure game, there are a few sports related games but I can’t recall a single one that tasks the player with flying down a ski slope in an attempt to jump as far as they possibly can without killing themselves. Ski Slope 2012 from Vivid Games is just that game, and one where the player is supposed to perform their task with as much professionalism as possible. Do one thing wrong and you could end up faceplanting the snow, and nobody wants that.

The gameplay in Ski Jump 2012 is based solely around the ski jump itself. The player starts the jump by tapping the screen, after that the jump is split up into four parts, the section when you’re travelling down the slope, the jump, the section in the air and then the landing. The player must work hard to perfect all four of these sections if they intend to get the best score they could possibly achieve. If something goes wrong however, there’s a chance that you’ll slow yourself down and end up with a much shorter score than you wanted. If there’s one thing that Ski Jump 2012 knows how to do it’s how to get you to care about the score that you get at the end of a jump.

The whole game looks rather visually impressive with all of the tracks and the people being modelled in full 3D with what looks like a lot of care and attention being afforded to them. There’s only so far you can go with making a ski jump look interesting but Vivid Games have managed it, they’re not the most exciting things in the world to look at but there’s just enough interest in the environments to keep most players coming back for more. The controls are one of the worst aspects of the game, once the player has learned how to use them they seem fine, especially when using the tilt controls instead of the buttons, but the game doesn’t have a way of telling the player how to use the controls properly, and doesn’t tell them properly what all the various items that are displayed on the screen during the game mean. Most players will be able to figure everything out within just a couple of jumps but those same players will find those first jumps hugely frustrating.

If the player can get past those first couple of jumps, where it’s difficult to understand what’s happening, then Ski Jump 2012 is quite an addictive little game. Most players will find themselves coming back time and again to get just a little bit further each time. The visuals are on the border of being breathtaking and the tilt controls are some of the easiest to use in all of the iPad games I’ve played. So good, in fact, that they should be the default option for the game. Ski Jump 2012 is an addictive little sports game that just gets better the more you play it, I just hope people can get past the terrible first couple of jumps to find the game that’s underneath that initial frustration.

WOODY WOODPECKER:

If you’re anything like me then you probably watched hours and hours of the Woody Woodpecker cartoons as a kid – maybe you even watch them now, I won’t judge – so it’s about time we got a game that is as iconic and catchy as the character himself. Tintash has developed the Woody Woodpecker game with creating a classic iOS game in mind, but is it the Woody Woodpecker game that all the fans of the character have been waiting all these years for? Is it a crazy, loveable and heart-warming as our maniacally laughing feathered friend?

The gameplay in Woody Woodpecker is based around a race to the finish line, you select the character that you want to play as (where most people would obviously pick Woody himself) and then attempt to get to the end of the level as quickly as you possibly can, using the hills and the weapons that you have at your disposal in order to do so. If you’ve played Tiny Wings before then you’ll be familiar with this style of gameplay as the main point of the game is to use the numerous hills within the level to maximise your momentum and launch yourself further into the air, and further along the track, than your opponents.

As with just about any other game on the iOS App Store each of the levels are divided up into different stages, all of which have three ‘thumbs up’ associated with them. The better you do in each of the races, the more of the ‘thumbs up’ you’ll find yourself rewarded with when the race has finished. A lot of players will want to collect all three ‘thumbs up’ for each race, and that requires coming first in every race, which is no easy task at all. Even the second and third levels took me a good few times to find my momentum and there are plenty of levels to be having a go at in Woody Woodpecker.

As you would expect with this style of gameplay, the controls are extremely simplistic, only requiring a single finger on the screen at any time. Touching the screen will cause your character to launch themselves towards the ground, hopefully towards a downward slope, letting go again will make them take that momentum that they’ve gained and send themselves skywards. This makes the entire game almost more about the rhythm of the level more than how fast you can go and, as such, makes what could have been a rather hectic game a little bit more serene and calming; which is strange considering the genre and characters involved.

If you’re a fan of Woody Woodpecker, or even just a fan of these games that rely on momentum in order to win, then you owe it to yourself to download this game. It’s addictive, has plenty of replay value and lots of content to keep you going for the long term. There’s even a multiplayer mode to keep things interesting for even longer than normal. Amazing stuff with an amazing art style and that laugh…just…yeah…

ZOMBIE WONDERLAND 2: OUTTA TIME:

Some games are well suited for the iDevices, the puzzle games of the world that task the player with tapping the screen for obvious reasons, rewarding them with Game Centre achievements, high scores and just about anything else they could possibly offer in order to keep people playing for the long term. Some games are the opposite. They are available on the iOS App Store but while you’re playing them you can’t help but think they would be much more suited on a device that has a dedicated controller, an easier way to control the things that happen on the screen. Zombie Wonderland 2: Outta Time is just one of those games, a game that works perfectly well as it is, but would it have worked even better on a console?

The gameplay in Zombie Wonderland 2 revolves around taking control of a caretaker and protecting various establishments around a small town from the oncoming hordes of zombies. In order to do this players must shoot all of the zombies before the get into the building and destroy whatever you’re tasked to protect at the start of each level, it might be a person or it might be something as simple as a jukebox; people need to be entertained, even during a zombie apocalypse.

In order to help you keep back the shuffling hordes the player has certain weapons and utilities at their disposal. The easiest of these helpful tools is the hammer, this will allow the player to board up the windows and keep the enemies back a little bit longer. The won’t last forever though and the player will have to juggle between repairing the blockade, shooting zombie faces and protecting whatever they’ve got to protect. It’s a skill that has to be acquired over time but once you’ve got it down to an art the game becomes hugely enjoyable and slightly addictive.

One of the most difficult aspects of Zombie Wonderland 2 to get a grasp with is the control scheme. Tapping the screen in order to do things is something that we’ve all come to expect when it comes to the iPad, but doing so from an isometric viewpoint isn’t easy at all. Most players will find themselves trying to tap on a window in order to board it up and end up firing their weapon, or vice-versa. This soon gets frustrating and could cause some players to put the game down quite early on in their experiences. If this game was on any of the consoles, the player would have a second analog stick to move the camera and wouldn’t come across this situation, therefore avoiding the main frustration. Having said that, if this game was on the consoles it would be a carbon copy of Dead Block, so I suppose that’s a good thing.

Zombie Wonderland 2: Outta Time is a good looking game with a great deal of gameplay associated with it, it’s just one of those games that can get frustrating after long periods of time playing it. If you get to grip with the controls I have no doubt that you’ll be able to have lots of fun shooting zombies in the face. If you can’t however, you may get frustrated with the game quite early on. Stick with it though, there’s something there, even if you’ve got to dig a little bit for it.