Mobile Monday – My Army, Oven Break, Word Trick, Spot Kick Hero

It’s a big week here at GodisaGeek.com with the first of our PlayStation Vita reviews having just hit the site, with more to come over the next few days, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to neglect our beloved mobile devices. Not a chance. This week we’ve got My Army, a game that combines the old school games (at least as far as I’m concerned) of Commando and Cannon Fodder, Oven Break, a crazy little tap-to-jump style game where you play as a Gingerbread Man who is constantly running, collecting jelly beans, as if things couldn’t get crazy enough.

Next we’ve got a game that will be hitting the iOS App Store this week, a game called Word Trick which can only be described as what would happen if Words with Friends had a crazy arcade mode that enabled you to rack up an insane amount of points. Lastly, there’s Spot Kick Hero which emulates all those spot kick/flick kick games we all played at school during those times when we were supposed to be learning.

Read on to find the full reviews of each of these games, download them, play them and tell us what you thought of them in the comments below.

Have fun and play some games!

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!

MY ARMY:

I’m an old school gamer at heart, I grew up with a Spectrum ZX 2+ and an Atari 2600 to keep me company, along with some of the now classic games for the two age-old systems. One of my favourites – for the Spectrum ZX at least – was Commando, a game where the objective was to get from the bottom of the screen to the top, killing all of the enemy troops that stood in your way. As with most of the old-school games I never got very far, the combination of no saving and being about 6 years old almost doomed me to certain failure; I kept coming back though. With that in mind you can imagine how my interests were piqued when I launched My Army for the first time, developed by Distinctive Developments Ltd and looking like the love-child of Commando and another old-school favourite, Cannon Fodder, I was very interested indeed.

Just like in Commando, the gameplay in My Army involves moving your troop of soldiers up the battlefield from bottom to top, dodging and weaving around all of the potential hazards that might be coming your way, collecting ammo as well as any POWs you may come across. Your only job in the game is to take back as much land as you possibly can. The further up the battlefield you get, the more points you get. Getting further into the battlefield, as well as netting you more and more points, also unlocks items for you to make use of later in the game. Uniforms have different characteristics, one might stop a homing missile from locking onto you while you’re in the countryside for example, while vehicles allow you to take an extra couple of hits before that soldier finds his way in front of the pearly gates.

There’s not much else to be said about the gameplay other than that. Having said that, even though the gameplay is simplistic and repetitive I often found myself coming back to it time and again. Something about the method of liberating countries by just walking through them and spraying bullets at just about everything that appears on the screen always makes me laugh. The fact that I’m building up my army score while I’m chuckling doesn’t hurt either. There’s a slight levelling mechanic built into the game in the sense that the longer you keep your main soldier alive (essentially your character, even though you can continue playing even after they’re dead), the more points they’ll accumulate on the battlefield. The more points they’ve accumulated, the faster they’ll level up and the faster, in turn, that they’ll collect even more points. All of these things added together ensure that the vast majority of players will keep coming back for more time after time; even after they would have normally moved on to one of the other thousands of games on the iOS App Store.

My Army is a game that a lot of people will be able to sit down with, fully intending to “just have a look” and then find themselves wildly flailing their iDevice around as they try and get those few points more than they did last time, a few hours after they started. It’s also a game that a lot of people will find themselves coming back to quite often, the combination of a cumulative score, intuitive controls and humorous gameplay being the main attractions. The simplicity of the controls, consisting solely of tilting the respective iDevices in order to control the direction of your line of troops, mean that just about anyone can pick up My Army and give it a go; even people who were a part of the last world war, should they be so inclined.

If you’re looking for a simple yet fun iOS top-down shooter, especially one which has fairly obvious old-school leanings, then make sure you start downloading My Army now, it’s well worth a look.

OVEN BREAK:

At one point in time the iOS App Store was littered with tap-to-jump games, games such as Hellkid where the only input that the player could give the game was a little tap in order to make the main character jump. This was used to collect items, grab onto ledges and jump over gaps. There has been a lull in those types of games for a while but it seems they’re back again, or at least one is. Oven Break, developed by Devsisters, is that game. A tap-to-jump running game where the main character is a constantly running gingerbread man collecting as many jelly beans as he can while avoiding the plethora of hazards around him.

As mentioned, the only real gameplay element is the ability to tap the screen of your iDevice in order to make the gingerbread man jump into the air. The player must do this in order to collect as many of the jelly beans that litter the level as possible. There are obstacles in the way however, bottles that the player must use the only other input method, a button that cause the character to slide along the floor, in order to slide under it and avoid losing a life, as well as pits in the level which, if jumped into, will also cause the player to lose a life. Lose all your lives and as expected, it’s game over and you’ll have to start all over again.

As well as collecting all of the jelly beans within a level, or at least as many as possible anyway (collecting all of them is extremely difficult, even impossible on some levels), players have the opportunity to collect letters along the way. These letters spell out the word ‘FREEDOM’ and as soon as you’ve collected all of the word, you’ll get a nice little bonus to your score. Pushing you ever closer to that often elusive high score. The ‘FREEDOM’ letters can be collected as many times as you’re able to throughout the level and it’s a great way to ensure the highest score possible; and what self-respecting gamer doesn’t want that?

As I’ve already mentioned, the controls in Oven Break are some of the most simplistic you can possibly get on the iOS devices, the whole game comprises of two buttons, one for jumping and the other for sliding along the floor. The player has no control whatsoever in the movement of the gingerbread man, he will simply run to the right of the screen constantly, speeding up as the level progresses, and it’s the job of the player to make sure that he doesn’t come into any obstacles along his way by jumping over them or sliding underneath them. The most difficult aspect of the game – apart from the speed that it can get to at the later levels – is the hooking feature. The gingerbread man can hook onto certain objects suspended from the ceiling in order to get a little bit further with his jump. To do this the player must tap the jump button twice in quick succession and this can be easy to miss, meaning that the gingerbread man will inevitably fall to their doom.

If you’ve never played a game of this genre before then you should at least give Oven Break a go, it’s not the best example of the genre but it’s pretty fun anyway, a lot of people will keep coming back to it with the mantra of “I’ll be able to get a little bit further next time; I’m sure of it!”. I know this from experience. Download it now and I’m sure you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about before too long.

WORD TRICK:

When it comes to word games on the iOS App Store there isn’t exactly a shortage, there’s Words with Friends, Hanging with Friends and a whole plethora of other similar game that are a variation on the same theme. So do we really need another one? Apparently so, Outplay Entertainment has come forward with Word Trick, a word game that players can either play with their friends or with random people from the community. A lot of people, at first glance, will wonder what the difference is between games such as Words with Friends and Word Trick, they look pretty similar except for Word Trick’s green tiles; these alter the gameplay rather significantly and can make or break the game depending on the style of play that an individual player prefers.

For the most part, the gameplay in Word Trick is exactly the same as what would be seen in Words with Friends, or even basic Scrabble, the player is given a set of seven tiles of letters and they are tasked with placing them on the board in such a way that they join the letters that have already been placed. It sounds simple but if you’ve ever played these types of games before then you’ll know that it can be anything but simple if the letter that you’ve been given to use aren’t the most favourable ones. We’ve all groaned at one point or another as we see our set of letter fill up with four O’s, a Q and two V’s. Word Trick is no different in the respect.

What makes Word Trick at least a little bit different from those other games (even significantly different if you’re using it properly) are the green tiles. With these, players can generate a word value that they’d never be able to get in Scrabble. Put three of the green tiles together and players with double their potential word score, four green tiles and they’ll be able to triple their score, etc. These make a word that would normally be a fairly mediocre 20 point word and turn it into a 40, 60 or even 80 point word. No longer do you have to know those stupid words that you always claimed were made up, you just have to hope that you’ve got enough green tiles to wipe the floor with your opponent.

In terms of the controls, things are extremely simplistic, if you’ve played any of the word games that have been available before then you’ll already know what you’re supposed to do. Basically you only have to use a single finger to grab a tile from your stack down at the bottom of the application and drag them onto the game board in order to make the word you’re attempting to play. Once you’ve set it onto the board, just press the submit button, and hopefully you’ll be gloating about your win in no time.

If you’re looking for something new to challenge your friends with then there’s no reason not to give Word Trick a go. It may look a little unoriginal to some people – and to a certain extent it is – but if you can get past that and really start to see the differences then you’ll really enjoy it. The easiest way to describe Word Trick is to think of it as an arcade version of a really down to earth game. The amount of points you’re able to attain, along with the bright colourful features and achievements certainly make this game feel like an arcade word game, and one that is well worth playing.

SPOT KICK HERO:

One sport related thing that I always enjoyed, right back to my school days, was the slower paced aspect of just taking your time and kicking the ball in the most accurate way you possibly could, whether that’s between the sticks in rugby or just in the back of the net in football. Something about taking the rush out of things always seemed to appeal to me. Well, it seems to have also appealed to Wired Productions as they have developed Spot Kick Hero, which is pretty much exactly what I’ve just mentioned, only scaled down into an iOS game.

Just like the table-top versions of flick kicking games – if you’ve been to school at all then you’ve probably played at one time or another – the aim of the game is to kick the ball in such a way that it ends up in the goal. Depending on which of the three games you choose to play, the aim will be to either kick the ball through the sticks or into the back of the net, something that will be obvious from the moment you start the app for the first time. The most difficult thing to get to grasp with from the moment you start the game will be the controls, although having said that, once you’ve got to grasp with the controls they’ll seem obvious. The main game is controlled by placing your finger onto the ball and swiping across the screen in the direction, and the speed, that you want the ball to travel; hopefully ending up with a point for your team.

Graphically, Spot Trick Hero isn’t all that impressive, a lot of players will notice things during their first play session that will annoy them all the way through their time with the application. The main things that are obvious are the fact that the models aren’t very good, they’re a little rough around the edges and the animations that are associated with them just look plain bad. All of this is especially noticeable when everything is slowed down during the replays that play whenever a kick is made. Turning the replays off altogether certainly makes this a little less noticeable but it can still look a little ugly if you pay too close attention to the game models.

If you’re a fan of sports, or even a fan of just the old-school flick sport games, then this is a game you should be downloading. It may not be the best looking game that’s available, it may not even be the most responsive when it comes down to the controls that you’re given, but there’s plenty of things to do within the game, from the three different sports that you can take part in, to the mini-games that are under each category, not to mention the multiplayer aspect of things, that Spot Kick Hero is a game that can take hours away from you without you ever even noticing. Now I need to get back to my game of flick rugby…