Mobile Monday – GMO Busters, The Rolling Cat, Barnyard Mahjong, Tactical Warrior

I can’t believe it’s Monday again, it seems like only last week that I was here telling you all what games you should be downloading…oh, wait. This week we’ve got four more games of the indie persuasion. We’re starting with GMO Busters, a game that tasks you with destroying all of those genetically modified organisms with your little stack of pure vegetables, all in a very “Angry Birds” style. The Rolling Cat is exactly what it says on the tin, a game where you roll about on the screen as a cat collecting sausages. Sounds mental? It is. If you’re a Mahjong player then you might enjoy our third game, Barnyard Mahjong from EnsenaSoft, a classic Mahjong game with a very barnyard theme. Lastly we’ve got Tactical Warrior, a game from James Pawliuk that gives the player supreme control of a battlefield and gives them one task; win.

That’s all we’ve got this week, be sure to check back next week for even more Mobile Monday goodness. Christmas doesn’t stop us here at GodisaGeek.com!

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!

GMO BUSTERS:

When you create a popular game, especially one that’s been downloaded millions of times, you’ve got to expect people to come along and copy your work. This isn’t confined just to games, it’s happened with almost every form of entertainment since time immemorial. GMO Busters is a copy and paste job of Angry Birds, there’s no sugar coating it, that’s what it is. The aim of the game is to destroy genetically modified organisms (hence the GMO in the title) with your little team of pure tomatoes by slingshotting them into the structures holding the genetically altered abominations. Simple enough? Yeah, but then again it was simple years ago too when Angry Birds did it.

As I mentioned, the gameplay plays out exactly like a game of Angry Birds, the player is given the task of taking down their enemies by pulling back on the slingshot that’s holding one of their friendly tomatoes, alter the trajectory by changing the angle that the tomato will be launched from and let go. A dotted line will trace the trajectory of your tomato meaning that if you fall just short of your intended target you can make the minor alterations to the trajectory necessary without having to remember the angle you fired from in the first place. This makes the game a little easier than it would otherwise be.

Once the player’s tomato has landed (hopefully on target) points will be awarded based on how many pieces of the structure they were able to hit along with a much larger amount of points for taking out one of the enemy in the process. The player has to clear the level of all enemies before they can proceed to the next level. The skill in GMO Busters, just as in Angry Birds, comes from being able to get three stars on each level. Stars are awarded for getting a certain amount of points; the more points, the more stars you’re awarded. This is the part where the game can get addictive as a lot of players may not allow themselves to move onto the next level before they have gotten three stars on the current one, which usually involves taking out all enemies in the level with a single tomato.

It’s difficult to recommend GMO Busters to anybody considering that the developers, Swift Entertainment, have just copied and pasted the entire concept of Angry Birds and just replaced some of the assets. The visuals look ok and the gameplay is as addictive as anything else currently on the App Store, but if this review has piqued your interest, then you should probably download Angry Birds instead of this. With Angry Birds you can be sure that Rovio will be constantly updating the game, adding new levels and generally providing after-market support for their title. I’m not entirely sure if Swift Entertainment will be able to provide the same support at all. To be honest, I’m not even sure how they were able to put GMO Busters out at all given that it’s such a blatant “homage”. Download it if you want to play Angry Birds but are for some reason repulsed from the original title, otherwise just download the original, Angry Birds.

THE ROLLING CAT:

The Rolling Cat. Simply saying the name doesn’t give any indication whatsoever about what the game could possibly be about, it could be absolutely anything, but the name is descriptive enough to let the player know that the main character is a cat that rolls, who needs more that that, right? Falcon Mobile have taken the idea of a cat that can roll from one side of the screen to the other and rolled with it (do you like what I did there?), what they’ve developed is a game that’s ludicrous, a little bit addictive and actually rather enjoyable once you get past the little annoying parts.

The main gameplay of The Rolling Cat tasks the player with tilting their iDevice in order to make the cat roll from one side of the screen to the other, the speed at which the cat rolls being controlled by the angle that the player tilts their device at; the more extreme the angle, the faster the cat moves. The aim of the game is to collect the sausages that (for some reason) are falling from the sky whilst simultaneously avoiding the icicles. Sounds simple enough but when you’re trying to tilt the device, look for openings in the icicles and looking for the collectibles all at the same time it can get a little bit overwhelming. In a good, challenging way though.

Whilst keeping your eye open for sausages to collect, there are also power up items that can boost your score by giving you a multiplier to modify your score. Collecting these power-ups are the easiest way to get the higher scores so it’s advised that they’re collected when they appear, although they usually appear surround by a bunch of icicles so collecting them is easier said than done. This only adds to the challenge though so it can’t really be considered a bad thing. The Rolling Cat gets more and more difficult as the game progresses as the cat in question is getting bigger all the time, thanks to all the sausages they’re eating. The bigger the cat gets, the harder it is to avoid the icicles – and therefore dying. This is where the addictive nature of the game comes in, it’s a fine line to walk between getting the high score, getting bigger and avoiding the ever increasing number of icicles on screen and players may well find themselves coming back time and again to give walking that line another attempt.

The Rolling Cat isn’t the pinnacle of iOS gaming but it’s good for a few fun sessions and a bit of a laugh at its expense. It’s not that the game is bad, it’s just that it won’t be enjoyable in the long term, there’s only so many times you can collect sausages falling out of the sky while trying to avoid all of the icicles before you start questioning your own sanity – and indeed, that of the developers. If you want a game that’s silly but enjoyable, and more than a little bit strangely addictive, then you could give The Rolling Cat a go, you wouldn’t be missing much if you skipped it altogether though.

BARNYARD MAHJONG:

Some games that appear on the App Store are brand new games, just thought up, developed and made available for people to download as brand new concepts, other games are new iterations of games that have been around as long as video games have and have just been updated for the more modern consoles. There are some games on there however, that are video game versions of classic games that have been around for millennia, that have been played for almost as long as games themselves have. Mahjong is one of those games and EnsenaSoft have taken it upon themselves to create a version of the classic Chinese game for the iOS App Store but is it one of the thousands already on there that’s worth your time and money to play?

If you’ve ever played Mahjong before then you know exactly how the gameplay works; basically the aim of the game is to clear the board of tiles by matching two of them at a time. This sounds simple enough until you realise that you can’t match paired tiles if they’ve still got a tile on both sides. This is where the strategy comes in because in order to clear all of the tiles players have to strategically decide which tiles they’re going to remove and in exactly which order, if they fail to do so then they could end the game with tiles still left on the board and no moves possible to make.

Like any other puzzle game on the App Store, each of the levels of Barnyard Mahjong are divided up into individual levels that are further ranked by stars, the better you perform the level, the more stars you’ll get upon completion of the level. Doing better in the level requires you to complete the level in faster and faster times along with trying to remove as many, if not all of the tiles from the board. Leaving tiles on the board will reduce the score at the end of the level, even if you managed to finish the level in the fastest times possible. Graphically Barnyard Mahjong looks okay, it’s not the best looking game on the App Store, not by a long shot. The decision to make the game have a barnyard theme is also extremely strange as nothing about the game (apart from the icons on the tiles themselves) has a barnyard theme, so the choice of theme could have been anything, the fact that it’s a barnyard theme adds nothing but it also subtracts nothing either.

If you’re a fan of Mahjong then there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy playing this iteration too, all of the classic rules of the game are here and all work well. A couple of extra game modes where the rules are shaken up a little would have been nice, but you can’t blame a developer for wanting to go down the route of a tried and tested game concept. If you’ve been looking for a game to quench that Mahjong thirst then Barnyard Mahjong might be the game for you. If you’ve never enjoyed the game in the first place then this new iteration of the concept isn’t going to change your feelings.

TACTICAL WARRIOR:

Tactics are something that a lot of people thrive on creating, they live and breath on the strength of those tactics and this often translates into the types of games that they may spend their time playing. The idea of being in control of an entire scenario is a superbly powerful feeling and is addictive all on its own. When that feeling of power is attached to a game, it could end up being an instant classic within the gaming world. James Pawliuk has tried to do just that with the development of Tactical Warrior, a game that gives the player supreme control of the outcome of a battle; the way that each of the characters move, the attack that they’ll use and even if they’ll attack at all, is in the control of the player. Is Tactical Warrior as addictive as the inherent concept of the game would suggest though?

As I mentioned, the main gameplay of Tactical Warrior involves having the player take part in a series of battles where they have to control where their players go and when they attack, if at all. Once the tutorial has been completed the player will be left to their own devices, choosing which battles they want to take part in, which of their characters they’re going to use and, once they’ve picked a battle, what tactic they’re going to use to finish the game with a victory; which is obviously the goal. Applying a tactic to a situation and coming out on top is one of the best feelings that can be gained from playing games and is the major point of addiction for Tactical Warrior, players that really love games like this and get a kick out of working out exactly how to play the battle will love it, despite its terrible graphical style.

If you’re looking for a game that looks good and plays even better then Tactical Warrior isn’t the game that you’re looking for. Just like James Pawliuk’s other game, Staunch Defense, the graphical style is very low quality, as if all of the assets that are used in the game are drawn quickly in paint. It doesn’t take anything from the gameplay side of things but I couldn’t help but wonder how much could have been added to the overall presentation of the game if the sprites had been created by a dedicated artist. I suppose we can only dream.

Players that are looking for a game with a good amount of tactical thought involved would do well do get Tactical Warriors, it’s a game that, to be frank, looks terrible but if you can get past that then you’ll find a game that has true depth and could easily be played for many, many hours. James Pawliuk is a developer that knows exactly what it takes to make a good game but it couldn’t hurt to hire an artist for his next game.