First up is Ewan’s look at DoDonPachi Maximum, what looks at first glance like some crazy, colourful, space-driven shoot ’em up (the screenshots above are good examples of this). But what does Ewan think?
[The game is] ‘devilishly complicated with far too many ways to die filling the screen. DoDonPachi’s style is…all the better for it.’
That bodes well, and when the ‘gaming brain’ clicks, then it becomes ‘fascinating’ to play. There are downsides that Ewan points out, such as the fact that using a joystick or D-Pad would have given much better feedback than the touchscreen, but these are outweighed by the positives such as the lack of button-mashing to fire and that ‘the user input is as good as can happen on a touchscreen’. Overall, Ewan says that ‘everything works‘, and isn’t that what we all look for in a game? Go try it out for yourself.
Slice Ice does pretty much exactly that, as David Gilson points out in his review. Keeping your penguins in a group on an ever-decreasing floating platform is the name of the game, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
As levels progress, your ice floes get more interesting shapes, the penguins walk at varying speeds and there are impenetrable rocky boundaries introduced to make your life trickier. There are similarities with the game featuring the other birds (you know, the cross ones) in that each level can be scored out of three stars, but David reckons that:
‘The developers have made the learning curve just right by making the early levels easy enough to give you a taste of success’.
The game comes recommended (once the soundtrack has been disabled), and presumably is suitable for all ages.
Have you tried either (or both) of these games? Which is your favourite (it’s a Showdown after all)? Let us know in the comments or @Nokia_Connects.